Terminus

A constant, sinister reminder of the spirits' threat to our world. I always fear it will flare into light at any moment, like in the stories of old.

Small and dark, Terminus is our world's second, unnatural moon, bought into our own realm from the Spirit Realm during the Spiritmeld. It's sudden appearance in the night sky was believed to signify the start of the end times, yet it has just sat there in a stable orbit for almost 1000 years. Terminus's orbit is highly inclined, at approximately 71 degrees from the equator. Terminus orbits our world extremely slowly, exactly once per year, with the "full" phase occurring on the Winter Solstice and the "new" phase on the Summer Solstice. This is so slow it appears to travel retrograde from the world's surface. Despite being small and further away from the world's much larger natural moon, Lupa, Terminus plunges the entire world into darkness as if it were a total solar eclipse if even a small part of the moon's disc passes in front of the sun.

Geography

Terminus is small, and it's surface is a completely featureless pitch black disk against the starry backdrop of the night sky. The only defining feature of this body is a bright, arcing line of white fire where the day-night terminator would be on a normal astronomical body, causing phases defined by this line of light slowly creeping across the surface.
When viewed from the Spirit World, Terminus looks like a normal astronomical object, though distorted as if observed through an irregularly shaped lens or extreme heat haze. It is small, barely large enough to pull itself into a sphere through hydrostatic forces, pockmarked with innumerable craters, and appears an icy white, though relatively dim due to the Spirit World's own feeble sunlight.

History

The appearance of Terminus in the night sky was sudden and incited much panic across the world. The event occurred on the Winter Solstice, and marked the beginning of the Spirit Meld. The Era of Spirits Calender officially begins on this date. Since then, Terminus has just sat there doing nothing of real importance.

Type

Planetoid / Moon