Kobagari

Kobagari

Astrographical Information
Region	Outer Rim
Sector	Kanz Sector (Halo Frontier)
System	Kobagari system
Suns	Han-Koba
Orbital Position	4th (of 9)
Moons	2 (Garimatu, Garihemba)
Coordinates	M-4
Rotation Period	26 standard hours
Orbital Period	358 local days
Planetary Information
Class	Moderate Terrestrial
Climate	Multiclimate
Atmosphere	Type I
Gravity	Standard
Primary Terrain	Diverse (Water, plains, forests)
Societal Information
Native Species	Koba-drakes (oceanic)
Immigrated Species	Humans, Mirialans, Pau'an, Selkath (oceans)
Primary Language	Galactic Basic Standard
Government	National Monarchies
Population	320 million
Major Cities	Veneph'tai (Capital of Veneph), Chagol'tai (Capital of Chagol), Rruda'tai (Capital of Rruda), Parinda'tai (Capital of Parinda), Xiria'tai (Capital of Xiria), various others by nation
Major Imports	xxx
Major Exports	Food (yentova products, seafood, koba-ale)
Affiliation	Galactic Empire (client state)
Mechanical Information
Astrogation	Hyperspace Backwater: Located as far from hyperspace routes as it is, Sacaya adds to all Astrogation checks to plan a course to or from it.
Knowledges	Outer Rim x • Education x • Lore x • Underworld x • Warfare x • Xenology x
Rarity Modifier	x
Other Mechanics	x

The resources-rich, biome-diverse world of Kobagari was settled several hundred generations ago by settlers from a core worlds monarchy overthrown in revolution by their own population. Fleeing their imminent deaths, the nobility of House Koba and their supporters fled their homeworld and eventually settled here. Five hundred years ago, House Koba's scions fell to infighting which ended in the destruction of House Koba, which dissolved into two separate Houses, House Veneph and House Xiria.

Today, the human Kobagari Nobility are among the richest and most influential powers in the Halo Frontier, and Kobagari's population is measured in the hundreds of millions, with multiple nations each ruled by their own house of nobility.

The Imperial Presence

Kobagari has arguably the most concentrated Imperial presence in the Halo Frontier. Given that after the Halo Frontier's Pacification, the various nations of Kobagari nearly fell to infighting to determine who would host the Imperial Garrison and offices of the Imperial Governor, Moff Eyetani ordered the garrison be established on one of the two moons of Kobagari, the green moon Garimatu. (Some claim that the infighting was a ruse by the Houses in order to accomplish exactly that, although if true, it would be the first time in history the Houses of Kobagari have cooperated on anything.) The Kobagari people have signed up in extensive numbers for training in Imperial academies, particularly those from middle- and lower-class social strata.

The Garimatu Compound

The Imperial base on the green moon is called the Garimatu Compound. It consists of:

• A perimeter wall with anti-aircraft emplacements along its length.
• A standard Rothana Heavy Engineering IM-455 Modular Garrison, which serves as the Corps Headquarters for General Amnen's Atrisian Corps, as well as the offices of the General and his staff.
• An Imperial Naval airfield and TIE repair facility.
• The offices of the Garimatu Diplomatic Corps, including the offices of the Imperial Governor to Kobagari, Governor Rhugo Kesyk.
• The Green Moon Academy, a basic training academy for infantry recruits, who are tested for their fitness to join both the Imperial Army and the Stormtrooper Corps.

Regimental Headquarters

The Atrisian Corps assigned to Kobagari is never fully located at the Garimatu Compound; indeed, of the more than 32,000 Army troopers who make up a Corps, a Corps headquarters never houses more than a thousand at any given time. The rest of them are divided into Regiments and scattered across the surface of the planet, ready to move to address any Imperial concerns in their given territory. These regiments consist of a little over 2000 troops apiece, some of whom are further sub-divided into battalions for placement at important strategic locations (such as cities).

Imperial Navy

Of the Halo Frontier Systems Force, a single attack line called "Typho's Heel," with the Halo Frontier Command Force, is positioned in the space around Kobagari. Typho's Hell consists of a Dreadnought heavy cruiser, a Vindicator heavy cruiser, three Carrack heavy cruisers, and three squadrons of TIEs (one assigned to the Dreadnought, two to the Vindicator) are in position to defend Imperial interests here.

