Travel in the saga is by portal and port alone. Time runs differently on every planet but one, gravity pulls harder after every jump, and each sun has a name and a feel. Below, every world the books describe, in the books' own words.
Before you port
How travel between worlds works.
Portals onlyRye's porting, a Makovian Elder's touch, Preceptor Qiar's portals, and later Carly's own. No ships.
Time bendsA day on Apricity is three days on Earth. On the Proem tour, one hour per planet is the limit. Only Gehz keeps time identically with the whole Metaverse.
Gravity pulls"After each planetary port, her center felt a bit heavier, which attributed to varying gravities."
Every sun has a nameDuenden's Cava, Cyim's Arx, Magnomium's Sol, RIP's Yeuton, Makovia's Nivval, Aeonia's Thyima, Au's Giree, Klipp's Vellun. Carly's core answers each one.
Helmets deployHostile air triggers a nano helmet the moment a foot touches the surface.
Aegers and porting don't mixApexian trainees vomit after the tour until they switch their wrist devices off.
Meridian · The community, late afternoon
Scionia · Earth · Sun Sol
Meridian
The first of its kind.
The above-ground community the Descendants built for themselves after leaving Afrax, two hours outside Piure on land they bought out so they would never have neighbors. Wrought-iron gates with a Private Property sign "so huge that you could see it from space," later lasers that read residents' retinas and admit only the Descendants who live there.
Tennis courts, pools, a golf course, gardens and meadows, a bowling alley, rec room, library, gym and a BK training facility.
Below ground: a modest lab, tunnels from every basement to the city line, a bomb shelter, and an independent energy source.
Fully furnished homes in earthy-fall colors: a television that rises from the wall, a red button that drops steel shields over every window, a patio Jacuzzi facing the golf course.
Mail and packages run through an off-site reception. "Not even Afrax knows this precise location." Guests are ported in blind.
Life runs like a training camp. Evan and Krill run training and weaponry, Sage has the lab, Ksenyia heads security, Carly controls intelligence, Jude handles supplies, Rye is transport, Val is operations, Jo is communications, Adam is defense.
Where the story takes it · contains Book III details
Both weddings happen in Meridian's gardens: Adam and Carly's on July 31st under white silk tents, and Evan and Jo's under canopies Rye erects the day before they leave for Apricity. The Menorca mission is planned in Evan's basement around a huge round table. After the Afrax massacre, the rescued captives notice that Meridian "was above ground and without reinforced walls," and most choose a shielded safe house instead.
Makovian Galaxy · Makovian Universe · Sun Nivval
Apricity
"The Mother Planet of Apricity, the Originating Light of Life that is Makovia."
Seat of the Makovian Panel of Life. Carly and Rye are force-ported here in their sleep and Carly stands "tiny among the giant beings" of the Panel: Elders Tanjuetti, Relve and Nanzaki, tall, with long tie-dyed fingers, speaking Giwaza "in a clickity tone," reading every thought in the room. One day here is three days on Earth.
The hippodrome: an open arena where Makovians gather for Panel hearings, emptied in haste when Carly "pulls on Nivval" and her eyes flame.
"The most abundant garden she'd ever seen," where Nanzaki walks Carly and tells her what she is.
Sister planets Filak, Opia and Voketto are visited on the Proem tour at thirty minutes each; the books name them and no more.
Makovians: modest, regal, masters of all trades and the moral authority of the Metaverse. Telepathic, telekinetic, psionic, able to teleport, "uncharacteristically strong," and reluctant to use any of it. The Descendants' verdict: "blatant snobs."
Where the story takes it · contains Book III details
In the garden Nanzaki names Carly "the Mother of Suns," the only living being able to supernova a galaxy, and unblocks her core. The Panel's law is absolute: a species that threatens the balance of Light faces cellular cessation, and the Scionians are ordered to Onus Lyceum with their most trusted cluster.
Duenden Galaxy · Seerian Universe · Sun Cava
Gehz
"We live as a planet of a singular family unit."
A crimson-and-cream swirling sky over red cindered land, under Cava, "buttery and magnificent." Gehz is the only planet where time lapses identically across the Metaverse, which is why the Metaversal Panel of Life sits here, at Carch beyond the city of Rossur, and why Onus Lyceum is held here: three segments, Proem, Avant and Guardian, seven days each, "each day the equivalent of a singular Cava axis."
The aerodrome: an ovular auditorium where lessons are given with holograms pulled from the archives and where Proem is tested.
The laboratory: "a massive, towering, white, sleek structure" with lightning lifts and a room of a dozen life-size white divinity capsules. A scan takes fifty seconds and is painless.
The dormitory on the outskirts of Rossur, where "capricious sandy eddies pirouetted majestically across the dorm windows": a mess hall, a siren, an AI that announces ten-minute courtesies, and rooms that are "not a dorm room, it's a loft."
A massive open stone stadium reached by portal, where Avant runs inside nano walls with D-Pads and countdown clocks.
Gehzians raise and educate every Gehzling together. Seerians are agender, reproduce asexually, rarely need thought, and are "the most civil, harmonious, and welcoming" beings the Descendants meet. Their laws are protective and capital.
Neophytes come from across the Seerian Universe: Qalopsia, Simiri, Metonia, Berronya, Bruud and Desa are named only as their homes.
