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Shchizenya, designated P3H-719 by the Tau'ri was a planet in the Milky Way galaxy that was ruled over by the Kettle-Dwellers.

Description[]

Shchizenya's Stargate is at the bottom of an artificially created crater that seems to have blown out the surface. The crater is actually about 2000 years old, and it has undergone little weathering, but repeated earthquakes have warped it into a football-shaped oblong rather than its original circular symmetrical shape. Shchizenya is a frigid, dark world with strong winds and storms and covered in almost perpetual fine dust. The planet hasn't harbored any sentient organic life for over 1,500 years. What little exists is sparse and hardy. The rocky plains of the planet plays home to lichens, mosses, succulents and other low creeping foliage and in some of the more remote mountainous areas, woody shrubs begin to emerge below the tree line, but grass flowering plants and trees that support a fauna heavy ecosystem simply does not exist.

Pollination is usually performed by crawling insects that have led to abundant niche specialization among plants and animals, being that the winds are just too strong for many airborne insects to have developed it. For that, the few plants that have evolved the ability to distribute their seeds in the wind have spread to almost every corner of the planet. At first glance it would be easy to conclude that Shchizenya is a dead world that lacks either useful resources or exobiology worth study. First glances are often misleading, as the dense clouds and roiling dust storms is actually home to a rich variety of artificial lifeforms all to small to be seen with the naked eye.

History[]

Over 2000 years ago, the inhabitants of Shchinzenya developed a network of nanomachines that they confided over custodianship of the planet's ecosystem . Several hundred years later, they became embroiled in a cataclysmic civil war that culminated in the total destruction of their civilization. Biological and chemical weapons stripped the surface of almost all organic life and nuclear weapons fell over once mighty cities and turned them into craters and ash. Millions of tons of dirt and dust kicked into the sky blotting out as much light and heat, as the planet fell in the middle of a nuclear winter. A millennium and a half later, the ambient temperature has risen sufficiently to be cold, but livable, but there are still significant amounts of dust in the sky. The background radiation count is also well above average, but not so much to be dangerous to human life. Eleven thousand years ago, a minor System Lord, whose name is now lost to history, enslaved a nomadic Chinese tribe that called themselves Zhenhuija . This particular Goa'uld was not adverse to train some of his people's slaves to make them more productive. With typical Goa'uld arrogances he rejected the possibility of education for all, no matter how educated Zhenhuija may have been when they were still only human.

Less than a century later, the Zhenuija staged a revolt and killed his self-proclaimed champion. They hijacked his spaceship and fled in search of an uninhabited world far from Goa'uld. They called the planet they eventually found heaven or "Shchinzenya" in Zhenuija dialect. They soon discovered a Stargate on the planet that scared them at first, as they had seen Stargates before, and associated them with the tyrannical Goa'uld, but it seemed non-functional and soon became a monument of their history as slaves. Zhenuija displayed space with similar suspicion: the sky was the intermediary of their former masters, and they feared meeting more of his kind. As their civilization developed built large construction projects within their solar system, but never sent out interstellar probes or ship for colonization.

Instead, focus on Shchizenya and its immediate surroundings. Their crowing achievement was the development of a massively distributed nanite networks with limited capacity for decision making. Its first two orders PROTECT SHCHIZENYA and SURVIVE. Their technical sophistication helped finally end their civilization. Two thousand years ago Zhenuija discovered the scientific principles behind Stargate, and repaired the long-dead gate on their world. The plot triggered massive political unrest between those who wanted the Stargate closes permanently and those who wanted to exploit its potential. Words came to blows, and the argument soon rafted out of control. Eventually Zhenuija civilization destroyed in a seismic civil war.

The planet has been scalded by nuclear radiation and whole towns have been wiped out due to bioengineered plagues. When the smoke cleared, somehow remained the only artifacts that survived. Intact was the Stargate itself and the nanite network again fed with a constant stream of microwave power beamed down from orbit satellites. The network spent a thousand years in silence and solitude learning incrementally until a millennium ago it crossed the threshold of consciousness. Its first order of business was to give itself a name. It called itself Shchizenya. (RPG: "First Steps: The Stargate Unexplored Worlds Roleplaying Sourcebook")

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