Zubos and the Eight Daughter Worlds

1.       Zubos, whose name means “Second World,” is the original Ionian-modified habitable world prepared for humans, dating to the original transportation of a human population from Earth, approximately 16,750 years ago. It orbits a G4V dwarf star of high metal content and an age of about 4 billion years, in a smallish spiral galaxy at great remove from the Milky Way. Zubos is the second planet. It has two medium-small moons, which are each close enough to appear about half the size in the sky as Earth’s moon, and to create tidal circulation of the planet’s single large ocean. Zubos’ continental cratons are scattered and relatively small; the largest continent is a bit larger than South America, and the total continental area is >20%. The biggest continent has very high mountains on its western flank, but the others are all older craton fragments without major cordilleras, although one or two of them have significant plateau areas. The planet has a mildly elliptical orbit, which results in slight seasonal variation. The continents are all located within ±60° of the equator, so the climates tend to be mild. The planet's position is squarely in the center of the ideal habitable zone for terrestrial type climate in Zubos' star system. Zubos has semi-arid regions in bands north and south of the equator, but a significant fraction of the land is well placed for moist, temperate forested life zones. The actual tropical areas are only about  one quarter of the total land area, and are sparsely inhabited. Rain forests predominate near the equator. The planet had primitive native life before modification, some of which persists, but it is only microbial and prokaryotic; since it uses a form of xNA different from the genetic system of Terrestroid and Ionianoid life, it has little interaction with them. Most of the biota of the planet are transplanted from Urbos, i.e., Earth. Zubos currently has a population of about 700 million people.

2.       The Eight Daughter Worlds[1] were all settled a considerable time later than Zubos, although the newest, Amdala, was first opened to settlement over 2000 years ago. No new human settled worlds have been introduced since that time and none are in the works.
            Two of the eight, Erastia and Colarus, are actually Earth-sized moons of small inner-system Neptunelike planets orbiting their respective sunlike stars. Another two, Pirobos and Tularit, are the second and third worlds, respectively, of the same F0V star, and are thus each planetary elements of a single two-planet system government. Korbos orbits a close ("spectroscopic") binary pair of sunlike stars, and has a more than usually eccentric orbit, resulting in distinctly pronounced seasons. The planet Corrace, which was settled about 2400 years ago, is the only one of the planets to have a significant Ionian population. It has about 50 million humans, and one million Ionians. Mostly the two species inhabit separate regions of Corrace, and keep to themselves, but there is more interaction between the species of an ordinary interpersonal and even quasi-commercial nature there than anywhere else. All of the sister worlds have their own unique circumstances which resulted in their original discovery, settlement, and, to varying degrees, terraforming (in all cases with some degree of Ionian assistance), and each today has its own unique human culture and dialects of the dominant world language of Zubos, Maric, which is the ancestor of all of the languages spoken on all eight of the Daughter Worlds. The dialects range from mutually comprehensible with Maric to so far afield as the barely mutually comprehensible without continual translation. The total population of all eight of the Daughter Worlds is approximately 25 billion.

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[1]   = Kalidara, Erastia, Colarus, Tularit & Pirobos, Korbos, Corrace, and Amdala. All, like the “second world” Zubos  (second, after the now almost mythical Urbos  (“Original World”), i.e., Earth) are roughly earth-size and orbit roughly sunlike stars of middle age. All, except Erastia and Pirobos, have been modified, to at least a slight degree, to be optimally human habitable. Erastia and Korbos are the most naturally earthlike, each with indigenous complex life to which human beings have had to adapt. (The interest and desire to do this was a main impetus to their colonization in the first place). All the others had only simple single-celled life prior to settlement, and are essentially reformed terrestroid biospheres, except for Corrace, which actually has a hybrid Terrestroid /Ionianoid  biosphere, with enough terrestrial plants, in particular, to ensure a functional agricultural economy for its human population. It is believed to be the only location in the universe where Ionian life and Earthbased life freely intermix and share a single biosphere.