Catualla

Cendo Prae, more commonly known as Catulla, is the home planet of the Catullans.

• Star system: Cendo Ipraem
• Pronunciation: Chen doe PRAE (pronunciation and linguistic derivation are archaic)
• Diameter: 13,585km (8,441 miles)
• Gravity: 1.3 standard gravity with a density of 6.3
• Axial Tilt: 6.4%, slight seasonal variance
• Orbital Period: 339 days
• Rotational Period: 27 hours
• Classification: M
  • Surface Water: 82.1%
  • Atmosphere: 1.2 is a standard pressure with 75% nitrogen, 24% oxygen, 1% trace chemicals
  • Climate: Bulk of land masses occur within semi-equatorial and true equatorial zones
  • Population: Just over 2.28 billion
    

Far, far away: Cendo Prae is so far from Earth that a viewer looking at a map of the Federation cannot see Cendo Prae without zooming out until the central, primary mass of the Federation becomes an indistinguishable blur.

The planet's relative isolation has protected it to a significant extent from both Borg and Dominion incursions in recent centuries. The Borg seemed to dismiss it altogether, and public revelations about Dominion activity were limited to some minor incidents of espionage and sabotage at Yoyodyne, all of which involved agents of the Founders, rather than the Founders themselves. There are rumours that the Federation may have chosen to exploit this perceived insignificance by storing caches of critical knowledge and assets in the vicinity of Cendo Prae, as seeds for recovery in the event of another Federation-scale threat, but nothing has been confirmed by any reputable public source.

Water, water everywhere: Even after centuries of careful coastline reclamation and near-continuous seawall construction, the amount of land above sea level on Cendo Prae is significantly below M-class norms. Nearly all land that isn't entirely vertical (and some that is) has been adapted for Catullan use. Above the water, virtually no wilderness or other apex predators native to the planet still exist. (With the advent of replicator technology, even large domesticated animals are rare.) Seen from orbit, Cendo Prae seems entirely tamed: terraced, bermed, groomed, fenced and walled everywhere but on sheer cliffsides and the steepest, narrowest mountain valleys.

Although woodlands remain, they are carefully managed and harvested. The species which shelter in those woodlands have survived because they are considered either useful or harmless. Now that Catullans can afford to look beyond the limits of their world for living space, and replicator technology combined with relatively abundant power make resources plentiful, a few factions within Catullan society have called for a concerted effort to preserve and revive the few remnants of Cendo Prae's original biodiversity-- even to the extent of advocating time travel to acquire viable specimens. But a public policy defining the steps to be taken in regards to this issue has yet to emerge.

Untamed oceans: Cendo Prae's aquatic biomes have fared much better. Although some species have suffered from excess harvesting, the extreme depths of Catulla's oceans (which in many cases have yet to be explored, although they have been roughly scanned from orbit) have protected hundreds of others. As a result, for most Catullans, the idea of wild and dangerous fauna is linked with large predator fish and amphibious or marine mammals, rather than terrestrial species. Cendo Prae has a surprisingly low population of reptiles and birds; many of the ecological niches normally occupied by those phyla have been taken over by mammals instead.

Sunny days: With the advent of planetary weather control satellites, storms are permitted to occur only when climatologists and ecobiologists can come to some agreement with civic authorities about scheduled disruptions in daily life. Until weather control was achieved, however, storms at sea continued to pose grave threats to Catullan life and property-- especially since so little inhabitable land existed much above sea level.

Botany

Neelkoms: Swift-growing pecies of tree with fragrant, soft wood, popular for the elaborate carving traditional to Catullan culture.

Fraet: Palm-like tree; unripe fruit popular among the Catullans who love sour tastes

Zee: Tree with loose, nutrient-rich outer bark layer, full of its seeds; known for the colonies of singing insects (also named zee), which burrow into that layer, and can be heard making eerie or beautiful chords at dawn and at dusk

Geography

Notable regions include:

• Audets Archipelago
  
• Brooftes and Lidlo, rivals in the planet's jekker league
  
• Duibensaat, known for its ancient, still-functioning tidal-powered clock tower
  
• Kussitser, site of a minor cultural festival
  
• Mutfoelsparg, a mountainous region, one of the few places on the planet where you can be more than a day or two of foot travel away from the ocean
  
• Ostleuvsjil, known for its coastal cliffs and rough water
  
• Utyoyomsaeg, one of the planet's major cities, ancestral home to the family which started the Yoyodyne Corporation
• Zundesrepf, site of a major disaster-- its massive seawalls failed during a storm, and the resulting tidal surges took many lives and destroyed a large area of habitable and arable land
  

Zoology

Birds and reptiles are both relatively rare on Catulla-- insects, mammal and fish species are predominant.

Gezelmeen: Swift, graceful, omnivorous amphibious mammal, known to leap out of the waves as it migrates. Short fur of its coat extremely well adapted to water, reddish in colour.

Hulveit: Predatory aquatic mammal, apex predator, hunts in packs; in popular culture, considered sly and resourceful.

Tsippe: Colour-changing species of shallow-water fish which plays dead to avoid its most common predator; can be startled into this behaviour by nearly any stimuli. Popular in home aquaria.