Ardaig

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 16 May 2014.

"Ardaig was sizeable, must hold two or three million souls. This quarter was ancient, with buildings of gray stone fantastically turreted and battlemented."
- Poul Anderson, "Day of Burning" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (New York, 2010), pp. 208-272 AT p. 223.

Ardaig is a city on the planet Merseia. Anderson must make it different from a Terrestrial city but not very different because Merseia is terrestroid and Merseians are oxygen-breathing bipeds. When Merseia is unified, Ardaig becomes the planetary capital. Later, it is joined in this role by modern antipodal Tridaig, where most of the government's business is conducted, although Ardaig remains the cultural and artistic center, the location both of the Roidhun's primary residence and of his Grand Council's annual meetings, and also becomes the location of the new Space Navy offices.

Ardaig and Tridaig embody tradition and technology, respectively. Ardaig differs from a Terrestrial city because:

it is neither bright nor busy at night;
ground vehicles are confined to tubeways or a few avenues;
streets are for pedestrians or gwydh riders;
recreation is at home or in ancient theaters and sports fields;
shops are small and have been run by the same family in the same house for generations - although there are also mercantile centers with communicator and delivery systems;
pavements are luminous;
street signs are not words but colorful heraldic emblems.

Those last details in particular are different and imaginative.

In The Hall Of The Mountain-King, Whether On Earth Or On Merseia

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 28 June 2916:

The hall of troll-king Illrede:

in a mountain cave;
vast;
hewn out of rock;
stolen gems and tapestries on the walls;
expensive goblets and cloths on ebony and ivory tables;
fires burning down the length;
rich garments on troll lords and ladies;
elf, dwarf and goblin thralls carrying trenchers of human, Faerie and animal meat and cups of southern wine;
snarling music;
smoky air;
ruddy light;
guards, "...moveless as heathen idols...," (The Broken Sword, p. 64) with glinting spears;
gobbling, guzzling, quarrelling trolls;
a thunderous din;
quiet lords in carven seats;
Illrede, fat and wrinkled, with long green tendrils for a beard and wearing a gold crown.

Colorful, barbaric and vividly imagined. Since trolls are large, green, humanoid and hostile, comparisons with Poul Anderson's alien Merseians are inevitable. In the audience chamber of Castle Afon:

"The mask helmets on suits of armor grinned like demons. The pattern of faded tapestries and rustling battle banners held no human symbology. For this was Old Wilwidh, before the machine came to impose universal sameness. It was the well-spring of Merseia. You had to see a place like this if you would understand, in your bones, that Merseains would never be kin to you." (Young Flandry, p. 141)

Unusual Heavenly Bodies

Originally published on Poul Anderson Appreciation, 21 April 2012.

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization:

Planets

Jupiter has solid land masses because that was a reasonable assumption when Anderson wrote about it.
Diomedes' poles are in the ecliptic plane. Each spends half the year in winter and night. Intelligent Diomedeans are winged migrators.
Although the planet Woden has two and a half Terran gravities, its sun is so energetic that Wodenite life can grow massive.
Tidal action has forced one hemisphere of the small, eccentrically orbiting, librating planet Ikrananka to face its red dwarf sun but such slow rotation generates a weak magnetic field so that the planet retains an atmosphere although most of its water has frozen on the cold side making the warm side a slowly deteriorating desert whose inhabitants, struggling for survival in their season-less, rhythm-less environment, regard nature as hostile, believing in demons but not in gods, whereas dwellers on the edge of the Twilight Zone with rain, snow, day, night and constellations, more conventionally believe in an annually dying and rising god and a single devil whose power can be neutralized. The latter are easier to trade with.
Pressure and temperature gradients on Daedalus refract light around the curve of the planet so that there is no horizon. Sunset is a ring of fire.
Nike is very small but holds an atmosphere and biosphere because it is so old that its weak gravity has had enough time to pull heavier elements into an atmosphere-generating solid core. Age explains its sun's variability which adversely affects Nikean weather.

