Cradle of Life

Like Eden, Jhoutai is a cradle of life. It is a rich, verdant world, replete with a massive menagerie of life even more varied than Eden both above and below the sea. It's a world that has not seen any extinction-level events, which means that the branches of the trees of evolution where never trimmed and so have only further exploded into increasingly strange expressions of life over time.

The Ring of Destiny

People once believed that the ring, a perfect circle to the naked eye, was evidence that The Wheel has chosen Jhoutai for a higher cause.

— Archivist Glorix
On Jhoutai

One of the most striking features about Jhoutai is the presence of an asteroid belt circling its equator. This influences its tides, temperature, and the ability for ships to take off and reach orbit—part of why the Verin had such difficulty originally visiting space.

Ancient peoples would use the shadow of the ring to determine the time of day, and determined early into their history, by the ring's shadow, the size and shape of the world.

A Seed of Terraformation

With its many rich biomes Jhoutai is a rich basis by which to model many other worlds. Granted, drawing from Jhoutai certainly comes with its own risks and dangers—many of the creatures, bacteria, and flora within those ecosystems are less than friendly to Sophont life—but it's more important to settle a world before you concern yourself with thriving in it.