Vethraan
"The hesitant die a hundred deaths in the waiting; the committed die once, if they die at all. Choose the leap, and give it everything in you."
House: Kael
Terrain: Aetheric (+3 power)
Name: recovered from the ancient record through translation
Vethraan is a gas giant in Kael hands, the most valuable class of territory in the system. The edict it carries was found not on any surface but in orbit, aboard a station the ancient Kael left behind.
Naming voice
Vethraan is the longest-held of the old Kael names, the doubled vowel stretched out before the word drops away to nothing. Even so the fracture is there, a name that builds and then simply stops. The ancient Kael seem to have named it the way their pilots flew from it, with a run-up and a release.
The inscription
One of the 54 edicts: the inscription this world carries, protected under the Stratagem Accord.
Theme: Commitment / decisive.
Discovery. The launch-station still rings the gas giant after two hundred thousand years, its orbit barely decayed, its rows of launch cradles empty and aimed outward into open space. The boarding teams moved through it in suits, past bay doors frozen open on the planet's glow. They found the edict at launch control, cut into the panel where a pilot's final clearance was given. This was the last fixed point a Kael flier touched before the cradle fired, the place where the decision to go became the going. The words were set exactly there, in front of the seat, at the height of a seated pilot's eyes.