Alkor Zephyr

Overview
Alkor Zephyr is an odd little planet in the Medusa Cascade that probably shouldn't exist. Its system contains eight stars, but because one of them is a pulsar, it only has seven visible suns. The natives are well aware that the eighth is there, however, and the effects of its constant radiation bombardment can be felt in the form of increased incidences of madness among the native populace. The seven visible suns can be destructive in their heat and contradictory gravitational pulls, but they are also the source of light and life as well, and as such hated, feared, and revered. Oaths by the seven suns are oaths on the source of life and death. The eight sun grants only madness, and a swear by the eighth sun is either an observation that the situation has gone beyond the realms of sanity, or an indication of something darker.

Between the gravitational effects of eight suns, the radiation of the pulsar, and an extreme axial tilt of the planet itself, it's a wonder that Alkor Zephyr manages to support any life at all, but there is, in fact, a thin band between the dead dust regions at the equator and the ice plains to the south. It is here that the Iraklia, a robot race whose origins have been lost to the mists of time, manage to survive. The oceans also support a wide variety of life, most of it quite dangerous.

The planet is highly unstable, geologically, and much of it is buffeted by extreme weather at any given time. Volcanic activity is also very common, and the north is dominated by magma barrens that will sometimes spit-forth flaming chunks of semi-molten rock that can land miles distant, reaching, at the worst times, as far south as the kingdoms of the Iraklia.

Thanks to Alkor Zephyr's unusual gravitational alignments and the interplay of the solar radiation on the planet's magnetic fields, the sky from the planetary surface is often surprisingly beautiful, as even during daytime, and even on the equator, light interplays with magnetics to produce a rainbow shimmer that permeates everything. Unfortunately, this does not save the surface itself from being very dreary in most regions.

Alkor Zephyr has three moons, though these are largely unremarkable, being little more than barren chunks. Two are rather small, but the third is somewhat larger than Earth's moon, relative to the planet Zephyr. This means that when it is reflecting light from the seven visible suns, it can be a rather spectacular sight.

The Iraklia are spindly and wear very muted colors. The joints are large and rounded, but protected. They are humanoid in shape, a bit taller compared with the 'normal' Transformer scale, have four optics (two on each side - a full sized set, and a smaller set above them), no noses, and mouths that rarely do anything but frown.

The Iraklia society is overall a peaceful one - they're generally much too busy battling the elements to worry about battling each other. However, as previously mentioned, thanks to the large amounts of radiation in the system, insanity is more common than it should be, and some of the people affected go off into the wilds and become violent brigands, preying on travelers, hunters, and smaller settlements. Sometimes these brigands even band together, becoming a larger threat. It is to deal with such as these that the warrior class exists, where stable and promising youths are raised to protect the Iraklia from the outsiders who are no longer a part of their society.

Other forms of insanity are less extreme, sometimes resulting in milder hallucinations and 'visions.' Sometimes these 'visions' seem to prove to be something more than radiation-induced fancy, however, as events in life start to mirror things predicted in dream uncomfortably. This form of insanity is most common among the elders, who have been exposed to the living conditions of the system for the longest, and those who 'suffer' in this way are often revered as profits. Not everything spouted by such an elder is going to happen down the road - sometimes a hallucination is just a hallucination - and at times the prophesies are cryptic, and cannot be fully understood until after they've passed.

Also notable in their recorded prophesies is a time of darkness, when all eight of their stars are blotted out. This is notable because the suns, as viewed from the planet at the time it was discovered, showed that they were approaching a full alignment. It's much easier to block out seven overlapping starts than seven stars scattered about the sky.

While the Iraklia are not a violent people, they are suspicious of outsiders, ever fearful for the doom that will fall from the skies, and tend towards the dour and joyless. Welcomes will be cold, if at all, and it is difficult to gain aid or earn the trust of these individuals. Not impossible, but the Iraklia face so many problems from the world around them that they are inclined to expect any new thing arrives to be something dangerous, something harmful. The Iraklia don't hope for "lucky breaks." They don't believe them. They don't even have a phrase for "good luck" in their vocabulary, so if strangers are showing up out of no where, it must be trouble.

The Iraklia survive primarily by farming solar energy, but it has been observed that once the energy is in their system and processed, it can be used as fuel by Cybertronian lifeforms. Many would find fuel gained by such a source distasteful, to say the least.

