Torus
 Sketch of Torus' water dynamic | |
| Author | Catherine |
|---|---|
| Written | approx. 9429 DE |
The Torus Age was Catherine's first Age, written under Gehn's tutelage. The Age does not have a full name, so it has come to be known by its unique shape. It exemplified Catherine's dream-like writing style, pushing the limits of what the Art is capable of in ways that defied D'ni traditions.
Appearance[edit | edit source]
As the name implies, the Torus Age is shaped like a giant donut, with most of the planet's mass on the outer edge and a narrow opening running through the center. The torus is aligned with the sun such that there is a light side and a dark side. On the light side, a lake rests in the middle of the terrain's bowl-like shape. The water in the lake flows down a ring-shaped waterfall and erupts out into the night side as a column of water. This water is captured by the torus's edge-heavy gravitational field and pulled back around to the light side, where it condenses into a ring of clouds and drains back into the lake as rain. A tunnel runs through the edge of the torus, connecting the interior faces of both sides.
The night side of the torus is populated by seemingly fantastical creatures, such as red and gold fireflies that can squeeze through cracks by changing their shape like a soap bubble, and blue snakes that can subdivide at will. The plant life on the night side has a similarly odd animal-like behavior, with flowers that can bend and move of their own accord. Even the rock is more like stiff, glossy gelatin, smelling of roses and camphor. When Atrus visited the Age with Catherine for the first time, he remarked that everything in it seemed impossible.
The light side, by contrast, is covered with much more typical forms of life. One feature in particular, however, stood out to Atrus on his visit: a field of tiny blue flowers, much like those around his mother's grave in the Cleft. Catherine feigned ignorance of their importance to him, but it is possible that Catherine learned about the flowers and their significance through Ti'ana.
