The star
Anlos is a quiet yellow star at the far edge of the galaxy, so remote that its light has never reached Earth. It keeps a small family: Caldera, a red world of slow volcanoes; Orrin, a ringed giant of gold and ice; and one blue-green world of seas, forests and white cloud that surveyors almost overlooked.
The planet that cooled in rings
Most worlds cool into chaos. This one cooled into order. As the young planet spun, its crust set into one thousand rings from pole to pole, and each ring cracked into one thousand plots, as even as the cells of a honeycomb. The rings run straight across oceans and continents alike, so every plot lies somewhere real: on open water, a shoreline, a forest floor or a mountainside. The first surveyors counted three times, and each time they got the same number. They named it after the count: Million.
Land and sea
About half of Million is dry land. Settlers on the open sea live in the floating tide cities, each home anchored above its own plot of the deep. On the coasts, homes look out over the shallows. Inland lie the wide green plains and the deep forests, with warm deserts across the dry belts and high country in the mountains above the clouds. At both poles sit the ice caps, quiet and bright. Every plot belongs to one of these seven places, and it always will.
The Ledger
Beneath the north pole runs a vein of memory-crystal the settlers call the Ledger. When someone settles a plot, the crystal hums and writes it down: the plot’s number, the settler’s name and their sigil. Crystal can’t be unwritten. And the Ledger, like everything on Million, has room for exactly one million entries.
The naming
No one arrives on Million with their old name. By ancient custom, the planet offers each newcomer a name drawn from its twelve old tongues, and a small sigil of light that belongs to them alone. No two are ever the same.
The Crown
The first thousand plots ring the north pole, out on the ice. Settlers call them the Crown, and the bold arrived there first.
Tally
A small grey moon circles the planet. Old settlers say it was named for its habit of watching the lights come on, one by one, as though it were counting.
The Sealing
When the millionth plot is taken, the Ledger will be full, and it will seal. No ship will land again. The planet will shine fully lit, a finished record of everyone who came. Nobody knows when the Sealing will come, only that it will come once.