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The Dome of Aughra

Aughra's quasi-Ptolemaic system

High up on a peak sits a dome. The dome sits on the top of a mountain near the edge of a cliff. The cliff is strutted with outcrop crystals of all colors. On the top of the cliff is a craggy mass of rocks, with shrubs and grasses growing thickly. There is a path that leads around the rocks to the top of the mountain. The path widens, allowing room on either side for trees and vinelike creepers to grow. Tendrils hanging from the leaves of the trees block the path and will seize and wind around, binding tightly with thongs, anyone that brushes against them. Aughra can control these tendrils, as well as the bushes and tall grasses, allowing them to let go.

Through the bushes and tall grasses is a hidden hole in the rock. This hole becomes a dark tunnel and a circuitous maze. At the end of the tunnel is a door which leads into the dome.

The vast dome is illuminated by a golden radiance, from an unknown source. Within the dome is an enormous and complicated orrery in constant and swift operation, modeling the relative motions and fixities of the trisolar system. Many-hued planets mounted on shafts of different lengths revolve in varying rhythms and orbit around the center, rising and falling; and around them in turn rotate moons and other satellites in their own trajectories, while eccentrically spinning comets dance in and out of the whole convoluted, interweaving, four-dimensional cosmos. There seems to be no safe place because the orbits of the orrery emcompass the great room.

This is where Aughra lives as well as her place of work. Her domestic clutter, pots and pans and utensils and glassware, lay scattered around, amidst alchemists' tools, biological specimens, and bits and pieces of half-assembled machines. A gallery runs along the circumference of the dome, with two large telescopes mounted diametrically opposite each other.

Halfway around the room is a niche that is presumably a sanctuary from the dangerous cosmos. Within this room is a table, a workbench, boxes, and a cupboard containing Nebrie cheese and white Kainz juice. There is also a cabinet with a shelf full of crystalline shards.  There is a high telescope gallery just under the dome.

The dome was built by Aughra and the urSkeks. It allows her to know when to expect the conjunctions.

Whatever material had been used to construct the dome was as brittle as an eggshell.

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