Eina-afa
#DescriptionDescription
Oafan habitat/station.
Size
The central cylinder is approximately 8100 kilometers across. The atmosphere extends from the rim all the way to the spindle. The habitable space is spun for gravity; This habitat appeals to the Oafa since it is, in essence, a big can full of sky. It is large enough to fit Mars, Luna, and Europa inside [[[@http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2013-04-20%7C2013-04-20]]]. The spindle has a circumference of 600 km [[[1]]] The radius of the can is 4050 km. The spindle radius is 95.5 km. The "troposphere-like" air depth is 3500 km. [[[2]]], with roughly 100km of very thin air existing between the edge of the spindle and the top of the troposphere (this rare-air layer is what creates the "tree line" on the pillars, and is likely created in part by the heat of the lighting system on the spindle.)
From spindle center to "sea level" ground is ~3695.5km. The distance between the outer hull and the inner floor (the ground) is therefore 354.5km. The thickness of the ground itself is unknown, but based on the cliff height of The Stormring, and the sea's depth, it's at least 140km. For comparison, Earth's crust is roughly 30km deep (5km under the oceans)
History
Lost to time, Eina-afa was rediscovered by the Prabstdi after 500 years of searching. Their search was based on information read from data fragments recovered from the derelict Oafan ship Mialhoua-ua that had been drifting for millions, perhaps tens of millions of years [[[@http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2013-08-25%7C2013-08-25]]]. Eina-Afa was made using post-trans-uranic elements (PTUs) in quantities staggeringly large to the people of the 30th century [[[@http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2013-09-12%7C2013-09-12]]].
When the Oafan people fled the Pa'anuri millions of years ago to hide aboard Eina-afa, their ships were left stasis-gelled and stored aboard the station. When Tagon's Toughs befriended the station AI, T'kkkuts Afa, they received many of these ships (and later sold most of them [[[@http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-03-09%7C2014-03-09]]]). One large ship became the Toughs' new ship Broken Wind, with T'kkkuts Afa (now renamed Iafa [[[@http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-03-07%7C2014-03-07]]]) as AI. A smaller ship became Ennesby's corvette Neosynchronicity [[[@http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-03-13%7C2014-03-13]]], and a weaponless freight hauler became Cindercone, the new hull for the AI of the heavily damaged gunship Bristlecone [[[@http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-03-14%7C2014-03-14]]].
Notable Residents and Expatriates
Chinook, Goddess of Earth, Wind, and Plumbing T'kkkuts Afa Various dangerous fauna Ambassador Bala Amin Captain Haley Sorlie Captain Landon and Tenzy Chief Justice Massey Reynstein
Notable Locations
Jumpstar Prime
Capitol city of Eina-Afa. Centrally located atop Soulcrypt Eight. Built from a U.N.S. Tricorn Battleplate, the city takes advantage of the modular pod structure common to battleplates, and is laid out with those pods mounted atop Soulcrypt Eight. The city is perched there, 1000 km above the ground.
Soulcrypts
Also called "Godwalls," these are giant baffles stretching between pillars. They're 1400km long and 1000 km high, reaching just 25% of the way to the spindle. They're roughly 300m wide, and their interiors are filled with racks for Oafan soul foils. It is unknown how many racks are actually full, but there are at least several hundred billion soul foils in storage. They are numbered, with Soulcrypt One at the firstlight end of Eina-Afa, and Soulcrypt Fifteen at the lastlight end.
Architectural note: ALL of the interior structures of Eina-Afa are sculpted in a set of languages. The large sculpts have depths of between 5 and 25 meters. The small ones are centimeter-scale, and are more uniformly deep, between 10cm and 20cm. There is millimeter-scale script as well, and within that there is a microscopic layer of encoding. The amount of information encoded here has not been calculated.
The Stormring
- (sometimes called The Stormring Sea, or The Stormring Ocean)** is a continuous ring of ocean 1400km wide, 25,000 km in circumference, with an average depth of 15km. //(
Rough math: It contains 500 million cubic kilometers of water. For comparison, all of Earth's salt-water bodies add up to 1,338 million cubic kilometers.)
It was carved over millions of years by a pair of giant, cylindrical storms that roll around the ring opposite each other. The Oafan hives named these storms Akkrok and Kutsko, which roughly translate as "Acid" and "Base" respectively. In the chemistry-centric language of the hive Oafans, this pair of names have a meaning very similar to "Anvil" and "Hammer." The storms travel windward around the ring at roughly 120 km/hr. It's 10,000 km from the trailing edge of one to the leading edge of the next, which means that any given patch of ocean will have a monster storm roll over it every three-and-a-half days. [storms have sustained winds of over 230 km/h].
