Kethra Almanac - World at a Glance#
S1. Deep time and the present#
| Anchor | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Dating system | AL, "After Landfall". The capital counts in solar years of 368 days. | The frontier's lunar count drifts from it; see Chapter IV. |
| Present year | AL 2314 | About 2,528 Earth years after Landfall (2314 × 1.092). |
| Hyperion today | About 195 AU away and closing. It adds about 0.76% to Kethra's heat. Red-night light is about 250 lux. | Worked from the orbit. orbital period of about 3,500 years is in Earth years, which is about 3,204 Kethran years. Closest approach falls in AL 2539, 225 Kethran years (246 Earth years) from now. |
| Hyperion's trend | About 20% brighter within one lifetime. About 0.93% extra heat by AL 2374 and about 1.05% by AL 2414. It peaks at about 1.3% in AL 2539. | Old people remember dimmer red nights. This is real, not nostalgia. |
| At Landfall (AL 0) | About 333 AU away and receding. About 0.26% extra heat; red nights about 90 lux. | The Founders landed in a cool, dim era. |
| The last hot era | Its peak came in about AL −665, 726 Earth years before Landfall and about 3,250 Earth years before the present. | No human has ever lived through a hot era. The land remembers it (see S3). |
| The next hot era | Centred on AL 2539 | The central environmental fact of the present day. |
| Place in the saga | AL 2314 stands at the opening of the first era, the colonial wars. Alien contact has not happened. AL 2314 is the saga's exact starting point. | The Corridor War, the charter disputes and belt unrest are the ground the colonial wars grow from. |
S2. The planet#
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Radius | about 6,340 km |
| Gravity | about 1.00 g. Kethra has about Earth's mass, which keeps the moon figures valid. |
| Surface area | about 505 million km² |
| Ocean | 66% of the surface |
| Land | about 172 million km² |
| Atmosphere | about 0.95 Earth atmospheres; 23% oxygen (Earth: 21%); traces of CO₂ and argon. Fires burn hotter and spread faster than on Earth. |
| Gardenland | About 19 million km² (about 11% of the land) has been converted to Earth-descended ecology. The rest is native Wild. |
S3. Geography#
| Region | Capital name | Frontier name | Area (million km²) | Population (millions) | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northern heartland continent | Calathe | the Old Shore | 48 | 342 | Where Landfall happened. Home to the Caldren Crown (214 million) and the Lesser Crowns (128 million). |
| Western continent | Oreth | Oreth | 29 | 299 | The Vardane Imperium (238 million) and the free Oreth coast states (61 million). |
| Eastern island continent | Aelos | Aelos | 12 | 41 | The Ilyr Sanctum. Isolated for centuries. |
| Equatorial sea | the Girdle Sea | the Girdle | - | - | The equator runs through it, and everyone calls the equator the Line. |
| Equatorial islands | the Line Isles | the Line Isles | 6 | 40 | Free ports, spaceports and Rovessa home harbours. Includes about 6 million Rovessa who live afloat. |
| Southern frontier continent | Notia | Eldvang | 41 | 142 | The frontier: the Southern Holds. Red summers. |
| Northern polar lands | the Rime | the Rime | 14 | 1 | Ice and research stations |
| Southern polar continent | the Southern Ice | Nifl | 16 | 2 | Ice and mining camps |
| Other islands | - | - | 6 | - | Scattered islands |
| Total | 172 | 867 |
The Stair. Warm eras raise the seas and cool ones lower them, while Calathe's southern coast slowly rises. The result is a staircase of raised beaches: bands of old shoreline that climb the coasts like steps. The youngest step, from the last hot era, is about 12 m up; the oldest in the Thess estuary are about 140 m up. The Founders built on the Stair. Aletheia, the capital, stands on it. The coming hot era will slowly flood the lowest steps again, with sea level rising about 0.3 m per century now and accelerating.
The Line. The equator, running through the Girdle Sea. It separates the northern heartlands, which say "Selenne", from the southern frontier, which says "Kethra". To "cross the Line" means to go south, or to make a choice that cannot be undone.
S4. Humanity off the planet#
| Settlement | Population | Governing body |
|---|---|---|
| Orbit around Kethra, and the moons Pandia and Ersa | 14 million | Vesper Orbital Compact |
| The Cinderbelt, about 50 AU out | 3.1 million | Cinderbelt Coalition, 1.5 million; Vardane Imperium (Castellan Rock and about 60 concessions), 0.9 million; Outer Lantern League, 0.5 million; others, 0.2 million. See Kronos and the Cinderbelt. |
| The gas giant's 15 moons: capital name Kronos, frontier name Ymir | 0.4 million | Vardane Imperium, by occupation: seized from the Cinderbelt Coalition in the Corridor War. About 89% of the people live under Vardane administration. Coalition, Lantern, Vesper, Crown, Ilyr and Free Banner footholds remain, and the Black Ledger is rumoured to have one (corrected 19 September 2026: earlier wording listed the Ledger's foothold as a fact; the Who's Who, chapter 11 and the Kronos colony almanac give it as rumour). See Kronos and the Cinderbelt. |
| Total humanity | about 884.5 million |
- Light delay: a signal takes about 7 hours each way between Kethra and the Cinderbelt. Every conversation with the belt is a letter, not a call.
- Travel: fusion torch-ships reach the belt in weeks to months.
- No faster-than-light travel. It was lost (see S5), so humanity cannot leave the system.
S5. How humanity came here#
- Earth-of-the-songs. The songs hold no history of Earth. They hold fragments: a green world under one moon, its creatures and old gods, the Leaving, and the Crossing. Why the ancestors left is lost. The songs say only that they saw something coming and went before it came. Nothing in any song names or describes what they saw.
