The Kaskori are a xenos race who inhabit 10 worlds in the south western corner of the galaxy. They have survived as an interstellar race for 8 thousand years. They have a rich history of conquest and warfare and that is just among their own species.
Physiology[]
The Kaskori are vaguely humanoid in their upper body with 2 arms and a head which is slightly further forwards than a human but their lower body consists of four pincers. One of their most unique attributes is they are 1cm tall on average. Their is little height variation amongst the species so they are almost all tiny but of course their society and culture is simply built around it. They are herbivores and normally eat Saston which is a small hardy organism that can be grown nearly anywhere. Instead of believing they are dwarfs they see all others are giants and predators to them. They live on land and rarely enter the water or live underground.
History[]
Origins[]
The Kaskori originate from the planet of Kaskor which is a desert world. They started off as nothing more than a normal animal species on one of Kaskor's continents. They lived in large groups near the occasional oasis in the desert. Being herbivores and small they were naturally low down on the food chain and commonly hunted by small vermin calls Virot. It was just another part of the food chain until one day it had a breakthrough in it's evolution. One group of the species who were forerunners of the Kaskori lived in an oasis which is their spiritual homeland now. This group had a breakthrough finally and developed a small physic gene which allowed short range telepathy. This telepathy allowed them to willingly share thoughts and as the gene spread through the group they began to be able to share their ideas. Eventually through telepathy they managed to create weapons. They first started off by creating wooden spears and then made mass killed a Virot. They continued to advance and then managed to make shields. Through heavy hunting they were able to wipe out at first all the other Virots on the oasis. They then had to contend with the next step on the food chain feral savage beasts which ran in packs and went from oasis to oasis killing Virot. As the physic Kaskori tried to fight these new larger beasts they found their wooden spears were useless and that their large shields were could not hold them back. They had to come up with something better and in time discovered how to work metal. They learned how to make metal weapons as well as slings and began to fight back against the predators. The could now penetrate the tougher hides of the beasts and they fought a desperate battle against the pack where they took large deaths but managed to kill them to the last one.
Conquest of Kaskori[]
After slaying the pack they then went onto march across the desert to find other sites of water to live on. After sending out search parties they found other places with other Kaskori and fought them. It was not a hard war to fight them with metal and disciplined formations up against isolated bare hand fighters. One by one they expanded across the region but still to slowly. It changed both with creation of the wagon and the discovery that they could create wells to allow more land to be lived on. Their progress grew faster as their populations numbers grew and the speed with they moved increased.
In tine they discovered basic black powder weaponry and began to manufacture guns. They encounter their next real challenge after having taken over most of the species original location. They came to great undrinkable lands of water. Unsure what to do and how to progress further they settled back to their lands and continued to build higher and higher while wiping out foreign predators. The species ability to share thoughts and idea's meant that they had gone from just another animal to the dominant species on a large continent in 1000 years.
In the 33 millennium a Rogue Trader and his ship happen to pass by the Kaskori and after some scans revealed the massive species on the planet. The Rogue Trader's psyker discovered that he could communicate to the planet's population via Telepathy and the Rogue Trader at first planned to simply destroy the planet before the population could advance further but discovered the planet had large quantities of Adamantium.
The Rogue Trader decided to convince the planet's population to first mine him vast quantities in excahnge for he promised all of the technological expertise they could ever want. Afterwards he then planned to destroy the species. When he told his Psyker what to say hisPpsyker knew the Rogue Trader well enough to know he was lying and accidentally allowed his thoughts about the deal to spill out during negotiations. The Kaskori realized they had no choice but to mine or they would be wiped out but came up with a plan.
They spent months hauling up a large amount of the planet's Adamantium and so they could mine deeper and get more resources the Rogue Trader while he went off to continue exploring agreed to give them mining technology. A whole year went by as they adapted the mining technology and built up vast stockpiles of both Adamantium and fake Admantium.
When the Rogue Trader returned he collected all of the Adamantium and fake Adamantium not realizing amongst the heaps of metal which they had not scanned thoroughly enough they had hidden thousands of Kaskori. The Kaskori then broke started to run wild on the cargo ships they had brought to carry it back. As they ran wild around the ship as individuals they managed to quickly map out the ship. The Rogue Trader had hired a large fleet of cargo carriers for this purpose and his fleet only just outnumbered them.
Then as the Rogue Traders warships prepared to start the planetary bombardment the Kaskori seized the warp drives of the cargo ships and since they were in the middle of the fleet formations so they could be protected from outside threats. They unseen by both internal sensors and people due to their size. They overloaded the warp drives blowing up the ships and the explosion hit a number other warships destroying or disabling them.
The Kaskori who died for their nation are now honoured once every Kaskori year in the Festival of Ascension where they started their campaign to destroy all predators.
Lady of the Void[]
Lady of the Void was an Ambition class cruiser and one of the only 2 cruisers in the Rogue Traders fleet. When the cargo ships exploded it was right at the front of the formation in Kaskor orbit and it's Stern shields buckled and the propulsion drives were badly damaged and the ship was knocked forwards into the planet's gravity well. As it plummeted through the atmosphere the shields violently flared but held during atmospheric entry. As it sped up the ships non- damaged manoeuvring thrusters were activated as the captain tried desperately to get it into a controlled landing in the ocean or another continent. He desperately swung the ship about and due to his good piloting skills managed to land the ship on the ocean and although most of the under hill was ruined the ship was still air tight and him and his crew managed to abandon ship and leave it buried under water a few kilometres from the coast of Kaskori held territory.
Most of the crew died as they tried to swim to the shore. The few who made it ashore were one by one captured and tied down. They were interrogated and then the decision was made to kill them all. They then decided to sail across the undrinkable water and find the sunken ship. They then lowered a wooden submarine and managed to enter the ship and started to explore.