Giant Stars and Rogue Planets

The red giant Betelgeuse has planets, some of them with life, because that was a reasonable assumption when Anderson wrote about it.
David Falkayn brags of finding a rogue (sunless) planet between Tau Ceti and 70 Ophiuchi although this adventure really happened to someone else.
The Merseians keep a base on Vorida, a rogue planet in the Betelgeuse sector.
The rogue planet Satan bypassing the blue giant Beta Crucis in a hyperbolic orbit becomes a base for the industrially valuable transformation of elements into heavier isotopes when its cryosphere becomes atmosphere and hydrosphere, coolants for heat waste.
A condensing giant star's gravity prevents the condensation of planets but nebular friction around the condensing blue giant Beta Centauri converted the hyperbolic orbits of a cluster of passing rogue planets into eccentric elliptical orbits.
A rogue planet hitting the star Saxo causes it to explode destroying its planets, including the inhabited Starkad.

Giant Planets and Eccentric Orbits

The captured planets of the blue giant Beta Centauri have eccentric orbits. See above.
Another star passing near Siekh skews its planets' orbits. The planet Talwin's distance from Siekh varies from 0.87 to 2.62 astronomical units. Huge ice caps form and melt each twice Terran year. There are floods and rain storms. One intelligent race hibernates in caves. Another estivates at sea. They do not meet.
In the Cerulian system, resonance with the jovoid planet Ogre has multiplied perturbation and brought the eccentricity of the terrestroid Vixen's orbit close to one-half so that, with a 24 degree axial tilt and midsummer nearly at periastron, once every eighteen month year the northern hemisphere is scorched with four times the radiation that Terra receives from Sol - snow melts, rivers overflow, lakes bake dry, storms rage, fires break out, erosion prevents mountain formation, hot wind blows dust and ash across dry plains.
A subjovian planet, which lost most of its lighter gasses when an eccentrically orbiting moon crashed on it, now has 15 Terran masses concentrated in a solid globe called Paradox but 8% of its atmosphere remains helium which diffuses through any material, ruining unprotected equipment.
The Cloud Universe globular cluster's eccentric orbit passes through dense clouds near the galactic center, gathering gas and dust which condense into heavy-metal-rich stars and planets.

Supernovae

When a superjovian planet of 1500 terrestrial masses orbits a star that goes supernova, the planetary core, now called Mirkheim, survives coated in valuable supermetals which are impossibly expensive to synthesise.
The massive star Valenderay, older than normal for its type in its region, must have come from elsewhere. Its supernova explosion will cause ecological disaster on the planet Merseia a parsec away unless artificial force screens protect the planet.
A nearby supernova causes a superjovian planet of 3000 Terrestrial masses to lose all its hydrogen and helium, over 90% of its mass, transforming it into Ramnu, a glacial globe of 310 Terrestrial masses, later inhabited by small, intelligent gliders.
A peak of radiation from the planet Dathyna's massive, metal-rich, irregularly variable sun, which probably condensed near a recent supernova, destroyed civilization but produced a killer mutation which exterminated the parent race, appropriated its technology and now threatens the Polesotechnic League.
Periodic ingestion of new matter by the Cloud Universe (see above) causes several supernovae per century for at least a million years.

Notes on the Above

Falkayn spells out why Satan alone is ideal for producing heavier isotopes. This cannot be done:

on inhabited planets because heat and radioactive waste would make them uninhabitable;
on uninhabited planets because heat waste added to solar radiation would vaporize the rivers needed for coolants;
on uninhabited planets with orbiting albedo-raising dust clouds because these would trap home-grown heat;
in newly formed systems because factories would be bombarded by meteors and asteroids;
on airless planets because the necessary heat exchangers are expensive and put engineering limits on the size of a plant;
on Jovoid planets because free hydrogen diffuses through materials and interferes with nuclear reactions;
on ordinary rogue planets because temperatures near absolute zero affect the properties of matter and because liquid water and gaseous atmosphere are necessary coolants.
 

