Miseo is a warm, temperate moon with a confusing day-night cycle for visitors because its cycles are driven by passing into the immense shadow of its parent, not rotation, as Miseo is tidally locked. Vera’nychta, meaning true night in the Haun’hai local language, occurs every few days as the moon passes into the darkest shade of its parent when Miseo’s own slightly elliptical orbit is closest to Huan’hai. In these events, Miseo can experience near-total darkness, except for the small amount of light that lenses around Huan’hai’s enormous horizon. When Huan’hai is furthest from its home star, Li, it is common to see frost or sporadic snow on the typically balmy world during this time as well.
However, it is the time-bending nature of the Huan’hai Incident that inspired stories of a very rare form of vera’nychta that occurred long ago, in the days before the event. In these stories, witnesses claim that a brilliant star could be seen in the night, growing brighter for decades before finally beginning to fade and disappear almost completely. Galatians knew this star, Dem, and recognized the unsettling signs of the event, but could never explain its unusually long period of brilliance until after the end of the Huan’hai Incident. Meanwhile, natives simply referred to it as Miu Vera’Nychta, meaning “the brilliant true nights.”
It has since been concluded that the bizarre, time-bending phenomenon in the Li system that caused the Huan’hai Incident allowed the inhabitants of that system to witness the Dem star supernova in slow motion. Yet for all the buzz around the few records kept of the time when Miu Vera’nychta was happening, like the massive shadow of Huan’hai, the nostalgia of the beautiful skylines it once produced still overshadows the tragic explanation for what painted the sky.