Calana's Halo
Encircling the only star in the Cantyma System is Calana's Halo. This magnificent megastructure was built by razheans, absorbing magical and solar energy from Calana, re-distributing it to power the entirety of Razhea Capita and other planets under the empire.
The red giant has had its rings for three thousand thousand years, initially constructed to give Razhea Capita the push it needed to become a true powerhouse of productivity. A months worth of energy extracted can power the planet for a hundred years.
Calana's Halo caused a bitter rivalry between razheans and oanie, sophonts native to a nearby solar system. The oanie built their own dyson sphere, much more complex, which resulted in razheans retrofitting the Halo, and the two species bounced back and forth for hundreds upon hundreds of years until the Kurhira System almost collapsed.
History
The technological surge seen three thousand years ago on Razhea Capita led to countless revolutionary discoveries.
Architect Aera Choroa saw great potential for the planet, seeing fantastic opportunity to improve energy generation, and there was nowhere better to look than the solar system's supermassive red giant.
Due to the sheer scale of the structure, Calana's Halo is made of hundreds of thousands of smaller segments. Each one was constructed on Razhea Capita, shot into space and pushed into position using remotely piloted drones. The Inner Halo was built first, as it is the smaller of the two. Despite this, the Inner Halo took over fifty years to construct and put into place.
Is this even... possible? Look at what we are trying to do. Build a ring around a STAR. We're so in over our heads.
Intense Competition
The oanie began their spacefaring age two and a half thousand years ago, several millenia after razheans did. The oanie stumbled across the Cantyma System and observed this megastructure. Jealousy runs through the veins of the oanie, and the thought that another species had more advanced technology was simply unacceptable.
In the following years Karkhala's best architects and solar physicists scrambled to design their own dyson sphere to wrap around the star in the Kurhira System.
Just twenty-five years after the oanie first discovered the Cantyma System, a recorded message was sent to the House of the Mastermind on Razhea Capita. In it, Toreius Vasanasz declared the oanie a superior species by announcing their own dyson sphere, unintentionally initiating a cold war.
Razheans responded in kind by retrofitting Calana's Halo with even more advanced technologies. The relatively simplistic solar panels were replaced with solar plates, a razhean invention designed to capture solar energy more efficiently as they orbit the star. Research facilities were even attached to the Outer Ring, for resident cosmologists to study the star and find more efficient ways of harvesting energy.
Oanie and razheans went back and forth for hundreds of years, trying to one-up the other by renovating their dyson spheres to become more advanced and efficient.
When will this end? Those apes clearly aren't going to stop. We've exhausted resources on over a thousands asteroids in the solar system... they're looking at converting a couple of our planets into resource farms, to just pump out millions of tonnes of metal and other stuff we need for the Halo.
The cold war came to a crashing halt around two thousand years ago. The fight for the most advanced dyson sphere had passed down through many generations, descendents only becoming more passionate about the cause.
After around thirty renovations on either dyson sphere barely any of the original Halo remained, and the Shell of Kurhira had undergone three complete redesigns. Both megastructures were unstable, utilising machinery far beyond both species' understanding. The fragile Shell of Kurhira began peeling away in several points after a solar flare erupted.
The Shell began to deteriorate, slowly crumbling apart then collapsing into the star. The subsequent destruction nearly caused the star itself to implode, destroying the entire solar system and more. The oanie quickly called it quits on the rivalry, reluctantly declaring razheans the more advanced species.
New technology was applied to Calana's Halo after the rivalry ended, far more stable but still functioning relatively the same.
Energy Gathering Systems
The current version of Calana's Halo uses spiderweb drones to harvest solar energy. The two Halos magnify solar energy, while the drones use a cobweb shaped net to harvest it.
Captured solar energy is converted into a liquid, condensed and much more powerful than its raw form. These are stored in solar batteries, collected by automated cargo ships and delivered to Razhea Capita. About 20% of these batteries are distributed to other planets, the rest stored to power Razhea Capita.
Fifteen factories across the planet's Surface solely manufacture empty batteries to be sent off into space.
Calana's Halo was first designed without spiderweb drones; in fact, they are a very recent addition. The original megastructure utilised Space Gates, with wires running through to send energy directly from the Halos to Razhea Capita. This was a dangerous choice, and after half of the Space Gates collapsed and imploded at once, the Halos were quickly redesigned.
For a short while, the Outer Halo was retrofitted to passively harvest magical energy, while the Inner Halo continuted to gather solar energy. Most red giants produce an obscene amount of magical energy, Calana is no exception. Despite this, the star was not able to produce enough magical energy to replace the solar energy the Outer Halo could have been gathering, so these changes were reverted. Magical energy is utilised differently, and nowadays it is harvested using a small string of spiderweb drones.
Now why did we think magic was the way to go?I don't know bro. I just do what I'm told. They tell me to build magic batteries, I build them no questions asked.
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