Overview
In the year 2187, the colony ship Stellar Horizon departed Earth bound for Kepler-442b. After a critical malfunction in their navigation systems during a solar storm, the ship drifted off course for decades while its passengers slept in cryogenic stasis. When the emergency systems finally initiated revival protocols, they found themselves approaching an unknown star system. With failing life support and no way to correct their course, they were forced to land on Duskara - a tidally locked world that barely met the minimum requirements for human survival. Now, eight centuries later, their descendants struggle to piece together their past while forging a future on this harsh but beckoning world.
In the narrow band between eternal day and endless night, humanity clings to existence on Duskara. This tidally locked world was never meant to be their home - they are the descendants of a colony ship that went terribly off course generations ago. The exact circumstances of their arrival are lost to time, though fragments of their history persist in shared memories and sacred data crystals.
Here, in a habitable zone barely 300 kilometers wide that circles the planet's meridian, civilization endures. To one side lies the day face - a hellish expanse of radiation-blasted rock where temperatures soar above 400°C. To the other stretches the night face - a frozen wasteland of ice and darkness, broken only by the faint glow of aurora and the dim red light of geothermal vents in deep caverns.
The eternal wind howls between these extremes, spawning massive storms where hot and cold air masses clash. Yet humans have not merely survived here - they have adapted and evolved. The harsh conditions and unknown radiations have awakened latent psychic abilities: thermal sensing, weather working, and the deep bonding that connects them to Duskara's native life forms.
Their settlements form a chain along the twilight band, each one a fortress against the wind, with soaring towers and deep roots. In the great caves of the night side, other communities huddle around geothermal warmth, developing their own distinct culture. They are all bound together by their mastery of wind and water - every drop precious, every breeze understood.
Technology here is a careful balance of preserved knowledge from Earth and innovations born of necessity. Wind turbines and thermal exchangers power their civilization, while ancient satellites still orbit overhead, their purposes largely forgotten. Some customs echo Earth's past, others are unique to this strange world where dawn never comes.
This is a world of:
Constant twilight and eternal windsPsychic abilities shaped by environmental pressuresLinear cities stretched along the habitable zoneCave dwellers who have never seen the starsAncient mysteries from Earth and new enigmas native to DuskaraThe struggle to maintain civilization in the face of extreme conditionsA culture shaped by the need to manage scarce resources
Yet for all its harshness, Duskara is home. Its people have developed a deep connection to their world's rhythms - the wind patterns, the temperature gradients, the flow of precious water through their carefully maintained systems. They have created beauty in their adaptation, strength in their communion with the planet's forces, and meaning in their struggle to thrive where their ancestors merely hoped to survive.