On Coridan (minor Acts of Contrition spoilers)

[rfmcdpei]

One of the major events occurring during Destiny's Borg invasion of the Federation and neighbours was the last-minute sparing, by Erika Hernandez, of five major worlds from obliteration. These worlds--Vulcan, Andor, Rigel IV, Q'onoS, and Coridan Prime--were hit hard, with tens if not hundreds of millions of fatalities and numerous major cities destroyed, but they remained fundamentally intact. In subsequent Treklit novels, it has seemed as if Coridan might not have fared as well as other worlds. In a 2011 post here, I mentioned that "in her post-invasion speech Bacco mentioned Coridan in the same breath as worlds like Risa and Ramatis which we know to have been sterilized, and novels like A Singular Destiny and the same Watching the Clock seem to imply that Coridan was wrecked to a greater extent, with Coridanite Starfleet officers left to cope with the sight of their world's devastation (destruction?) and descriptions of the surface as "ruined"." Later novels have suggested that Coridan civilization seems to have survived, but that could as easily be due to Coridanite-settled worlds elsewhere surviving as to Coridan Prime's survival.

The question has been settled. In Acts of Contrition, much of the action is set on Coridan. It is an inhabited planet; it has a substantial population; it has a capital city; it is sufficiently organized to support, among other things, a medical infrastructure capable of tracking and controlling an insidious epidemic. Coridan Prime still lives.

The world of Coridan has had a very unfortunate history in Treklit, suffering multiple genocidal attacks. It's nice that, despite everything that has been thrown about it, it survives.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

"I'm not dead!"

In the discussion you linked to, I mentioned a possible reason why Coridan was apparently worse off than Vulcan, Andor and Rigel IV - its still substantial deposits of surface dilithium. Warpath mentioned that the Burning Sea of Coridan - which was set aflame in the Enterprise novels - is still going strong 200 years after the Romulan attack. Perhaps the Coridan biosphere suffered from another round of dilithium fires in the aftermath of the Borg assault, which suggested an initially pessimistic forecast for recovery, only for the effect to be ultimately lesser than first assumed? Qo'noS - which was hit by several waves of Borg attack, not just the singular "Battle of the Queens" assault - was said, in contrast to Vulcan and Andor (which are beaten but unbowed), to be "barely habitable", so much so that Martok was considering relocating the capital permanently to Ty'Gokor. (As it is, I'm rather disappointed that recent sources - e.g. The Klingon Art of War - have suggested that the move wasn't permanent. I like change). Since Qo'noS seems to be doing slightly better than anticipated, and the other planets attacked in that event survived, it's reasonable that Coridan managed to just about pull through.

As you say, for a while Coridan seemed to occupy an uncertain position between Risa-Deneva-Regulus levels of destruction (the planet is an uninhabited, radioactive rock) and Vulcan-Andor-Rigel levels (massive destruction but still functioning as planetary civilizations). Acts of Contrition confirmed its placement in the lower band of the latter, as had perhaps been hinted by Watching the Clock, which takes place around the same general time as the Beyer Voyager books.

 

[Markonian]

I wonder whether the other razed worlds have a chance to be revived, perhaps by ecosculpting?

We never learned what became of the Risans, other than some escaped. (AOTF)

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I wonder whether the other razed worlds have a chance to be revived, perhaps by ecosculpting?

We never learned what became of the Risans, other than some escaped. (AOTF)

In Losing the Peace, the president of the Denevan diaspora seizes onto the line in Bacco's speech, "we will rebuild these worlds" and tries to lobby for an attempted reconstruction of Deneva, as the President supposedly "promised". Everyone else knows that this would be an insanely costly affair that would take decades. (Okay, they could Genesis it, but obviously that isn't going to happen).

We've seen first-hand how Andor and Ardana are being aided/rebuilt, and we hear of Vulcan.

As for the Risians, Peaceable Kingdoms mentions a rumour that the surviving Risians are possibly going to receive a new homeworld - presumably one of the many "spare" M-class worlds, which will then be designated the seat of the Risian Hedony. Of course, if they did that then every displaced population would require the same treatment.