Anderson invented several ways to disrupt familiar celestial processes:

a giant star capturing rogue planets;
a supernova transforming one of its own planets into the industrially valuable Mirkheim;
a supernova potentially devastating a planet in a nearby system;
a supernova transforming a planet in a nearby system into the massive but solid Ramnu;
a supernova affecting the condensation of another star;
a rogue planet causing a nova by hitting a star;
a rogue planet becoming the industrially valuable Satan by just missing a star;
a star causing eccentric planetary orbits by just missing another star;
an eccentrically orbiting moon transforming its planet into the massive but solid Paradox by hitting it;
an eccentrically orbiting globular cluster causing new stellar condensations and novae by gathering dust from clouds near the galactic center;
planets with eccentric axial tilts;
a planet with no horizon;
a planet with a very close horizon!

Unscientific readers forget technical details so it is good to summarize them. The explanations begin to sound similar but, in each case, they are used to create a unique effect. Supernovae:

usually destroy all their own planets;
can affect planets in nearby systems;
possibly affected the condensation of a nearby star. 
 

In "A Sun Invisible," Anderson planned to introduce the unexpected Beta Centaurian system as the solution of a puzzle so he had Falkayn mention rogue planets earlier in the story. Thus, it was not a deus ex machina when captured rogues turned out to explain why there are planets orbiting a giant star. In Ensign Flandry, Anderson introduced the planet Starkad only to reveal, near the end of the novel, that its sun was doomed to be hit by a rogue planet so, again, Anderson made sure that a rogue, Vorida, had been mentioned much earlier in the novel.
 

These features recur:
 

giant stars;
superjovian planets;
novae and supernovae;
industrially valuable planets;
massive but solid planets;
stellar and planetary condensations;
metal-rich stars and planets;
rogue planets;
collisions;
near misses;
eccentric orbits;
other odd planets;
intelligent fliers or gliders.

Responding to these phenomena, Anderson's characters:

negotiate with Ikranankans and Betelgeuseans;
let extra-solar hydrogen-breathers who have colonized Ogre colonize Jupiter;
colonize the Beta Centaurian system;
trade with Diomedeans;
save Merseia;
incorporate Wodenites and Dathynans;
evacuate some Starkadians;
exploit Satan, Mirkheim and the Cloud Universe;
study Talwin, Ramnu and Paradox;
live on Kirkasant (in the Cloud Universe), Vixen, Daedalus and Nike.

Added on 12/5/12: A revised text explains that the Betelguesean planets were seeded and colonized but should they have existed? 

Added, 23/5/12: Data on Diomedes that I missed above: the system is metal-poor though not old possibly because the electromagnetic action of a passing neutron star fractionalized the original cloud of dust and gas. Consequently, Diomedes has 4.75 terrestrial mass but a low density so its gravity is only 1.10.

Ramnuan Miscellania

Before disappearing to Scotland for a week, let me note some more details about Ramnu.

The meter-high Ramnuans' rigid torso and high pelvic circle make them squat rather than bend in their planet's high gravity, seven Terrestrials. Consequently, gestation is short and the young, born small, are carried in pouches by adults of either sex.

A Ramnuan's vanes are muscular tissue with sensory input and a rippling body language mostly incomprehensible to human beings, like an Ythrian's feathers. When Yewwl and her companions spy in Dukeston, they are suspected and arrested because they cannot conceal their tension.

Ramnuans around Wainwright Station live in the large, shared territory of a clan whereas those around Dukeston live in families, each with a surname and a single patch of land. Thus, Yewwl's band meets a prospector called Ayon Orresa'ul.

As on Merseia, Anderson imagines not only an alien biology but also cultural differences within the alien species. 

One Fictional Planet

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 25 May 2014.

For many of his fictional planets, Poul Anderson seriously considers:

the astrophysical conditions of the condensation of this planetary system from the primordial gas and dust;
the current planetary environment and climate;
every facet of the social life of the inhabitants;
their galacto-political relations to other planets during a changing history.

