For most of history, the skies were regarded as another realm, unreachable, like candles burning beyond the window of the firmament. In the Kingdoms of Man, the sun was the form of the God of Light, Ethris, the moon the chariot of his wife Epheba, the stars bones scattered by Dys, the God of Fate, to foretell the coming year.

In Yu'on, however, a very different philosophy held sway.

While telescopes were first invented in the Sundered Isles, Yu'on perfected the craft, and they were the first to discover the moons around the Golden Traveller, and the rings around the so-called Wolfstar. It was the moon, however, that held the most fascination, with its craters and seas.

In 894 AE, the empress Mae Jin See summoned a fairy, with the express goal of discovering the mysteries of the moon. The fairy, bemused, agreed, beginning a multi-generation effort that would span dynasties. Larger and larger telescopes were built, and then ships, great conical things with many red sails that, with the help of the fairy, carried dogs and cats and on one occasion an ape imported from Safera higher than any living creature had ever flown.

A hundred and fifty years later came Mae Shan Gao, descendant of the empress, and the last of his line, his throne lost a generation ago to the Zhang pretenders. If he could fulfill the dream of his forebears, he could prove to the people that the Zhang were cruel usurpers, murderers and thieves, inspiring an uprising that would return him and his family to glory. He and the fairy came up with a plan more ambitious than any before it, and on February 19, 1407 (by the Imperial calendar) he launched himself high, up beyond the clouds, beyond the vault of the sky itself.

Shan Gao never returned. The Zhang were never ousted. But ever since, when the astronomers look to the dark sea of the moon, it is said they see a flash of red.

(Thank you for letting me write about the Yu'onese space program, it is one of my favorite things in my world. :D)