Oriel is a planet with a roof, a crusted atmospheric ceiling that falls in chunks like oversized snow. The snow is alive, the Ologists joke. It mimics life, but only out of the corner of your eye. . . or behind your back.
Oriel is a far-flung world whose raw potential is contested. A deliberately crashed spaceship throws the planet's atmosphere into turmoil, kick-starting an evolutionary process that accelerates out of control. There is indigenous life on Oriel but in a form unrecognised by man. Soon this, along with man himself, is transmuted into a pastiche of 21st Century Earth, people and buildings grown from the land itself in a matter of days, flourishing briefly before falling into conflict and decay. A few surviving humans struggle to make sense of the new world, whilst others are drawn to Oriel in a hopeless search for answers, redemption, and even lost love.
