Maya Kovel/Legends

Maya Kovel was a windswept Outer Rim Territories desert planet located in the Moddell sector. It was the homeworld of the sentient Ayrou species, which had already developed spaceflight technology prior to its first contact with the Galactic Republic by 50 BBY. The Ayrou went on to have a significant presence throughout the larger Zuma sector's Inner and Outer Zuma regions, including control over the Vashan-worked mines on the planet Vasha.
Following the first contact with the Republic, the Ayrou on Maya Kovel underwent a religious upheaval that saw them discard the treasure accumulated under the tenets of their previous religious tradition. Some of those riches were loaded aboard freighters and shot into Maya Kovel's sun, while the exact location of one other such treasure vault was hidden on a chalcedony idol known as the Ayrou Tessent—at some point spirited offworld, it was eventually discovered on Vasha by 3 ABY. During the reign of both the New Republic and the Galactic Alliance, Ayrou senators represented Maya Kovel and the rest of the Moddell sector in the legislative bodies of those governments.
==Description==
Maya Kovel was a terrestrial planet located in the Maya Kovel system. It lay within the Inner Moddell systems area of the Moddell sector, one of the subsectors making up the Inner Zuma Region within the Outer Rim Territories' Zuma sector. The hyperlane known as the Annaj-Houche Run connected it to the Thonner and Vasha systems. The stars and star systems of Kuna's Eye, Kuna's Fist, Kuna's Gullet, Kuna's Heart, Kuna's Horn, Kuna's Scale, Kuna's Tail, and Kuna's Tooth, so named by Maya Kovel's native Ayrou species, all together formed the Kuna constellation in the planet's night sky.
Maya Kovel orbited a single star and was itself circled by an airless moon. The planet's local year lasted 463 local days, each of which was twenty-nine standard hours long. Its gravity was ninety percent standard. Although Maya Kovel had a temperate climate, it also had a thin, acrid Type II atmosphere. It gave rise to regular fierce windstorms that exposed vast deposits of iron oxide, iron, and other elements in the planet's soil and rock, leading to Maya Kovel's surface having a deep-red appearance when viewed from space. In addition, the planet's air often caused in Human visitors to Maya Kovel who did not wear breath masks a hacking cough that, if left untreated, could lead to a dangerous shortness of breath.
Desert dominated the surface of Maya Kovel, although the planet's rift valleys were carpeted in colonies of a type of dark green lichen that developed from seeds. The lichen developed whenever those seeds found themselves out of the wind and with a reliable source of water, despite such circumstances sometimes taking centuries to arise. At one point, Maya Kovel was home to a birdlike species from which the sentient Ayrou evolved.
==History==
===First contact===
By the time scouts of the Galactic Republic began visiting what would eventually become the Moddell sector, Maya Kovel's native Ayrou species were one of the few of the sector's species that had already developed spaceflight, establishing a research station on their homeworld's moon and exploring as far as the Outer Moddell systems planet Ast Kikorie via the use of unmanned drones. When Ayrou scouts made first contact with the Republic—an event that cause more upheaval than any other in the species' modern history—the Ayrou were following a religious tradition known as il Madri, which decreed the hoarding of material treasures.
After first contact, however, the species rapidly and utterly renounced il Madri, with the hierarchs of the tradition's chapterhouses declaring their accumulated wealth taboo. Accordingly, the contents of some chapterhouses' treasure vaults were subsequently loaded aboard freighters and shot into Maya Kovel's sun. According to a legend, the riches of the Ur-Chapterhouse of il Madri were hidden in one of the Kuna systems, with their encoded coordinates placed in one of the two chalcedony idols known as the Tessents. The Ayrou Tessent was said to have eventually been spirited off Maya Kovel.
