Sfal

Sfal has a surface equal to 1/3 of an Earth's, covered in a mosaic of jungles and swamps, with few mountain ranges, some grasslands, and few round seas, rich in tertium salts. Its sky is golden, pink over the edges, with two triangle suns, spinning all around it and one round moon. The length of days and nights vary, but the whole day-night cycle usually lasts around twenty-four hours. The climate is warm, with temperatures around 30ºC and humid. The plant life is very rich, with thousands of species, usually with pink or bright violet leaves. They are all very fragile though—just by brushing them you could rip their leaves off. None of them has more than 3m in height. They also have a strong, balsamic scent, often described as 'suffocating'. There are also many fungi and zoophytes, but no real animals.

Sfal was discovered by Dahlsian sorcerers twenty cycles (40 earthy years) ago. Before that it was uninhabited. On the plain between the highest mountain in the world—called The Red Mountains, from the red, translucent rock they're made of—and a salty sea, they made the main city of Sfal: Marka-na-Sfal. Sfal opened Dahlsi people a path to Meon cluster, the whole cluster of worlds that were previously uninhabited and were ripe for taking. Unfortunately, worlds in Meon only merge once, with one of the so-called junction worlds: Sfal, Kooine, Daesi, and Tydus. Sfal is the most important, as it connects Meon to the rest of the universe.

Sfal serves mostly as a transit station for people traveling to Meon. Marka-na-Sfal is an important trade center, but the world itself doesn't have many natural goods. Tertium is mined on a small scale and some local plants are grown for food in the areas around the city (most food is brought from Varocca, though, as it has a much more suitable climate and the merge is merely a few hours from Marka-na-Sfal).

Human habitation hasn’t been kind to Sfal. Three separate species of pests turned large swaths of forest into desert. In a desperate attempt to save local flora, Dahlsi introduced six species of predators, which slowed the destruction but didn’t stop it. Part of the cleared land was later planted with Varpulian fruiting trees to provide for the inhabitants of the city. Furthermore, the accumulation of waste (for Dahlsi the usual method of disposing of it was dumping it over the edge, but the nearest edge was too far from Marka-na-Sfal), caused the infestation of amorphous creatures known as sculkes. When they grew so bold they started attacking humans and clogging the life-support systems of the Dahlsian Inner City, Dahlsi had to bring over siplahs (picture naked mole rats with tentacled faces) to take care of them. So far siplahs, bred especially to hypoallergenic, are the only animals allowed in the Inner City.