Eayn

Eayn is a terrestrial natural satellite of the ice giant Chu'ot, located in the Y'Deio system. It is the homeworld of the Kig-Yar species. Much of Eayn's surface is covered by oceans, with relatively small continents and abundant archipelagos.

History
The Kig-Yar developed both air- and spaceflight relatively early into their technological path, having already colonized several bodies of the Y'Deio system many centuries before the Covenant's arrival.

Society and culture
The fractured nature of Eayn's landmasses has led to considerable diversity among its inhabitants, in terms of cultures, political structures, and biology. Eayn's political landscape encompasses hundreds of polities, the vast majority of them geographically small. These range from sovereign city-states to nations, various republics, cooperatives and communal enclaves, pseudo-feudal and corporate holdings, monarchies, and various other forms humans only have vague equivalents to. Although trade and international pacts are commonplace, any large unions between states are tenuous and impermanent at best The Covenant had significant difficulty dealing with this ever-changing patchwork, and so decreed that the Eaynian governments (whatever they are at a given time) must elect from among themselves a council to represent the planet and the rest of the Y'Deio system's significant polities to the Covenant. Although this practice had a rough start at best, it did solidify over the ages, and by later centuries, most Kig-Yar colonies of any repute had similar arrangements in place. This has carried over to the post-war era, as most Kig-Yar settlements find it facilitates easier correspondence between them and Sangheili fiefdoms or other overarching polities they are part of.

Today, Eayn is estimated to house only one-third of the total population of the Y'Deio system, with most of the Kig-Yar living on the system's other bodies as well as innumerable space habitats.

Physical characteristics
While Chu'ot orbits relatively far from Y'Deio, Eayn's atmosphere has a high carbon dioxide content, which along with tidal heating keeps the world warm. The tidal forces also make volcanism common, and island formation is frequent. The atmosphere is more buoyant than that of Earth, making dirigibles and other air transport highly viable. Due to its low gravity, Eayn has many tall mountain peaks, some of which reach high into the atmosphere; this made orbital transit relatively easy for the Kig-Yar, who constructed large mass drivers into these mountains. Various anomalies in Eayn's ecology and atmosphere suggest it did not evolve naturally, and was artificially transplanted in the ancient past.

A local "month" is generally understood as the time it takes for Eayn to orbit Chu'ot, while an Eaynian "year" is agreed to be the time it takes for Chu'ot to orbit Y'Deio.