SLD Saint Vengeance

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Saint Vengeance is mostly shallow seas and briny swamps, with a scattering of large, low-lying islands. It has a broad, bright ring that causes a bands of brighter light and deeper shadow in alternating periods of the year. Saint Vengeance is best known as the source of the emigration of the Hellings.

Neighborhood

A large world orbitting a red-orange sun at 58 mehlmau (EF: approx. 0.62 AU, inside the orbit of Venus). The year clocks at about 4.78 sœyœr (EF: about 199 Earth days), the day at 29.2 hours, giving them a year of about 163.7 days. Saint Vengeance has no moons, but the brilliant ring orbits the planet once every 632 hours (EF: approx. every 26.4 Earth days), or once every 21.6 days. The calendar year is thus divided into 7 or 8 "rings."

The rings are very bright, with three broad yellowy bands broken by two narrow bluish-purple. Ring light, at its zenith, occurs twice each calendar ring, once in the north and south. During summer ring light covers a band from -5° to 45°. During winter, ring light falls from 10° to 55°. Simultaneous to ring light zenith, a ring shadow falls near 70° summer and 50° winter. After ring zenith, the rings rise narrow and cant across the sky until, at the middle and end of each ring period, they vanish. The rings are also visible in the artic night during zenith, although they appear narrower and glow less brightly.

People

A small colony of Hellish people took refuge on Saint Vengeance, fleeing the Cataclysm, about 411 BR. According to legend, the colony consisted exclusively of mothers and their children, with no boys over the age of 10. For the first 12 years, all conception was acheived with a large-bore syringe and a large store of "necessities." Echo Valentine is credited as being the first biological father, in a series of randy stories. To this day, family law empowers the mother to deny her child's paternity, and the father has little recourse. Although such a denial is known as "Pleading Valentine," few mothers now claim, as they once did, that the child was sired by of the ghost of Echo Valentine.

Despite their maternal origins, the "Vengies" are a fierce people. Men often resolve differences with a traditional duel: the rivals squared off at twenty paces and charge full-tilt into each other. The one who falls loses. If the rivals are lethally angry, the charge is performed with a "beet," which is a hardwood club about four feet long, weilded two-handed. Being an offensive fighting style, few duels require a second pass, and if that fails, the rivals usually patch up their differences.

Vengies are organized in tribes, clans, and septs, usually along avuncular lines (man to sororal nephew). Warfare, before the revelation, was common. In the early days of the Insula, it was waged as mass duels with beets. Quickly shields and one-handed beets were adopted. Although the muzzleloader was used for hunting, it was seen as a feminine weapon, not "manly" enough for war (which explains the Hellish word for the female genitalia.). By the middle of the Insula, however, the advantages of winning wars overrode the traditional prejudice, its only vestige being the tradition of not seeing an encounter as truly a "battle" if the sides have not met in a charge.

Ecology

Saint Vengeance suffers from low relief, which means her seas are shallow, her plains swampy, and her "mountains" little more than ripples. Exactly what was indiginous to Saint Vengeance is difficult to determine. Crops common among the Known Worlds present here include mangoes, rice, and tomatoes. According to legend the mangrove, a tree with buttress-like roots pervasive across the warmer latittudes, was planted by Matriarchs for a timber crop in the wetlands, but the tree is so common and so peculiarly adapted to the Saint Vengeance climate (not to mention that it is unique to Hellish Worlds), that we conclude it is a native species.