Komra
This page details people, events, and organisations from the /tg/ Heresy, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. See the /tg/ Heresy Timeline and Galaxy pages for more information on the Alternate Universe.
The Komra are a subspecies of humans originating in the mineral-rich worlds of the galactic core, formally known as Homo Sapiens Robustus for their stocky, powerful builds.
History
Unlike most of the humans of the Galaxy, the Komra are well aware of their origins. The progenitors of their people embarked on the Long March Starship Trantor and their descendants arrived decades later on the Komra homeworld, Karzor. The Komra Calendar dates from the arrival of the Trantor on Karzor in the Year of Landfall (224.M6), typically abbreviated to 0LF in the Komra Calendar.
The Landfall
The colonists on the Trantor set out from Terra hoping to isolate themselves from a human race that they felt was decadent, avaricious, and dishonourable. Their ambition was to build a new, virtuous society in which industry would be a beneficial purpose in human lives rather than a devouring blight. The colonists were all volunteers, choosing to set aside their loved ones on Terra in pursuit of a grand idea. Although the volunteers knew that they would not be the beneficiaries of the new society, they chose to embark and raise a new generation for a new world that would be free of the flaws of old Earth.
This mission of isolation succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its originators. Due to a freak accident, the Trantor was flung thousands of light years from Earth, ending up in the Galactic Core long before any other humans would travel so far. Lost beyond hope of return, the colonists determined to find a new home for themselves and their great arkship wandered the bitter worlds of the core searching for one that could sustain life. For all of its deprivations, the decades aboard the Trantor forged a great spirit of togetherness among the ship's complement. The name "Komra" is derived from the familiar term of address the Trantor's complement used for one another.
Although the Trantor's complement rejoiced on discovering a world that could meet their needs, their ideals would be hard-tested on Karzor. The Komra's new home was a hard, unforgiving planet. Although Karzor's crust held valuable deposits of minerals, including adamantium, living organisms struggled. The only plants were tough grasses, grazed on by rodent-like reptiles. Karzor's air was all but poisonous, thin in oxygen and filled with carcinogenic dust. Any thought of escaping Karzor had been abandoned on landing: the world's mighty gravitational pull was too strong for the Trantor to escape. Imprisoned by their own decisions, the settlers from the Trantor were forced to do all of their outdoor work in exo-suits with much of the population sheltering in the habitation modules of their craft. Even with these precautions, Karzor's hostile environment began whittling away the ship's complement. Bone and lung cancer were major killers, but the hazards of working in high gravity also took their toll.
Through centuries of collective struggle and self-sacrifice, the descendants of the Trantor expedition established a stable home. Karzor's crust was forced to give up its precious minerals and became the home of teeming billions, nourished by hydroponic farms and proud of their traditions. The planet's fierce gravity was overcome with a series of great tensile towers about its equator. Beyond Karzor's atmosphere, new colony ships were assembled and dispatched to nearby worlds, initially establishing colonies on the other planets in Karzor's system. Crude space-warping technology was developed in 1694LF (928.M7), allowing Karzor's inhabitants to travel at superluminal speeds and set about exploring the stars near to their homeworld. The first interstellar colony ship, CH3-H0, was launched in 1741LF (965.M7) and Karzor's subterranean factories churned out successors throughout the next three centuries. Karazak, Chelob Hold, Rakizor, and Shifbar were the most successful of Karzor's colonies, and they too set about building settler ships to spread the Komra way of life to new planets.
The Severing
By 2013LF (237.M8), differences began to emerge among the ruling councils - the Sojt - of the most sophisticated Komra worlds. For all that their ancestors had sought unity in their common labour, their communication technology could not bridge the gaps between the stars. Without the Warp Drive, the most sophisticated transmissions took months to travel from one world to another. Communiques travelling the breadth of Komra space taking over a year. It was impossible for their civilization to co-operate under these conditions. The first hostilities broke out when colonists from Karazak arrived on the world of Dabnug to find Komra from Chelob Hold had already settled the world. Rather than combine their efforts, the settlers began to war over Dabnug and sent messages to their homeworlds requesting material aid. Karazak was first to respond, re-directing its newest settler ship to reinforce Dabnug. For their part, the Sojt of Chelob Hold resolved not only to send aid to Dabnug but to send punitive expeditions to outposts of Karazak. So began a long period of internecine conflict among the Komra.
If the wars that developed in this period were low-intensity, they were still costly. The most powerful worlds were too populous to succumb to a direct assault by their rivals, but a colony with a few million settlers could be overwhelmed by the arrival of a hostile fleet of transports. Komra warfare was total and undivided from civilian life: the tools that had been used to battle with the harsh environments of the core worlds were used just as ruthlessly against the scions of rival worlds. As the wars raged on, it became clear that Karzor's great population and industrial might made it more than a match for any one of its boisterous colonies. After a Karzor fleet was barely beaten back from Rakizor itself, the Rakizor Sojt determined to found a league of the young worlds against the Komra homeworld.
The building of the league took considerable time and patience. Karazak demanded that it host the first conference, and the Chelob Hold Sojt nearly boycotted a discussion on the soil of their arch-rivals. In the end, Rakizor's emissaries had to threaten the other young worlds with defection, promising to submit to Karzor and fight for the subjugation of the young worlds if the league could not be founded. The bluff was not called and in 2362LF (586.M8) a new body, the Brysojt was brought into being to lead the war against Karzor.
Even with their strength combined, the young worlds were outmatched and quickly settled on a desperate measure. The space-warping superluminal drives of the Komra were known to unleash a hugely destructive burst of particles at their destination. For centuries, the standard practice of Komra vessels, even in wartime, was to disengage the space-warping drive far above the elliptic of their destination solar system to allow this burst to dissipate harmlessly into space. Rather than succumb to the might of their homeworld, the league massed its ships and used the combined fleet to unleash a massive particle wave at Karzor itself.
The destruction was total. Unforgiving Karzor and its tens of billions of inhabitants were wiped out. Many of the league's ships were lost in the attack, victims of the abominable energies they had unleashed. In achieving victory, the league had thrown their civilization back hundreds of years. Although unrepentant, the victorious worlds were chastened. If the Komra were to survive, they could never again wage such total wars against one another. In order to govern the new era of limited conflicts, the Brysojt was established as a court of arbitration over the disputes of the Komra worlds. It would be housed on a great space fortress, Valaya Station, built from the ruins of Korzar as a monument to the victims of fratricidal war.