Fauna of the Commonwealth - A World Teaser and Creature Datafile for the Knights-Marshal of the Commonwealth Setting

There are hundreds of worlds within the Commonwealth, on the Edge, and beyond. My goal in the published setting is not to document all of these, an essentially impossible task. Instead. My intent is to write up a sector of the Edge, one which would be assigned, in whole or in part, to the group of Knights-Marshal player characters - An Interstellar Sandbox, if you will, known as Edge Sector Draconis. This would include a map of the sector, with stars, danger zones or other space phenomena, trade or other routes, and of course, planets, moons, asteroid belts or other places inhabited by life of one sort or another.

Even this is a daunting task, at least as complex as building a single world in a fantasy game. I have in the past mentioned some of the Known Worlds of the Commonwealth, such as Pembroke or Caerlow, both home planets of one branch of Humanity. Over the next several posts, I would like to introduce some of the worlds in Sector Draconis and a creature or two resident upon each. This is in the way of a teaser for these planets and other locations, and should not be understood to be the operant approach toward world-building as a whole.

One of the things I do want to avoid in documenting the fauna of Sector Draconis is the Star Trek naming conundrum. There will be no Regulan bloodworms or Cardassian voles in KMotC. In Star Trek it made a certain sense, and did work as a lazy shorthand in description. But since so much of humanity in the Knights-Marshal 'verse has very little in common with the twenty-first century human frame of reference exhibited by most readers or players, it makes no sense for creatures to be given names that are analogs of  existing terrestrial ones with planetary appelations attached.

So without further ado, here is a little planetary teaser for Samarkhan:

Orbiting a red giant at a considerable distance, this world would be an icy sphere were it not for the tectonic stresses it endures under the attentions of its daughters Qizi ['daughter'] and Kolenked ['Shadowed'] - the large moons that spin around each other, one red, the other eternally shadowed by her sister. Humans were brought to the iron rich Samarkhan via the Alkayid Elohir, who left a sizable number of their own people behind to tailor the genetic material of the humans to suit their purposes. In the centuries since their arrival, the people of Samarkhan have lived in enforced rusticity - farming, hunting, fishing, mining or wandering at a pre-industrial level of technology, according to the dictates of the harsh climate and geology.

Something on the order of a third of a million Samarkhani exist, roughly 20 percent of which are pysche of one sort or another [genetically modified humans who are psionically active]. A dozen years ago, an Alkayid caravan ship appeared in the skies over the Elohir Enclave - Aspan Qabirga ['The Wall of Heaven'] and removed the Elohir who had guided and shaped their mortal charges since their arrival. Civil war over the scraps left behind soon followed, and has not yet resolved itself.

Tectonic activity is constant on Samarkhan, releasing heavy clouds that insulate the planet. But there is a single large tectonic plate that occupies tens of thousands of square miles that is relatively stable. Whether this is a result of Elohir tampering, or a natural phenomena is unknown, but there is little or no vulcanism on this plate - referred to as Jer ['Plain']. Because of this, it is the most heavily settled portion of Samarkhan, with walled city-states surrounded by farmers, as well as nomadic groups that can number into the tens of thousands wandering where they will.

One of the great predators of the Jer is the Qizil, a powerful quadruped with certain reptilian characteristics. It hunts alone, is not afraid of anything, and frequently preys upon humans in addition to the ezki, a grazer that makes up its natural prey.  its armored hide is proof against all but the most powerful weapons that Samarkhanis have at their disposal. Swords or archery are rarely effective, but a charging lancer can kill one, often at the cost of their own life or that of their mount [to be detailed in another post]. Since the departure of the Elohir, some enterprising starfarers have been trading tensor technology to the locals, but the number of Qizil has not yet begun to decline.

Next time - A Once Thriving Sagati Free Hold is now nothing more than 'The Husk of Halikonae!'