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BARD PAPER: OPAL8705 | Home | Traveller | BARD | OPAL |
Coshecawat has long been a mystery to historians and xenologists. The world is a hollowed out moon of a larger world known as Serkhet (Y9C6000-0). The world is inhabited by humans, though no one knows how they got there, or where they come from, though indications are that they have been here for about 40,000 years. The world itself is a fairly typical stony body, but it has been hollowed into a series of concentric spheres, each of them self contained with self supporting gardens, small lakes that are constantly recirculated, and habitations for people. The technology that produced these features appears to be high stellar, though few intact artifacts have been found to confirms this. Some archaeologists alledge that another major race or even jump capable humans existed before the other major races attained starflight, but this has not been verified. The reasons for the abandonment of its people have never been determined. Local legends simply state that some kind of stellar catastrophe wiped out their civilisation, and they alone survived.
The inhabitants simply call themselves the Cawat or "People" in their native language. Initial surveys by the IISS missed them, as they were confined to the deep core of their world. A group of researchers stumbled on to them while trying to determine the source of elevated CO2 readings. When first discovered they were subsisting on a few surviving systems, including the decrepit solar power network, farming crops and forging metal implements out of scavenged metals. Only sixty thousand had survived the long isolation, though they seem unsuperstitious about the Scout Contact team. Nevertheless IISS interdicted the world in 506, largely to prevent exploitation by unscruplous academics. For their part the Cawat only wanted to be left alone, with a little outside assistance to keep vital systems maintained or replaced.
In recent years reports have surfaced that the Scouts were less than honest in their publicly released reports of the people. The Cawat turned out to be more advanced than initially thought, and their world in better shape. Several agencies of the Imperial government used the world as a storage or transhipment point for various materials, and the Navy built ammunition and supply depots to support military operations against the Zhodani. Rumors have also surfaced that a Viral holding facility has been constructed in a remote part of the system, but these have proven difficult to verify.