Bolera

Bolera was a planet in the Unknown Regions, an early member of the Golden Empire and the homeworld of the Athans.

Geography
Dominated by water, Bolera's three major oceans bordered all its continents, though some remained linked by strips of land, and indeed some of these were so wide that the separation of one continent from another was a haphazard and subjective business. The continents themselves were covered in savannahs, which gave way here and there to several major deserts. Densely wooded areas were confined to the equatorial regions, and the far north and south around the poles were ringed by tundra and permafrost that eventually yielded to snow and ice.

The vast savannahs were home to a number of predator and prey animals, some of which strayed along the borders of the both desert and forest, though these two areas had their own distinct species which rarely thrived in the savannah regions. The single native sentient species, the Athans, existed across the globe.

Most of Bolera was warm, above twenty degrees Centigrade in nearly all areas aside from the polar regions. Rain was common on the savannahs—a shower occurred at least every three days in most regions—but even this water felt pleasantly warm to most humanoids.

Society and culture
Before they encountered the Golden Empire, the Athans existed in nomadic hunting packs, moving around Bolera in search of food. Though their preference was for meat, and they would sometimes follow herds of prey animals over hundreds of kilometers, the Athans could also subsist on fruits and plants, and by 91 ABY some had begun to show signs of inclining toward permanent settlements, lingering for months or even years with abundant fruit or edible crops.

After the Athans submitted to the Golden Empire, Rin Sakaros organized tens of thousands of them into the first major cities on the largest continent. Both the concept of cities (along with farming and domestication) and the cities themselves spread, and by 141 ABY most of Bolera's Athan tribes had formed cities with technology millennia ahead of where they had been a mere half century before.

History
Only oral traditions existed among the Athans prior to their encounter with Rin Sakaros, and most of these concerned hunting rituals and religious rites, and so there were no reliable native histories of Bolera or the Athans themselves. Royal researchers concluded that the sentient hunting packs had existed for over a millennium before they encountered the Golden Empire.

Bolera joined the Empire in 91 ABY and experienced a rapid influx of technology. Within half a century, the first continent Rin had settled had a dozen major cities with tens or hundreds of thousands of occupants, and major farming compounds existed across the globe. Bolera began to draw revenue from its exportation of foodstuffs—even with all the Athans fed, farming technology led to food supplies exponentially greater than demand—and textiles, which the Resource Council discovered could be refined from plants in Bolera's forests.

Bolera was the site of the final destruction of the slaving syndicate Red Eclipse in 116 ABY, for which it won some measure of fame and notability throughout the Empire, particularly among the former worlds of the Tetrarchy of Mezlagob. The Armada later established an Officer Training Institute for the Royal Starfighter Corps on Bolera.