Deneva

From USS Wolff Wiki
Revision as of 06:41, 21 December 2014 by Thedrew (talk | contribs) (1 revision)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to navigation Jump to search


Deneva
Astronomical Location
Physical Characteristic
Classification M
Surface Gravity 1.0g
Moons None
Additional Information
Affiliation Federation
Population 1 million humans
  [Source]


Originally a modest planet with colonial aspirations, Deneva became the site of a terrible infestation that led to the discovery of parasitic interstellar organisms.

For almost all of its history, Deneva has been placid and idyllic. During the colony’s frontier days in the late 22nd century, it faced other dangers from ships traveling along its trade routes, but usually welcomed the opportunity to learn from them, too. It wasn’t until the arrival of neural parasites in the 23rd century that the colony suffered a disaster that set back colony efforts by decades. By the 24th century, recolonization is underway, but in a much more guarded state.

Deneva orbits a G5 V yellow dwarf star much like Earth’s sun, about 60 light-years from the Federation core worlds along a key trade and shipping route into the Alpha Quadrant. The Deneva system has an immensely rich asteroid belt, and asteroid miners send raw ores to large, robotic refineries in orbit around the planet to be turned into pure metals for transshipment to Earth and other industrial worlds. Since almost all of this traffic is automated, it was not interrupted by the Denevan parasite invasion.

Climate

Deneva has almost no axial tilt, and therefore has very equable weather and almost no seasonal variation. The main city on the planet, Deneva Station, can claim to have some of the best weather in the Galaxy, resembling a smog-free Los Angeles spring afternoon year round. In the northern oceans, circulator currents keep temperatures mixed, which can cause rough weather and even hurricanes, but most of the storms never cross the equator onto the southern continents.

Geography

Almost all of Deneva’s northern hemisphere is ocean; the three large continents are all in the south. The long, kidney-shaped southernmost continent, Sibir, is cold and mountainous, and almost completely uninhabited. The two other continents, Bolshoi (the largest) and Menshoi (the smaller) have low mountains along their southern flanks and large rivers flowing north into the ocean. Both continents support large ranches and farms, which serve primarily as research centers into efficient organic agriculture and testing grounds for new fertilizers or counter-pest organism release programs. Deneva Station is on the southwestern coast of Bolshoi, about a mile and a half inland. Up country, a fully-functional spaceport welcomes freighters and trading ships without transporters or otherwise dependent on ground services.

Civilization

From the beginning, Deneva served as a kind of “laboratory of colony building,” where specialists from all fields would come to get some hands-on experience on a world with plenty of room for error. Deneva Station supports top-flight research institutes in biology, agronomy, metallurgy, hydrology, kinesthetics, and most recently xenobiology. Denevans’ Starfleet alumni often retire to the planet, and even families of other officers move to Deneva after hearing about the perfect weather, great natural beauty, and interesting work available there. Well satisfied with its lot, Deneva remains a colony; its governor is appointed by the Federation Council, but is usually a former Starfleet official with family ties to the planet.

History

The Denevan ecology was fairly undeveloped when the colony ship U.S.S. Yermakov arrived in 2166 to establish a permanent Federation presence in the system. Terraforming was minimal, as most Earth plants and animals grew and flourished easily in Deneva’s warm, equable climate. The Deneva colony’s only troubles came from the occasional Orion pirate or Terabian raider, which the colonial militia could usually fight off using converted freighters and mining lasers. However, Deneva’s position along a major trade route led to contacts with not only the Tellarites and Andorians, but other races as well. Unusually for such a relative backwater planet, Deneva came to supply many of Starfleet’s best-educated and most cosmopolitan officers. The colony itself grew slowly, but surely, reaching a stable population of one million by the mid-2240s.

In 2267, ships from Ingraham B brought an infestation of neural parasites, which attempted to take control of the entire population of the planet. The parasites had destroyed civilization entirely on Beta Portolan five centuries before, and caused epidemic madness on Levinius V and Cygni XII before reaching Ingraham B in 2265. The U.S.S. Enterprise, investigating the phenomenon, reached Deneva barely in time to prevent another tragedy. Deploying 210 trimagnesite satellite flares, Starfleet managed to neutralize the parasites by drenching the planet in strong ultraviolet radiation, the parasites’ weakness discovered by Enterprise surgeon Leonard McCoy. Although the planetary cancer rate briefly climbed, aggressive treatment returned Deneva to its peaceful, prosperous state shortly thereafter.

Places of Interest

The primary place of interest to offworlders on Deneva is the Aurelan Kirk Memorial Institute for Xenobiological Studies in Deneva Station. Established in the wake of the neural parasite attack, this institute is famous for researching other interstellar life forms, especially dangerous or predatory ones. Specialists and scholars at the Aurelan Kirk Institute have a reputation for thinking of their work as “defense research” or “pest control” rather than pure biology. Ecologists and other exobiologists sometimes question the Institute’s attitudes and research methods — colonists from threatened worlds, however, often call in the Institute if they think Starfleet isn’t taking the danger of interstellar infestation seriously.

The director of the Institute, Dr. Piotr Gomez, has recruited a top-flight staff from all over the Federation and beyond; even Klingon admirals have lectured at the institute, or given seminars on alien life-form combat techniques. Gomez’ reputation for fire-eating aggression against interstellar predators is second only to his reputation for brilliant and closely-argued research. Whether his own tragic personal history (losing his mother to an attack by the Crystalline Entity) plays any role in the quality of his scientific thought remains unknown, even to his closest colleagues.

Reference(s)

  • Burns, Eric, Kenneth A. Hite & Doug Sun. Star Trek Roleplaying Game Book 7: Worlds, Decipher, 2005. ISBN: 1582369097.