Spider Files 003: Planet O!elli [Worldbuilding Sketch] (Patreon)

Heya everyone! Kinda sorta inspired by Earth Day I wanted to give some love to planet O!elli and its major habitats, the main location of my worldbuilding project and home to all my sexy spider people! The planet itself is an ocean world a bit smaller than earth, dominated by tropical, desert, and savannah regions!

Some important notes about O!elli's topography:

O!elli's landmass has a single supercontinent that stretches along much of the equator. The northernmost and southernmost regions are populated by large deserts, whilst the midregions and coastlines range from dense tropics to sparser savannas.

Most notably, however, are O!elli's massive canyon valleys! There are three major formations, though one has largely collapsed due to erosion and filled with water. These canyons are massive, stretching longer than the length of multiple countries! Entire nations have risen and fallen within them over the course of O!elli's history.

The canyons are filled with networks of tunnels and trenches that cut deep into O!elli's surface, certain regions being so vast that entire underground ecologies have formed! Erosion has led to a sort of "spongey" surface to lots of O!elli's plateaus that are inhabited by many different species.

Massive jungle seas have formed within the canyon valleys, creating huge basins that hydrate the surrounding landscapes. These are the most biologically diverse non-aquatic regions on the planet and are essential to the functioning of the planet's biosphere.

These regions are populated by a form of megaflora that create their own meshwork of tunnels via a from of structural parasitism wherein the flora uses sheer cliffs and rock faces to anchor themselves as they grow. The oldest growths are thousands of years old!

The jungle basins form what is essentially a "wall" against the deserts to the north and south. It is theorized that in the past the deserts reached much deeper inland, but as the canyons formed and basin ecologies developed, those dry regions were eventually converted into fertile wetlands.

Unfortunately... the deserts have been expanding once again. This is due to the destruction of many important basin habitats after a series of orbital bombardments carried out by the Conglootimax Trading Company. Conglootimax, representing the Cabati Empire's interests on O!elli, partially colonized O!elli in order to exploit its resources, with little regard to the native biosphere.

This next section goes a bit deeper into the history of Conglootimax's occupation and how the company's actions changed O!elli's social and biological landscapes:

Following their initial invasion, Conglootimax imposed a brutal system of apartheid on O!elli, wherein indigenous people were severely disenfranchised and forced to work dangerous industrial and labor jobs in Cabati settlements. Many were even "relocated" off world to the Cabati homeworld and colonies as a source of cheap labor.

Eventually, largely due to The Cabati Empire having stretched itself far too thin, a series of wars broke out as the native O!elli people began to fight off Cabati oppression. This seemed to work for a time, until Conglootimax employed the ace up their sleeve: targeted orbital bombardment. In order to maximize profits and also quell resistance, the company began aggressively clearing large swaths of the biosphere by dropping kinetic agents from orbit.

The few major settlements that survived either lacked proximity to resources of import to the Cabati, or were so well camouflaged that they were too difficult to target. A few major nations forsaw the bombardment and had large bunker cities constructed deep within the canyons and caves, where they would remain hidden for generations to cultivate strength for an offensive.

Most impacts, however, succeeded in wiping out the surface biosphere and topsoil. This provided Conglootimax with easy access to mineral resources whilst symultaneously destroying key strategic settlements of the O!elli resistance.

For the next century Mining became the largest industry on O!elli. Further destruction of the canyon biospheres allowed the deserts to push further inward. Ecological instability disrupted communities even far outside of the reach of Conglootimax, which eventually led to a unified offense. The bunker cities deep underground supplied the revolution with industrial technology repurposed for war. As the Cabati were severely outnumbered, their defeat was inevitable.

Conglootimax planned another series of bombardments, but these plans fell through due to a lack of internal support. There were there now many large settlements of Cabati on O!elli that would also suffer from further bombardment. Additionally, further careless destruction of the biosphere had the potential to make the planet uninhabitable. The Cabati homeworld was also experiencing a governmental collapse that was sending shockwaves across all of its colonies, major settlements having already broken away to establish their own nations.

The Cabati were unable to call reinforcements from their homeworld, and their former allies saw their bombardment and subsequent harvesting of O!elli's resources and people as a major ethics violation. With growing pressure from external bodies and a losing warfront on the planet's surface, Conglootimax itself fractured and collapsed, decimating the Cabati's control over the planet.

In the years that followed, O!elli's new planetary government has been on a mission to restore the planet's biosphere with multiple large scale ecological megaprojects. There has been a large focus on reclaiming land that was once used for extraction and using them as seedbeds for responsive industry and ecological repair. Apartheid era slums were rehabilitated whilst mines and factories were converted into new O!elli settlements.

This unified focus has majorly boosted O!elli's economy, with them becoming a key player in their stellar neighborhood (having a massive surplus of resources to sell at a high price certainly helps as well 😉)

There is much debate about the future. The people of O!elli recognize that their society now has a n unprecedented amount of economic potential, with many different alien corporations and governments now showing interest in the planet. There is fear, however, that these foreign powers are a bit too eager to fill the void that the Cabati left.

O!elli is at a crossroads. Does the planet solely focus on repair and rehabilitation, or does it begin to rub elbows with the galactic community to expand its reach towards the stars like so many civilizations before it?

[Super long history blurb, thanks to anyone who read this far! I fear I've been super overthinking everything haha, but its so fun! Feel free to ask any questions, im still fleshing things out!]