Moontides
Moontides is much like your Earth, being the 3rd planet of a solar system, orbiting a yellow Sun. It's Moon, however, was always directly over the same geographical point of the planet, but otherwise was very similar to your Moon. However, Moontides's Moon had a strong attractional force on Moontides's water, stronger than your usual gravitation force.
This had the strange effect of permanently pulling on all water on the planet in the same direction relative to the planet's core. This gravitation flow was stayed constant for so long that the water had uniquely affected the physiology of the planet's core. For you see, all the water at the opposite pole to the Moon had dug a hole straight through the planet's core. The water drains into this hole in the anti-Moon pole, reaches all the way down to the mantle of Moontides, and then slithers its war around the mantle until it reaches a point directly below the Moon pole of the planet, all the time being pulled by the Moon's strength.
With their being a lot of water to transfer from Drain to Fountain, a lot of it overflowed as it went through the hole, leading to underworld waterways developing through simple wear and tear over eons. Several, but not all, of this underworld waterways created caverns around them through erosion, some of which have entrances on the surface, leading to exploration and expansion by the surface peoples, and eventual underworld settlements devloping as well.
From there, the water dug a hole upwards until it emerges in geysers all over the Moon pole of the planet, It then snakes out into many longitudinal rivers that go all the way from the Moon pole to the anti-Moon pole, and the cycle begins anew. This unique geography of the planet resulted in most civilizations settling next to the longitudinal rivers, with the two greatest cities of Moontides, Fountain and Drain being on the two poles of the planet.
The People
The planet is home to all sorts of sentient species, with a tendency towards bipedal creatures. There are frog-, dog-, cat-, moth- and standard human shaped peoples, along with their animal counterparts like frogs, dogs, cats, moths, etc existing at the same time. As settlements were built, most species came together to live alongside each other, though the ones with greater or innate dark vision did concentrate on the Moon-antipodal side of the planet, where life was easier for them at the dark moonless nights. Generations of migration have made it easy to feel the change in species along a gradient of dark vision, if one were to travel from Fountain to Drain.
However, travel and trade are often expected and encouraged, and so the peoples have built well maintained and well-lit roads and riverways throughout the planet. This, along with night vision and lighting equipment simply being more accessible on the dark side of the planet, allows any species to easily travel all over the planet.
All of these was pushed farther after
First Contact with the
Luminaries , as the Luminaries brought with them spaceships and communication technology, promoting greater interconnection than ever before, and even other spacefaring civilizations and allies of the Luminaries would visit and live in the various settlements of Moontides.
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