Picture of the planet Kassidor in space with links to major sections of the site

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Kassidor Facts and Figures
(As of Jan. 1, 4100)

Diameter11,526.564mi. (Maximum equatorial)
Habitable area117,000,000 sq. mi. (under 13,000ft oxygen barometric in altitude with 5" or more rain per Earth year.)
Density4.279 g/cc (little to no metallic core)
Gravity36.714 ft/sec2 = 1.1402g
Day84hr. 39min.
Year64 Earth days, 18hr. 58 min. = .1774Ye, Ye = 5.637Yk
Population 9 Billion - 3000bc.
27 Billion - 0ad.
40 Billion - 2300ad.
42 Billion - 4100ad


Kassidor is the common name of a light-gravity, liquid-water planet of the star 61 Cygni A. The phrase 'Kassidor' means approximately 'All of Land' in the language spoken by the majority of the planet's inhabitants. Since it's attachment to the stargate system in 3817, it has become well known all thru human space for sex, drugs and music, but even the millions that have visited have seldom ventured beyond the clubs and beaches of Kassidor City.

In examining Earth's mythology, it seems like there must have been some contact between Earth and Kassidor earlier than the first documented contact by the Pan Solar League in 2267. However, there is no direct evidence, no physical evidence and very few crackpots who have come forward with bizarre theories or fake evidence.

Unlike most worlds that were settled by humans before the stargates, Kassidor was not seeded with zygotes brought by the seed-ships of the silicon-simulated human civilization of Earth's 22nd thru 25th centuries. Kassidor was one of the planets settled by early humans around the time of the Ice Age on Earth. Science still doesn't know how humans arrived at other worlds 25,000 years ago. There are five known planets where primitive humans could have survived, on two others besides Earth, they did. On the cold, dry, arid and heavy planet of Kinunde, they barely survived and remained primitive until discovered by the simulates in 2479.

On Kassidor, in contrast, humans thrived, spreading thruout the world and developing a wide range of cultures and ethnic variations. The planet is poor in metals, and the meager fossil fuel reserves were exhausted by 2500bc. Until then, the cultural patterns on Earth and Kassidor were quite similar, except that Kassidor went thru each phase nearly five thousand years sooner, developing science and industry by 3000bc.

After the collapse of industrial civilization the world became mainly pastoral once again, but with traces of ancient technology that were considered 'magic' by most of it's inhabitants. Ancient knowledge was preserved by a few survivors of the industrial age who were known as 'wizards' or 'sorcerers' by the populace. Many historical events from that era have become popular legends on the other worlds of human space, though they are usually transformed into local settings when told.

The 'modern' culture of the planet is based on very advanced biological science and few of it's members have known famine, pestilence, disease or aging. For most of the planet, the 'modern' culture dates back to Earth's Hellenic age, but in the land of the lake it dates back to the era when Atlantis sank. In the race that founded that culture, the dichotomy between the sexes is low. Women shun the alpha male, desire multiple partners and expect equality. That was an accepted fact of life for centuries before the public found out that this cultural trait was caused by an artificial STD, set loose by the Kassikan, soon after the Kassikan was founded. For a thousand years that society developed unknown to any other part of the planet. In the whole history of that society, violence and domination have been rare.

Since approximately 900ad, using force on another human has been impossible due to a separate modification to the human mind called the Instinct ('Twass', pronounced as a proper noun). For this reason alone, it is the most culturally unique planet in human space. The culture is very stagnant however and the world we can visit today is little changed from that discovered by the simulates nearly two thousand years ago. In fact it has changed remarkably little since the time of Jesus Christ. Since then there has been no government as we know it, the Empire government deals with a 5500 year old institution called the Kassikan (roughly 'All of Knowledge') that is actually a large private university that also owns much of the industrial base of the Highlands. They openly modify and enhance the human mind and the wizards on the pyramid have always used the most enhancements their science can provide on themselves. People come to the Kassikan seeking biochemical enhancements to the mind, there are now programming languages used to write artificial memories. The Kassikan also appears to be the center from which the current culture radiates.

Kassidor's inhabitants divide its 'day' into three twenty-eight hour periods of waking and sleeping and call it a week. The planet is tilted only 11 degrees on its axis so the seasons are mild in all but the polar regions. The equatorial regions have a higher average elevation. The inhabited portions of the equatorial regions often have a climate where the 'weekly' variation is extreme and the annual is detectable astronomically. The deeper ocean basins in equatorial regions are uninhabitable from the heat, with the one simply known as 'hell' reaching up to the 160's F, 70's C.

The planet's surface elevation varies by more than 78,000 feet (27,000M), from seven miles below Earth's sea level to eight miles above. No human variation has evolved on the world to survive at much over 13,000 feet (4,000M), barometric. Regions higher than that cover just over half the planet's surface area. They have a weekly temperature variation of up to 200F (111C) and in some places the air is too thin and dry to allow liquid water. These continental plateaus are bleak wastelands but with some meager traces of life here and there in isolated pockets low enough to contain air and water. These 'continents' vary in size from a few square miles to larger than Asia. In total they cover more area than Earth's oceans. Tibet and the Altiplano would be examples of a couple small, low ones.

More than half of the planet's water is trapped in immense ice caps that calve at their edges into shallow water that evaporates in the dry polar air. There are a few small oceans, but geologically, the ocean basins are the habitable land, forming a network of basins interconnected by passes of varying elevation and difficulty that enclose dozens of continental plateaus.

The creatures that are now the draft animals trapped water for irrigation a million years before humans were brought to Kassidor and the humans seem to have been taught agriculture and irrigation when they were first released, so climate unmodified by cultural intervention exists only in the fossil record. The climates and biosphere of Kassidor are much more heavily modified by human intervention than those of Earth.

The fertile climate of the basins insures that native life flourishes in a great abundance and variety. A form of evolution as rich, as unique, as interesting as all those evolved on all of Earth is native to Kassidor. Another whole evolution of life, nearly as varied and rich as Earth's, a larger evolution of life than native to any other planet in human space, appears to have evolved on this same planet. It is believed that early Kassidor revolved so rapidly that there was no atmosphere over the entire equatorial band and it was too geologically active to solidify. That may have allowed evolution to start independently in each hemisphere.

Two more microscopic forms of evolution seem to have arrived on the planet at the same time as humans, it is presumed that whatever means transported humans from Earth, it couldn't have been as sterile as 20th century human probes. Neither one of those evolutions is important in the ecology today, but are good evidence that the transporting of humans was done by an unknown alien species and not an antediluvian civilization of Earth.

When first contacted, the planet supported several species of Earth evolution besides humans. There were onions, and some parasites to both onions and humans and some forms bio-engineered from those parasites. The most dangerous infectious diseases were not brought with them. There is no way to tell if this was by accident or design.

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