Clan of Saar

The Saar are one of the oldest spacefaring species, but their history is awash in tragedy, their homeworld lost to time and shrouded in myth and legend. Some Saar say their planet was swallowed by a supernova, or destroyed in a long-forgotten war. Others maintain that it is out there, somewhere, and that the Saar will one day return to it.

However the myth goes, the truth is thus: the Saar people have appeared in the written record as homeless wanderers for as far back as galactic history goes. “Lost as the Saar” was a common metaphor during the Lazax Imperium; the Saar people were scattered across known space in an existence of pervasive and constant persecution, facing expulsions and massacres, eking out meager livings, and viewed as lesser sentients fit only to be exploited for hard labor. The largest known Saar colony, Lisis, was annexed by the Sardakk N’orr during the Twilight Wars, and none of the Saar who lived there were heard from again.

In the hearts of slums and the bellies of cargo transports, the Saar remained one people. To meet another Saar anywhere in the galaxy was to instantly find family, willing to pool resources, to help free other Saar from indentured servitude, to carve out new homes together—at least until new oppressors would come and the Saar would either flee or be captured anew as pawns in whatever game more powerful beings demanded they play.

But wherever Saar gathered, emancipated or shackled, they taught each other what little they knew of their ways, celebrating whenever a new fragment of myth or a verse of a song or a rule of a game was brought into the fold by the addition of a new Saar to their clan. They told stories of their lost home, the home they hoped one day to return to. Many wore silver pendants they called Tears of Lisis to remember the lost colony, the closest thing the modern Saar ever had to a homeworld.

The head of one such Saar clan was Ragh Gavar, called the Captain of Hope for his deeds. In his life during the Dark Years after the fading of the Lazax Imperium, Ragh became a firm believer that the Saar homeworld was merely lost, not destroyed. As the captain of a freighter, Ragh visited many ports of call, leading him to become a familiar and prominent figure among the Saar. During his long-haul trips, he composed poetry and songs of great hope and imagination, and wherever his ship touched down, all Saar who could come would swarm his loading doors and listen to his verses.

Ragh desired more for his people, planning one day to pull together a great fleet and search for the lost home he believed so firmly lay somewhere out there. But it was not to be.

It was halfway through his final run that Ragh’s aged freighter failed him. His crew awoke from a jump to find the ship adrift, lost between the stars like their ancestors before them, without any way to get back on course. Ragh’s final ship’s log was a song of prayer, beseeching the One Between the Stars to guide him and his crew to home.

Shortly after Gavar’s disappearance, throughout the great expanses of the galaxy, every Saar began to feel within themselves an unyielding longing for the stars, and especially for a certain distant place beyond known space. Early followers of the Call found its origin in the great asteroid field of Jorun, where Ragh’s powerless ship had rammed into a massive asteroid. Ragh and the surviving crew had survived there for years, exploring the mineral and water-rich caves, continent-sized caverns with breathable atmosphere and dozens of species of fauna that sustained them.

The joy of being reunited with Ragh’s crew was counterbalanced by shock: Ragh himself had not stayed. His crewmates said that the Captain of Hope awoke one night from a restless dream, bade his crewmates farewell, and disappeared into the great network of caverns of the asteroid that now bore his name.

The Call began shortly after, leading most Saar to believe that Ragh had gone to the One Between the Stars, having made one final trade: a new home for his people. Soon a colony was established on Ragh, followed shortly by one on Lisis II, due to the rapidly growing belief that the life-bearing Jorun asteroids were in fact the remnants of the long-lost Saar homeworld, and that Ragh had led his people to salvation.

To this day, galactic anthropologists and the Saar themselves have no explanation for what has come to be known as the Call, only that it is a matter of record that Saar began to uproot themselves in record numbers, descending upon Jorun over the course of the next few centuries, seeking their place in what all Saar would come to recognize as their new home, becoming part of the Clan of all Saar.

The Jorun Asteroid Field was soon blanketed in orbital settlements; the Saar never did quite get out of the habit of preparing to leave at a moment’s notice. The holy day of Houw Shanan became one of celebrating a new purpose rather than of mourning a lost past. The Saar established massive fleets, and each Saar in a fleet carried with them a piece of the Jorun field; they swept the galaxy in search of lost Saar who had been unable to answer the Call, freeing them and integrating them into the Clan of Saar.

The Saar Today

Today the Saar are brighter, stronger, and more united than ever before. Little is known of early Saar physiology, as they were not seen as fit to be studied. But the contemporary Saar have adapted remarkably to a life spent outside of planetary gravity wells. Save for some lessening of muscle strength, their physiology shows few effects of long-term low-gravity exposure, and their genome resists the degenerative effects of solar radiation. Likewise, their minds do not become disoriented when exposed to a chaotic environment such as the Jorun Asteroid Field. No matter where a Saar is, they can always chart a course home.

Whether holding great feasts and contests of chance in the Jorun field or united in song and musical performance on their migration ships, the Saar have maintained their highly unified nature, with a singular sense of loyalty enviable even by their ancient enemies, the Sardakk N’orr. “All Saar are one Saar” is a phrase of greeting and expression of well wishes. While each individual Saar may no longer feel the Call to bring them to Jorun, most do, and once they’ve made their pilgrimage, many Saar now feel the need to replace that deep yearning with another sense of purpose, a sense of service to something more noble, something greater than themselves.

The Clan of Saar today is now composed of thousands of smaller clans, their members shifting effortlessly between groups as they carry out their new Calls. Some become great artists or chart newly discovered sectors of the galaxy; others become renowned warriors, freeing their people from servitude or establishing new Saar colonies throughout known space; still others simply exist as a free people.

The Clan of Saar is governed by the Council of Captains, a holdover from the days of exile when ship captains were seen as the greatest authorities among the Saar. A Saar must earn the rank of captain on a civilian or military vessel to sit on the council, but any who have held the title receive a chance to serve a single five-year term. The Council of Captains oversees the Saar Admiralty, which is tasked with administering the shoals of ships that sail through the Jorun field and with maintaining the Saar’s formidable defenses.

Goals of the Clan of Saar

The Clan of Saar’s primary focus is to maintain its people’s safety and independence. Having been consigned to the margins of galactic society and oppressed for so long, the Saar work hard to ensure this can never happen again. Some captains advocate more ambitious building programs to expand their navies; indeed, one of the Clan of Saar’s great resources is its large civilian fleet that can be armed for war at a moment’s notice. Other captains push for the Saar to use their seat and influence on the Galactic Council to identify potential threats and eliminate them before they can grow, or to build alliances from a position of strength.