Someone recently asked me why the Brunnen G left Brunnis. Apparently there's been a bit of confusion because of a section of the LEXXicon on the US Sci Fi Channel Board.
Brunnis - Ancestral planet of the Brunnen-G. Planet was abandoned thousands of years ago, because of a massive attack by His Shadow. Satellites were built to keep the sun from going supernova and preserve the remnants of the culture.
Now, normally one might take information from official sources as
accurate. But how 'official' is the Sci Fi Channel site, and how
accurate?
On the textual evidence from the series, I'm reluctant to
accept it.
In I Worship His Shadow, Stan says near the end that the
Dark Zone is a realm 'inaccessible to the forces of His Shadow.' This
has been taken by some to suggest that
His Shadow is physically unable to enter the Dark Zone,
perhaps it rejects him or something.
I prefer a more conservative view that the Divine Order simply has no
presence in the other Universe.
However, this is contradicted almost immediately by the
predecessors in Supernova when they tell Giggerota they
have the memories of the many thousands they killed...
"including some who lived on Brunnis." Then they prove
it by directing Giggerota and telling her how to safely
shut off the stabilizers.
Now, what this seems to prove is that His Shadow was operating and the
Divine Order existed before the Brunnen-G left Brunnis. The Divine Order is definitely very very old. It also
suggests that the Divine Order was fairly big and powerful even then if
it could either a) reach into the Dark Zone to claim Brunnen G victims,
or b) cast a net wide enough to catch Brunnen-G wandering into the Light
Universe.
Note that the Predecessors said 'some', which suggests
more than one. This may have been a single group killed
and captured together. Or it might have been kills of
different individuals or groups over a period of time...
If the second, it would suggest the Divine Order was on
the hunt.
As to who these Brunnen-G were? It may be that the Brunnen G or members
of them maintained contact or continued travelling between the light and
dark universes.
But then again, following the Insect Wars, the Brunnen-G appear to have
become fairly isolationist. They seem
completely unaware of developments... In Brigadoom they
are shocked to discover that the Insect Wars are a hazy
memory and that mankind has fallen to fighting among itself.
If they'd been keeping an eye out this wouldn't have come as a surprise.
My guess is that the Brunnen-G killed by the Predecessors were either
exiles or renegades. Or else they were part of the scouting or real
estate agents expeditions that the Brunnen-G probably sent to the Light
Universe to locate a suitable planet for them to move to. Logically,
the Brunnen-G would have sent scouts out, I can't imagine them moving
their entire population without having their new home picked out.
Does this mean that the Sci Fi Board is accurate? Well, it's possible.
But killing a few Brunnen-G is different from a major attack on Brunnis.
My gut instinct is to say no. I simply don't believe that the race that
lead humanity to victory in the Insect Wars would put up with a major
assault on their homeworld.
Their technology and military prowess was far superior to
other cultures, and if they had enough gumption to move their entire
population between Universes, I can't imagine they wouldn't have come
after the Divine Order. I also can't imagine they would have moved into
the Light Universe
with the Divine Order and left an enemy like that standing.
Especially if the attack was recent. They'd have gone out
and cleaned the Divine Order's clock but good. End of His Shadow.
Besides, the timing seems wrong.
In Brigadoom the Master says that 'humanity survived (the Insect
Wars)...but the Brunnen-G world was dying' This suggests that the
decline of the Brunnen-G sun dates to
around the time of the Insect Wars or shortly thereafter.
In contrast, we know from Mantrid that the last insect
went into a period of hiding and hibernation before infecting its first
human. The Divine Order must have
been established well after the Insect Wars, and it probably
required centuries or even millennia to grow to the point
where it could be dangerous.
It strikes me that the Divine Order is simply too late for such an
attack to destabilize the sun, and there's no evidence that anything
other than the sun was the cause of the planet's deterioration.
The other textual clues, primarily in Supernova, seem to support this.
Kai says that they built the stabilizers thousands of years ago to keep
the sun from going supernova. He immediately after says that they left
'when the planet could no longer support life.'
Poetman says that 'I knew we were leaving Brunnis, after all
the sun was dying.'
In a memory recording that Stan encounters, a Brunnen-G writes that 'our
sun continues to die, I fear that one day
Brunnis will do the same and we will have to leave and go...' It may be
possible to date this memory record somewhat: since Stan first
encounters a record from the time of the Insect Wars, and then
afterwards, a record from 5000 years before, we can assume it takes
place sometime between those two events.
