Tyr or Tiw (Mean English: Mars) is the fourth wanderstar from the Sun. As the outermost of the earth-like, stony worlds, loremasters look upon Tyr as one alike unto Earth, but smaller, dryer,
Tyr or Tiw (Mean English: Mars) is the fourth wanderstar from the Sun. As the outermost of the earth-like, stony worlds, loremasters look upon Tyr as one alike unto Earth, but smaller, dryer, and colder. In yoretide, ago, water—and byhaps life among it—flowed upon the outer husk of Tyr, and in our days, many witshippers, rockwrights, and talemasters weigh plots to make this world lifebearing once more. But, until those plots, man will continue to put rovers on Tyr.
One day on Tyr lasts slightly longer than on Earth; 24 and two-thirds stounds rather than 24 stounds alone. Tyr makes one whirl about the Sun in 668 of its own days, or 687 Earth-days. This wanderer's skypath is egg-shaped rather than an even wheel, for which thing the yeartides of Tyr are not of like length as are Earth's. In the northern halfball, spring is a third again as long as fall.
Tyr's inweight is but a ninth of the inweight of Earth, though its girth is slightly more than half of the Earth's girth. The weightpull at the husk is two-fifths that of Earth. Tyr is a desert for its coldness and thin, unbreathworthy loftsea, which is but six thousandths as thick as Earth's loftsea. Unlike Earth, Tyr lacks sourstuff and chokestuff, and is instead bewinded by wortloft.
The rust in the dry ironish stones gives Tyr its deep-red hue, for which sake it was taken in olden times for a god of fire, blood, or the clash of weapons. In Babylon the wanderer was called Nirgal, to the Hindus it was Angaraka, for the Greeks, Ares, and for the Romans, Mars.
Tyr is spored by two Dread and Fear. The tungles whirl about Tyr much nearer than the moon does the Earth, and they are also much smaller. The bigger one, Fear, is 14 miles across and wends its path in 7.7 stounds, while the smaller one, Dread, is only eight miles across and wends its path in 30.4 stounds. The tungles are without a ball shape, and are thought to be stolen skystones., called
Tyr is one of the five oldenway wanderers, being seen by the naked eye and thus known to all stargazing folks. Its nearness to Earth makes it to look as if going backwards when it is overtaken by the Earth in their wendings; though all wanderers go back from time to time, Tyr does it the most. In Ptolemy's Thoughtlay, the Earth is the navel of the allsky, and all things whirl about it. But for being unfit to unriddle Tyr's backwards wending, this belief was cast away, yielding to Copernicus' Thoughtlay where the Sun is the navel of the allsky.
But in time, Tyr also was the undoing of Copernicus, for in his mind the path of every wanderer is an evenwheel, while in truth, Tyr's path is more uneven than most. Kepler saw this, and putting his mind to the riddle, he found that all wanderers journey not along an evenwheel, but along a squashed wheel, like unto the shadow of a ring that does not quite face the light.
After Europeans wrought the first spyglasses, they could see things upon the husk of Tyr. In 1659, Huygens became the first man of heavenlore to see between Tyr's light and murky lands and make a drawing of what he saw. But there would be no bitwise landspread of Tyr until Schiaparelli's in 1877. That same year, Asaph Hall found the two tungles.
Schiaparelli spoke of seeing furrows on the husk of Tyr, which were sometimes thought to be waterways, built in a forlorn bid to save a dying folkdom from a worldwide drought. Upon hearing this, Lowell yearned to see the waterways for himself, so he built a gazinghouse on Mars Hill in Flagstaff, Arizona, and for fifteen years sought after Tyr's riddles. But in the end the furrows were found out for a brainshade, a wile played on the eyes by the weak spyglasses of the day.
For many years, Tyr was thought to be an abode to wights and worts, with woods and heaths giving the world its hues that could be seen to shift with the yeartides. In 1891, Guzman's Winnings, a sum of a hundred thousand francs, was bequeathed to the first man to make wireless speech with the indwellers of another wanderer or tungle. Tyr was left out, in belief that calling upon the Tyrfolk would be too easy.