When Commodore Cregmun Typho, commander of the Halo Frontier Systems Force, is in the Frontier, the Commodore's Flight – consisting of his Imperial-class Star Destroyer, the Inexhorable, its six squadrons of TIEs, and its pair of Carrack cruisers – can be found positioned above Kobagari's green moon as well.

The Kobagari Nations

The world of Kobagari is divided into six kingdoms, the highest echelon of organization being the kings at the top of most of those nations (only the Free Oceans differ, with an elected Minister). The various nations have resisted any attempts by one another or by outside influences to establish a single governing administrator for the entire world, a fact for which the Kobagari are often seen as somewhat fractious and backwater. Ultimately, this isn't terribly surprising: the Houses of the Kobagari frequently fall to infighting with one another, launching vendettas and breaking into wars with alarming frequency.

Species: The Kobagari nations are made up of about 70% humans, in terms of species, with Mirialans and Pau'an making up another 25% of the population. Kobagari citizenry have a slight bias against species that are not at least near-humans, although this bias has faded significantly in the past century or so.

The Masque Stricture: The Kobagari nations also adhere to the Masque Stricture, a cultural stricture that suggests that the revelation of the face is something reserved for the intimacies of family, romantic relationships, and very close friendships.

• Among the nobility, this manifests as a tendency to wear actual masks, many of which are emblematic of the noble house in question, and often packed with electronics to give their wearer a variety of useful information. This stricture is observed differently across the rest of the nations, with some nations preferring veils or partial masks (particularly lower-face ones).
• The lack of a Masque Stricture is one of the things that sets the Free Oceans citizenry apart from the Kobagari.

The Star Road: The primary religion of Kobagari is a faith called "the Star Road." It is a mode of ancestral veneration, which teaches that the ancestors came from the stars, and that upon death, all souls return to the stars to be rejoined with those ancestors.

• Small sects based around the actions of lauded and famed ancestors rise and fall within the very diffuse faith. It has no central authority, although individual sects do tend to feature powerfully charismatic leaders – though these never come to dominate the faith as a whole, as one of the few faith-wide strictures is that there is no ancestor with dominance over any others, and it is blasphemy to suggest such.
• Each of the noble Houses maintain their own rites to their individual ancestors, and various nations tend to evolve culturally-focused rites and traditions based around this.
• This is the reason why the Kobagari tend to think of space with connotations of funerary pageantry and the afterlife – in their teachings, space is the dominion of the dead.
• Funereal arrangements among the Kobagari involve cremation of the body in high-plasma crematoria which render the body down into fine, sparkling carbon particles. These are gathered in a given settlement and once a year during the festival of Yetashime ("The Return to Source") fired into space to explode around the planet of Koba'ando. These particulates slowly settle to the deserts of Koba'ando.
• In contrast, noble Houses venture to Koba'ando itself to hold funerary rites at immense familial city-tombs once a year during Yetashime.

Veneph

When the original settlers of Kobagari came to this world, they settled into the lands of what is now considered the kingdom of Veneph, making it the longest-established region. Its cities are large, and Venephans pride themselves on their urbane sophistication. The people of Veneph consider themselves to be traders and artisans, with a focus on artistic embellishment in their daily lives. For generations, Venephans have been veil-and-hood wearers as part of their Masque Stricture expression, and traditionalists are likely to embellish this look with striking eye make-up in all genders. In terms of garments, Venephans prefer draperies, saris, and robes in their day-to-day garb, favoring brocades and "busy" looking patterns.

Venephans are renowned for their elaborate artistic-yet-decadent carnivals and academies of art and philosophy that form so much of the nation's discourse. Every family nominally claims affiliation with one of these institutions – as patrons if they can afford to do so. Those who cannot still tend to socially attach themselves to one or the other of them, on the basis of their employment or association of family members who have attended them. In Veneph, ideas do not stand on their own merit: if they do not inspire artists to create works that uphold and communicate them, then how much value can such an idea actually have?