What conclusions can we draw from this? First, never a mention of an attack from the
Divine Order precipitating the departure, by either Kai or Poetman.
Second, the sun was deteriorating
well before Brunnis was abandoned, this is confirmed by all three
sources, and the stabilizers. Third, the deterioration of the sun was
the cause of the planet's eventual deterioration, again, implied by all
three sources.
This is all consistent with the Master's remarks in Brigadoom.
Let us turn from the spoken text to the visual text. What do we see of
the planet Brunnis, thousands of years after it was abandoned? And what
conclusions may we draw from this?
Brunnis appears to have a green tinged atmosphere. I'm not
sure what that means about the composition of the atmosphere, but its
probably not a terrestrial mix of gases.
From the ground, the atmosphere is definitely reddish.
The planet's surface appears reddish, and geological features are
visible which look like dried out river, lake and sea beds. There
appear to be clearly differentiated
light and dark areas, with some very dark spots. This suggests a
creative live geology, and probably plate tectonics.
Bodies of water remain, there appears to be a reasonable ocean in the
upper part of the northern hemisphere. There's also another, much
smaller sea near the equator, but this appears to be a relic body of
water, as its connected to or surrounded by a light coloured flat plain
which appears to be a remnant sea bed. The northern ocean is adjacent
to similar light coloured areas, which suggest that it too, is in
retreat.
There does not seem to be significant - if any - cratering, which suggests
that water-based erosional processes have been eliminating them. This
in turn suggests that Brunnis
was once much wetter than it is now. Also, the absence
of craters also indicates that there hasn't been any substantial
bombardment, either by natural meteor strikes,
or by attack, since the planet started to dry out.
Primarily on the night side of Brunnis, white clouds are visible. There
are also white clouds around what appears to be a sea in the upper
northern hemisphere, but generally there doesn't seem to be a lot of
cloud cover during the day. Clouds on dayside seem strongly associated
with the bodies of water. There's some suggestion of a south pole, or at
least white clouds clustering around a south pole. There does not
appear to be a north polar ice cap, rather, the north ocean extends into
that area.
On the surface of Brunnis, we get to see a huge, almost endless
cityscape. Apart from being abandoned, all of the buildings appear to
be in good shape. There's no evidence
in what we see of war, fire, or other substantial damage.
So, what conclusions can we draw from this?
First, I'm not seeing evidence of a 'massive attack' on
the planet's surface. The cities aren't damaged. There's no apparent
cratering.
What I do see, is a planet that was clearly once very earthlike, and is
now well on the way to becoming Marslike.
Perhaps this transformation is the result of the attack?
Possibly, but if so, I'd expect more secondary effects... damage,
craters, some other signs.
Allow me to speculate...
I do not believe the Brunnis sun aged naturally. Stellar life cycles
are measured in the billions of years, and if
the Brunnen-G sun was within a million years of shifting
into a nova phase, it would have been very apparent and they wouldn't
have settled there in the first place.
Either that, or the Brunnen-G and humanity are incredibly, incredibly
old. On the order of millions or tens of millions of years. That's a
bit much, even for me.
I think that the Brunnis sun started as a main sequence middle aged
star, much like our own, and suddenly for some
reason moved off sequence.
Why? I have no idea. It may have been a natural fluke.
I have a theory, posted elsewhere, that the Brunnen-G may
have detonated stars to destroy the insects, and they may
have destabilised their own sun to keep the insects from attacking.
Alternatively, the sun may have been destabilized as a result of the
Insects attacking. Or it
might have been an unintended side effect caused by one or the other.
Of course, this flies in the face of the Beans' own statement that the
Insect Wars took place in the Light Universe. But if things were so
dire that the Master in Brigadoom could say 'humanity survived' then it
suggests that humanity, all of it was at risk, and since humanity
probably originates in the Dark Zone, this implies that at least some
battles were fought here.
The destabilization of the sun might have been the Divine Order's
attack, referred to in Lexxicon, but I don't think so. First, the
timing seems all wrong. Second, if they had the power to toast stars
that long ago, why would they even bother to build a pea-shooter like
the Lexx?
