"Auguries showed the world to be teeming with life, a verdant jungle of steaming treetops and dense undergrowth from pole-to-pole. Yet the savants cautioned us, radiological parametrics were far in excess of tolerable levels, an unprotected excursion into those rich forests would lead to a long, slow death from flesh-cankers. The Lord Abstentia Kredoes III declared the world a Death World even before several teams reported evidence of ancient ruins buried beneath the jungles.
Before departing I was asked to consult on naming this world, so deadly that it undoubtedly swallowed whatever civilisation came before. Only a single name seems appropriate for such a blighted place: Extinction."
- Explorator Fleet Consulat-Cartographex, Joaquin H. Responitos
The Distant Past
The home planet of the Valon was once a technological marvel, aided by the planet's unique background radiation, the Valon people were able to produce clean unlimited energy. Modern scholars might compare the cities to those of the ancient Aeldari in beauty, and the technological height of the Dark Ages of Humanity.
However this advancement would also be its demise…
A great religious split between two factions led to years of intense civil war that cumulated in the use of technology not unlike the atomics of Terra. When these weapons were used they reacted in unforeseen ways with the planet's natural radiation, leading to an unparalleled cataclysm that left the world shattered beyond recognition.
What life remained was hideously mutated by the fallout, and survived by preying on anything else living. Eventually vegetation returned to the surface. Creeping vines and irradiated foliage, now free of technology, slowly began to flourish.
Extinction
Uncounted thousands of years have passed since destruction of the Valon society. The race that call themselves the Valon are now a distorted and mutated version of their predecessors.
Life before the catastrophe exists now as nothing more than stories passed on though the ages between the creatures that would become the Valon of modern day. A unanimous fear of technology became the basis of the Valon religion:
technology brings destruction…
Primitive tribes were formed, led by single females known as brood mothers (the only Valon able to reproduce), and a new culture began to re-emerge. The Valon people, now hunter-scavengers, united to tame the planet from the hostile creatures that now inhabit its surface.
Arguments were settled in single combat between the tribes as the Valon population was still close to extinction levels. A combatant would be chosen from each tribe who would undertake the ritual of “Black Scale” a fast tracked evolution of irradiated genetics allowing those chosen to become a warriors who’s fighting prowess was unrivalled by the general populace.
These fighters would represent the tribe in single mortal combat whenever the need for war was unavoidable, victory or defeat deciding the fate of the whole tribe. This system led to hundreds of years of relative peace on Valon, the planet reborn from the ashes of disaster untold.
The Outsiders Arrive
Without warning several bright stars appeared in the night sky… but they were not stars at all.
A space fairing race know to the Valon only as "the outsiders" began to make lighting raids on the world, the target was the Valon themselves. Captured for slavery, many were taken and many more killed in the process. These Valon were taken from their homeworld, never to be seen again.
The Valon of modern day are the descendants of the Valon taken from the homeworld, though they know little or nothing of their home world, society or history.
Raakatan Valon
Very little is known about the history of
The Raakata System by people of the
The Ithacan Star League due to the deliberate repression of information after
The Great War. The Valon in the Outer Reaches are free members of Ithacan society, like all sentient beings, and often lead similar lives to other members of the Ithacan League. The Valon are a very rare race, rarely seen. Most Valon in the Ithacan League originally come from
The Protectorship of Themiscrya, a trading partner of the Ithacan League before the destruction of Niobe Station
Amphion Crossing. Some Valon have assimilated fully into the Star League while others retain some semblance of the technology-fearing ancestral Valon.
Maps recovered of the
Imperium Minoris list the Death World
Extinction as the homeworld of the Valon.
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