Sarelle

Sarelle is the fifth and second largest planet around Maea and the third largest planet in the Cnara System. As of the present day, it and its 31 moons are home to 14 trillion inhabitants (the vast majority of which are Carlean). The planet's two major moons are Azelis and Erenne.

Population

Most of Sarelle's trillions of inhabitants live in orbital habitats rather than on a natural body, and most of those remaining live on one of Sarelle's two moons. However, there are still several billion individuals who live on floating cities in the planetary atmosphere. Each city is encased in a large D O M E to hold in the atmosphere and keep temperatures livable. Rather than using expensive and impractical antigravity technology, these cities usually hang from one of the many orbital rings which surround the planet.

The largest and oldest city, Fabula, has a population of over 13.5 million, but most cities on the planet are much smaller than this and are based around helium-3 "mining" plants.

Although some percentage of the population has advocated for creating artificial cosmetic rings around Sarelle, similar to Jupiter in the Sol System, this has not happened as it has been deemed kind of pointless. However, Sarelle sort of has rings, made of the various orbital habitats, satellites, and other artificial structures.

History

Formation

Sarelle formed as a massive rocky body which then attracted a large amount of hydrogen and helium, which increased its mass twentyfold. It then formed a huge disk which formed at least three generations of moons, the final generation containing the two Sarelleian Major Moons, Azelis and Erenne.

Exploration by the Carleans

The Carleans' first manned mission to Sarelle was in 74 AFO (4535 CE), to study the interesting icy moon of Azelis. Since then, the gas giant itself was only studied by probes for a while, until proper pressure-resistant manned spacecraft that could actually ascend were developed.

Colonization

The first city to be established was known as simply Sarelle Colony A, but it was later named Fabula by its inhabitants. It was placed in the middle atmosphere a few hundred years after the first mission. Fabula has grown to become the capital of Sarelle. Unlike Jupiter, no proposal for transforming Sarelle into a brown dwarf was even considered, due to the planet being thought to be too small for such a project.

Sarelle's current global population is almost a trillion people, all of whom live on the vast floating cities anchored to the orbital rings.