I wonder how the Pandrilites are doing? Pandril is strongly hinted several times to have been wiped clean, and it was mentioned in Stargazer that few residents leave the planet (or at least didn't as of the 2330s). Nor do we hear of Pandrilite colonies. How many Pandrilites are left?

 

[SicOne]

Couldn't they Genesis those sterilized worlds? I mean, I am of the understanding that it doesn't quite work as advertised in TWOK, but I didn't know if they were farther along in the process to at least make Borg-sterilized planets somewhat inhabitable.

I remember there was a Genesis Wave miniseries and some kind of Genesis Force book some time ago, but I never read them. Just seems to me that this would be an ideal testing ground for Genesis-related tech?

 

[Enterprise1701]

Couldn't they Genesis those sterilized worlds? I mean, I am of the understanding that it doesn't quite work as advertised in TWOK, but I didn't know if they were farther along in the process to at least make Borg-sterilized planets somewhat inhabitable.

I remember there was a Genesis Wave miniseries and some kind of Genesis Force book some time ago, but I never read them. Just seems to me that this would be an ideal testing ground for Genesis-related tech?

Well, I don't think the public in known space would react kindly to something that killed so many inhabited planets.

Plus, the Federation has never conducted a successful test of the Genesis device. The Genesis planet blew up, and that was it for experimentation. In the Myriad Universes novella, The Chimes at Midnight,

Spoiler: ending of The Chimes at Midnight

the Federation conducts a successful before deploying it on Praxis in order to cow the Klingons into un-occupying Earth, but the detonation kills thousands of Klingons in underground habitations. Subsequently, the Romulans sever relations with the Federation over "metaweapons use", and plans to develop its own Gensis devices as a countermeasure to the Federation's superweapon. The Genesis device sure worked out well in this reality.

 

[Idran]

Plus it would probably just make the Tholians even more upset at the Federation than they usually are, and with the recent diplomatic progress they've been making with the Typhon Pact, I doubt the Federation would want to risk that.

There isn't really anything that'd be gained from using Genesis on a sterilized world anyway, I think, even if it worked; the new world would have absolutely nothing in common with the old besides being in the same spot, so there wouldn't really be anything left for any survivors to connect with in that regard, and it doesn't seem like living space is an overall concern. Lack of infrastructure would be the problem, and that would be the case on a pre-existing uninhabited M-class world or a once-sterilized planet that was Genesis'd.

 

[rfmcdpei]

I wonder how the Pandrilites are doing? Pandril is strongly hinted several times to have been wiped clean, and it was mentioned in Stargazer that few residents leave the planet (or at least didn't as of the 2330s). Nor do we hear of Pandrilite colonies. How many Pandrilites are left?

I thought Noonien Soong visited Pandril post-Borg to check his investments.

 

[Markonian]

As for the Risians, Peaceable Kingdoms mentions a rumour that the surviving Risians are possibly going to receive a new homeworld - presumably one of the many "spare" M-class worlds, which will then be designated the seat of the Risian Hedony. Of course, if they did that then every displaced population would require the same treatment.

Providing new homeworlds seems like the most practical solution. It worked with New Vulcan, Klorgat VII (Remans), New Romulus (STO), New Halana; and presumably the mirror Romulans also settled on a "New" world after their planet was sterilized.

New Risa, New Acamar, New Ramatis anyone?

There's also another issue. Not every species is spreading like a rabbit among the stars, like Humans do. Andorians faced extinction and barely survived (poor Aenar. Anyone going to revive them?).

So, who is taking care of ensuring that the surviving populations of endangered species like plants, animals and the usual planet-ians are saved from extinction? Did enough Acamarians survive to provide a healthy genepool? Would people encourage interspecies mixing if not? Is there anybody encouraging individuals of endangered species to procreate?

 

[rfmcdpei]

As for the Risians, Peaceable Kingdoms mentions a rumour that the surviving Risians are possibly going to receive a new homeworld - presumably one of the many "spare" M-class worlds, which will then be designated the seat of the Risian Hedony. Of course, if they did that then every displaced population would require the same treatment.

