Editing Nobledark Imperium Notable Planets (section)

=== Tikal ===

Typically, the words "tropical rainforest" and "major urban center" don't go together in the popular lexicon. Not so with Tikal. Tikal is a warm and wet world, with a climate resembling that of Old Earth more than fifty million years ago, such that tropical rainforests extend from the equator to the poles.

Because of the thick rainforests and mangroves that choke most of the world, Tikal’s population tends to be concentrated in a few heavily urbanized areas, as it is easier to expand outward by hacking away at the jungle surrounding a city than to try and build an entirely new city from scratch. The largest city on Tikal, Itza, covered nearly 20,000 square kilometers even before the Tarellians made first contact with the Imperium back during the Great Crusade, and is a veritable hive now. Tikal was one of the last surviving core worlds of the Tarellian Confederacy in the wake of the tyranid invasion, and so refugees from all across Tarellian space poured into the highly urbanized Tikal, causing the planet's largest cities to well in population and turning Itza into a hive city almost out of necessity. Although outnumbered by Tarellians living on more traditional arid worlds across the Neo-Confederacy, Tikal is one of the most populated worlds in the Neo-Confederacy.

Natives of Tikal, as opposed to the descendants of refugees from the tyranid invasion, tend to be rather short for Tarellians, with heights ranging from 4'8" to 5' on average. This is a useful feature for moving through cramped quarters, whether it is the dense undergrowth of a rainforest or the crowded streets of a city. To compensate for their smaller size, the Tarellians of Tikal supplement their usual ranged weaponry with poisoned darts, developed from the poison of a native creature, which they use to sap and slow their foes. By the same principle, the Tarellians of Tikal are not very proficient in close-quarters combat. The Tikaleze also have much brighter and more pronounced markings than other Tarellian nations, often in bold stripes of black and blue as opposed to the duskier browns, yellows, and oranges most people associate with Tarellians, a useful feature for differentiating individuals in the cramped and often underlit confines of cities.

Tikal’s main contribution to the Tarellian Neo-Confederacy is precious metals, which is why the Tarellians settled there in the first place back before the Age of Strife. Tikal is known for its high density of precious metals, not just gold and silver but more precious metals like adamantium. Tikal is the biggest producer of electrical contacts in its region of space. The Tarellians of Tikal used these precious metals for ceremonial purposes back in the days after the Age of Strife before anyone knew their worth, and still use them for monuments today. Some have tried to steal from the Tikaleze, which often invokes their wrath if they try to steal from public monuments or memorials.

Tikal is one of the more literate worlds in the Neo-Confederacy, owing to its massive urban population and therefore massive bureaucracy necessary to organize it. Tikal’s libraries contain thousands of scrolls and codices, mostly written in the Tarellian script, though the most important documents are carved into soft metal in the event that Tarellian civilization collapses as it did during the Age of Strife.

Like all Tarellian worlds, Tikal prides itself on being economically self-sufficient, despite benefiting from interstellar trade, its people don’t need it to survive. Tikal’s people primarily live off aquaculture grown in massive farming operations in the planet’s inland lakes and ponds. Indeed, many Tikaleze cities are built right on the edge of large inland lakes specifically to be closer to food. Some of these farms are actually old impacts of meteorites that have subsequently filled with water.