As I have nothing to do, I wanted to propose a question. If the Sundering turned Drellikar into Drellis and Karrym, and if Drellis is continually sucking off the outer gas layer of Karrym, then is it not logical that one day Drellis will suck Karrym to nothing and be the only star Khoras has? Also, if this happens would it not be almost assuredly catastrophic? And if the Sundering so badly wounded the suns, would it not be expected that the speed of Drellis's absorption of Karrym be exponential and be potentially nearing a "zero hour" when it begins to build uncontrollably, causing a almost definite end time for Khoras?
Anyways, I thought that that might get someone thinking, and maybe even be the inspiration for a final campaign to save the world, possibly being a herculean effort to say reunite the suns.
Bye. ;)
Hello!
Perhaps I've got an answer. The case of two stars orbiting each other is not fictional. And it's frequent to have a couple of star composed of one big star and one white dwarf. Even if the white dwarf is small, its mass is important and can effectively suck the outer layer of the other star. But the other star can't disappear because the mass transfer is very low in comparison with the star mass.
What could happen, but I have no idea of the frequency, is the following scheme. If I remember, the sucked mater (Hydrogen) forms a layer on the surface of the white dwarf. When enough matter is accumulated, Hydrogen begin to fusion in a chain reaction which spread through the surface layer. It's called a supernovae of type I (the other type of supernovae is the well know tremendous explosion of an old star). If such an event occur in the khorasian solar system, all life will be obliterated. But as I said, I don't know the frequency of this event and I guess it's not common.
In the other case (for example, one time per century or millennium), here can be an explanation. Usually, the white dwarf is the nucleus of an old star and is rich in heavy metals which can not fusion (a core of iron for example). Then the incoming Hydrogen is kept at the surface and can enter into fusion. In our case, well... it's magic... it was not an old star which has formed Drellis and we enter in the speculation field :-\. In this case we can guess that there is still a large proportion of Hydrogen and other light elements. So incoming Hydrogen can mix with the star matter and the supernovae is avoided.
That's my explanation 8)
It's true that as gaseous matter is pulled off of Drellis that it's mass is always decreasing. And it's possible that this reduction in mass could reach some critical point. However, this transition is very slow. Even though Drellis is a dwarf star, it's still pretty big and the transfer of matter is small in comparison. It will take millions of years to reach that critical point. When that critical point is reached, there are a number of things that could happen - the dwarf could be pulled in to Karrym entirely resulting in some sort of supernova. It could dwindle away to nothing. It could collapse in on itself resulting in a brown dwarf - an even smaller type of star... it's really speculation. Luckily, we don't have to worry about it. That's millions of years into the future. :)
Another possibilty is that some group or nation on Khoras achieves enough power and wealth and status and magical ability that they pursue the magical studies of the ancient Mage Lords and attempt to reunite the two stars in one. That is an idea that I had considered and that could be considered the "final episode" in the Khoras timeline. :) Again, an interesting idea, but not one that I have pursued. If you wanted to create a campaign based on that idea, feel free. I imagine that such a plot line would be IMMENSE and would involve dozens of nations and groups. Whoever controls that kind of magical power (such that they could reunite the two stars) could literally change the world. That would be the grand daddy of all adventures.
As someone has pointed out .. there are real universe analogs to the Drellis/Karrym pair .. Beta Lyra immedately springs to mind.
And I agree with Delbareth. I see Karrym as a standard G2v yellow dwarf, while Drellis is much smaller but brighter, since it's blue, probably a BOv and definately not on the main sequence. It would look like a blue spark in the sky, next to Karrym's disk.
Probably Drellis only has a percentage of the mass of Karrym, maybe 5 percent, otherwise the Sundering would have made Karrym an orange dwarf and shrunk the life zone too much.
Just my thoughts
Oh .. I messed up .. and I should have known better. Upon reading the site, it said that both Karrym and Drellis have the same mass. Given that, and that Drellis is blue, that still means Drellis is smaller than Karrym ... probably about quarter of the size. At a rough guess .. I'd put them both at 0.6 to 0.7 solar masses each.
Yeah, blue-white stars are so bright they are easy to see.
Oh it would be easy to see alright, but looking at it may well be the last thing you ever see ... like looking at an arc welder light.
Unfortunately my copy of Norton's Star Atlas is conspicuous by it's absence otherwise I'd run a few numbers through the stellar foumulas there and see what comes out.
Oh well, if you find it, load 'em up.