Sofia Ishtar Batma

> *While many Gaians advocate the transformation of dead worlds into lush jungles, Batma is a leading advocate for the creation of desert biomes with nutrient-rich plantlife and striking, beautiful vistas.*
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## Strategy

When you assign the rare governor - **Sofia Ishtar Batma** - to a city, facilities in that city that reduce world's water levels will reduce water levels even more.

Secondly, population that lives in that city will consume less biomass.

This governor's power booster ability will only affect Water Reduction, not Biomass Consumption, since Biomass Consumption cannot be boosted.

If playing with the Biospheres funcion enabled, instead of the biomass function, then the biomass consumption effect that Sofia Ishtar Batma has will not actually do anything. Additionally, since biomass consumption is not a feature on Beginner mode, so her effect will not do anything on that difficulty.

## Lore

Under the Rose Queen's guidance, the Daughters of Gaia have made it their mission to spread a "green wave" across the cosmos, transforming desolate worlds into lush, forest-covered utopias for humanity's expansion. This monolithic vision of a green future does not fit with all adherents of Veriditas, however, including wilderness ecologist Sofia Ishtar Batma. Her life's work has centered on proving the value and resilience of flora that thrives in desert biomes, and her desire to see this plantlife replicated on new worlds has at times caused her to butt heads with Gaian leadership.⁣

Batma grew up in southern Morocco, surrounded by the intense heat and unique wildlife of the western Sahara. For her higher education, she accepted a rare opportunity with the Far Future Institute to study ecology practices on a still-contested Mercury. But Sofia remained nostalgic for the vast open deserts of her childhood, dotted with cactus patches and rare oases which both housed and sustained sources of water amid intense heat. Her insistence that these biome structures could allow Mercury to "jump the line" in becoming habitable caused her colleagues at the FFI to dismiss her as impractical and overzealous. It was at this point she came into contact with the Daughters of Gaia, and found herself among more like-minded thinkers.⁣

Now aligned with company that shared her aggressive pro-terraforming values, Batma needed only prove to the Gaians that there was another way to bring life to planets beyond the overzealous spread of incongruous jungle vegetation. This was no small feat, for strict interpretation of Veriditas called for a galaxy covered entirely in green. With her own careful reading of the original gospel, Sofia was able to convince the Rose Queen herself that new biomes ought to be tailored towards that planet's unique character, meaning hotter worlds like Mercury would be better served by introducing more heat-resistant plantlife and creatures. This progressive view of Veriditas is still a source of debate among Gaians, but it has allowed Batma to achieve her dream of bringing Earth's vibrant deserts to her new home on Mercury.

*From Terragenesis's Instagram page*

## Trivia

* "Batma" is an Arabic surname, implying that she likely stems from Arabic descent.
* Her clan name, "Ishtar," indicates that she comes from the Ishtar Terra region on Venus.