Corvan II
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Corvan II is a rough, pristine planet. It had a developing indigenous population in the 22nd century. Corvan II is a young Federation world by the 23rd century, first beginning the transition from a planetary emphasis on agriculture to industrial applications. By the 24th century, the buildup of industrial pollutants — and the introduction of Ferengi trade and less scrupulous industrial techniques — became disastrous for Corvan II. Starfleet and other Federation teams were heavily involved in cleanup operations and the resettling of threatened plant and animal species into other ecospheres until Corvan II’s biosphere iwas repaired enough for species reintroduction. Corvan II’s troubles, as with most things in life, represent opportunities for the less scrupulous. The Ferengi capitalized on the extremely small populations of some indigenous Corvan II species, and a trade in endangered creatures grew. Starfleet works to stop this poaching, while the Ferengi or Orion Syndicate work to expand it.
Though many in the Federation think they have mastered their environment, there are always incidents and events to remind them just how far they have to go. One of the tragedies of the 24th century is Corvan II — a beautiful, once pristine world, horribly polluted in the name of progress.
Corvan II is a Federation member world in the Alpha Quadrant, located within thirty light years of Ferengi space. It is the second planet of seven orbiting the yellow star Corvan. Corvan’s relative proximity to Ferengi-dominated worlds has led to a reasonable amount of trade since first contact with the Ferengi — including some early trade that took place before standard Ferengi methods were more clearly understood by Starfleet and the Federation, and some trade with intermediaries affiliated with the Ferengi Alliance.
This, coupled with a number of less scrupulous Corvanite businessmen working with the Ferengi to increase their own profits, led to the drastic industrial pollution of the late 24th century.
Climate
Corvan II has a relatively typical Class M climate. It has lush tropical rainforests along its equatorial regions, and more temperate zones in its northern and southern hemispheres.
The pollution on Corvan II has been steadily changing the climate, however. Building greenhouse gases have caused the polar ice caps to disintegrate. This in turn has led to rising shorelines, and changing climates throughout the biosphere. Hardest hit have been the rainforests, which have gotten too hot in many places to support native vegetation or species cover. Further, climate changes have led to altered rainfall and storm patterns, which in turn have led to increasingly chaotic weather planet-wide.
Geography
There are six continents on Corvan II, four of which cross the equatorial line, and two of which are entirely in the northern hemisphere. The temperate regions of Corvan II have always been ideally suited to agriculture, and Corvan II’s society has evolved around those pursuits.
However, the mineral and resource rich planet had many things to offer. Increasingly sophisticated mineralogical surveys showed valuable industrial materials present on Corvan II, though intrusive and process-intensive refining would be necessary to make them usable. These refineries are what eventually led to the near-destruction of Corvan II’s biosphere by pollution.
Civilization
The Corvanite population is a native species of humanoids. Their world structure was balkanized until the 23rd century, though warfare between the different nation states was never particularly heavy. In 2239, the Council of 200 Nations formed, to discuss the development of a planetary infrastructure. This evolved, in 2255, into the Council of Independent Nation-States, which elected a planetary governing body to direct planet-wide infrastructural and diplomatic affairs. It was this body that negotiated Corvan II’s admission into the United Federation of Planets.
The Council of Nation-States, as it’s called today, has taken a far more centralized role in planetary affairs. It is a huge body, with twenty-five representatives elected from every former nation on Corvan II in the Council’s upper chamber, and 4,500 representatives elected to represent Corvan II’s population (nearly two and a half billion inhabitants) in the lower chamber. A byzantine bureaucracy has evolved to handle day by day affairs, with different departments and bureaus having sometimes-contradictory responsibilities for planetary administration. This allowed the powerful industrial lobby, under influence from Ferengi trade partners, to implement dangerous refining techniques and led Corvan II to the disaster it now deals with. How it recovers from this horror will impact the Corvanite civilization for centuries to come.