In the case of Dennitza, there was no astrophysical accident - no nearby supernova or passing neutron star etc. However, there was a more recent collision with "...a shower of giant meteoroids..." -Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 498. Results: craters, extinctions, tsunamis, clouds, an Ice Age and, at the time of human colonization six hundred years ago, a Great Spring, now submerging coastal towns. The Kazan or Cauldron is a huge astrobleme containing woods, farms, rivers and the capital city.

Four hundred years ago, immigrants fleeing the modernization of Merseia, and better adapted to cold environments, provided labor during industrialization and now do most of the fishing and pelagriculture. They retain Vach organization and are represented in a third House of the Parliament. Anderson demonstrates that both species have developed new legends and traditions during their centuries on Dennitza.

Altai

Altai ("Golden"):

is a planet of the yellow-orange star Krasna ("Red");
is ringed like Saturn;
has two moons;
has three quarters Earth gravity;
has polar ice on most of the northern hemisphere and much of the southern hemisphere and no oceans;
has bronze and gold steppe and tundra with large lakes between the ice;
was humanly colonized seven centuries before Flandry's time;
is ruled, by the Kha Khan of All the Tribes, from Ulan Baligh on Ozero Rurik, a lake formed by the southward flowing rivers, Zeya and Talyma;
rotates in thirty five hours but the adapted colonists eat four or five meals a day;
is both isolated and isolationist;
however, trades with Betelgeuse and receives military hardware from Merseia;
also has aerial, ice-dwelling natives.

There is more information about Altai and this post will be added to.

Nyanza IV

At low tide people swim through Jairnovaunt on the surface, guided by marked buoys. A captain's house contains models, scrimshaw, stuffed fish and a couch covered with the hide of a large sea animal killed by the captain.

We learn the names of three Nyanzan nations:

Jarnovaunt;
The Kraal;
Rossala, which is ruled by a Sheikh.

Uhunhu is a million-year old ruined sunken pre-human city of dolmens and menhirs, used as a base by A'u, a fifteen-meter-long, whale-mouthed, talon-legged amphibian with hands on boneless arms who, like Aycharaych, is not Merseian but serves Merseia and has fought Flandry before although "The Game of Glory" is the only story featuring this particular adversary.

Flandry first meets Aycharaych between chasing A'u out of Spica and catching him on Nyanza. Aycharaych later tells Flandry that his side will miss A'u. We are to understand that Flandry and Aycharaych have clashed between their first meeting and the occasion when the latter mentions A'u. However, we read of Flandry-Aycharaych encounters only in "Honorable Enemies" (the first meeting), "Hunters of the Sky Cave" (mention of A'u) and A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows (the last meeting). Despite his massive output, Anderson was a restrained author who never overdid anything and later launched new series instead of merely rehashing the Technic History.

In the Kith History, human colonists of a planet with a large ocean became aquatic. Maybe some Nyanzans will do likewise?

Betelgeuse

The red giant star, Betelgeuse, is Alpha Orionis.

In Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization History, Betelgeuse has forty seven planets, six bearing life. The star's total radiation is great enough that its liquid water zone includes that many planetary orbits; however, not long enough for life, let alone intelligence, to develop. Because Betelgeuse is much more massive than Sol, it has spent only a short time on the main sequence and is dying.

Human explorers found an interplanetary civilization with vague traditions, although no extant records, of ancestors arriving from elsewhere and seeding lifeless planets:

engineered microorganisms can generate a breathable atmosphere in decades;
automated processes can produce soil;
plants and animals grown from cells can then be released.

Betelgeuseans:

have hereditary rulers called Sartazes;
now have the hyperdrive;
rule a few nearby stars;
will evacuate their system when necessary;
play potential enemies, like Terra and Merseia, off against each other;
are treated as a buffer state between imperia and barbarians;
have human citizens, some in key positions;
are short, stocky, bald and blue with large yellow eyes in round blunt faces;
trade with the human colonies, Altai and Unan Besar;
thus were, indirectly, the means by which Dominic Flandry ended Merseian subversion on the former and a dictatorship on the latter.

More On Planets

The previous post lists twelve planets visited in four novels. Also, Therayn is mentioned but not visited in A Circus Of Hells.

