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The story of the Kushan Exodus to Hiigara is widely known and often told; most of us already know all about the voyage. In six months, the survivors of our entire race traveled from the prison world of Kharak to our once and future homeworld. The trip was a major turning point not only for the Kushan people, but for most of the civilized galaxy; our return to Hiigara was not only the end of our 3,000-year exile, but the end of the Taiidanii Empire, and its tyranny over billions.
By the ancient Kharakian dating system, the Kushan people returned to Hiigara in the year 1216. In honor of the momentous occasion, however, Kiith Sjet declared the beginning of a new calendar on the day the returning Kushan first set foot on our homeworld. By decree, the Hiigaran Landfall marked the first day of a new Year Zero. From that time on, "days" have been measured by Hiigara's period of rotation, and "years" according to the revolutions of Hiigara around its mother sun.
By the new dating system, then, these words are written in the year 15 AHL-15 years After Hiigaran Landfall. The past decade and a half have been a time of both celebration and adversity for the Kushan people. Nearly 550,000 of us survived the Exodus from Kharak, but our culture has been subjected to tremendous stress. There is not a single aspect of Kushan existence which we have not been forced to re-examine in light of our new circumstances. Even the simplest things, like providing our population with food and shelter, have proved far more complicated that we ever imagined.
Virtually everything our people once knew about agriculture and animal husbandry was learned on a desert world. Kharakian fruits and grains were adapted to conditions of high heat and radiation, and very little precipitation; when our people built their first farms on Hiigara, they were hard-pressed to find any land that would favor the thick-skinned, shallow-rooted crops that had been our staple foods for centuries. Very few regions of Hiigara have an annual rainfall as low as even the most temperate and forgiving areas of Kharak! The vast majority of Kharakian food plants are drowned or washed away in heavy rains, and even those that can survive the rain are often killed by the vast array of hostile microbes in the Hiigaran soil; our scientists are cataloging a new species of killing fungus every day.
The fact that our people have been able to sustain themselves on Hiigara at all is largely thanks to the efforts of Kiith Paktu. Prior to Exodus, members of the Southern Federation had the most experience with life in a water- and oxygen-rich climate. Paktu fishing operations have been highly successful, and their orchards and farms have prospered more than those of any other kiith, thanks in part to a skillful use of recombinant DNA. The Paktu also have many experiments underway to find edible plants in the local ecosphere, and have even begun to domesticate some of Hiigara's native fauna.
Alas, feeding our people is not our only worry; defending ourselves is also a serious concern. The Bentusi and the new Taiidanii Republic have established a small buffer zone around Hiigara, a region approximately ten lightyears in diameter. Anything within a five lightyear radius of Hiigara is considered our space, and we are obligated to defend it. Our warrior kiithid are forced to maintain constant patrols to keep our spaceways from being overrun, not only by the mongrel ships of the pirate races, but by the last bitter remnants of the Imperial fleet.
The Mothership, which once carried our people safely across 50,000 lightyears of uncharted space, is no longer a ship of war. Deprived of the conscious direction of Karan Sjet, the Mothership's engines are set on automatic; She serves as an orbital space station and shipyard. Manned by a skeleton crew of 8,000 engineers, the Mothership provides living quarters for those working in low orbit, and She has given birth to over 30 carrier-class ships since the Hiigaran Landfall. The result of this phenomenal output has been a new Hiigaran navy, which consists of six great Fleets; the largest of our present-day kiithid have each taken command of an autonomous carrier group. The fleets of Manaan, Soban, Naabal, LiirHra, Paktu and Kaalel take turns patrolling the outer systems, guarding our trade routes, and defending Hiigara itself.
Addressing the practical concerns of our people has been hard enough. Up until the year 11 AHL, food rationing was common, and on the surface of Hiigara, thousands are still engaged in construction. Difficult as it has been to provide for our peoples' practical needs, providing for their political needs has been far, far more troublesome. Kushan society has been in a state of flux since the Exodus; finding some way to give all our people a fair say in government is a serious problem, and no one is entirely satisfied by any solution.