• House Veneph: One of the two Houses that came out of the dissolution of the founding House Koba, the Venephs consider themselves inheritors of the ancient culture and artistic traditions the Koba championed. Patrons of the arts on an unheard of scale, a Veneph child who cannot reliably discuss artistic criticism in at least six languages by the age of thirteen are never introduced into society.
• Veneph'tai: Veneph'tai was founded about five hundred years ago, with the elevation of House Veneph to a ruling clan. it is the Seat of House Veneph, centered around the tall spires of the Veneph Palace, whose mirror finish reflects the waters of the inner sea below the cliffs on which it stands. It is also home to the High Opera, a vast edifice which visitors take for a temple complex of some kind, which is in truth a theater. Many troupes perform in any of the two-dozen performance spaces here, through it is dominated by the entirely-Pau'an Guild of Cantors.

Chagol

x

• House Chagol: xxx
• Chagol'tai: xxx

Rruda

x

• House Rruda: xxx
• Rruda: xxx

Parinda

x

• House Parinda: xxx
• Parinda'tai: xxx

Xiria

Culturally speaking, Xirians are resolute and not given to excess, almost as a reflex to their proximity to Veneph, one might argue. Xirian society is regimented, with a strong military leadership. Children are educated in military academies where as they advance through its ranks, the least-suitable for military life are excised from the roster entirely and shunted into industrial-focused trade educations.

• House Xiria: When House Koba fell into infighting, they say that House Veneph inherited Koba's decadence and refinement, while House Xiria inherited its military-industrial tendencies. The Xiria masks are all smooth, silvery surfaces that reflect the faces of those the Xirian noble gazes upon; they eschew the elaborate regalia of other houses in favor of military uniforms.
• Xiria'tai: When House Koba dissolved and the Veneph household rose to prominence, it hunted for the Xirian upstarts. The sea-side fortification that protected House Xiria and allowed it to survive long enough to establish their power soon grew into a vast and sprawling city around the keep. Xiria'tai's harbor is entirely dedicated to the naval powers of the nation of Xiria, without any mercantile or private functions.

The Free Oceans

The cities that make up the Free Oceans are all sub-aquatic, although many of them have "above-wave" platforms that reach above the water level to provide access by speeder or starship to their settlements. A quarter of Free Oceaners are human, Mirialan, or Pau'an, and a full half are Selkaths. The remainder of their population are made up of other species, notably amphibious or entirely aquatic peoples.

Though the Free Oceans settlements include "bubble buildings" (as the local term is for buildings filled with air), most of the citizens are water-dwellers. Even those non-amphibious species receive cybernetic upgrades that grant them amphibious capability, although they frequently have bubble homes and schools for their children. Much of the agriculture and mining of the Free Oceans is aquatic in nature, and forms the basis for the economy for the city-states.

Though the Free Oceans do include a number of small aquatic-agriculture settlements, their truly large cities are all located along the edge of one of the immensely deep and unique trenches found along the floors of the Kobagari oceans. Most of the seas here are quite shallow, no more than a few hundred feet deep, but there exist a small handful of deep trenches that have all evolved very unique geographies and biomes. All of the major cities of the Free Oceans are built perched along the edge of one of these trenches, sometimes even being built slightly down the trench walls into them a short distance. All of these cities are named after the trench in question, with the prefix "M'pak" appended to the name, a Selkath title that literally means "perched." These cities all take advantage of the unique resources and biomes of their home trench as the basis for their prosperity.

• M'pak Tessu: A major mining operation, the walls of the Tessu Trench are rich in mineral ores. In particular, the kinds used to develop electronics circuitry are in ample supply, leading M'pak Tessu to become something of a hub of technological innovation on Kobagari. Half of the world's technological exports come from here, and it is home to an incredible variety of research corporations, think-tanks, and tech academies. It is also the unofficial home of Kobagari cybernetics – unsurprising, given how many Free Oceans adults are made up of species without native aquatic adaptation. In shadier populations, M'pak Tessu is known as the go-to place to acquire cybernetic upgrades of dangerous and even illegal sorts.