Lists of planets might become a feature of these blogs. See:

Planets Of The Long Night
Fully Realized Planets
Fully Realized Planets II

Point of view makes a difference to how any planet is perceived:

in Ensign Flandry, Terra is perceived not by the title character but by Lord Markus Hauksberg when he attends the Emperor's birthday celebration at the Coral Palace;

however, in The Rebel Worlds, young Flandry visits Admiralty Center in the Rocky Mountains;

in Ensign Flandry, Brechdan Ironrede, Hand of the Vach Ynvory, surveys his ancestral domain on Merseia (see Merseian Customs) but that planet is also, very differently, perceived by the young Flandry who has become aide to Commander Abrams of Intelligence. See Merseian Scenery.

There is much scope here for rereading and the studying of details. I had completely forgotten Ysabeau and the unnamed planet in A Circus Of Hells.

The Sky Cave

Yet another volume of space ceases to be a mere void to be traversed and becomes instead a space-scape with interesting features to be observed and approached. Flandry knows that, although the nebula where a star is condensing is a near-vacuum, size and distance make its dust and gas resemble receding caverns with "...walls and roofs larger than planetary systems..."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 284.

He sees great black clouds with gulfs, canyons and steeps redly illuminated by the infra-star. His ship passes between the walls and under the roofs of the caverns. The haze and light thicken until he sees the sable-spotted crimson disc edged with "...coronal arabesques...," shining as yet only by gravitational energy because its core has not yet condensed enough to start the nuclear fusion that will ignite a new star, a "nova stella" in the literal sense. A few more million years are necessary. Meanwhile, Terra and Merseia contend for what they call the "Imperial Stars," to quote the excellent title of one Flandry omnibus volume.

Merseia

Originally published on Poul Anderson Appreciation, Tues 24 April 2012.

Astronomical:

in the system of the Sol-like star Korych;
four moons - Neihevin, Seith, Lythyr and Wythna;
lethally close (about one parsec) to the supernova, Valendary.

When visited by a ship of the Grand Survey:

an industrial revolution starting by the Wilwidh Ocean in the northern hemisphere;
scientific method invented;
heliocentric astronomy;
post-Newtonian, pre-Maxwellian physics;
chemistry beginning;
a well-developed taxonomy;
speculations about evolution;
steam trains;
political power fragmented among the Vachs;
scientists, engineers and teachers each under the patronage of a Hand of a Vach.

When visited, two hundred years later, by the trader team:

the Vachs have confederated;
in the social dislocation following the industrial revolution, the baronial tradition survives as the Gethfennu, organized crime;
the most powerful Vach, Dathyr, is based in Castle Afon in the city of Ardaig;
other Vachs - Hallen, Ynvory, Rueth, Isthyr, landless Urdiolch;
the Republic of Lafdigu in the southern hemisphere;
interplanetary travel;
inconclusive space battles;
a Gethfennu colony on the planet Ronraud;
Star Believers regarding galactics as divine;
Demonists regarding them as demonic;
Adzel addresses a Believer gathering of clients, commoners and city proletariat. 

When visited, several centuries later, by Ensign Dominic Flandry:

the capital planet of an interstellar empire, the Roidhunate;
unified under the Roidhun, who is of Vach Urdiolch;
Brechdan Ironrede, current Hand of the Vach Ynvory, is Protector of the Roidhun's Grand Council;
twin capitals, ancient Ardaig on the bay of the River Oiss on the Wilwidh Ocean and modern antipodal Tridaig;
Castle Afon, the Roidhun's official primary residence, and the newly built Admiralty House are in Ardaig.

When Flandry is an Admiral:

his opposite number, Tachwyr the Dark, has become Hand of the Vach Dathyr and Protector of the Grand Council.

Sources: "Day of Burning"; Ensign Flandry; The Game of Empire.