Where the story takes it · contains Book III details
Carly chronoports on Gehz, reliving a day of Avant and watching Traife die twice. The MPOL debates her cessation at Carch and refuses it: "Most certainly not of an unborn innocent." At the end of Specular the Descendants are awarded a seat on the Panel, and the volunteers, Zoya and Alexandra among them, leave Earth for Gehz in deep blue robes.
RIP Galaxy · Scionian Universe · Sun Yeuton
Sharen
"We have an entire planet to ourselves."
Rye's private getaway and the first other world Carly ever saw. A massive pastel moon hangs so close that Carly knows at once they are not on Earth; at night it "shone nearly as brightly as the sun," and by day "the sun and moon were on equal footing" until the clouds part on "the trio of blazing suns."
Water everywhere: oceans, roaring rivers, crashing waterfalls with a cave hidden behind the falls. "I can't believe how much water there is on this planet."
Hiking, snorkeling, and ice-skating "if we're willing to travel out far enough."
A cozy cottage stocked with a year of food, a generator humming behind it, no alarms, no phones, no television.
Uninhabited, as far as the books show. Carly later tells Persa it is proof that RIP is habitable.
Where the story takes it · contains Book III details
Sharen is Adam and Carly's secret honeymoon, courtesy of Rye, spent "soaring the skies, exploring the planet, and each other." Carly passes it again at the end of the trilogy while circling Yeuton, and the baby jumps.
RIP Galaxy · Scionian Universe · Sun Yeuton
Origa
The ice planet. Being dropped here is "nothing short of a death sentence."
"An ice-ridden desolate plane with scarce oxygen and little heat," where "double-digit negative temperatures" stab the skin. The Metaverse's place of exile. Rye circles Charro ready to drop him here the day he appears on the Promenade.
No sentient life is described. No one lives here.
Named without hesitation by Seerian Magistry Qisa when Carly asks where an enemy can be ended.
Where the story takes it · contains Book III details
Carly disguises Origa as a green world with a dirt road, lifts the imagery for Emebet, and with "the energy of all one-hundred-seventy-six billion suns and stars" atomizes the planet into intergalactic dust. At Qisa's instruction she gathers the debris and restores it whole.
Aeonia Galaxy · Makovian Universe · Sun Thyima
Vyun
"Vyun shall not be visited."
The dead world of the Makovian Universe, "reported to be uninhabitable"; "the atmosphere could kill us." Ybia, the most powerful Scionian who ever lived, unwittingly drew a catastrophic amount of energy from the Scionian suns, and her supernovae reached the nearest universe, "ending all sentient and insentient life on Vyun."
A barren surface. The nano helmet deploys the instant a foot touches it.
Its sister planets Sxulit, Hurex and Oble are visited at thirty minutes each on the Proem tour and only named.
Where the story takes it · contains Book III details
Team Prism's Avant task is to shield Vyun's energy. The moment Carly steps onto it, she chronoports a day back to the Gehz stadium, and the Preceptors realize the prophecy is true. Vyun "truly opened [Evan] up like a flower"; he and Rye marry afterward.
Klipp Galaxy · Apexian Universe · Sun Vellun
Kroo
The capital of Apexia. Statues of the Mersers.
Drudge's home planet, where he comes "from an elite family," and the one place the Descendants see him animated: "Drudge paraded around, proudly pointing to several monuments and statues of prominent Kroo Merser Warriors who had set records for swordsmanship, hunt, and game… Drudge actually smiled, which shocked them all." Saved for last on the Apexian tour.
The Au Galaxy, Mgregor, Komur, Uzu, Orpha and N'Evious, is explored "in two hours flat"; then Illayia, Elysia, Wreiyn and Giji in Klipp. Komur is the home of Poz, who fails Proem and gets three more attempts. Nothing else is described.
Apexians: "brute, forceful, prideful, egotistical warriors," abnormally swift, with the keenest senses and masterful navigation. Tournaments of hunt, game and swordsmanship; Aegers on the wrist to block telepathy; draft into Onus at puberty, where being passed over for a cycle is a disgrace.
Krill's summary: "their entire culture is grounded in violence." Yif's: "He doesn't represent us all."
Magnomium Galaxy · Scionian Universe · Sun Sol
Scionia
"What you call Earth is, in fact, Scionia."
The Makovians call the galaxy Magnomium, "great sun." Sol is "the second most powerful sun in the Metaverse." Ybia's supernovae are why only one planet here is habitable, and why "the planet of Jupiter was once three separate, smaller, habitable planets." Earth is named for mammalian life, the only galaxy where it may originate. The saga's ground on Earth:
Piure, California. Keetering High, Aunt Vera's house, the Caspian home, the Promenade, Cress Law Firm. "A perfect California day… balmy, in the mid 70's."
McIntyre. The desert-valley town next door: McIntyre Foods, Dr. Blake's first office, the airport.
Silver Springs, Minnesota. Carly's hometown, snow and freezing cold, weekends in bookstores with her parents.
Afrax. "A safe house and headquarters in International Falls," hidden underground, with dorms, a corridor that cocoons intruders, a council and a panel.
Meridian. Above.
Siberia. Chara sands and the Udokan Mountains near the abandoned Mirny Diamond Mine, over an Iksha facility.
Menorca, Spain; Greenland; Sintashta, Russia. The facility under the sea, the place Carly first calls on the suns, and the ancestral town.
Find your Verse
Which Light are you from?
Four questions on the home page sort you into Makovia, Scionia, Seer or Apexia.
