Naazir and Rokha


The worlds of Naazir and Rokha are home to the symbiotic Naaz-Rokha Alliance. Naazir is the original homeworld of the diminutive Naaz. After the Naaz allied with the nomadic Rokha, the two species began to build a new society together on Naazir. They also colonized and terraformed a second world in the Naa system. This they named Rokha so that the two halves of their new partnership would be equally honored in the names of their two worlds.

Naazir

Naazir is a small, low-gravity world covered in high mountain ranges divided by deep, narrow seas. Most of the plant and animal life has evolved to live on the nearly vertical mountain slopes, and the four-armed Naaz are no exception. Verdant forests of twisting vine trees and tenacious conifers cover the cliff tops and dangle off the sides of sheer drops, while the narrow and chilly seas host all sorts of fish species. Most of the seas are separate from one another, so each has evolved its own unique ecosystem and species. The landmasses, on the other hand, tend to be connected, leading to more blended arboreal biomes across the globe.

The inhabitants of Naazir live in cities bolted and burrowed into the towering cliff faces, with vertical farms and retractable fisheries providing most of the food supplies. Early in the Alliance’s existence, the Naaz-Rokha decided that they’d rather keep their industry in space, and now orbital factories ring the planet, leaving Naazir itself largely untouched.

Quellin Facing

The capital of the Alliance, the city of Quellin Facing was the site of the first treaties signed between the Naaz and the Rokha. It later served as the base from which the two species launched the campaign to drive the last invaders off their planet. The city extends down the sheer sides of the titanic Quellin Mountain like a series of shelves carved into and extending out from the rock. The uppermost shelves catch the most sunlight and are devoted to parks, promenades, government buildings, and habs. The lower shelves remain in a constant gloomy twilight and host commercial centers, data vaults, and monorail transit hubs. At the base of Quellin Facing, the Ibrak Sea laps at the lowest shelf, where fleets of fishing vessels launch each day.

Congress Hall

The Tetrarchy’s staff and the representatives in the Congress both execute their duties from the smooth and gleaming building of Congress Hall. Built on the uppermost shelf of Quellin Facing, the Hall contains the storied Chamber of Congress, where elected representatives from across Naazir and Rokha meet, as well as the four offices of the Tetrarchy. Two Eidolon mechs stand guard on either side of Congress Hall’s towering nisswood doors. Though the Eidolons are decorated and painted as honor guards, their weapons are real, and they serve as a reminder of the Alliance’s ingenuity and strength.

Rokha

The fifth planet in orbit around Naa, and farther out than Naazir, Rokha has long been a dry and lifeless world, with a thin atmosphere of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. All that changed when the burgeoning Alliance offered its new Rokha partners the one thing the species never had: a homeworld.

Rokha was subjected to a quick and enthusiastic terraforming process. Comet drops heated the world, thickened its atmosphere, and supplied it with water. Orbital mirror arrays further warmed Rokha, and Alliance scientists seeded the planet with biotech organisms that began to pump oxygen into the atmosphere and introduced a minor greenhouse effect, increasing the temperature to a habitable level. Remarkably, given the Alliance’s reliance on homegrown technologies and lack of access to ancient geoformers, Rokha changed into an entirely new world in just a few centuries.

The new planet was still cooler than its neighbor, with stormy seas and vast stretches of foggy alpine forests and upland tundra. The Rokha loved the planet and, after centuries of work, so did many Naaz. Although it began as a world for just one species, both ended up settling on it (while just as many from both species remained on Naazir). It is still less populated than Naazir, but with more space to build and expand, that may change in the next few centuries.

Dormont Vault

Rokha’s largest city is built on the sprawling upland plateau called the Morit Shelf. Here the city remains aloof from the worst storms thrown up by the planet’s new seas, although its winters are considered legendary by anyone in the Alliance. Despite the weather, Dormont Vault has the distinction of being the largest single city in the Kal-Geydr system; it is a maze of gleaming towers erupting from a thick carpet of verdant forests and stretching from the foothills of the neighboring mountains right to the edge of the Morit Shelf. Here, where the cliffs drop away to the salt flats below, the Alliance has built hundreds of docking bays into the rock as berths for starships of all sizes.

One of Dormont Vault’s most notable districts is the Kenaran Quarter, home to a large population of Hacan expatriates and immigrants. A number of the buildings have been constructed out of materials resembling the golden sandstone of the tri-system, and floating light globes bathe the streets in a hot yellow-white glow. The local Hacan have become enthusiastic members of the Alliance, even if every one of them constantly complains about the weather.

Exotic Energies Institute

The EEI was founded relatively recently, but its scientists and other staff are working diligently to make it the galaxy’s foremost research center for new power sources, such as the Alliance’s renowned entropic field harvesting. Recently, the Tetrarchy has declared these research fields a matter of state importance. This has put the Institute into something of a bind. On the one hand, it has been suddenly showered with money and resources to continue its work. However, visas for visiting scholars are suddenly much less likely to be approved, and armed security guards have begun to patrol the Institute’s campus. This leaves the staff, many of whom originally joined the EEI in hopes of making a difference for the entire galaxy, quite uncomfortable.


Star Name and Type

Kal-Geydr binary system, yellow star and red dwarf


Naazir Population Status

homeworld, 7 billion (49% Naaz, 49% Rokha, 2% other)


Rokha Population Status

homeworld, 5.7 billion (48% Naaz, 48% Rokha, 2% Hacan, 1% Human, 1% other)


Government

alliance led by the Tetrarchy


Major Imports

exotic raw materials, research


Major Exports

high-performance devices, technological development, culture




Cover image: by mroceannn

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