For some curious reason, the Iraklia speak a somewhat antiquated form of Decepticon.

History
As stated above, little is known of the history of the Iraklia. Their origins have been lost in the mists of time, due, largely, to the fact that their environment makes proper record-keeping a difficult proposition at best.

On occasion, the pulsar's generated radiation gets processed by radio receivers as voice, usually interpreted as a series of random numbers. Space farers who have gone to investigate these transmissions often never returned. Even experienced pilots have difficulty navigating the eight large gravity wells of Alkor's system, making crashing very likely and leading to the region becoming something of the space equivalent to Earth's Bermuda Triangle.

Recently, missions by both the Autobots and the Decepticons to investigate the transmission have managed to return successfully. The Decepticon mission even recovered one of their own, lost two years prior to the same mistakes that cost the lives of so many other space travelers.

Places Of Interest
Note: No area that has not yet been publicly explored has had its description added, although some notes may be included based on what information has made itself available. Areas completely undiscovered are left out.

Middle Dust Plains
"Interest" here is relative. The middle dust plains take up much of the planet, and are the location landed on by recent Autobot and Decepticon forays onto this world. However, for the most part the dust plains are miles and miles of nothing.

Description: Nothing. There is nothing here but ground and sky, and even the ground barely deserves mentioning. Gray, cracked ground is packed tight, though not so tight as to keep the top layers from blowing about in the exceedingly heavy winds, some hot, some frigid. Looking around, there is no hint of life in this arid and inhospitable land.

The sky, when it can be seen through the dust, is much more interesting. This system sports seven visible stars, but now, in a junction that occurs once in countless eons, the suns have aligned so that only indication that this world has more than one are the different colors flickering along the edges. Blue in the center, yellow beyond that, red on the edges, with other, more exotic hues bursting into life and before fleeing vision as quickly. It's difficult to tell what the light is bouncing off of, but as it reaches its fingers towards the edges of the sky it is reflected and refracted and recombined and split again, scattering shards of broken crystal colors across the cloudless firmament. It offers such stunning contrast to the lifeless gray of the planet that it's visually overwhelming, so that one almost misses the dark spot of a moon hanging halfway between the horizon and the sky-stars. Come to think of it, that moon seems a bit closer to the suns than it had a while ago...

Kingdom of Iraklia
The Kingdom exists along the small band of habitatal land that borders the Dust Plains to the south and the Ice Regions to the north. The word "Kingdom" is loosed here very loosely, as the Iraklia consist mostly of a few scattered towns, villages, and hamlets that don't war on themselves because they're too busy just surviving. There is no true central government, and local governing policies vary from community to community.

Description: Despite the wretched heat in the north, the deep freeze in the south, and the frying radiation, intelligent life lives on Alkor Zephyr. In the south, closer to the cold than the heat, sits the kingdom of Iraklia, descended from the earlier kingdom of Lor. Small hamlets scatter the land. With eight suns, the common people tend to farm out solar cell ranches and solve most of their energy needs in that way. Glossy expanses of solar cells stretch out across the fields, and one may catch a glimpse of a native dusting the soot from the north off the cells to keep production peak. Along trade routes and rivers created by glacier melt, there are larger cities, where trade bustles. The natives seem a suspicious people, however, and are quite wary of strangers. It is as if they expect doom at every turn.

Magma Barrens
The region north of the Dust Plains, the Magma Barrens are, as yet, largely unexplored. However, their influence in times of geological instability can be felt a very long distance away, indeed.

Oceans
Alkor Zephyr's surface, like many worlds, is made up largely of ocean. However, this ocean is generally unexplored.

Nameless Town
The references to "Nameless Town" has generated some confusion. In fact, most towns and hamelets in Iraklia have go unnamed, meaning that there are many places that can be called "Nameless Town." However, outsiders visiting Alkor Zephyr, after speaking with a local banished priest, assumed he was giving the specific name of his own town, rather then just generally implying that his town had no name. Presumably, he was probably referring to one of the towns with no name nearest to where he was found. That said, asking any random native, "Where is Nameless Town?" is unlikely to yield any useful information.

Ice Caves
The Decepticon recovered from Alkor Zephyr says they exist. No details have been gathered beyond that.

Logs

 * Dead Air - While investigating a mysterious distress signal, the Transformers find a hostile planet. A stranger prophesies doom, while some of the Decepticons encounter a familiar face.