Venezia

Venezia is a human Outer Colony in the Orso system. Following the war, it has become one of the most notable — and in some cases notorious — melting pots of the human and ex-Covenant civilizations.

History
Venezia's original settlers were an offshoot of the group that colonized the nearby Gao. While the colony was originally smaller than Gao, largely serving as a waystation and mining outpost, Venezia's population began to grow during the settlements of systems beyond Cordoba, such as Elduros and Sverdlovsk. This also brought more diverse population groups to the planet. The next major population boom came as a result of the migrations caused by the Human-Covenant War, and immigration has been fairly constant since the 2540s. Venezia remained cut off from the UNSC at large for much of the later half of the war, only resuming contact in the post-war era. Following the war, Venezia became a stopover between the Tempest Crossing, a former Covenant invasion route, and the Strewn Shore, a refuge housing refugees from the Covenant capital High Charity. Various peripheral elements of the Covenant hegemony, including defectors, merchants, smugglers and pirates gradually gravitated to Venezia due to its general lawlessness and economically profitable location.

Topography and ecology
Venezia is a terrestrial world with a gravity of roughly 0.8G. The planet has a chaotic excuse for an ecosystem, a mix of the rather primal native fauna mixed with non-native plants and animals, many of them inadvertently brought by the human settlers from various other worlds, mainly the nearby Gao. Various fauna and flora of Covenant origin have been introduced to the planet since contact. As a result, various regions of the planet have their own micro-biomes. Venezia's single shallow ocean is largely covered in a native type of algae growth, which has a distinct small that covers much of the planet outside its windswept highland regions and deserts. Humans and many aliens widely consider the smell to be highly unpleasant, but according to Venezia's denizens, one grows accustomed to it over time.

Governance and society
Venezia has lacked a formal, officially-recognized representative government at least since the 2520s. Since the end of the war and Venezia's growing economic importance, the various settlements on the planet have formed something of an alliance to facilitate trade and defense. Together with several other worlds of the Via Casilina trade route, they form what is known as the Via Casilina Community. The spaceport-city of New Tyne, including the core city and a surrounding sprawl of slums and raft-cities filled with refugees, is considered by some to be Venezia's capital, though many of the other independent city-states are quick to dispute this claim.