JEDI HoloNet

Vanqor

*****************************************************************************************************

Vanqoran folklore claims that the planet was once a tropical paradise mirroring the natural beauty of its counterpart planet, Typha-Dor, before an immense and undescribed calamity wiped out most natural life on the planet and reduced much of its landmass to barren desert and rocky mountainscapes. No concrete evidence exists to support this claim, but impact craters all across the planet’s landscape suggest the possibility of a massive natural disaster potentially causing a mass extinction event at some point in Vanqor’s distant past.

Most of the planet is coated by dark-grey deserts, canyons, and mountains, save for a few river valleys and one smaller ocean found near the planet’s equator. The planet has two seasons, dry and rainy. During dry season, Vanqor’s people mostly rely on natural reservoirs and stashes of water collected during its rainy season to get by. Special equipment is used to preserve and recycle moisture deposited from a sapient’s body to make use of all that is available, and help stave off dehydration in Vanqor’s more arid regions. During rainy season, Vanqor experiences constant rainfall and storms. Areas near the ocean or attached bays and gulfs can often experience massive monsoons and severe flooding, in which entire levels of an undercity might be submerged completely. By day, Vanqor’s skies appear a sulfur tint of yellow, and at night, the sky and clouds take on a charcoal hue, a result of clouds of silica deposits in the atmosphere.

Vanqor’s earliest societies settled near what little fertile soil was present, and to this day most sentient life on the planet is clustered around the very same waterways and irrigation systems that cradled Vanqor’s first generations. This has lead to a great degree of population density on the planet despite bearing a planetary population no larger than most Outer Rim worlds, as Vanqorans attempt to preserve as much fertile ground as possible for agricultural purposes in order to feed their population.

To remedy this, most cities have had new additional layers built on top of them over time, with the most esteemed or affluent members of society living near the top, and the poorer and socially ostracized taking to the undercities. Additionally, multiple hydroponics facilities and “meat factories” have been constructed to help feed an ever-growing populace. As a result of the intricate design of Vanqoran cities, many possess a large, labyrinthian system of access tunnels, maintenance passages, sewage drains, transportation railways, and other subterranean tunnels that make up one giant web. Knowledge of many different passages have been lost to time, and new additions are constructed all the time to meet the growing needs of the city’s people. Nobody, from the most experienced of tunnel dwellers to the best educated urban architects, can confidently claim that they know every corner of a city’s underground.

Vanqor has very little in the way of lucrative natural resources or agricultural products in enough excess to freely trade, or the capacity for massive amounts of industry. With very little resources at their disposal, Vanqorans are relegated to make the most of what they can find, and their efficiency and penchant to find use for objects thought to have long outlived their usefulness are traits admired even by their Typha-Dori rivals. Massive scrapyards can salvage and dismantle some derelict ships, using their parts to create utilities and appliances, or piece together and refurbish others to the best of their abilities to create “new” functioning vehicles. As such, many smaller merchant ships and pirate vessels that either work on a more limited budget or require legal discretion turn to Vanqoran scrapyards.

With most legal trade in the Uziel system passing through Typha-Dor and neglecting Vanqor, the planet has become a hub for black market activity. The sale of goods commonly considered illegal by the greater galaxy often makes its way through Vanqor with very little (if any) trouble, with the exception of slaves. Vanqor serves as a link on the galactic slave trade connecting Florrum to Zygerria, but laws dictate that Vanqorans cannot own or be taken as slaves. As a loophole to profit off the trade while adhering to tradition, slaves are cordoned off to special sections in the planet’s spaceports, with the owning and purchasing of slaves being handled entirely by offworlders. Vanqorans profit off the trade through premiums or taxes placed on the buying and selling.

Likewise, Vanqor has stood to profit in the past from major galactic governments creating and maintaining undocumented research outposts and prison camps on their planet. These “black sites” have in the past been constructed by the Confederacy of Independent Systems and Galactic Empire to serve as bases of operations where less legally-compliant behavior or more ethically questionable endeavors can be conducted away from the galactic community at large, and kept a secret. These black sites, however, have long been left abandoned, and have been converted into outposts and settlements since.

