BARD PAPER: OPAL8621 | Home | Traveller | BARD | OPAL |
BARD PAPER: OPAL8621 | Home | Traveller | BARD | OPAL |
The homeworld of the Shi'awei minor race. Imperial Scouts discovered this world in 314, and interdicted the world in accordance with Imperial Law. before 1073 the world was listed as 314-765, and was patrolled regularly by IISS cruisers. At the time of its discovery, Imperial law regarding contact with primitive races had become punitive regarding outside interference. The Shi'awei were barely TL 1 at that time, and had no concept of the universe outside of their world, and their race was one of the first to benefit from these more stringent regulations.
In 1073, however, the liner Ishgarlu, misjumped insystem from nearby Mora subsector. A computer failure caused the ship's jump field to malform, and the ship jumped parsecs off course. Its communications were knocked out, preventing a mayday, and the vessel precipitated too close to the world for the scout cruisers to detect. The ship crashed in a shallow shoal, alerting the curious Shi'awei, who explored the wreck and interacted directly with the survivors. Several days passed before the crew managed to salvage a radio with a range long enough to contact the interdiction patrol. The rescue and recovery of the Ishgarlu and its survivors took several days, further contaminating the world.
The incident sparked a major controversy within the IISS and subsector nobility. A debate raged between senior bureaucrats who resented the Ishgarlu's intrusion, and oppurtunistic academics and IISS contact specialists who urged a lifting of the world's interdiction. A compromise was worked out in 1075 that opened the world to limited contact, through the auspicies of IISS, and the interdiction was raised to a partial quarantine. The Imperium, and later the Regency, lucked out with the Shi'awei, who are by nature a curious and gregarious race, lacking xenophobia and free of the dogmatic superstitions that contact specialists use to justify the interdiction of developing cultures. Indeed the Shi'awei have adapted so well to offworld contact that it sparked a major controversy in the Imperial bureaucracy in the last few years before the Civil War over the entire validity of the non-interference philosophy.
Commercial contact on Chaosheo is limited to the Crashsite Downport, located, naturally, near the Ishgarlu's old crash site, and a surrounding commercial zone 15 km in diameter. Supervised trade has allowed the aliens to dramatically increase their technological repertoire, and a number of industrial goods are being produced locally. The Shi'awei are very good at abstract thinking, and hands on artisanship, and a small number of their best and brightest have journeyed to Regency universities to be educated in various subjects.