Stone-Rain Basin
Brimmock
The weather report calls for boulders.
Rock vapour rises from hot magma oceans, then condenses and falls as mineral rain and pebble-snow in the cold zones. Wind channels howl along the lava shoreline.
Ceramic landing pads are the only safe parking. Onobo deploys a thermal veil. Zamfyr asks if he needs an umbrella. He needs a roof.
On the hot side, the ground is a glowing ocean of magma. The heat is so intense that rock itself boils into the air, drifts to the cold side and falls as stone. A gentle shower here means gravel. A storm means boulders.
For Meep Rocks, Brimmock is paradise: an endless free buffet falling from the sky. Thousands of young Meeps crunch through the gravel drifts, and giant floating Meeps drift overhead catching boulders mid-fall. It is the biggest Meep population anywhere in THE GALAXY.
Mineral grazers, slow and armoured, wander the cooling plains and lick the fresh stone for nutrients. They are very calm. Everything else is not.
Atmosphere
Glowing, ashen, gritty.
Local quirk
Local greeting: 'Duck.' Local reply: 'Meep.'
Regions · proposed names, not locked canon
Stone-Rain Basin
The cold zone where rocks fall, and where Meep Rocks gather to feast.
The Meep Grounds
The galaxy's biggest Meep Rock nursery: thousands of young Meeps chewing fresh-fallen stone.
Lava Shoreline
Where the magma meets the sky.
The Ceramic Pads
A string of heat-proof landing platforms, rebuilt so often that the patches have patches.
Pebble Drifts
Fields of freshly fallen gravel, piled like snowdrifts. Warm to the touch, and the Meeps' favourite buffet.
The Big Drift
A slow herd of giant adult Meeps floating above the basin, trailing rubble, mouths open for whatever falls next.
Hazards
- ▲Precipitating rocksPebbles, stones and boulders falling from the sky, often all at once.
- ▲Lava shorelinesThe edge of the magma ocean shifts with every tide of heat. The beach is not a beach.
Visitor tips
- ✦Wear a reinforced helmet. Then another one.
- ✦Land only on the ceramic pads.
- ✦Say hello to Steve.
Local life
- ●Meep Rocks (thousands)
- ●Giant floating Meeps overhead
- ●Heat-tolerant mineral grazers
A day on Brimmock
There is no real day here. One horizon glows orange from the magma, the other is grey with falling rock, and in between the sky crackles.
The relay crew live in a bunker and listen to the rocks hitting the roof the way other people listen to rain.
Locals & customs
Relay Tech Grub Hollister
Has lived alone in the relay bunker for six years. Talks to the mineral grazers. Thinks one of them is called Steve.
Steve
A mineral grazer the size of a bus. Probably not called Steve.
- ◆The local greeting is 'Duck.' The local reply is also 'Duck.'
- ◆Every visitor signs a helmet and leaves it on the wall. There are a lot of dented helmets.
Legends & history
The Stone That Fell Up
Grub swears that once, during a huge storm, he saw a rock fall upward, back toward the sky.
Onobo checked the records. There was a spike in the data that afternoon. He has not told Grub.
Crew log
“I asked for an umbrella. Onobo gave me a roof. I walked around wearing a roof.”
“Hot one side. Rocks the other. Very honest planet.”
Story seed · in development
Rock Bottom
An errant signal from a Brimmock relay is blinding Earth's telescopes. Fixing it means standing in a rock storm.
The relay isn't broken. Someone has turned it to point at Earth on purpose, and the rock storms are covering their tracks.
Earthward stakes
Earth's observatories go dark until the relay is fixed.
Onobo packs
Science inspiration
Inspired by models of rock rain and supersonic winds on lava planet K2-141b. Life here is fiction.
McGill: K2-141b forecast