Black market sales and the export of fauna make up large portions of Vanqor’s economic profitability. Largely considered by academia to be the original homeworld of gundarks, the hulking, four-armed mammalian species is reported to be in common abundance around Vanqor’s mountains and rock formations. Their natural habitats consist of winding, branching underground cave systems. These cave systems can often be as deep and complex as the subterranean passages found in Vanqoran cities, with countless gundark nests dwelling inside, each staking out its own territory and defending it from rival nests. Trappers will often go into these caves to try and capture strong and healthy gundarks alive to be sold to offworlders, the captive gundarks often ending up in fighting rings, zoos, circuses, and research laboratories across the galaxy.

Many trappers will chart cave systems looking for valuable items that can be sold for untold amounts of money, and legends exist of huge caches of treasure lost deep inside gundark nests, though many tales and myths claim that the deepest caverns, or those containing items of tremendous value, are cursed. Tales such as these claim that adventurers defiling the sanctity of ancient vaults and forgotten tombs meet grisly ends at the hands of preternatural guardians, or awoken spirits.

There is no presence of a deity in Vanqoran spirituality, nor an afterlife. The sole belief of the Vanqorans is that after an indeterminate amount of time after death, the soul of an individual permeates into its surroundings. This has lead to the widespread practice of cremation, under the belief that the spirits of the departed are most content in the skies, while many often avoid tunnels and bodies of water thought to have been the dumping grounds for bodies in the past. Some even claim that souls can cling onto weapons used to kill their mortal coil.

There has never been a common consensus on how much time passes between death and the departing of the soul, what objects a soul can and cannot pass into, or the nature and behavior of these souls after death. It is commonly believed however, that scorned, covetous, or vengeful spirits can leave an impact on the living, and the superstitious claim that the howling heard during windstorms and monsoons are the cries of the departed. In the past, certain spiritual leaders or superstitious figures have claimed to possess the ability to summon and commune with the souls of the deceased. Naturally, no empirical evidence exists to support these claims, though in the past, some of these individuals had found themselves the center of a fanatical following, or harsh persecution.

Believed to have been the natural culmination of the Vanqorans’ way of life, their culture rigidly adheres to the concepts of humility, transparency, and honesty. Arrogance and posturing are severely frowned upon in Vanqoran society, to the extent that every member of Vanqoran society, from rich to poor, are expected to dress in simple, blandly colored clothing. An overwhelming majority of Vanqorans dress in dark grey garments that lack any elaborate design, but many believe that any neutral color (excluding white) is acceptable. However, more strict adherents believe that dark grey is the only acceptable shade, and will even prohibit jewelry, ornamentation, and tattoos. Brightly colored dyes are taboo in Vanqoran culture. However, the Vanqoran desire for simplicity does not translate over to every facet of Vanqoran life, and Vanqorans have been noted in the past to produce great and complex works of art in the form of grand buildings and monuments, intricate and thought-provoking poetry, and elaborate songs and dances. Vanqoran festivals and holidays correspond to the standard harvesting period, the first day of rainy season, and Vanqoran’s “summer” solstice. Elaborate ceremonies exist for marriages, the birth of the first child, and the death of a loved one.

Other traditional laws exist that address business practices, familial ties, government proceedings, and social etiquette. Severe infractions in the past could result in legal punishment or ostracization, in which an individual becomes an outcast of society. Individuals shunned by society at large are refused the ability to buy and sell, take on jobs, or interact with upstanding members of a community, and often must resort to begging in order to survive. Mild violations of what is considered to be standard behavior or conduct were often simply met with disapproval from friends, family, and peers. Many believe that the black market on Vanqor is disdainful, and do not actively participate in it, but perceive it as a necessary evil to keep the planet’s economy afloat, and therefore tolerate its presence.

