VERDANT FERAL WORLD | OUTER RIM
Features
Remote. The Kassyyor system is a distant and largely insignificant system on the very edge between the Core Worlds and Outer Rim.
Wild Fauna. Notorious for its large predators and heavily forested terrain, Hsskhor is often listed among planets unsafe for citizens of the Galactic Empire to visit without particular permits. Its sister planet, Kashyyyk, has a similar kind of environment and aggressive predatory fauna.
Corporate Controlled. While the native Trandoshans would claim otherwise, the government of Hsskhor have become so dependent on Czerka Mercantile for many of its most essential supplies that it now essentially owes fealty to that organisation. A ferocious independence movement exists on the planet, composed primarily of militant Trandoshans who want not just to remove the planet from Czerka’s control, but to overthrow the current ruling council in a bloody coup.
Locations
Khoruss Sska. While an uncountable diaspora of individual tribes, cults, gangs and hunting societies exists in small clusters across the entire planet, only one significant city exists, which is Khoruss Sska. The only standard starports on the surface are located here.
Grand Temple of the Scorekeeper. A truly colossal edifice in the centre of the single large metropolis on the planet, devoted to both native and returning Trandoshans who wish to offer their current score to their deity in order to gain her favour.
Talarus Base. A sprawling corporate centre from which Czerka maintains its military and economic control of the planet. Despite the notorious aggression of the native Trandoshans, the base has remained secure since Czerka Mercantile’s assumption of control over the planetary government.
History
The native Trandoshans of the planet Hsskhor are renowned across the galaxy as being among the foremost and reliable bounty hunters and mercenaries. Tough, uncompromising, and utterly ruthless, they have formed the backbone of many of the most formidable private armies in the history of the Old Republic. This reputation did not come unearned.
Among the most prominent aspects of Trandoshan culture is the Cult of the Scorekeeper, a form of reverence for a huntress-spirit who keeps a record of a Trandoshan’s greatest achievements. Traditionally, these great acts have were only ever brutal murders; specifically, only hand-to-hand kills earned score in the early records of the Scorekeeper. However, as time passed and more Trandoshans mastered missile weapons and then later blaster weaponry, hunting of all sorts eventually entered the means by which Trandoshans believed they could tally score for their primal goddess.
In modern times, the Scorekeeper also grants points for any kind of “hunt”. This has seen a large increase in the number of Trandoshans found as bounty hunters, though some have begun to interpret the “score” as being any kind of achievement a particular Trandoshan deems worthy of the Scorekeeper’s notice, whether violent or not. These latter believers are presently viewed as heretics by the dominant Trandoshan clerical class who administer the Grand Temple and, ultimately, are the ones who award points on behalf of the divine Scorekeeper. Even now, no act earns a higher score than killing another warrior in hand-to-hand combat.
This obsession with point-scoring and acts of wanton aggression saw Hsskhor develop faster than its sister-planet, Kashyyyk, with which it shares a great many similarities. The reptilian Trandoshans eventually began to prey on the Wookiee natives of Kashyyyk, and as fierce warriors themselves this only spurred more Trandoshans to seek points either capturing or killing Wookiees. Over time, this developed into something of a lucrative slave trade for the Hsskhor elite, who found themselves with an excess of captives from Kashyyyk. It was not long before these slaves found a market in the larger galactic community.
The Old Republic remained publicly opposed to slavery across its entire duration, though its single effort at addressing what was euphemistically called “the problem of Hsskhor and Kashyyyk” remained unaddressed. No doubt there were enough Senators and powerful benefactors in clandestine support of this particular type of trade that any actual effort to challenge the status quo became an incredibly formidable prospect. By the time of the Galactic Empire, the Old Republic had failed to adequately confront the “problem” and the burgeoning New Order simply embraced the practice.
Yet the practice had its costs for the Trandoshans also. As their expansive slave trade in Wookiees (and other species, but few records address them specifically) began to reap their greatest reward, the clerical elite on Hsskhor foolishly deferred many of their planet’s necessities to corporate interests. Already having established a valuable export trade with the Trandoshans, it was Czerka Mercantile whose grip eventually throttled Khoruss Sska. Having almost single-handedly engineered the machinery of “trade”—whose near sole export were slaves—Czerka had also invested heavily in a great deal of infrastructure on Hsskhor itself.
Eventually, it became apparent even to the high clerics and even the war-leaders of the great raiding clans that Czerka could, if threatened, hold the entire planet’s economy to ransom. Czerka wisely maintained a diplomatic stance in regard to their influence, politely requesting various changes, alterations, laws, removals of regulation, and the like. Their liaisons were smart enough to recognise that pushing the hyper-aggressive Trandoshans would likely only trigger some kind of violent outbreak and defeat the purpose of their intent. While there remains a virulent resistance to this subversive control across the planet, in all practical senses, Hsskhor has been for generations under the heel of the Czerka corporation, despite its outward appearance of remaining an independent theocracy under the clerics of the Scorekeeper.
Phenomena
A standard day on Hsskhor lasts a little over twenty one standard hours, and the length of its solar year is three hundred and fifty five days.
Flora and fauna on the planet are famously diverse and abundant, or as the Czerka technicians frequently report, abundantly out of control. A significant amount of megafauna exists on the planet, particularly of the reptilian variety. However, Hsskhor also serves an enormous variety of insectoid life, most of which are of a typically small size (including the various species of locust, the paste of which is a local dietary speciality), as well as a vast array of plant life which feeds on them. Most flora, it has been noted, are highly poisonous to most species other than Trandoshans.