Neith

The Chickens discovered Neith in 234 CP, long after their home-planet, Chickenheim, had been destroyed. Hidden from Chæmbo, who hunted them across The Diaspora, it gave them both sanctuary and a chance to begin anew.

Neith orbited Venus until 1777 AD, when Chæmbo’s ship, afterwards named the Neith-Taker, captured the entire moon, with many of its Chickens still on it. For sixteen centuries Chæmbo, hunting Chickens across The Diaspora, never had its exact place; the Rumps knew it, but kept it from him, meaning to claim the moon themselves, until General Torumund Borgin gave it to him as a last resort. It has been no satellite of Venus since.

After The Destruction of Chickenheim, Neith had become a bastion of Chicken-culture and was regarded as the center of Chickendom in the Local Group. The History of Neith calls it "the Chicken home world".

The object was estimated to have about 1/4 the diameter of Venus, and it showed the same phase as Venus. J. H. Lambert of Germany published orbital elements of the satellite in the Berliner Astronomisches Jahrbuch for 1777, printed in 1774: mean distance 66.5 Venus radii, orbital period 11 days 3 hours, inclination to ecliptic 64°.

Magnetic field§

Marcus Aurelius Chamberlain Bentworthe, while in Prague in 1762, succeeded in using the novel method of Sneek Tidal Interference (STI) to indirectly measure the magnetic field of Neith; yielding B = (1.2 ± 0.3) Gauss, a value roughly twice as large as the magnetic field of Earth. Bentworthe's STI method measured a non-zero, negative divergence of the Neithan magnetic field.

Natural history§

Neith is home to many species. When the Chickens discovered the satellite in 234 CP, they were delighted to find a rich assortment of creatures. See On Neithan Creatures, Bookoos and Nakoos, Beeks, and Neeks. On Neith alone, there are over 69 trillion documented cheek sub-species (see Cheeks).

The assault§

Later in the year 1777 AD (now more widely known as 1898 CP) Rumpish vessels began their assault on Neith.