In the past, Vanqoran culture had a stronger presence on the planet, so much so that members of society were often categorized into different familial groups or occupational guilds, depending on location and circumstance. Traditional naming reflected this, with the structure of an old Vanqoran name being surname first and forename second, connected by a hyphen (i.e. Gor-Raso, Pira-Vad, Sas-Omik). The leader of the planetary government often took the surname “Van” as to reflect of his sovereign control over the whole planet. Examples include Van-Uxith, Van-Priya, and Van-Baval. Over time, however, the value placed on traditionalist systems and conventions deteriorated, and Vanqoran culture began to mix with the wider galactic culture. The traditional naming convention is nearly forgotten in modern-day Vanqor, and cultural standards and taboos are far more lax. This is reflected most clearly in Vanqor’s planetary government. Once an intricate monarchistic system, it has since been replaced with a republic-style system of government. However, with the amount of power the president holds over the parliament, prime minister, and courts, Vanqor’s government remains largely autocratic in nature.

The core beliefs and values that comprise Vanqoran culture inherently put them at odds with their counterparts from their sister planet of Typha-Dor. In stark contrast to Vanqorans, Typha-Dori are keen to dress expressively and are perceived by the Vanqorans to be brash, vain, and contemptuous of others. The two planets have a long-standing rivalry, and have clashed multiple times throughout their history in a bid for supremacy over the other. Both sides vie for control over the entirety of Uziel system, including the other planets and satellites within the system, and the opposing planet’s homeworld. These planets and moons in the past have been colonized by Vanqoran, Typha-Dori, or a mix of settlers from both worlds. Some have pledged their allegiance to Vanqor or Typha-Dor, while others are hotly contested by locals and the two major planetary governments to present day. A few planets seek to claim sovereignty and establish themselves as an independent government, but Vanqor and Typha-Dor both ignore these claims.

While much ground has been gained and lost by both sides throughout history, neither has been able to claim total victory. The closest Vanqor has ever come to conquering Typha-Dor was a military campaign in 25 BBY, in which Vanqor’s leader, a man by the name of Van-Ith, was able to consolidate a massive fleet superior to the Typha-Dori’s defense forces at the time. However, a group of Jedi managed to intervene on behalf of the Typha-Dori, helping the Typha-Dori to outmaneuver the Vanqoran fleet and force them into a peace agreement.

Besides the Typha-Dori, the Vanqoran government possess a long-standing resentment against the Brotherhoods, groups of Vanqorans that live in the deep deserts of Vanqor far beyond the fertile valleys, oceans, and gulfs. The desert-dwelling Vanqorans have built their settlements in and around oases and large ships that have crashed onto the planetscape during past conflicts. Officially, the Vanqoran government claims total ownership over the planet and declares that members of the various Brotherhoods are citizens. The Brotherhoods fervently resists these claims. Armed conflicts have erupted in the past over territory disputes and the question of sovereignty. In the end, however, the Vanqoran government has never been able to fully control the planet’s populace, due in large part to the fact that there is no knowledge of how many Brotherhoods exist, or where they are.

The Brotherhoods presently are largely ignored by the Vanqoran government, both seeing no reason to instigate conflict against the other. As such, they continue to freely maintain their own society, developing their settlements and trading with what offworlders and Vanqoran nationals they come into contact with that don’t meet them with resentment or suspicion. Most Brotherhood trade and commerce is centered around one of their few recorded cities. The Brotherhood city of Frem-Kaladi was founded on the remnants of a crashed Republican warship, and much of the ship’s functions and systems have been converted for the sake of maintaining the city and producing goods.

While the Brotherhoods have been daring enough to explore Vanqor’s boundless deserts in the past, they have been recorded to have extreme reluctance in traveling close to the planet’s polar regions. Devoid of any resources and inhospitable to sapient life, these areas are rarely, if ever, explored given the danger. These areas are frequented by massive sandstorms, ground tremors, and dry thunderstorms, which make them all the more dangerous. The Brotherhoods claim, however, that there is far more to the regions that make them to be eagerly avoided.

*****************************************************************************************************