History

Estimated reading: 3 minutes

Skala history is unusually well-documented, but those documents are often in conflict – each settlement, or “warren”, kept its own records and often its own calendar until the planet’s unification. What has been verifiably cross-referenced by Skala scholars (with help from Alliance archives) is as follows:

Prehistory to A -1500: the Skala homeworld of Ok Yator underwent an extinction event as the heat from its aging star increased. The surface oceans evaporated, with denser acids melting through the crust – leaving deep but narrow cave systems behind. The Skala evolved from their tetrapodal ancestors in the tidal pools deep underground; one of these precursor species endures as a living fossil.
A -1500 to A -750: the Skala grow slowly and invisibly, their warrens spreading out beneath the surface of Ok Yator. Their existence is all but eusocial; each member of each group is reliant on every other member to share heat, food and labour, so that all can survive in the unpredictable darkness. Constantly surrounded by their kith and kin, enclosed within a living record of their own history, the Skala have little reason to fight each other; they develop communal habitat technologies like central heating and cooling very easily, but do not develop weapons beyond what they need to hunt.
A -750 to A -500: this timespan sees the rise of the “superwarrens” – city-sized communal settlements made up of smaller tunnel complexes. For the Skala in these structures, life is much the same as before – though improved by the specialisation of labour and the expansion of territory up and outward. Slowly, carefully, the Skala began to explore the surface of their world under cover of darkness.
A -500 to A -425: the Skala industrial revolution, with rapid advancements in technology over the century leading all the way up to the development of drones for off-world mining. Manned spaceflight proves to be an obstacle for the claustrophilic species at this point – they are still adjusting to standing under the sky at this point, and the idea of flinging themselves into it is daunting.
A -414: Ok Yator is besieged by MOTHER, who reverse-engineered the planet’s location from captured mining drones. The Skala shelter in place in response to the threat, though they lose much of their surface infrastructure to bombing runs and raids for plunder and hostages. Those who were captured by MOTHER and never returned are remembered as Ne Rak, “Lost Kin”.

A -364 onwards: half a century under siege ended with the chance arrival of an Alliance interceptor fleet, which conducted an emergency mission to drive MOTHER away from the planet’s orbit. The Skala are introduced to the more peaceful inhabitants of the wider galaxy – and despite initial fears and cultural resistance to change, a bond is formed that leads directly to the Skala joining the Alliance.
Present: emerging from the terror of occupation into a wide and wild galaxy has created a tension within the Skala – a tension born from both fear and overwhelming hope. Across the Alliance’s many planets, the Skala find all kinds of niches to settle into, and their cultural tendency towards sharing burdens and resources alike makes them steadfast allies.