Nouveau Montreal

Nouveau Montreal is a prominent UNSC-aligned colony world. The world has recently gained notoriety due it's importance as trade hub at the human end of the Pleiades Corridor.

Initial Colonization
The Avalon System was first surveyed by the Auriga Expeditions in 2419. With a brief manned expedition to the surface of the world that was later named Nouveau Montreal. The system was notable for the Earth-analog world along with an accessible asteroid belt between Nouveau Montreal and Avalon IV. However, due to the distance from the Inner Colonies the planet wouldn’t be immediately colonized due to easier to reach prospects. The first colony ships would reach Nouveau Montreal in 2437 as slipspace technology improved and new sliproutes were discovered. Initial colonization would see a largely Quebecois and West African Francophone population be settled along the southern coast of Nouveau Montreal’s main supercontinent. That colonization would be pushed by Nebulex Extraction and Refining, an Earth-based corporation. Nebulex had made claims on the system believing the planet and asteroid belt to be more plentiful than it actually was and as such expended a significant amount of resources developing a colony that was not showing the necessary returns to justify continued development. As such corporate cashflow slowly stopped and the colony's growth stagnated as the corporate council running the planet saw no reason to continue work on the world. Interest in further colonization would also be dampened by the new push to colonize the Asgard Stratum, diverting resources away from the Clavain Sector. The system would only see minor development in the outer system as a refueling depot would be constructed in orbit of the gas-giant Avalon IV along with some mining outposts in the nearby asteroid belt.

Topography
An Earth-analog terrestrial world Nouveau Montreal orbits an F9V class star. With an orbit of 1.4AU Nouveau Montreal is in the closer half of the habitable zone for a star of this type and as such is significantly warmer than Earth. From this there is little in the way of polar ice caps, and an equatorial band that is effectively uninhabitable to human life. The planet however is not dry, it is fairly wet with most of the extra water being vapor in the atmosphere, further increasing the temperature. As such terraforming efforts, that have been fairly sporadic over the years, has focused on trying to bring some of that vapor down from the atmosphere to cool the planet.

Nouveau Montreal is a young world, and a younger world than it's level of life would suggest. The world should only be comprised of single celled and perhaps a handful of simple multicellular organisms. As such the world is one of the clearest examples of out-of-place biota. Examples of native life have been found on the sea floor however, and have confirmed the theories that Nouveau Montreal life should be developmentally younger than actually is. These samples of early life and how they've interacted with the life that was seeded or brought by humans has fascinated scientists.

Also due to it's age the planet is tectonically active. The planet has 3 main continents, one of which is a supercontinent hat takes up 77% of the land surface area and 21% of the planet's surface. The other two continents are close to the northern coast of the supercontinent and it's believed they have recently, geologically speaking, broken off of the main supercontinent. This is collaborated by the fact the main supercontinent currently has numerous rift valleys and is believed to be in the process of breaking apart. This activity naturally causes a large amount of earthquakes and tsunamis to occur. Causing the majority of the population to live on the southern coast of the supercontinent. This region suffers from relatively little tectonic activity and is fairly temperate by the standards of the planet, with a Mediterranean type climate. However, as planet's population has grown, either though natural growth or from refugees, the interior of the supercontinent and the northern two continents have also been settled. While less hospitable than previously settled regions, climate control and light terraforming has improved these conditions.