Planets In The Young Flandry Trilogy

Ensign Flandry
Terra
Starkad
Merseia

A Circus Of Hells
Irumclaw
Wayland
Talwin
an unnamed planet
Ysabeau

The Rebel Worlds
Terra
Shalmu
Llynathawr
Aeneas
Dido 

The Audience Chamber Of Castle Afon

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 17 September 2016:

Centuries apart, both David Falkayn and Max Abrams stand in the audience chamber of Castle Afon in Ardaig on Merseia. Falkayn is Nicholas van Rijn's protege and Abrams is Dominic Flandry's mentor.

Falkayn sees:

a high, gaunt, echoing chamber of unhuman proportions;
woven tapestries on stone walls;
windows arched at top and bottom;
battle banners hanging from rafters;
a hearth with a fire big enough to roast an elephant;
armored, demon-masked troopers lining the hall, bearing curved swords, barbed pikes and guns;
the Hand of the Vach Dathyr in orange robes and horned miter.

Abrams sees:

long, flagged floor;
high walls;
narrow windows arched at top and bottom;
sawtoothed vaulting;
proportions wrong by Terran criteria but not here;
demonic mask helmets on suits of armor;
faded tapestries;
rustling battle banners;
unhuman symbology;
a dragon carved in black wood;
the black-robed Hand of the Vach Ynvory lifting a spear and crashing it down in salute.

Some of us might remember James Blish's Jack Loftus in the audience room of the Hegemon of Malis (here).

The Game Of Empire: Some Loose Ends

One more divine name: Tangaroa Zachary. Gatto and Tangaroa converse by eidophone.

Half a millennium after the events of "Day of Burning," Merseia still requires forcefield protection from the radiation of the supernova, Valenderay: a permanent reminder to the Merseians of their former vulnerability and dependency.

The moons of Imhotep are Zoser, Kanofer and Rahotep. In autumn, dead leaves are underfoot in Olga's Landing. In Old Town, Tigery trading caravans arrive from the lowlands. There are crowds, music and savory odors from foodstalls and Winged Smoke houses.

Through the transparent wall of a high Terra-conditioned floor of the Pyramid, Dominic Flandry, Diana Crowfeather, Targovi and Axor see:

scarlet, russet and amber woods;

outside the heated area, boulders, crags, native plants, frozen rivulets, sunlit snow-covered mountains and green glaciers.

Llynathawr

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 22 May 2014.

Fans of Poul Anderson's History Of Technic Civilization know somewhat of the major planets such as Terra, Hermes, Merseia and Avalon but what do we know of Llynathawr apart from its name (which we do not know how to spell)? Yet another entire planet sketched briefly by Anderson, Llynathawr was discovered by Cynthians and bought by the Terran Empire, has good climate and scenery and rich natural resources, is close to Sector Naval HQ on Ifri and has trade opportunities with both Imperial and barbarian planets.

Llynathawr's single (?) city, Catawrayannis (population: two million), on the Luana River, houses the hill top palace of the Governor of Sector Alpha Crucis. This frontier Sector also contains the Virgilian System, with inhabited Dido and colonized Aeneas, and the industrial rogue planet Satan which, at the time of the McCormac Rebellion, was an ancient possession of the Duke of Hermes, a colony planet in Sector Antares.

In the previous volume, the planet Irumclaw, with its empty suburban mansions, was described as:

"...like a piece of wreckage at the edge of the receding tide of empire."
 -Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 204.

Llynthawr has seen not a receding tide but a false dawn. The planet was bought in order to "...strengthen this frontier by attracting settlers." (p. 400) However, few people any longer leave comfortable environments for new beginnings in remote places and those few prefer town to country. Also, nearer colonials like Aeneans are already settled and unwilling to move. Thus, Catawrayannis is surrounded by sparsely lit wilderness.

The new Governor's audience chamber has a gold and black "...live-fur carpet..." (p. 402). A living surface, like grass underfoot? It also has many moving lights and dynasculps, incense, low music, an animated Imperial court masquerade covering one wall and an enormous inscribed portrait of the Emperor behind the chair of state. Subtle bad taste, reflecting Governor Snelund's personality.

An interesting place: we see too little of Llynathawr - although we are learning to spell it.