Geographical Features

The landmass of Kobagari is about fifty percent oceanic. Its oceans are by-and-large shallow, with only a few uniquely deep pelagic trenches which are filled with highly individualized biomes, entirely separated from others of their sort. The exploration and exploitation of the unique resources of these trenches is often central to the success of Free Oceans settlements.

Weather

X

Native Species

The majority of Kobagari's biological diversity is aquatic in origin, with several cycles of ecological surges out of the ocean by animal species, who then evolve and return to the sea. This has led to a fantastically complex oceanic biome, aided by the incredible variation of terrain on Kobagari's ocean floors.

In contrast, its ground life is almost entirely dominated by birds and other flying animal-life. The Kobagari like to joke that all animals on Kobagari either take to the air or return to the sea, and to some extent this is true. Though a small number of reptiles and mammals can be found dwelling on and in the ground, most of the ground-based animal life on Kobagari are insects and non-webspinning arachnids. Each of the Kobagari Houses has as its insignia a specific species of spider, named for it, which these families believe best highlight their cultural strengths and ideals. Some species of wild spiders grow to quite large sizes, although such species are unheard of outside of the protected wilderness areas that have the space and diversity of life to serve as their hunting grounds.

Seafood and aquatic agriculture products make up a significant portion of most of Kobagari's food, given the portion of the world covered in water, and the nearness of most of its settlements to the oceans. In particular, redhra, the tiny egg-masses of a deep-sea tentacled crustacean, are highly prized for richness of taste and texture, frequently eaten in hollowed out nenji fruits by the very rich, or in small, buttery, hollow yeast rolls by the rest of the populace.

Nenji is another sought-after rare delicacy, although its rarity is entirely artificial, as only the Houses of Kobagari may cultivate the small, delicate nenji trees that grow the soft-skinned purple-green stone-fruits. Over half of the world's nenji produce are used to make nenji-ata, an extremely sweet liquor favored by the Houses of Kobagari. The dregs from producing true nenji-ata are sold to companies that use them to make a far more common alcoholic beverage, koba-ale, by brewing them with yentova, a common kind of grain.

The subsistence-level food of the Kobagari people is yentova-based, and the ubiquitous grain is often processed into a powder or paste and sold off-world to food manufacturers. The people of Kobagari have seemingly a hundred different cultural variants of a basic staple chowder: a rich seafood broth in which yentova has been boiled until soft, thickening the broth, with a few choice vegetables chopped find and added at the last twenty or so minutes of cooking. Different areas on Kobagari have their own variations on this chowder, and "chowder tourism" – traveling to different areas to sample their recipes – is a popular Kobagari past-time among the middle and lower classes (as ground and air travel are quite inexpensive on-world).

The Moons of Kobagari

Kobagari has two moons, one a verdant green and the other a clean blue-white in the night sky.

Garimatu

Savannah/Forest Moon
The closest of the two moons, Garimatu is a verdant green moon made up of about equal proportions forests and grasslands, criss-crossed by deep river canyons that feature stepped waterfalls along many of their lengths. Rather than seem to give precedence to any Kobagari kingdom over another, the Empire has claimed Garimatu as its garrison for Kobagari.

Garihemba

Ice/Water Moon
A mostly-liquid water moon over a core of mineral-rich stone, whichever side of Garihemba faces away from the sun tends to freeze over. Garihemba is home to a number of mining installations that provide a significant portion of the income for the Free Ocean alliance. The water isn't terribly deep here, so many of these installations have towers and spires that poke up out of the water, but all of the work is sub-aquatic, meaning it is largely a selkath concern, with crews drawn from other aquatic species, particularly from folk in Lyn'Kati settlements looking for off-world work.

The Kobagari System

Planet	Type	Moons
Han-Koba	Sun	None
Kobarega	Molten Mineral Sea	3
Kobamataii	Superheated Rock	None
Koba'ando, the Funerary World	Terrestrial (Arid Desert)	1
Kobagari	Terrestrial (Multi-Biome)	2
Kobazayo	Airless Rock	5
Kobaburaku	Terrestrial (Ice World)	None
Kobaeo	Gas Giant	23
Kobataziri	Airless Rock	1
Kobahendo	Airless Rock	None