Providing new homeworlds seems like the most practical solution. It worked with New Vulcan, Klorgat VII (Remans), New Romulus (STO), New Halana; and presumably the mirror Romulans also settled on a "New" world after their planet was sterilized.

New Risa, New Acamar, New Ramatis anyone?

There's also another issue. Not every species is spreading like a rabbit among the stars, like Humans do. Andorians faced extinction and barely survived (poor Aenar. Anyone going to revive them?).

It depends entirely on the people. In the case of the Romulans, both in our universe and in the Mirror Universe, Romulan populations were sufficiently large away from the homeworld for Romulan civilization to survive. The choice of a new planet as capital and new homeworld seems to have been less an existential issue and more a political issue. Which world would become the new focus of Romulan civilization, and why?

On a smaller scale, the Coridanites also seem to have been expansive, within their system and without. (There were Coridanite settlements in the Rigel colonies.) If Coridan Prime had been destroyed, presumably some new world could have become Cordianite civilization's focus. Somewhere else in their homesystem, perhaps?

The case of the Remans is different, in that their resettlement involved the relocation of a population from one world to another.

It's entirely possible that some surviving populations are too dispersed to recover. Given Trek civilization's ability to facilitate inter-species reproduction, in a few centuries the last traces of peoples which weren't sufficiently dispersed to recover might be unusual DNA inheritances in the gene pool of different compatible species.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Also. With its sad recent history, saving Coridan was always going to be difficult. May I say that it is no surprise that it is Kirsten Mother Fucking Beyer who did it?

 

[Enterprise1701]

Besides focusing around colony planets/moons/asteroids or new homeworlds, we've also got some species that exodused from their planets of origin to spaceborne life. The Pa'haquel and the Rianconi in Orion's Hounds, for example mostly utilize star-jellies. Or the Vostigye, as depicted in the Myriad Universes novella Places of Exile, who live almost exclusively in spaceborne habitat spheres, some in orbit of their Birthworld.

 

[SicOne]

Refresh my memory...was Qo'Nos sufficiently devastated in Destiny to the point where they had to evacuate the planet? Or was the talk of relocating the capital to Ty'Gokor just speculation?

 

[Markonian]

Refresh my memory...was Qo'Nos sufficiently devastated in Destiny to the point where they had to evacuate the planet? Or was the talk of relocating the capital to Ty'Gokor just speculation?

In A Singular Destiny, Chancellor Martok considered relocating the capital only but the planet itself remained viable. Subsequent novels hinted/established that First City and the Great Hall have been rebuilt.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Refresh my memory...was Qo'Nos sufficiently devastated in Destiny to the point where they had to evacuate the planet? Or was the talk of relocating the capital to Ty'Gokor just speculation?

As I recall, Erika Hernandez stopped the simultaneous attacks on Vulcan, Andor, and Qo'noS midway through. At the conclusion of Lost Souls, Chancellor Martok and General Goluk are standing in the ruins of the Great Hall, receiving reports of the various levels of global devastation.

 

[SicOne]

Refresh my memory...was Qo'Nos sufficiently devastated in Destiny to the point where they had to evacuate the planet? Or was the talk of relocating the capital to Ty'Gokor just speculation?

In A Singular Destiny, Chancellor Martok considered relocating the capital only but the planet itself remained viable. Subsequent novels hinted/established that First City and the Great Hall have been rebuilt.

Refresh my memory...was Qo'Nos sufficiently devastated in Destiny to the point where they had to evacuate the planet? Or was the talk of relocating the capital to Ty'Gokor just speculation?

As I recall, Erika Hernandez stopped the simultaneous attacks on Vulcan, Andor, and Qo'noS midway through. At the conclusion of Lost Souls, Chancellor Martok and General Goluk are standing in the ruins of the Great Hall, receiving reports of the various levels of global devastation.

OK, thanks folks. Goddamn if I'm not gonna have to interrupt my other non-Trek books now to re-read the Destiny trilogy as well as ASD...