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Khar-Toba
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Classification
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Purpose
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Colony Ship
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Mass
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100,000 tons
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Speed
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150 m/s
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Hyperdrive
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Affiliation
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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 prison 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 Khar-Toba was actually one of many similar vessels in a convoy, though many were destroyed by the hardships and perils of extended deep space travel. In the Bentusi retelling of the Kushan exile story, 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.
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. 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 Rachel S'jet's scans.
The Khar-Toba's hyperspace 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 power 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, Nabaal, Paktu, Soban, and Manaan) had an important role in the city.
At some point, at least 1000 years before its discovery by the Kushan, the hyperspace core began to malfunction and caused severe issues for ships passing through and near the Kharak system. These issues ranged from pulling in vessels and causing them to crash to pulling an entire fleet of frigates out of hyperspace and materializing them under the surface of Kharak. A notable vessel destroyed in this manner was a Taiidan carrier in the process of deploying an orbital 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. They 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.
Appearances
- Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak
- Homeworld
- Homeworld 2 (backstory cutscene)