Filna orbits the adequately warm and bright star Nirr. This star, in turn, does its part to ruin everything by orbiting the much more massive, and, therefore, much more warm and bright star Zirkkl. The humanoid (and often multi-headed) Fraznaks are the dominant life-form on the planet, though certainly not the most intelligent. Many alien life forms have migrated to the planet, most often because they enjoy pain, were forced to move there, or were tricked into moving there.

Its main exports are frustration, annoyance, and confusion. It also exports fish, though this matters very little.

Its population is, for some strange and apparently unkowable reason, remarkably high at 14 billion. 70 percent of those are Filni natives who were too dumb, or too poor, to find a nicer planet. 12 percent are aliens. The rest are just crazy.

The climate

The Filni climate can be summed up in two words: Really hot. Can be, but won't. It is ALWAYS warm in Filna, and very often it is hot. Really hot. No matter where you are on Filna, the traditional casual attire will never, ever include a sweater, winter coat, or the traditional Sphere of Gorb, worn to communicate with the Glorious Loofa, ward off the Evil Snail, and survive the freezing cold.

For the past three years, an unusual amount of storms have been cropping up, somewhat cooling the hot planet. This is believed to be because a planet as miserable as Filna can't possibly like itself.

The time

On Filna, a day lasts 34 hours. And since Filna's sun orbits another sun, it just so happens to be 34 hot, bright hours. This makes getting adequate sleep very difficult. To remedy this problem, many Filni have taken to buying really thick curtains, sleeping in basements, or evolving to develop thicker eyelids or the ability to survive without sleep.

There is nothing resembling the A.M./P.M. system on Filna; the hours are counted from 0 to 34, so that people who wake up late won't get confused when they look out the window, as there is almost always at least one sun in the sky.

There are only six days in a week, to compensate for the long days. The months, however, have an average of 36 days, and there are 27 months in a year.

The people--and the non-people

The Filni people consist of three sentient species, respectively, the Fraznaks, the Menace, and the Sentient Turkeys. The story of the Fraznaks and the Menace is long and weird. So, we might as well get on with it. Two million years ago, a hyperintelligent race of kind, peaceful, highly enlightened beings known an the Krevgann-Zorkwols of the Kepplar Mountains roamed the mountains, and not just the Kepplar ones. That's a common, though understandable, mistake.

The Zorkwols would be exactly like cats--if cats weighed 280 lbs., had opposable thumbs, could walk upright, had blue hair, and enjoyed telling confusing riddles to the Fraznaks. The Zorkwols would sometimes encounter a Fraznak wandering through a mountain range and sneak up on him, considerably cat-like, get right behind him, and then greet him very politely. They would then tell the wanderer an ingenious riddle, as was their compulsion.

However, the Fraznaks did not spend that much time in the mountains, so the Zorkwols, in a desperate effort to spring difficult riddles on unsuspecting, barely-intelligent life forms, began traveling to villages, sneaking up on people, and telling them riddles.

If the person answered the riddle satisfactorily, the Zorkwol would smile, think, "There may be hope for this species yet," and then telepathically broadcast that thought to any sentient being in the area. This often left a victorious Fraznak, who should be jumping up and down, clapping his hands, and acting generally giddy, feeling like a loser. This, it is now believed, was a plot by the Zorkwols to give the Fraznaks a drive to be more intelligent, and thus more challenging.

While this could be seen as a good thing, if slightly creepy, the Fraznaks were very annoyed by the riddles. They did not like riddles. They were unbelievably boring, and thinking about them hurt their heads. But what they most dreaded was answering them. Because although when they answered right, they could expect a smile, polite congratulations, a polite farewell, and mild to severe depression, whenever they answered wrong, the Zorkwols would eat them. It was for this reason the Fraznaks called them the Menace.

Once the blue-haired Menace decided to travel to villages to tell their riddles, they changed their tactics a little. They went from sneaking to stalking. The went from politely smiling and congratulating winners to hugging them. They went from eating the losers to eating the losers, burning their villages, killing all the villagers by whatever means necessary, and stealing their food, and whatever shiny objects were lying around.

This greatly annoyed the Fraznaks. They didn't like riddles. They didn't like being systematically slaughtered by insane cats. The thing they really didn't like was the fact that while the Fraznaks had deciphered and could understand the Menace's language, they were physically incapable of speaking it. And while the Menace were hyper-intelligent, they never had any clue what the Fraznaks were saying. That meant that no matter whether you answered right or wrong, you would be eaten, your village burned, the townspeople slaughtered, your food and shiny things stolen, and the Menace would move on. The Fraznaks really didn't like that.

Since they weren't very intelligent or inventive, the original solution to this problem was to just stop going near the mountains. And if the Menace were to come to your village and tell you a riddle, you should:

1( Pick up a really big rock.

2( Throw it at him.

3( Run away.

Do this, and you might survive. The other townspeople wouldn't, though. And then, years later, a man determined a more permanent solution: the Fraznaks must eliminate their kind. This would have made more sense if the man didn't mean his own kind. Fortunately for the Fraznaks, one man spoke up and noted that they could try to exterminate the Menace instead. So the Fraznaks had to choose between destroying their own species and destroying another species. Both men gained a sizable group of followers. However, since the Fraznaks weren't very intelligent or inventive, they couldn't think of a way to do either.

And then one day, the Menace altogether stopped showing up at the villages. To this day it is still not understood why, though it is believed to have something to do with maraschino cherries, since everyone who ate them, carried them, or wore a perfume that smelled like them met a Menace, it would tell its riddle, wait until the poor soul responded, then eat them in mid-sentence. The Menace did not like maraschino cherries.

So, when the Menace retreated into the mountains, the Fraznaks became the dominant life form, named the planet Filna (who knows why), and called themselves the Filni.

So then that just leaves the Sentient Turkeys. Three years ago, in Tonga City--the capital of the Quirrl Republic--dozens of domestic turkeys took to the streets wearing strange outfits. They wore helmets and gloves and things that looked like big backpacks. They talked to each other for a while, and then waved to the crowd that had gathered around them. "Goodbye," they said. "Oh, and it would be nice if you stopped killing and eating us. Just a thought." Then they all turned on their jetpacks and flew away. They returned 26 seconds before they left, which was very confusing to everyone. But the impending doom of an exploding universe was averted when the returning Sentient Turkeys whipped out their mind-wipe devices and erased the memory of their return. Then they ran off and disappeared. Then, the original Sentient Turkeys all turned on their jetpacks and flew away.

14 seconds later, the Turkeys returned, appearing out of thin air. They explained that they had learned how to travel from one universe to another, and to travel in time. The crowd asked, "How? How can you do something so amazing?" The Sentient Turkeys responded that they weren't going to tell them how. They just thought the people deserved to be so disappointed after the whole thing about Turkeys being hunted and killed for two million years.

No Filni has eaten a turkey after that day.