The Outer Sky of Iovis
Iovis dominates the view of every inhabitant in the Outer Sky. It is a colossus of layered clouds, banded with colors and marred by slow, grinding storms older than some civilizations. From the surface of Ione it fills a third of the heavens, overwhelming in scale and a constant reminder of presence larger than any living thing.
Ione is a marginally hospitable moon; its surface kept warm by geothermal activity, its atmosphere kept breathable by ancient technology, and its gravity light but sufficient. The world is settled by myriad cultures, touched by travelers, and marked by ancient ruins and newer settlements. Many of its inhabitants observe and map the gas giant above, while others interpret its signs as the passing of ages and the telling of omens.
Other natural and artificial bodies orbit the giant like a solemn procession; mining platforms and asteroids, active and abandoned research stations, debris fields and objects on decaying orbits, observation posts and structures whose original purpose has been forgotten. The Outer Sky is home to everyone from settlers and traders to cultists and archivists. To travel through the Outer Sky is to move through bands of influence as varied as the surface of Iovis and as real as its gravitational pull.
Below it all hang the Iovian rings; dark bands of dust faintly visible and spread out along the plane of the giant’s rotation. The Outer Sky is a collection of places to be and places to go, yet distances are vast and travel measured in days and weeks. Communication lags, news travels slow, and people appear and disappear by accident and design. To live here is to be constantly aware of your own smallness, the immensity of the sky, and the intangible threads connecting people and places.
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