Before the terraforming reconstructed its surface, Yridia III was a rocky, barren world, uninhabitable to most life. When the Empire first stumbled upon the Yridia System, the planet was useless to them; one of many they didn't bother to initially report. What they overlooked, however, was the planet's potential. The founders of House Tarentum saw that potential and commissioned a largest scale eco-transmutation to rival that of the efforts on Telos. Yridia III’s barren rocky surface was terraformed into the most beautiful and ecologically diverse planet within two kiloparsecs of the local star systems. The world is home to a wide variety of terrains, from vast plains spanning tens of millions of square kilometers to the high mountains and their thousands of linking lakes and rivers emptying into a great ocean. The Great Basin, a crater remnant found in the Southern Hemisphere is one of the few original features from pre-terraforming times.