Corvanites are social, open to new ideas and methods. They can see many societies that have far greater technological and industrial development, and there is a strong desire to reach these goals. However, there is no single philosophy that pervades Corvan II, and environmentalists, zoologists, sociologists and iconoclasts alike have sounded warnings in the past. Now that these warnings have been justified, Corvan II finds itself needing to unite to survive and recover.
History
Corvan II developed warp travel in the late 22nd century. They did some exploration, though their emphasis was far more on planetary affairs. As a mostly agrarian world without great population pressure, they didn’t feel the driving need to colonize that other planets did. However, after making contact with the Federation in 2328, Corvan II discovered two things — the potentially valuable industrial resources on their world, and the advantages of sharing resources and technology. Corvan II was advanced enough that the Prime Directive did not apply, but they still could benefit greatly from Federation membership.
They founded their Council of 200 Nations in 2239, followed by the Council of Independent Nation-States in 2255. This gave them the planetary government needed to settle their affairs down and join the Federation. The Federation then sent experts and crews to help them exploit their natural resources and refine them for use at home and across the galaxy. As was always the case with the Federation, these techniques were designed to preserve Corvan II’s environment.
In 2357, Corvan II entered into trade with several worlds on the outskirts of Federation territory. They didn’t realize at the time that these worlds were under the economic domination of the Ferengi Alliance. The gradual discovery of a unified economic infrastructure there led to the Federation’s early knowledge of Ferengi business. It was also then that many of the rumors about Ferengi — particularly the rumor of their taste for sentient flesh, itself a false interpretation of their desire for economic consumption and supremancy — surfaced. In 2365, Corvan II began large scale direct trade with he Ferengi, with the mechanisms for this trade having been oiled long before by the Ferengi’s partners.
Part of this oiling took place at the expense of the established refinery techniques developed by the Federation. Industrialists, hungry for profit and easily influenced by the Ferengi, began implementing newer refineries, designed to quintuple production. This meant strip mining and mountain-capping for raw materials, with concomitantly more industrial pollution. The overly complex Council of Nation-States was slow to respond to this, while Corvanite industrialists were quick to exploit these new revenue paths.
In 2367, massive climate changes swept over Corvan II. The Ferengi refineries had been masking reports of the true levels of pollution, with the assistance — often unwitting — of their Corvanite partners. This pollution reached and passed a critical threshold, literally poisoning the Corvanite biosphere. In calling for help after massive crop failures and the sudden destruction of millions of acres of rainforest, Corvan II made it possible for Starfleet, in the person of the U.S.S. Galaxy, to learn the truth about the poison they had let into their environment. Naturally, the Ferengi Alliance sold out the industrialists wholesale and pulled out of the sector, claiming the pollution was an internal matter and leaving Corvan II and the Federation to clean the mess up.
The disaster was nearly complete. Hundreds of unique species of plant and animal were wiped out, and planetary epidemics broke out due to the poor air quality and famine. The Council of Nation-States nearly fell, but the much smaller executive cabinet was voted special powers to deal with the emergency. Working hand in hand with Starfleet, the two sides of the long process — cleaning up the waste and relocating endangered species to safe worlds in the interim — began in earnest. The U.S.S. Enterprise-D relocated a breeding pair of gilvos from Corvan II in 2368, for example — when there were only 14 gilvos left.
It is perhaps a fitting insult that the same Ferengi who fled the despoiled planet took many samples of Corvanite flora and fauna with them, and are selling them to collectors. This deplorable practice is of less interest to Corvan II and the Federation than actually saving Corvan II’s biosphere, of course.
Places of Interest
The Jepisati wastes, once the lush and full Jepisata, a rainforest and jungle laden equatorial nation-state on Corvan II, has become a symbol of the horrors of the pollution, destruction and relocation necessary in the wake of industrial horror. Frighteningly, it has also become a favorite place for thieves, renegade Ferengi and Orion Syndicate members to loot, as so much had to be abandoned in the initial evacuations of 2367.
Reference(s)
- Burns, Eric, Kenneth A. Hite & Doug Sun. Star Trek Roleplaying Game Book 7: Worlds, Decipher, 2005. ISBN: 1582369097.