The Stormring was created (as far as anyone knows) when Soulcrypt Six, empty at the time, was cut down, giving the rotational winds a continuous path. It is believed that at this time the interior floor of Eina-Afa was one great ocean, and that the atmosphere was shallow. The storms drew water into the air, creating much more energetic weather systems throughout the can, and in carving the Stormring they spread material necessary for the jungles that climbed the pillars and soulcrypts.
Isthmus Galactica
All that can be seen of Soulcrypt Six is its upper edge. The rest is submerged and silted over. This visible strip of PTU composite is just under 1400km long and about 25km wide. The uppermost lip of the isthmus is around 1000m above the surface of the water
Roughing out the math here, Isthmus Galactic has an average incline of 2.3�, and the deepest edge is just under 40km below the surface of the water. 25km of that depth is silt.
Affiliations & Relationships
Appearances
First appearance
First mentioned (though not by name) [[[@http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2013-01-06%7C2013-01-06]]] by Hioefua Far-Wanders, who describes it as having "attractive open spaces", but "infested with vermin". First seen as well as mentioned by name [[[@http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2013-04-20%7C2013-04-20]]].
Other notable appearances
Author's Note
My schematics, created by Brook West: The leftmost circle is a cross-section. The center image is the layout of pillars and soulcrypts, the half-circle is a draft image, not accurate, depicting half of a lengthwise cross-section, along with some external superstructure.
I don't always draw it "correctly," so inferring dimensions from the strip art is fraught.
MATH NOTES:
These are the official measurements as of Jan 18, 2017. I?ve checked all the earlier sources and these are consistent. Surface area calculations made previously may be inaccurate, because the calculator I was using included cylinder caps in their volumes. I got sloppy, yes.
Length: 12,000 km Radius: Exterior 8,100 km Radius: Interior 3695 km (center of spindle to avg ground level [ABOVE stormring sea]) Surface area of ?ground? (cutouts for pillars & Stormring not subtracted) - 279,000,000 km� (279 million km�) (Pillar cutouts subtracted) - 275,375,000 km� (Subtract cutout for Stormring) 272,125,000 km� TOTAL ?GROUND? + lake SURFACE: 272.125 million km� (COMPARISON: Earth?s land masses add up to 149 million km�)
Pillar radius: 45 km (yes, huge.)
Pillar Length: 3600 km
Pillar tree-line: 2800 km
Forested Pillar area (1): 792,000 km�
No. of Pillars: 570 (31 groups of 18, 2 groups of 6)
Forested pillar area (all): 451.44 million km�
Baffle (soulcrypt) size: 0.3km wide x 1000km high x 1400km long
Baffle Surface vertical surface: 1.4 million km�
Baffle top surface: 420 km�
No. of Baffles: 14 standing, one fallen.
Baffle vertical surface (all): 19.6 million km�
Total vertical forests: 471.44 million km�
NOTE: there is more vertical jungle than horizontal jungle
CABLES: Cable surfaces add up to about 1 million km� and are not in these totals. Also some of that is upside-down. Call it a 380,000 km� of cable surface that can be walked on?
Stormring Sea width: 1400 km
Length: 23,844km at sea level.
Surface area of sea: 33.4 million
Cliff height: 100km
Ocean depth: 15km
Volume of water: 500 million km� (earth has 1.34 billion km�)
Speculation
[Insert uncertain and speculative facts about the place.]
The Eina-Afa is big. The main "Canister" is 8100 Kilometers in diameter and This image compares it to several planetary objects in our system. The image below is 2500 pixels wide and tall. Each pixel is 10 kilometers on a side. This means that each pixel is roughly the size of Brooklyn. A battle plate would fit easily into one of them.
The length of the can has never been stated. There are only two exterior views of the can suitable for measurement, The image from [[[@http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2013-04-20%7C2013-04-20]]] (seen at the top of this page) gives 135 px long vs 98 px diameter gives L/D ratio of 1.35. The below from 2015-06-28 gives 80/52 pixels for an L/D of 1.53 This gives a range of 11,000 km to 12,400 km for the length of the can.
File:Schlockmercenary/eina-afa-size.png
External References
