Kokhas
Continent wide ice storms whip around Kokhas, making it almost uninhabitable. Just a handful of primitive species are designed to tolerate this vicious environment, others living on the Eye, the planet's quieter, calmer core. The storms visible from space speed up to over twenty thousand miles per hour, or five miles per second. Almost no spacecrafts can survive the journey to the Eye.
How life survives on Kokhas is a question atomian scientists ask all the time. Scientists have observed incredible thermal energy from the Eye. A currently unexplored region, the Eye has accumulated many theories and hypotheses within the scientific community.
Geography, Location & Climate
Kokhas is a small ice giant, so small it is often considered a rocky planet. The Eye of Kokhas is about a tenth of the entire planet's diameter, the rest of the planet an icy haze. Atmospheric icebergs are dragged around the planet in strong storms, crashing into each other and creating seismic events on the Eye, after icy downfalls collide with the core.
Pinkish-white clouds float around Kokhas in the thermosphere, raging ice storms just below. From orbit the storms are almost invisible, but the presence can be felt in the exosphere, disrupting artificial satellite paths and spacecrafts.
Eye
The Eye is the core of the planet. Ice storms don't directly reach the Eye, but falling atmospheric icebergs are somewhat frequent. Rivers of apalous, a magical water with a much lower freezing point, keep creatures alive on the Eye.
Temperatures on the Eye remain around -40 degrees Celsius. Unusual thermal activity, sporadic temperature spikes, have been detected on the Eye and is actively being studied by atomians of the neighbouring planet Aton.
History
Thousands of years of visitors on Kokhas has resulted in a wasteland of broken spacecrafts piling up on the Eye. As people attempt to land on the planet they unwittingly fly straight into ice storms, typically destroying the spacecraft and killing its crew.
The first successful landing on Kokhas took place thirty-five years ago, by atomians. With vehicles already designed to handle ice storms, navigating Kokhas was not a difficult task. The planet was eventually claimed by Aton.
Ecology
Kokhasian Jellies
Kokhasian jellies are in their own infraphylum under Cnidaria, Kokhasia. With a hundred and five species of these jellies, they are so unique they can't be classified under any other existing taxa.Few lifeforms thrive on Kokhas. Several jellyfish species survive amongst the ice storms; when they collide with an iceberg they break into thousands of pieces, each one capable of regenerating all major body parts. Heavily armoured creatures wander the Eye, feeding off what few nutrients are available.
The entire planet's ecosystem rely on the jellyfish in the upper atmospheres. Their regenerated offspring rain down from the skies, scavengers vacuuming the remains of what is available.
Evidence of megafauna on Kokhas comes in the form of aurora scales. These giant chitin plates are evidence of massive creatures lurking around the Eye, currently undiscovered by atomians. Aurora scales have been found littering the Eye's wastelands, around fractured corpses of crashed spacecrafts.
4/5/8900 (Aton time)
Orbit No.
1
Distance From Sun
7.9 AU No. of Satellites
173
Significant Natural Satellites
Avasas, Baunah, Eirut, Tirus, Xeusin
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So the core is hollow and basically a giant cave? Is it somewhat open, or are there just tons of holes leading to the inside everywhere? Just how big is the estimated size of these megafauna?
The core isn't hollow, creatures live on its surface :) The core is the size of a very small planet, probably something like Mercury. As for megafauna, I'm not sure as of yet, but I imagine a lot are at least elephant sized.