Platonius
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Platonius technically was colonized by aliens influenced by Earth thought, but it went undiscovered by the Federation until the 23rd century. After that discovery, it becomes clear that the Platonians are not particularly interested in rejoining with humanity or even acting in a neighborly fashion. While the Prime Directive technically doesn’t limit contact due to the Platonians having prior star traveling technology, Starfleet doctrine calls for keeping communication limited in the interests of avoiding further incidents like the one in which crew members of the U.S.S. Enterprise became puppets of bored Platonians.
The Class M planet Platonius is the adopted home of an eccentric race that calls themselves Platonians and lives by their interpretation of Republic, a work by the Human philosopher Plato. Most food plants native to the planet contain a substance called kironide, which gives psychokinetic powers to anyone who consumes a sufficient quantity over a period of time.
Platonius is the third planet of a system in the Alpha Quadrant designated Alpha Derridia by the Federation.
Climate
Platonius has a mild climate that falls well within Class M norms. Its sub-arctic bands are subject to violent storms that bear snow in the winter and heavy rain in the warmer months, but the equatorial and subtropic regions are calm for most of the year.
Geography
Three-fourths of Platonius’ surface is covered by water. Its only continent is a long strip of land that stretches from its northern sub-arctic band to the bottom of its southern sub-tropical band. The Platonians settled on a peninsula sticking out into the sea that cuts into the middle of the continent; to them, looking on it from above, it reminded them of Greece, where they had lived on Earth. They named it Attica, but have not concerned themselves with naming other geographical features on the planet.
Civilization
The Platonians are a truly ancient race. They are descendants of an intelligent humanoid species that developed space travel when (by comparison) Earth’s civilizations were just entering the Iron Age. When the star of their native solar system, Sahndara, went nova only 38 of them were able to escape. This relative handful of survivors wandered space looking for a new home until they came upon Earth — in particular, the civilization of classical Greece. There, their Human-like appearance allowed them to blend in with the natives, and they quickly became enamored of the philosopher Plato. When classical Greek civilization collapsed, they left Earth and resumed wandering until they found an uninhabited Class M planet that they named Platonius.
Once settled on their new homeworld, the Platonians (as they now called themselves) established a society based on their interpretation of Plato’s work, especially the Republic. In particular, they seized upon Plato’s belief that only philosophers were fit to govern. Since they viewed themselves as the ultimate philosophers, the Platonians quickly came to believe that they were superior beings who had an inherent right to exploit others for their labor or amusement value.
Perhaps the most curious feature of the Platonians’ civilization is the fact that they seem to have abandoned all of the knowledge that would come naturally to a spacefaring race in favor of Iron Age technology. With the exception of their telekinetic gifts, they dress and live as did the ancient Greeks. The few Federation sociologists who have studied the Platonians observe that their exceptionally long life span seems to have bred in them boredom and carelessness when it comes to the idea of progress. They behave as though they prefer to indulge themselves in a perfectly static and insular world rather than examine their circumstances critically and strive to improve them. Given this outlook and their single-minded absorption in their image of Plato, they are perfectly happy to live in conditions that most any starfaring race would consider primitive.
History
Platonius had no intelligent life (and indeed, no name) until the Platonians settled here somewhere around the year 100 BC. They themselves keep little exact reckoning of their history, since their society is fixed in its routines and they effectively live in a continual present.
The Platonians remained isolated from the rest of the galaxy until 2268, when a crisis caused them to issue a general distress call. Their leader, Parmen, fell ill when a cut in his leg became infected (never having known disease themselves despite their kironide-induced vulnerability, the Platonians had no advanced knowledge of medicine). The Enterprise responded by sending a landing party that included Chief Medical Officer Dr. Leonard McCoy, who treated Parmen’s infected leg. However, the experience convinced the Platonians that they needed a doctor on permanent call, and they attempted to detain the entire landing party by force. Dr. McCoy thwarted the plan by distilling kironide from natural sources and injecting his comrades with it, thus giving them the same psychokinetic powers as their captors and allowing them to escape.
Since that testy first encounter, the Federation has regarded the Platonians warily. From time to time, they send diplomatic missions to reassure them that the Federation’s attitude toward them is entirely peaceful. But these embassies are filled to a person with powerful psionics who can resist any trick that the Platonians might try to pull, or at least counter their powers with powers of their own. In fact, the Federation wishes to quarantine Platonius and its inhabitants, both to steer its citizens clear of this powerful and unpleasantly arrogant race, and keep the existence of a substance as powerful as kironide as secret as it can.
Places of Interest
The Platonians’ settlement is located on a pleasant hilltop in the planet’s northern sub-tropical band. The climate here is dry and mild for most of the year, and well suits habitation by a race given to wearing loose-fitting cloth tunics and togas. All 40 Platonians live in an over-sized replica of a villa from Earth’s Classical Greek civilization. It’s really more like a palace, since it’s large enough to accommodate their entire population and features beautiful courtyards and luxuriously appointed (by ancient Terran standards, anyway) common areas.
Reference(s)
- Burns, Eric, Kenneth A. Hite & Doug Sun. Star Trek Roleplaying Game Book 7: Worlds, Decipher, 2005. ISBN: 1582369097.