- The Crossing. The ancestors crossed by a means the songs call the Long Door. How it worked was lost in the Silence. Seven ships set out; three reached Kethra: the Patience, the Covenant and the Lodestar. They carried about 214,000 people, most of them in cold sleep, along with seed stocks, embryo banks and Earth soil cultures.
- The Forgetting. On landing, the Founders sealed every navigation record and swore the Oath of the Unmapped: no one would ever seek Earth, so that whatever they fled could never follow a path back. The records were sealed, not destroyed. They were lost over the following centuries, as the Founders' data-stores failed during the Silence and the last people trained to read them died. Whether any sealed fragment survives, perhaps in Ilyr, is rumour and an open question. The Oath is the oldest law on Kethra and the root of its deepest taboo.
- Landfall, AL 0. The ships came down on the southern coast of Calathe, at the place still called Landfall.
- The Gift. The Founders engineered a gut flora that lets humans partly digest processed native foods. It passes from mother to child.
- The Silence, AL 41–about 400. The ships' fabricators failed. The Grey Cough, a mutated Earth virus, swept the settlements from AL 44 to 61. The population fell to about 58,000 by AL 120. The knowledge behind the Long Door was lost, along with most written records. The songs survived, kept by the first song-keepers, the origin of the Cantorate.
S6. Eras (full history in Chapter IV and the country almanac)#
| Era | Years |
|---|---|
| The Crossing, the Forgetting and Landfall | before AL 0 to AL 0 |
| The Founding | AL 0–41 |
| The Silence | AL 41–about 400 |
| The Kindling: chiefdoms and the first kingdoms | about AL 400–812 |
| The Crown Era, from the Charter of Caldren (AL 812) | AL 812–1500 |
| The Relearning: printing, steam, electricity, the Vault Openings | AL 1500–1900 |
| Settlement of Eldvang across the Line | from AL 1620s |
| The Ascent: flight, computing, orbit (AL 2011), frames, the belt (AL 2140) | AL 1900–2150 |
| The Iron Winter: an autonomous war-machine disaster | AL 2141–2146 |
| Homeworld Assembly founded by the Charter of Aletheia | AL 2150 |
| The Corridor War: Caldren against Vardane | AL 2279–2291 |
| The Armistice of Saltline | AL 2291 |
| The present | AL 2314 |
S7. Where the factions sit on Kethra#
These are native Kethran institutions with Kethran names. They are not inherited from songs.
| Faction | Placement on Kethra |
|---|---|
| Caldren Crown | Constitutional monarchy in southern Calathe. Capital Aletheia, which is also the seat of the Homeworld Assembly. The capital nation. |
| Vardane Imperium | Rigid imperial state on Oreth. Capital Vardenhold. Uneasy armistice with Caldren after the Corridor War. Holds the Kronos moons (seized from the Coalition) and extensive Cinderbelt operations. Controls food (phosphate) and power (fusion fuel). |
| Ilyr Sanctum | Aelos (see the Ilyr Sanctum almanac). Founded by keepers of the Founders' archive who sailed east during the Silence. Restricts technology because it knows what the songs' war cost. Capital Ilyrion. |
| Order of the Veiled Sun | The Ilyr Sanctum's elite military order, flying exceptional frames. |
| Rovessa Caravans | (See the Rovessa Caravans almanac.) Trading families living aboard great sea-carriers on the Girdle Sea. Neutral carriers across the Line. Home port Saltline. |
| Free Banner Guild | Licensed mercenary frame companies |
| Black Ledger | Assassins and deniable operators. Hidden. |
| Homeworld Assembly | The planetary union: 15 member states, founded AL 2150. Its name declares Kethra the new homeworld. |
| Homeguard Command | The Assembly's joint defence command |
| Vesper Orbital Compact | Governs orbit and the moon stations |
| Cinderbelt Coalition | Belt industry and shipyards, seated at Cinder Hollow. The largest belt power. Dispossessed of its Kronos moons by the Imperium, and wants Hearthport back. |
| Outer Lantern League | Belt and outer-system settlements resisting coercive orbital and Coalition rule |
| Southern Holds | An original grouping, not a roster faction. (See the Southern Holds almanac.) Self-governing frontier settlements in Eldvang. Some are chartered to Caldren ("Crown Holds") or to Vardane ("Imperial Holds"); others are free. They are bound loosely by the Holds Compact. Their disputes over charters echo the colonial wars in the songs. |
| Concord Fleet | Not yet formed in AL 2314. In the saga, it is the joint fleet raised when alien contact comes, in era 2. Its seed may be Homeguard Command's small orbital arm. Coalition politics over command and contributions follow the register. |
S8. Technology in the present day#
- Frames. Piloted fighting and working machines, the VectorZ machines. The law of the Frame Accord requires a human hand in every frame: "No frame without a hand." This dates from the Iron Winter.
- Energy. Fusion power, thorium fission and tidal power.
- Space. Fusion torch-ships within the system. Orbital spin-habitats.
- No faster-than-light travel. No outward signalling. The Quiet Sky Accord limits powerful broadcasts aimed out of the system.
- The Mending Accord (AL 2163), called the Mending Ban in everyday speech. Heritable human genetic editing is banned. Therapies that are not inherited are licensed.
- Listeners. Ilyr trains a small number of "Listeners" using Founder neural technology. Whether their abilities are real psionics is an open question.
S9. The Caldren Crown in brief (full detail in the country almanac)#
- Area: 5.9 million km²
- Population: 214.3 million
- Capital: Aletheia, metropolitan population 11.2 million
- Government: constitutional monarchy. The current monarch is Elisande II of House Halden, reigning since AL 2289.
- Currency: the crown (Cr), divided into 100 marks
- Religion: the state church is the Cantorate, the Church of the Song
- Motto: Keep the Song