Tellus

"If Earth were to fall one fateful day, it would not be Mars who would take the reigns of the Coalition. It would be Tellus, in all of its sterile, materialistic glories." — SECGEN George Mildred Faulkner
Tellus (designated as Elpis III), also colloquially known as Neo-Terra, is a temperate terra world located within the star system of Elpis. Home to over sixty billion people, it is one of the most populated worlds in the Coalition - only surpassed by planets such as Earth or Hyperion. It is also one of the wealthiest planets per citizen in the Coalition, serving as the secondary or primary headquarters location for a multitude of mega-corporations and conglomerates.
The world of Tellus has from the start of its history been an integral world of the Coalition. The proximity of the Elpis star system to the political and cultural center of humanity, Sol, allowed it and its satellite worlds such as Tellus to become privy to near-instantaneous access of colonists and colonization equipment as early as the early 2100s. Intense colonization efforts stimulated by corporations allowed for the world to skyrocket in development and population with diversity from nearly every present Terran nation, but as a result, much of its land became divvied up between the companies that sponsored its own terraformation and colonization. In the Corporate Revolution, Tellus served as the impromptu capital of the rebelling corporations.
Following the end of the Corporate Revolution and the establishment of the Coalition Corporate Advisory Committee, the dissemination of corporate assets once more across the Coalition allowed Tellus to relax its tight corporate institutions and make way for sections of Coalition supranational bureaucracy to influence its geopolitics. Tellus maintains several nations with Coalition membership that have strong affiliations to their Terran counterparts. For example, the Federal Republic of Iscaria holds the influential megasprawl of Monatoga City, and yet affiliates itself highly with the current United States of America on Terra more than its fellow Tellurian nation-states.
Currently, Tellus is considered a continental world consistent of many miniature continents spread across the planetary Tellus Ocean. It is orbited by three main bodies, two natural and one artificial: the Pygmalion moon, Dyad asteroid, and Astarte O'Neill cylinder, respectively. Considered to be the service capital of the Coalition, it primarily imports agricultural and manufacturing products and exports its multitude of financial, commercial, and government services.
==History==
===Discovery===
Elpis III was discovered by Earth astronomers as early as the 2000s from exoplanet discovery initiatives, even before the completion of the Combined Solar Telescope Array in 2049. It was included in the top of terraforming candidate lists due to its optimal mass, goldilocks zone position, and pre-existing deposits of water in the form of ice.
===Terraformation===
Tellus was one of the first worlds to be terraformed under the Tomorrow Initiative launched by Secretary General Edoardo Colombera, with terraforming ships and stations being positioned on and around the world in 2088. These projects lasted until about 2104 with the completion of a breathable atmosphere that could support a subsequent biosphere and hydrosphere cycles.
===Colonization===
The colonization of Tellus was mainly pioneered by member states of the European Federation, with Hungarian and Portuguese populations in particular immigrating due to subsidized labor contracts in Hungary and Portugal for the mission. The United States of America and the United Kingdom also invested a large amount of colonists and wealth into the colonization of Tellus.
==Trivia ==
*Tellus is the homeworld of the famous Secretary General George Mildred Faulkner, who was the pioneer of Coalition Forces Authority expansion and upgrade in the recent decades and accredited with ending the Belial War.
Category:Planets
Category:Elpis
Category:Tellus
Category:Coalition of Congressional Republics
Category:Core Region
Category:Astrography