===Into the wider galaxy===
The Republic scouts saw the Ayrou as a natural candidate for joining their government, and the Moddell sector became a nominal part of the Republic around 50 BBY. The Ayrou subsequently gained a widespread presence in the sector as well as powerful influence throughout the Inner and Outer Zuma regions. Affluent entrepreneurs on Maya Kovel became one of the parties financing Trindellan oak logging operations on the moon Trindello, and the Ayrou made a virtual vassal out of the Vashans working in the mines on their homeworld, Vasha—although not all Vashans were content with the Ayrou control, leading to the Vashan Liberation Force, a small group of approximately twenty Vashans posing no real threat to Maya Kovel's forces, being formed on the planet Sarafur.
The Ayrou also maintained a penal colony on the planet Thonner during the years following its settlement in 25 BBY. For at least sixteen years the Ayrou used Thonner to incarcerate individuals who had resorted to physical violence to achieve their goals, including a non-Ayrou who had been imprisoned after becoming involved in a fistfight on Maya Kovel. Eventually, however, the Ayrou largely withdrew their presence from Thonner and denied having ever used the world as a prison.
At some point by 3 ABY,By default, the events of are set during the opposition to Galactic Empire slavery on the planet Mandalore. The Essential Atlas dates the events of Star Wars (1977) 69, which depict the end of the Imperial presence on Mandalore per , to 3 ABY. before the Alsakan and Ayrou Tessents were discovered on Ast Kikorie and Vasha, respectively, Barzur Antilles gave a testimony at the House of Detention of the planet Annaj, capital of the Moddell sector. Antilles expressed their lack of appreciation for the artwork displayed between the two idols, implying that it indicated a lack of a "decent artist" both on Maya Kovel and the Core Worlds planet Alsakan that in turn supposedly contributed to the complicated nature of the ongoing search for the Tessents. An Ayrou senator represented Maya Kovel and the Moddell in the New Republic Senate by 19 ABY,The Essential Reader's Companion dates the events of Specter of the Past, which include an appearance of an Ayrou Senator of the Moddell sector, to 19 ABY. a practice which continued with that governmental body's successor, the Senate of the Galactic Alliance.
==Inhabitants==
Maya Kovel was the homeworld of the sentient, humanoid Ayrou species, who spoke the Ayrou language. Wily negotiators and tireless collectors of information, the Ayrou also were pacifists who shunned physical violence as a sign of an individual's weakness of character. The Vashans, a virtual vassal species of the Ayrou, eventually adopted for their society the latter's tradition of periodic religious upheaval.
The inhabitants of Maya Kovel, which was home to three hundred million Ayrou, two-hundred-and-fifty thousand Vashans, and twenty-five thousand Humans, had access to space-level technology, including six spaceports: two stellar-class and four of limited services. They imported technology from off-world and in return exported foodstuffs. In addition, the clan-based Ayrou, who farmed the lichen growing in Maya Kovel's rift valleys, exported their delicious undeveloped seeds throughout the Inner Zuma sectors. At some point, the Human scout Cobb Salfur hired out his services at Maya Kovel's spaceports.Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds
==Behind the scenes==
Maya Kovel was introduced in the ninth issue of the Star Wars Gamer magazine on February 22, 2002. Within the magazine, the planet was mentioned in the source article "Endor and the Moddell Sector" as well as the roleplaying adventure "Race for the Tessent," both being written for use with Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars Roleplaying Game. The 2009 reference book The Essential Atlas placed it in grid square H-16.
Instead of featuring a set plot, "Race for the Tessent" presents several settings in the Moddell sector that the player characters may visit during their search for the artifacts known as the Tessents. For each of the settings, the adventure also suggests possible circumstances for a Tessent being hidden there. Assuming that as much of the non-contradictory information presented in the adventure as possible is canonical with respect to the Star Wars Legends continuity, this article assumes that the Alsakan Tessent and the Ayrou Tessent were hidden on the planets Ast Kikorie and Vasha, respectively.
==Appearances==
* 
==Sources==
*
*Ultimate Alien Anthology
*Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds
*The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
*The Essential Atlas
==Notes and references==
Category:Desert planets
Category:Low-gravity planets
Category:Moddell sector planets
Category:New Republic planets
Category:Type II atmosphere planets