Orbstack

The Orbstack refers to the living heart of the Daban Urnud: sixteen hollow spheres (“orbs”), each a little under a mile across, clustered about a central axis that spins to create pseudogravity. According to accounts from a Laterran informant, most of the ship’s Forty Thousand residents spend their lives inside this habitat rather than venturing to the exterior or service structures.

Structure and Environment

• Each orb is half filled with water. The water’s surface supports houseboats; roofs and decks are used to grow food.
• When the ship is not under acceleration, doors can be opened to join neighboring orbs, allowing free movement between them.
• The cluster’s rotation provides a steady down‑direction; the spheres and links create a connected neighborhood rather than isolated modules.
• The sixteen orbs are arranged in stacked four‑orb layers; each layer is rotated forty‑five degrees relative to the one below, producing a column a little more than two miles high and a little less than two miles across.
• Rotation is on the order of one revolution per minute to produce comfortable pseudogravity. Under thrust, water settles aft; furnishings are latched or fixed to prevent shifting.
• Light captured on the exterior frame is routed inward along optical trunk lines to illuminate rooftop farms within the orbs.

Engineering and Core

• A central “chimney,” roughly half a mile in diameter, runs up the axis of the stack. Around it is a lattice of trusswork holding the orbs in place while the ship maneuvers and spins.
• The core houses critical systems: storage for tens of thousands of nuclear propulsion charges, reactors, major plumbing and wiring, and pressurized corridors connecting the orbs.

Relation to the Ship Frame and Protection

• The Orbstack is suspended within a rubble‑shielded icosahedral frame by a network of giant shock pistons that isolate it from impacts and vibration.
• Systems that interface with the outside universe—sensors, telescopes, scout craft, and weapons—are mounted on the pistons and at the twelve vertices where pistons meet.
• Several vertices are themselves complex vehicles or stations: some are pressurized command spheres; others provide wide tunnels for traffic between the interior and open space; one vertex functions as an optical observatory benefitting from vacuum seeing conditions.
• The rubble shield—essentially walls of gravel hung on the frame—provides protection against sunlight, stray rocks, cosmic rays, and hostile action.

Communities and Organization

• The Orbstack houses communities from the four origin peoples: Urnud, Tro, Laterre, and Fthos. Officially, each maintains four orbs, though mixing occurs.
• Daily life includes education; one orb hosts a school. Children are raised within the Orbstack’s communities.
• Shipboard politics influence life in the orbs. The alliance called the Pedestal contrasts with an opposition movement known as the Fulcrum (identified with Fthosians in current accounts).

Role and Status

• Provides habitation, food production, and services for the ship’s population; suits the long‑duration voyaging purpose of the Daban Urnud.
• Most residents seldom see the exterior of the vessel, living entirely within the Orbstack’s linked orbs.

Notes on Sources and Certainty

Much of the descriptive detail above derives from the testimony of a Laterran traveler and from models built using those descriptions. Internal arrangements beyond publicly described or inhabited areas may be uncertain; where specifics are not corroborated, they should be treated as informed reconstructions rather than established fact.

Notes on Usage

• The term is often used with an article (e.g., “the Orbstack”).