Pluto (White Star Jupiter)

Pluto
The planet Pluto is not a gas giant, but rather a minuscule icy ball of rock. In this timeline, Jupiter's increased gravitational pull pulled nearly all the objects in the Kipper belt and Oort cloud closer, thereby greatly increasing Pluto's mass, and water content. Now with more surface area to warm it, internal heat and a magnetosphere coming from within, an atmosphere to keep the heat, and plenty of water and other substances, Pluto was life-worthy. Pluto is the farthest planet from Umimon Major (Jupiter, in the words of most Uminonians), though it becomes the closest planet to our Sun for half of its orbital period. Therefore the USR use it as a jumping-off point for their military campaigns in the inner solar system. Though the Plutonians are not aligned with the USR, they allow them to build a few bases and shipyards on, in orbit around, and on the moon of Pluto, in exchange for materials rare on the planet, such as methane, lithium, and copper. While they do allow these installations on and off-world, the Xurlans are completely unaware that the USR are in fact waging a war with the other system, of which they have had no contact until the planet is visited by the IPC. Pluto has one moon, Charon (It is known as Zech to the Xurlans), which has been colonized and excessively mined.

Xurlans
The Xurlans are a curious race compared to nearly any other life form, fictional or otherwise. Rather than being one organism, they are actually a combination of a few dozen, to as much as one hundred centipede-like creatures. Early in the planet's history, roughly one billion years before the planet of Earth went to war with itself, three-foot long centipedes dominated the planet, living in colonies of hundreds. Occasionaly, the long antennae of a couple would become intertwined, forming a pleasant relationship between the two which was difficult to break off. As more and more of them began to "relate" it became more than just two; Threee, four, five; one dozen, two dozen three dozen. With each successive addition, they became more and more linked, sharing legs, neurons, and blood vessels, in additon to antennae. Eventually, one particularly large group gained sentience; the first true Xurlan. Over time, the body structure changed and evolved, ebbing and flowing like the tides. After a decade (Roghly one Plutonian year) after the initial unification, they became nearly inseperable from the main organism. After years of tribal warfare, it became apparent to the Xurlans that when wounded in battle, one could simply replace the damaged area with another centipede and continue fighting. This innovation made their wars last many Plutonian years. As a consequence, the individual centipedes were nearly driven to extinction, forcing the Xurlans to stop their wars and consider peace. When a shaky peace was established, a Warlord, Zevorian, united all Xurlans under one banner; the United Forces of Safar. (Safar being what Pluto is known as to them) Henceforth, the centipede population exploded, causing more and more to be integrated into each Xurlan. This made them smarter, and thus they became advanced, having highly massive sky scapers and continent-spanning cities while Rome was little more than a few mud huts. Since Zevorian began the dynasty, no war has struck the planet, with the denizens being thankful for their dictatorship. The average lifetime of a Xurlan is 20 Plutonian years, or 201 Earth years.