Shral

''This page pertains to the collaborative "Thrive Universe" project, and is not necessarily part of Thrive's official development. More information here and here.''"'This world is our hell, our punishment for imperfection' -Ashrel Mokrashr, Prophet"

Astronomy
Shral is a small, earth-like planet orbiting the yellow Shadoka star. It has two moons, Shresh and Ketash. Both of these have some abandoned military bases on them, and some small mining outposts. Other bodies in the system mainly have mining outposts on them, and some research ones. Other bodies in the system are: Shem (large hot planet close to the sun), Tresho Asteroid Ring, Ashomka (large icy planet), Foosh (gas giant), Yorsh (extremely large ringed gas giant). The system is located in the Outer Seregon Arm.

Geography
About 90% of the planet is covered in ocean, the remaining 10% consists of dry land. This land is divided into various large island groups, the largest of which is just a bit bigger than New Zealand, and is called ‘Shatash’. These islands mostly consist of wet biomes, like swamps or mangroves. The average temperature is slightly hotter than that of earth, being at 17-18°C (63-64°F). Shral is also infamous for it’s extremely bad, and unpredictable weather. Tornadoes and tsunamis are common, and some of the lower islands can sometimes be submerged in water for months at a time. The poles consist of cold seas, although no permanent ice exists.

Biosphere
Most of Shral’s plant life is small, and without true permanent roots, in order to deal with the constant floods. Some species float on the water. Some exceptions to this rule exist, as some plants deal with the floods in the completely opposite way: by growing so big that they can’t get entirely submerged. Almost all of Shral’s animal life is amphibian in one way or another. Most of them are not capable of lasting on land for more than three hours or so. In addition, most of Shral’s fauna is cold-blooded, needing to warm up for about an hour or so every day. Interestingly, sight is a relatively underdeveloped sense on Shral. Some species have developed alternative senses to make up for this, like echolocation, electroreception or similar.

Notable lifeforms
-Toshra

Infrastructure
Due to its unpredictable weather, Shral does not have an as developed infrastructure as one might expect from the homeworld of an FTL species. It has relatively few cities, and no large land-based buildings. Instead, most houses and buildings on Shral are mostly underground, and designed to survive any natural disaster. In more recent years, some permanently submerged cities have been constructed. In general, these cities have higher buildings than those on dry land. These high buildings are somewhat similar to skyscrapers, and are called ‘Breachers’. The planet houses 9 billion Toshra, 3 million Commonwealth species and around 3000 other species.