Kavaron

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Kavaron
Information
Plane	The Edge
Colors
Status	A ruined husk decaying away into space
Part of	Sothera system

Kavaron is the second-closest planet to the supervoid Sothera in the Edge, together with its twin Evendo that co-orbits Sothera almost exactly opposite Kavaron. It is the homeworld of the Kav. Once a verdant and resource-rich terrestrial world, it's now a ruined husk decaying away into space, picked over by scavengers, wildcat miners, imperial memorial teams, and treasure hunters. The planet is riven in two, with one half of the world shattered into a vast debris cloud that follows close behind its remaining whole side as it orbits Sothera.

Description

The Kav regard Kavaron as split into two hemispheres: Kavaron Before and Kavaron That Is. Thanks to its rich moxite and uranium deposits, it remains the richest planet in the Sothera system. Because of the constant planetfall from the Mordraine Ring, it has no other satellites.

Kavaron Before

Kavaron Before is a tectonically mitigated wedge of Kavaron, the last stable terrestrial remains of the planet, which the Kav managed to stabilize with a ring of massive tectonic anchors. These great pillars were plunged dozens of kilometers into Kavaron's crust. Outside of this anchor wall, Kavaron crumbles away into space, trembling and heaving as gravity tears the world apart. Inside the wall, the Kavaronic Empire collects the world's monuments, architectural wonders, great works of art, and eons worth of cultural treasures. A large, but dwindling, planetary population remains in Kavaron Before; the catastrophe that doomed Kavaron began its cascading collapse in living memory, and the ongoing work of evacuating a global population off-world and into free-floating space stations continues. The inner wall then has the appearance of an open-air, nation-sized museum, a memorial megalopolis where open space is a premium and a population of millions work to build and launch new stations, catalog and pack artifacts of the Kav collected in Vu, and maintain the tectonic mitigation wall against the steady advance of catastrophe outside the barrier.

Despite its crumbling status, Kavaron Before maintains a breathable atmosphere, solid terrain, and a cycle of day and night. Nonetheless, the planet is ultimately doomed. The outermost ring of the tectonic mitigation wall has already lost pylons to the crumbling world. Though the wall does slow the brutal effects of gravitational warping and still the shaking earth under Kavaron Before, it does not stop it. More of the planet crumbles away each day, and more debris falls back to Kavaron Before as meteorites, killing thousands every day. Heated by these re-entries, Kavaron's atmosphere is heated to a tropical climate that makes tracking incoming ships impossible. Kavaron's boost lasers, the Guns of Kavaron, constantly push world-ending chunks of debris higher into orbit. One way or another, this generation of Kav and all that follow will be exiled to the Edge until a suitable replacement world can be found.

Kavaron That Is

Outside the wall, Kavaron is a tumult, a cataclysmic landscape of flood basalt that glows orange and red. The air, ionized from moxite and uranium explosions, is wracked by volcanic clouds and constant purple lightning. This land is less of a landscape and more of a churning gravitational storm of debris ranging from micrometeorite clouds to continental chunks. Kavaron That Is still maintains some breathable atmosphere on its surface, although at much lower pressure. Its air smells sulfuric, reminiscent of gunpowder and eggs.

Kavaron That Is lacks any official government. Scattered ship-based settlements exist, remnants of the Teamer culture that existed before the Ruin. These governments are typically led by a coach, who drives the team, and a postillion, who navigates. Emergency medical services are referred to as "Trample".

Rumors swirl of memorial vaults: twenty-kilometer-wide, hardened, self-contained storage facilities built in the earliest days of the catastrophe to store artifacts, treasures, monuments, and even culturally important locations that could not otherwise be brought to Kavaron Before. True or not, these rumors pull scavengers and hunters in from across the system. Countering these scavengers are Kav memorial teams, who race to rescue their ancient treasures and ferry them to diadem stations off-planet. Kavaron That Is is also a popular destination for wildcat teams to hunt deposits of moxite that might be too small for the large mining concerns. Though there are no mother lodes left, these leftovers can still be life-changing for smaller teams. Additionally, these teams often raid damaged or opened artifact bunkers where memorial teams have already evacuated the monuments to see if they can find anything worth salvaging. The more cutthroat scavengers even risk attacking memorial teams that they know are transporting goods. Law is scarce on Kavaron That Is, which remains in what is euphemistically called a "permanent state of emergency."

