Bacto

The system from which Bactarans hail is relatively small, containing only five planets. The Bactaran homeworld is a moon orbiting the second planet, a gas giant called Martok; its orbital neighbor is the warp bridge to the Mintaka system. Unbeknownst to Bactaran astronomers, a second warp bridge orbits the furthest planet, Trojaka.

Bactara

The homeworld of the Bactarans is a large moon of the gas giant Martok. The world gets a similar amount of heat from its sun as Earth does, but the additional heat radiating from the gas giant, as well as tidal forces from Martok's gravity, warms the moon well above the temperature of Earth, while equalizing the moon-wide temperature somewhat - aside from the amount of light, the difference between day and night, or equator and poles, is minimal. A chilly day on Bactara is about 40ºC, while some parts of the moon reach 60-80ºC, all of which the Bactarans are equipped to survive longterm. Most of the temperature variation that does exist is due to frequent eclipses from the planet, which increase in frequency during two "seasons" a year - day-long eclipses lower the surface temperature of the moon to as low as 20ºC (about room temperature for humans). The moon is tidally locked to Martok; the planet-facing side is usually a few degrees warmer than the outer side, except during the aforementioned eclipses, when it is the coldest region.

Bactara is midway in size between Earth and Mars. Between this and an orbital neighborhood rich in targets for both landing and gravity assistance, Bactarans have an easier time than humans in lifting off from their world.

Bactara is a densely populated, bustling world. A century before first contact it was devastated by war, but in the intervening years most of the moon has recovered, along with the population and civilization. The feudal House society leads to many small towns, most of them walled - each consisting primarily (if not exclusively) of members of a particular House. Interspersed among these small towns are a smaller number of massive cities, which are freely accessible to any friendly House.

The Martoki religious house is the most prominent house in the planet-facing region, and many religious holidays are based around the eclipses of Martok. Several wealthy (and spacefaring) houses compete for the leading and trailing sides of the moon (either side is beneficial for space launches, and the temperature climate helps makes the land fertile). On the far side of the moon is the Land of Moti, a cold, barren wasteland made worse in Korzof's war.

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The Land of Moti: A region of the moon on the far side of Bactara from the gas giant it orbits, Martok.

Following Korzof's war, a large section of Bactara was rendered unusable for many purposes, such as farmland. As punishment for their role in the horrors of the war, the House of Moti's fertile lands were seized, and the wasteland given to the House instead. Radiation has subsided somewhat, but it remains difficult-to-impossible to farm the land. It is still moderately useful for mining, and so in recent generations, the Moti have begun to do just that.

The most religious House, which worships Martok, considers this region to be cursed due to its distance from Martok. The reality is not far off; part of its troubles are due to the lack of thermal radiation from the gas giant, making the land cold (by Bactaran standards) and inhospital to most of the animal life which Bactaran crops symbiotically depend on. During the Expansion Era, it is discovered that Earth-native crops can be grown here without much issue and can alleviate some (though not all) of the Moti's nutritional needs. Following this discovery, and subsequent trading of crops, the region begins to recover both ecologically and economically.

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Martok

Martok is a gas giant located in the habitable zone of the Bacto sun. Its atmosphere consists of hydrogen and methane, with a few water vapor clouds, mostly around the poles. This gives the giant's equatorial area a flat, plain blue appearance, with storms of thick white clouds around the poles of the planet.

Because Bactara is tidally locked to Martok, the giant appears to hang in the same place in the sky; its apparent diameter from Bactara is 13 degrees, or about 25 times the angular size of the moon seen from Earth. Depending on its phase, it may provide nighttime illumination that is a significant fraction of the daytime illumination on Bactara - over 600 times as bright as a full moon on Earth, or just under 1/10 of the illumination from Bacto.

Martok is worshipped by many Bactarans, with the most famously devout of them belonging to the House of Martoki, whose main territory lies directly on the closest point on the Bactaran surface to Martok. Martoki temples are designed and constructed with a skylight, aimed towards Martok, in such a way that Martok's reflected light illuminates the temple's pulpit; Martok's light is considered holy. A frequent holy incidence is the "full Martok", when the giant is brightest in the sky; this happens at "midnight" on each of Bactara's 300-hour "days"..

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Guraza

The innermost moon of Martok is a shepherd moon for the gas giant's single ring. It resembles Io (the moon of Jupiter), in that it is volcanically hyperactive, covered in lava flows in the hot areas and various rocky elements in between. It is smaller than Io, though, being only barely large enough to form itself into a sphere (and even then, an elongated one). Its core is heated up from tidal forces of Martok's gravity. It seems likely that a significant portion of the ring's material comes from volcanic material ejected from Guraza. Guraza is rich in a number of minerals that are useful to Bactaran spacefaring technology, and mining it for these materials is one of the early objectives of the space program. Mining Guraza is dangerous work, though, and mining the Solar System's asteroid belt proves a more attractive option once available.

The TMP given here refers to the majority of the surface; near active volcanoes, it can reach as high as TMP 9.

Etymology fun fact: The name "Guraza" is very similar to the Bactaran word for "fire".

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Boruwak

This chilly, dry rock has few useful minerals and no surface water or ice; it is useful for gravity assists. The Bactaran military has two enclosed bases on this moon: an outpost for observation, and a maximum-security prison complex.

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Foka

This inner planet of the Bacto system is barely within the realm of survivability for Bactarans, but it is survivable, and as such was colonized about 30 years before first contact by the spacefaring houses. Foka Bactarans are known for their shortened height and stocky build.

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Formok

This world holds a thick CO2 atmsophere, and is too cold for Bactarans to survive without suits. The atmosphere creates a greenhouse effect that keeps the planet within the habitable temperature range of humans despite its long range from the star.

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Thojaka

This frozen world is composed of carbonaceous rock and ice, giving it an extremely dark albedo. It is notable mostly for the warp bridge orbiting it. Bactaran astronomers never discovered the warp bridge, due largely to the dark color making gravitational lensing difficult to detect.

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