- "Scan complete, preparing targeting matrix. Wait... Our scanners picked up something... It's all around us... It's incredible... An entire city buried beneath the sand. This... This must be it! This must be Khar-Toba. The First City of Kharak... It's... It's real. " — Rachel S'jet, Chief Science Officer of the Kapisi, upon scanning Khar-Toba's surrounding city, 1110 KDS.
The Khar-Toba ("First City" in Kharakid) is the name given to the ruins of an ancient city on the world of Kharak discovered by the Kushan, descendants of the city's inhabitants. This city was also built out of the ruins of a sub-light transport ship referred to by the same name, its original name lost to history. Parts of the ship are found in other locations inhabited by the exiled Hiigarans, such as the Great Nebula.
History[]
One of the Khar-Toba's sister ships, derelict inside a nebula
The Khar-Toba was a non-combatant ship which originally came to Kharak from Hiigara, carrying with it a portion of the exiled Kushan race. The Taiidan had commissioned the convoy to evacuate the Exiles to a world where they would never again see Hiigara or disturb the victorious Taiidan Empire. The solution was agreed upon by all the sides involved: the defeated Hiigaran republic, the Galactic Council and the Taiidan, led by Admiral Riesstiu. The surviving Hiigarans would move to a far-away desert world in a fleet of sub-light transport ships, where they would be left in peace as long as they didn't use Hyperspace technology again. The Khar-Toba and its sister ships were all built in a single month to evacuate every last able-bodied Hiigaran before the deadline, after which Riesstiu and the Taiidani would claim the Hiigaran territories as their own and either kill or enslave any Hiigaran that remained in those worlds, depending on their role in the assault and devastation of Taiidan, the Taiidani homeworld. During the convoy's construction, a group of Hiigarans went to the Angel Moon and retrieved the Second Core from the remains of Sajuuk's Wrath, after which they smuggled it within the transport ship that would become Khar-Toba.
During the years-long journey of the convoy across the galaxy, many of the ships were destroyed by the hardships and perils of extended deep space travel, combined with the flaws and imperfections some of them had due to them having been hastily built. In the Bentusi retelling of the Kushan exile story and in the temple murals made by Kiith Gaalsien, five such craft are shown descending to Kharak, so either the others were destroyed during re-entry or they were never rediscovered; no mention of the sister ships being on Kharak was ever made. While the convoy passed through the Great Nebula, four of the transport ships chose to settle it. They built a home in the nebula, and became the Kadeshi.
The Khar-Toba landed in the Great Banded Desert in Kharak's equator, at the center the region known by the Gaalsien as the Dreamlands. It suffered considerable damage during planetfall, and was unable to relocate to the more temperate polar regions of Kharak, as the ship had broken apart into three pieces. It served as the foundation for the first city of Kharak, from which a network of tunnels and buildings grew. The wrecked ship itself was stripped to a near-skeletal state; even its outer hull plating was used in the construction of buildings. The city's plan from a bird's eye view resembled the Hiigaran emblem, with a walled enclave around the Khar-Toba's wreck acting as Hiigara and the districts of buildings around it acting as the wings of the Angel Moon.
The Hiigaran flag layout of the city of Khar-Toba, as revealed under the sands of the desert by the scanner network deployed by the Kapisi's fleet in 1110 KDS.
The Second Core was moved from inside the ship to a shielded underground chamber, serving as the power plant for the city. When the Second Core's fusion reactor core eventually stopped working, the city (which was of the highest technological level on the entire planet for thousands of years) is suspected to have been abandoned, and its people left for Kharak's northern pole. Given the symbols found on the city's ruins and the ship's wreck, seven known Kiithid (S'jet, Somtaaw, Gaalsien, Naabal, Paktu, a lost kiith whose sigil the Soban adopted as their own, and Manaan) existed there and had an important role in the city.
At some point, at least 1000 years before its rediscovery by the Kushan, the Second Core partially reawakened itself in an uncontrolled state, forming a massive Hyperspace interference field around the Kharak System. Alien ships traveling through this field often experienced major hyperdrive malfunctions, ranging from getting pulled in and crashing onto Kharak's surface to getting pulled out of hyperspace deep under the desert planet's surface. A notable vessel destroyed in the former manner was the Taiidan (ship), a carrier in the process of deploying an orbital bombardment weapon in Kharak's orbit, presumably for the purpose of preventing the exiles from returning to space.
Discovery[]
Khar-Toba was re-discovered in the Kharak year 1106 KDS when a Viin Cal satellite intended to scan the Kharak System turned the wrong way and scanned Kharak instead. After self-destructing it, the satellite facility operator that evening, Leykab Jaraci, noted a strong energy signal coming from the desert, which was originally codenamed the Jaraci Object, but became later known as the Primary Anomaly. In 1110 KDS, an expedition was sent out by the Coalition of the Northern Kiithid to recover the object, which was located deep within territory controlled by Kiith Gaalsien, a kiith who the Coalition were engaged in battle. After defeating the Gaalsiens in the conflict called Desert Wars, the Coalition discovered the original city of the Kushan people as well as the metallic wreckage of the Khar-Toba. Over the next 25 years, the discovery of the fusion core, hyperdrive, and Guidestone within the Khar-Toba wreckage catapulted the Kushan people in technology and gave the motivation and capability to seek out their roots on Hiigara.
The Khar-Toba discovery was so important than it gave name to a historical era of the Kushan: the Khar-Toba Era, which lasted about a century, a era of peace and technological progress which ended with the Kharakian Genocide.
Appearances[]
- Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak
- Homeworld (introduction cutscene)
- Homeworld 2 (backstory cutscene)