One of the planets from my worldbuilding project Iron Dawn, drawn in Procreate. LORE: Chiro is the closest planet to the sun, with an extremely strong magnetic field protecting it and its moons from radiation despite the planet's relatively thin atmosphere and slow rotation of roughly 35 hours. Nearly all of the almost twice-as-large-as-Earth Chiro is covered in a vast desert, divided between the shallow and deep deserts, the latter lacking the shifting rivers that define the ecosystem there. The desert is dominated by the Sand Plankton, which form the base of the ecosystem and produce oxygen in place of normal plants. The deep desert is the home of the Harvesters, colossal creatures that swim through the sand near the surface during the day, filter feeding on Sand Plankton and anything else caught in their path. To avoid disturbing the Sand Plankton, which attracts Harvesters, Chirid nomads in the deep deserts have learned to walk in a perfect, predictable rhythm, though this isn't guaranteed to work forever. The most noticeable feature of Chiro is the ring system, formed by an interstellar asteroid impact millions of years ago that blasted ancient Chiro's oceans into a ring around the planet and introduced a new tree of life to the solar system, including the many spaceborne lifeforms living in the ring.