The New Daiamid was completed in the year 4 AHL, the crowning glory of our planetary capital at Asaam Kiith'sid. The Daiamid Assembly is still the main governing body of the Kushan race, although its detractors claim that the New Daiamid cannot rule as fairly as its predecessor on Kharak once did. Such hotheads denounce the current Assembly as a sham, and maintain that a few families wield too much power. Sadly, there is some merit to this accusation! Over one-half of the Kushan population now belong to one of six kiithid, and by virtue of sheer population the major families have tremendous influence. The Paktu, the Manaan, the Sjet, Naabal, LiirHra, Kaalel and Soban are by far the largest kiith groupings in existence, and their combined numbers come to almost 300,000. By contrast, the majority of other kiithid on Hiigara can boast a few hundred souls at best; most are lucky to have even that many. In some cases kiithid, which were once over 100,000 strong on Kharak, now have only 30 or 40 members.
These smaller kiithid are now collectively known as the Sleepers, because most of them spent the voyage from Kharak in cryogenic suspension. Coming from all walks of life, the only thing that these men and women have in common today is their powerlessness in the present Daiamid system. Unable to compete with large kiithid which can lay claim to half a continent at a time, exhausted by years of struggle for a voice in the Assembly, many of these small kiithid have given up the fight to establish a power base for themselves on Hiigara. Dozens of Sleeper clans have chosen in recent years to abandon their ancient names and become vassals instead, joining their bloodlines to powerhouses like the Paktu or the Naabal. The family honor comes a poor second, as always, to survival. Surrendering to necessity is an ancient tradition among the Kushan, as is bowing to the greater power and resources of a larger kiith.
Given the many trials our people have had to face since landfall, some analysts believe that it would be impossible to hold Kushan society together without the influence of Karan Sjet. Karan has been the Sa of Sa's in the New Daiamid since its first vote. The Sjet'sa has spent the last 15 years serving as an arbiter in the Daiamid's power struggles, and her efforts to bind our people together have kept the Kushan from fragmenting, despite the tremendous pressure on our people from without and within.
To have some inkling of the duties Sjet'sa has performed in the past 15 years, one has only to look back over the list of our achievements. In the first year after Landfall alone, Sjet'sa presided over the ground-breaking ceremonies of over 150 new cities, towns and small settlements. She settled 36 disputes in the New Daiamid, blessed the hulls of four newly-built carriers, and personally oversaw the filing of land claims in the Shaar peninsula. The second year after Landfall, Sjet'sa proposed a monument to the Martyrs of Kharak, and personally selected a site in the Desert of the Bones; over the next several months she oversaw the engraving of nearly 300 million names on a free-standing spire of basalt in the desert. Many Kushan since then have traveled to her Tower of Names to find the people of their own kiithid, and make offerings for the peaceful rest of their one-time lovers and friends.
One of the most controversial relief mechanisms that Sjet'sa has adopted for the benefit of Sleeper kiithid has been to grant limited access to the Mothership's building facilities. Sjet'sa has permitted several small families, exhausted by the struggle for land and influence on Hiigara, to seek their fortunes among the stars. Many of these smaller kiithid have built themselves carrier-class vessels, ships with a powerful enough PDA to build and support small colonies off-world. Most of these tiny settlements are dedicated to mining, hydroponic farming or manufacturing. While so many others continue building new settlements on Hiigara, these small, hard-working kiithid prosper in trade, and provide much-needed supplies to the outbound fleets. Coincidentally, the small star-faring kiithid control a much greater tonnage of ships, collectively, than any one of the major kiithid can control alone...
The Sjet'sa no longer appears daily in the New Daiamid; she presides over the Assembly only on special occasions, or when a matter is put up for her special arbitration. Since the year 7 AHL, the Sa of Sa's has become increasingly reclusive, and appears less and less frequently at social events. Kiith Sjet has built a special compound for her in the Suungo mountain range, and she occasionally mans the observatory there; she has also been seen aboard the Mothership, sometimes wandering in the unmanned passages near the old control core. Regardless of her desire for privacy, however, her presence is felt everywhere. In the recent Kushan population explosion, the name "Karan" has been given to thousands of baby girls, and even among boys, the name "Kar" is surprisingly common.
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