Xi

Called Xi (“zee”) by the natives, Rihlah V is technically classified as a Xi’An Habitation World. A natural super-earth, Xi is a temperate planet roughly 3.5 times the size of mankind’s home world. Like any Xi’An focus planet, Xi’s dedication to a single task has produced ultra-ordered results unlike anything you might find orbiting a Human star. Estimates suggest that between fifty and one hundred billion Xi’An inhabit the stacked lifespheres that form the basis for the world’s dozens of massive cityscapes.

The exception is Corilla, a smaller city surrounded by dense tropical rainforests.

Corilla
Open to outsiders, Corilla has become a de-facto trading post where interested Xi’An can interact with Human, Banu and Tevarin shipmasters. Over the years, Corilla has become home to a distinct community of UEE ex-patriots and political refugees, who have begun to subtly merge their distinct Human culture amidst the city’s standard Xi’An hab-world architecture. UEE law enforcement has no jurisdiction in Xi’An space, and so it has become a popular place to ‘hide in plain sight.’ (However, note that the Xi’An typically do not prosecute Human-on-Human crimes, making it an open port for more ruthless bounty hunters.)

Visitors are warned not to try and explore other regions of the planet, for both sociological and practical reasons. In the case of the former, Xi’An culture remains extremely xenophobic, and Humans are absolutely not welcome in settlements beyond Corilla. Anyone caught in another settlement will be treated as an infiltrator, and the UEE government has shown little interest in expending clout to save the lives of wayward tourists taken in such instances. Additionally, it is generally impossible to simply walk out of Corilla: the settlement’s surrounding rainforests are impassible and are stocked with a variety of toxic plants and deadly animals (chief among them, the fearsome alltongued Rihlah jumpbeast).