A R C H I V I S T
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To provide a home to a new, Mesoamerican-inspired galactic culture and for there to be another option for spacers to have jungle-themed adventures upon.
- Image Credit: Image made using http://planetmaker.wthr.us/
- Canon: N/A
- Links: [ Provide links to any relevant development threads, characters, companies, locations, etc here. ]
- Planet Name: Cuauhtlah
- Demonym: Tlaltec / "Kawtites"
- Region: Unknown Regions
- System Name: Teochantli
- System Features: The system consists of eight planets (4 terrestrial, 4 gaseous). Cuauhtlah is the 4th planet in the orbit of the system's yellow dwarf star, within the warmer side of the habitable zone. Cuauhtlah has a singular moon.
- Location: Cuauhtlah, and its system, is located in this hex
- Major Imports: N/A
- Major Exports: Planetary only: aside from typical necessities like food and textiles, the local culture trades among itself with gold, durasteel, jade, and a local cultivar of the plant that makes chocolate.It has yet to significantly trade these things with the Galaxy at large.
- Unexploited Resources: N/A
- Gravity: Standard
- Climate: tropical
- Primary Terrain: Rain Forest / Jungle
- Atmosphere: Type I
- Capital City: Tlatoanican
- Planetary Features: [ What are interesting artificial features of the planet? Ruins, interconnected cities, floating urban platforms. This field is used to sketch out artificial features, adding RP opportunities, but without the need for specific details like in the the major locations field. You can also include if the planet is primarily Wild, Rural, Suburban, Urban, or a Mix. ]
- Major Locations: [ What are the major locations on your world? Include an explanation on each. ]
- Native Species: Nexulatl, various tropical fauna and flora
- Immigrated Species: Humans, Chiss, Nexu (extinct / evolved into Nexulatl), Rakatan (alleged / extinct, see "Histry").
- Population: Moderate
- Demographics: Most of Cuauhtlah is populated by the local Human ethnic group known as Tlaltecs, with a very small majority of sentients belonging to Chiss or other aliens due to the infrequent usage of the planet as a hideout for pirates.
- Primary Languages: Basic, Toskitl (local language), some Cheunh
- Culture: In the case of the planet's larger ethnic group, the Tlaltecs, life is much like that of a typical Iron Age village. Everyone is either growing food, making building materials, hunting, or otherwise contributing to the livelihood of the village as a whole. Each settlement, or group of settlements if their territories are small enough, are over seen by a chieftain known as a calpixqui, In turn, the calpixqui are ruled over by the tlaloani, a position similar to a king in other cultures. The tlaloani acts to guide the Tlaltecs as a whole, decreeing law, settling inter-village conflict, and so on. The Tlaltecs are a polytheist, who are supersitious about speaking the "true names" of their gods outside of their temples of worship. There are two groups of gods, the Star Gods, and the Night Gods. Legend holds that the Night Gods had once enslaved the Tlaltec's ancestors, and that the Star Gods were among the empowered ancestors that freed them and became deified afterwords. The Star Gods seem to draw upon ideas similar to the Jedi perspective of the Light Side, and the Night Gods of the Dark Side, respectively. In times of great sickness, plague, or hardship, it is not uncommon for the Tlaltecs to resort to sentient sacrifice to placate the Night Gods, who they view all great evils as being their doing.
- Government: Tribal Monarchy
- Affiliation: N/A
- Wealth: Medium
- Stability: Medium
- Freedom & Oppression: For the most part, Cuauhtlah is a place of personal freedoms. Villagers can easily bring matters before their chieftains to discuss. The only objection, in most cases, is willingly worshiping the Night Gods, as anyone who does is considered evil or bringing bad luck.
- Military: Militarily speaking, the Tlaltecs are likely only able to keep back a small invasion force from a modern galactic army. Their most elite warriors, the Nexulatl Guard, only number enough to protect settlements, not go into a full fledged war with anynoe outside of their homeworld. They are very primitive, have not yet understood handheld blasters, seeming to prefer their hand-forged melee weapons and archery.
- Technology: As far as transportation, the Tlaltecs have recently reached near-Galactic standards in the past two centuries. Having a mix of cobbling old tech left by pirates, and some minor technological uplifting by the Ascendancy in the recent past, they have now started space travel. However, as far as weaponry goes, the average Tlaltec favors hand-made weaponry reminiscent of an Iron Age culture.
Many milennia ago, the meager jungle planet that would be known as Cuauhtlah was seen as an inhospitable place to most that had the chance of glimpsing it. The dense jungle held many dangerous, a risk when combined with what appeared to be a lack of any valuable resources, made the world undesirable. It would not be until the waning days of the Infinite Empire that the planet would have any sentient inhabitants. Based upon Tlaltec legend alone, what few xenoarchaeologists have understood is the following. The native mythology tells of a time when their ancestors came from the stars, brought to the world by the Night Gods, who are depicted as reptile-like humanoid with conical heads. The ancestors of the modern Tlaltecs had, at some point, rebelled against the Night Gods, and established new civilization. The leaders of this rebellion would be later deified as the Star Gods of Tlaltec myth. If the Rakata had indeed been the pre-deification of the Night Gods, any evidence of their technology or bones have been discovered on-world.
After their civilization was founded, the natives had relatively few run-ins with the Galactic world as a whole. s the planet was still seen as greatly dangerous, very few still ventured there. Typically, it would be pirates, or small military forces from throughout Galactic history. Most were either scared off world or killed by the Tlaltecs. Those that were not often found themselves inter-marrying with the natives. The one notable incident is accidental release of nexus upon the planet, leading to the subsequent evolution of the nexulatl, whose visage the tribes took as their own as a symbol of fierceness and cunning.
In recent Galactic history, the Tlaltecs were struck both with a great sickness that the Galaxy knew as the Gulag Plague, and experienced the event of the Netherworld. Both incidents were seen as the work of the Night Gods, prompting ritual human sacrifices to the Night Gods until each event had run its course. The native population was able to bounce back from them, but they have left psycho-cultural scars upon the Tlaltecs, who refer to the incidents as "The Days of Night's Hunger". In a more positive peace of recent events, an expeditionary group from the Chiss Ascendancy managed to broker peace and gas been slowly uplifting the tribes from the Iron Age to the Galactic. The result has caused more common use of repulsorlift, speeders, and atmospheric flyers across the Tlaltec nation
