What Earthporn ain’t good for, I’ll never know. Thanks to redditor Snahans for sharing this image here.

I can imagine a lot of similarities between Earth and Drendast. Forests, deserts, mountains, oceans, islands, and various other non-polar terrains. But when it comes to imagining (to say nothing of describing) what sets Drendast apart from Earth, I come up with as many misses as I do hits.

As mentioned in Drendast, Part 1: The Big Picture, Drendast is a mega planet, nearly 100 times the diameter of the sun. It is so massive that it has three (3) suns orbiting around it, not the other way around. Prior to the fall of one of those suns, called Tropreus, into the planet, there was perpetual daylight. Life evolved in a manner which capitalized on that bountiful, endless supply of energy, easily able to meet all basic needs in peace. This meant no predation, no struggle to survive. Life was a free gift.

Additionally, the surface of the planet is more than 90% ocean, save for what looks like 12 little islands spread out evenly around its surface. Those islands, called Subworlds, are actually massive, Pangaea-sized super continents, connected to one another via a naturally occurring intra-planetary network of Conduits.

I could go on about other known features about Drendast, similar or different from what we might expect to find on Earth, but the point of this entry is to emphasize the fact that there’s still tonnes of details which are unknown or not clearly understood about the planetary super system. For example:

How is it that the gravity isn’t too crushing for complexity and, eventually, self-replicating proto-life forms to emerge? Does the presence of ether mitigate some of gravity’s more intense effects at that magnitude?

How are days marked with three suns in the sky, if at all?

Wouldn’t there be solar tides? How would they effect the planet’s surface?

In what ways is the climate on Drendast unlike that found on Earth?

Does Drendast have a determinable spin/rotation?

Does the Drendain stellar system orbit around anything else out in deeper space? Like how our solar system orbits around the super massive black hole in our galaxy’s center?

Are there other, more distant stars and celestial bodies? If so, are Drendains aware of this fact prior to the fall of Tropreus, given that it should be impossible to see stars in the night sky if there’s never any night?

Is there tectonic activity on Drendast prior to the Fall? If so, how does it manifest itself? Would it at least partly be caused by the orbits of the suns?

What is the present day role of the formative primordial ether at the planet and suns’ cores, if any? I mean, right now, it’s the ambiguous, cosmic, vaguely-spiritual, ultra caveat any sci-fi writer might like to have on hand to magically conjure up an otherwise impossible explanation for how and why things are the way they are, and I’m happy to use it to explain the cosmic origins of Drendast, but beyond that..?

If Drendast has no spin of it’s own, does it have a magnetic field? If so, how? Is it anything at all like that found on Earth? If not, again, how so? — I’m thinking the suns each contribute equally to what might be described as a dynamic, ‘Triune’ (or ‘three-in-one’) magnetic field around and resonating with Drendast.

Are there monsters on Drendast, despite ideal evolutionary conditions?

Drendast and the three suns may be deified by the Drendain peoples, but will they actually play a role as personified entities throughout the course of Drendain history, literally and directly intervening here and there, or no?

These and many more questions plague me somewhat, leaving what might otherwise be a fully immersive setting bereft with holes. Sure, there is supposed to be a given amount of perpetual uncertainty in the world of Drendast owing to the fact that it’s just so bloody huge that no amount of exploratory effort could ever observe everything there is to see under the suns even after thousands of lifetimes, but there are other mysteries, such as the ones listed above, which are only mysteries because I, as a writer, come up short for answers which I feel I rightfully should understand better.

So, I might as well just put it out there for any interested thinkers and dreamers to muse over. If you can imagine a sensible enough sounding state of things on Drendast which sufficiently answers one or more of these questions for me, and I go as far as to officially adopt it as cannon for what is known and true of Drendast, I will be more than glad to credit it back to you!

Any takers?