History

The Ruin

Driven by the impending Sotheran supernova, the Kav accelerated their extensive yet destabilizing mining projects as mounting cataclysms all but tore the planet apart. They had to deal their world a coup de grace of extractive mining and industrial production to lift not only their species but enough of their biome off-world to escape the crumbling one. The planet finally crumbled after centuries of Kav industrial strip mining, weakening its integrity so much that it began to fall away into space, prompting the imperial Kav to rapidly expand their space program to ensure the survival of their species. During this period, known as the Ruin or the Break, the planet's destabilized core flashed up through the cracks and lifted entire subcontinents into orbit.

Forced to make a home among the stars due to climate collapse and apocalyptic tectonic destabilization, the collapse of Sothera into a supervoid gave the Kav time to mitigate the crumbling of the world, buying them enough time to continue their spaceward migration and attempts to collect and preserve as much of their terrestrial history and culture as possible. On a day that later became known as Exodus Day, the first Kav shuttle lifted the first flight of refugees off Kavaron's unstable surface.

Geography

• Kavaron Before — The remaining whole side of the world, where the Kav imperial capital remains.
  • The Guns of Kavaron — Defensive boost lasers that constantly push larger pieces of debris higher into the planet's orbit, delaying their fall to the surface or sending them to Kavaron That Is. They can be bounced off nuclear-powered orbital mirrors to strike ground targets.
  • The Rushdown range — a range of mountains dotted with villages. One village with a population was hit by a Ring strike decelerated by Tannuk years before 4564 AR, killing 25,000 of its 30,000 inhabitants.
  • Summotank — a city of four million Kav on the drainage lake of great shattersprings.
  • Vu — The ancient capital of the Kavaronic Empire and the last remaining imperial city on the planet. It is still largely intact, though it is now crowded with refugees and the cultural wealth of the whole of Kav history on Kavaron. Shuttles land and depart around the clock, ferrying people and artifacts off-world as soon as there is space for them.
• Kavaron That Is — the ruined half of Kavaron. Eventually, all Kavaron Before will become Kavaron That Is.
  • Taro-duend — a temporary settlement or strike town, a laager on stilts where Kav miners staged before heading out into Kavaron That Is. Inflatable half-permanent barracks clustered around dirigible-hauled smelting rigs under a forest of lightning rods and rigid kites, and a small airport could handle light spaceplanes. It had an emergency government, concerned with managing casualties and protecting its members. As a working town, its trade consisted of cordwainers, armorers, lung rinsers, herdcares, gardeners, slack shops, garages, and smokehouses. It smelled like fresh ozone from its airport lasers. Wrack pilots projected their tense-ten highlight reels on walls of smoke. It was destroyed by the Sunstar Free Company Palestar Sundog under Syr Vondam. After killing all 6,000 inhabitants, the ship ignited its fusion engine, wiping out the remains in a nuclear blast.
• Duranuw, the Mordraine Ring, or the Mordring — either the outermost ring of the tectonic mitigation wall or the ring of debris surrounding the planet, depending on the source. In the latter case, it is thickest around the planet's equator.
• Memorial vaults — installations seeded throughout Kavaron Before and Kavaron That Is. These range in size from simple bunkers to massive, citadel-like complexes. They are hardened against tectonic activity and intended to be self-sustaining, preserving the artifacts and people within until they can be found and extracted.

Culture

Crops are grown in greenhouses on Kavaron Before. Fire brigades use hoses filled with adhesive suds.

Currency

Old Kav currency includes quiyos, staters, and axemonies. Quiyos are a spindle of metal like a Kav horn-hair, with a pointed end referred to as the "point" and a snub end referred to as the "notch."

Languages

• Imperial Kfar.

In-game references

Represented in:

• Kavaron, Memorial World

Associated cards:

• Kavaron Consumed
• Kavaron Harrier
• Kavaron Sky Warden
• Kavaron Turbo Drone

Depicted in:

• Debris Field Crusher
• Volatile Orbit

Referred to:

• Command Tower (EOC)
• Drill Too Deep
• Full Bore
• Fungal Colossus
• Glittering Massif
• Memorial Team Leader
• Memorial Vault
• Mutinous Massacre
• Plasma Bolt
• Possibility Technician
• Red Tiger Mechan
• Remnant Elemental
• Rust Harvester
• Territorial Bruntar