Pitar (fictional planet)

Pitar is a fictional planet created by Alan Dean Foster for his Humanx Commonwealth universe. This planet, like Midworld and Ulru-Ujurr, is under Church Edict preventing any Commonwealth citizen from setting foot on the planet.

The native race of the planet, also known as the Pitar, were remarkably human-like, physiologically if not genetically, although generally more well-formed, handsome and muscular than typical human standards.

First human contact with the planet was in 2360 AD. In 2365 the Pitar destroyed the colonists on the planet Treetrunk (Argus V) which started the Human-Pitar War. A year later human and thranx scientists invented the SCCAM missile which allowed the alliance of humans and thranx to break the defenses of the Pitar. The Pitar refused any kind of surrender, and the entire race was exterminated. Due to their "irredeemable narccisism", even the few Pitar captured killed themselves or otherwise rendered themselves unsuitable for study.

It was discovered by scientists after the fact that the Pitar had planned a long-term, galactic level genocide of all non-Pitaran sentients. The attack on Treetrunk was perpetrated for the purposes of obtaining human female reproductive organs, which could be genetically altered to produce Pitaran offspring, compensating for the low birthrate that was the Pitaran's main disadvantage over races such as humans and the Thranx.

The planet first appeared in the novel "Dirge" (2000), although it was referenced in Foster's first novel, "The Tar-Aiym Krang" (1973).