The Haizat Monestary

        Roughly six hundred years ago, a great vessel descended from the stars in flames, and crashed into the white alkali flats of Axis. It brought with it the race known as the hoomiku. For generations, their aging colony ship fled the doomed world they once called home, and when at last it seemed they had found a new place to settle and rebuilt their civilization, a world still far from the Eater's deadly pull, their starship was shot down by an ancient Creator defense cannon positioned on its larger moon, Tropos. Critically damaged, the aging spacecraft was forced into an emergency crash-landing on the surface. The impact killed hundreds of colonists, and tore a debris-strewn gash in the landscape that stretched for miles. Of the original crew of five hundred, only twenty-six survived, all of them children.

        For six hundred years, the stranded colonists have lived in secret, avoiding contact with the 'local savages' as they gradually attempt to repair their ancient colony ship. Without the adults, their initial adpatation to the new and frightening world of Rym was turbulent and riddled with previously unheard-of anarchy and chaos; nobody could decide on a leader. Gradually, however, their society reshaped itself around new systems of government and order was restored, along with the firm unified resolution to repair the colony ship and continue their quest for a new home. Six centuries have gone by since the inception of the Great Project, and as it nears completion, everything is running as it always does in hoomiku society: like clockwork. Except for one tiny problem.

        "I'm so tired of these idiots! Everyone's always talking about how bloody wonderful it's going to be to start fleeing again. They can't wait to get back into that wreck and coast through space for another few lifetimes. Not me! Here I get to explore the ruins of an ancient civilization, eat real food, and do whatever the hell I want. I can scream my lungs out. AAAAHAHAHAHA! See? I've been tagging along with adventurers don't you know? And oh boy, do I have plans." - Haxle the Stupid

        Haxle is a perpetual problem, a hoomiku with no interest in joining the exodus. This wouldn't be a problem for the hoomiku council, save the fact that he's constantly trying to convince others to join his little rebellion. See Haxle.

The Colony Ship

        The Haizat was one of two massive space arks constructed by the hoomiku to carry on their civilization beyond the reach of the Eater. Knowing their world was doomed, they selected one thousand of their brightest, strongest, and most promising citizens as colonists to guide the arks. They took with them a digital record of all life, a copy of every written work, every treasured artifact and icon...the very heart and soul of their race torn free, the body left to die. The second colony ark, the Kaeon, experienced a series of engine failures that left it floundering in the Eater's grasp, doomed to die along with the hoomiku homeworld. The Haizat escaped the deadly pull of the vortex, and accelerated to its maximum velocity, roughly half the speed of light, as the crew of five hundred hoomiku elite settled in for a long, long journey.

        Without stasis technology, the hoomiku were forced to build a fully enclosed, self-perpetuating biosphere into each ark, a closed system of exchange in which absolutely nothing could be wasted. Perfect order had to be maintained at all times, and for five generations, the colonists lived this way. As old colonists died, breeding was authorized on a one-for-one basis, and through the generations, the same rigid order was instilled in each young colonist. And then, at last, after a thousand years in the depths of space, the Haizat reached its destination, a system which had shown a planet with an oxygen-bearing atmosphere.

        Even before the crash, the colony ship was falling apart. Despite their careful recycling, resources were low, and many of the ship's vital components had begun to fail. The crash was even more devastating, though the ship's landing on the soft sandstone flats kept it from breaking apart. The colonists fared worse, the overwhelming majority pulverized by debris or incinerated by the superheated air that blew through the crumbling ship as it fell through the atmosphere. Only a small number of the children, cowering in an escape pod, survived the crash.

        Presently, the hoomiku estimate that the Haizat is back up to about eighty percent of its original structure and system specifications - better than it was when it was shot down. It took the first two generations just to re-acquire the necessary sciences to begin the project from the ship's computer archives, and some doubted if it could even be done at all. Centuries later, what once seemed impossible in on the threshold of completion. The ship's reactor is back to full operational capacity, and the delicate balance of the biosphere has been nearly restored. It is now merely a matter of gathering new stores of supplies from the dangerous alien world, and repairing the last of the ship's nine gigantic engines. The Haizat's slow excavation and repair has turned the crash crater into a gigantic underground hanger, well hidden from any prying eyes. The ship's interior, in fact, has its own defense system, largely composed of automated ray weapons meant to incapacitate intruders.

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