Anyway, the point is that Brunnis sun, for whatever reason, moves off
main sequence during or following the Insect Wars.
What does this mean to the planet?
Possibly, it means that more radiation starts pouring out.
In particular, more hard radiation. Much more ultraviolet,
much more high wavelength stuff.
The first effect of increased ultraviolet and hard radiation is that the
planets ecosystem starts to go. The plants, particularly are being
destroyed. The ultraviolet slowly sterilises the planet down to the
bacterial level. Brunnis
is turned into a sterile desert.
The Brunnen-G could have responded by building greenhouses
and arcologies, habitats, and great sheltered gardens. But under the
sun, the ecostructure is being destroyed down to
a bacterial level and there's not really much they can do about that.
Even engineering radiation resistant plants won't help if the soil
bacteria that plants rely upon no longer exist. The destruction of the
ecosystem is too
thorough.
But more than that, the hard radiation hitting the upper atmosphere is
probably splitting water vapour H2O into
its constituent components, hydrogen and oxygen. A lot
of the free hydrogen is escaping into space.
The remaining oxygen atoms combine into oxygen or ozone. Even with the
ecology dead, the atmosphere probably remains oxygenated or even
hyperoxygenated. The atmosphere probably
has a high percentage of ozone, which means the planet probably reeks,
and your lungs burn as you breathe.
This process also means that the planet is being dried out.
The destruction of atmospheric water by radiation means that the
atmosphere, especially during the day, is probably desiccated. It's
desert dry, perhaps even painfully dry. It never rains on Brunnis, at
least not during the day, because the clouds are torn to pieces as they
form.
But even without clouds, you probably still have lightning.
The preponderance of charged particles caused by the breakdown of
atmospheric water probably means massive
dry lightning bolts, and a lot of static electricity floating around to
make life unpleasant.
The weather on Brunnis probably sucks... and blows. The increased
radiation and heat, the desiccation of the atmosphere, and the vanishing
of the oceans and seas which
trapped heat makes for substantial changes in climate.
The normal weather we know vanishes, no more rains obviously, probably
no more storms (although what looks
like a proto hurricane cloud is visible in one shot, probably a
semi-permanent formation over a water body)
Instead, the days are terribly hot and nights are bitterly cold and the
temperature difference creates a ceaseless planetary wind.
The oceans and water bodies are being continually desiccated, as the
radiation burns off the top layers, and
heat causes evaporation. Clouds form above water bodies, but are
continually being broken down into hydrogen and oxygen, oxygen and
ozone. The clouds are breaking down too
quickly to drift over dry land, and only survive over oceans because
they're continually replenished by the shrinking seas oceans. Already
large areas of water have been dried out, leaving only seabeds and large
light coloured plains.
Eventually, all the water, except possibly relics at the poles will be
gone and the oxygen/ozone mix in the atmosphere will probably start to
decline.
As the oceans shrink, the salt, mineral, and sediment content will
increase. Eventually, they'll be as or more salty than the dead sea in
the middle east, and unable to support life. This has already happened
in all or most areas. There may be some fish, algae or bacteria left
in the upper reaches of the northern ocean, but the writing is on the
wall for them.
This probably didn't happen immediately, but rather, the planet probably
slowly became more and more unliveable
over centuries or even millennia.
Nor would it have affected all the planet in the same
way at the same time. The equatorial regions would have
been worse affected than the polar regions.
If the planet had axial tilt, then it had seasons. Over time, what we
would find is that the center of summer would become too 'hot' for life,
and that biological activity would shift towards fall and spring. As
heat and radiation increased, the summer 'hot' spot would steadily
increase until the life cycle was reversed and winter became the season
of life and growth, while summer became the season of hibernation and
death.
Gradually, the permanent dead zone would expand further and further
northward from the equator. The seasons of winter 'life' would grow
steadily shorter as the increasing radiation extended the periods of
lethality. Life, and
habitable environment would retreat steadily towards the poles and
winter seasons. But eventually the planet would be sterilised.
So this is what Brunnis became. This is the world the
Brunnen-G finally abandoned. A world of sterile deserts and dying seas,
a world of burning cloudless red sky and ceaseless moaning winds, a
world where the very air is painfully dry and reeks of ozone, where
breathing makes
the lungs ache and burn.
© July 2000 Darrow.
© 2000 WordWrights.
