| abstract
| - 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 prophets. 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. There are rumors that the walls of reality on Alkor Zephyr are unusually thin, bringing that world much closer to the Fifth, the Transformer Land of the Dead, than the rest of the universe is. Some say it is this, and not the influence of the local pulsar, that is the source of such a prophetic and doom-oriented culture. 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.
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