Cavaraad

The Cavaraad, known colloquially as 'the Giants,' are an alien species native to Sadal Suud, approximately fifty thousand years younger than humanity as a species. They are physically enormous — a holograph shows one individual at least thirty feet high, with gray clay-like flesh, staved-in faces described as if someone pressed a thumb into a clay effigy to hollow out the face, leaving a featureless black pit where a face would be, dwarfing the fungal forests of Sadal Suud. Despite their size they lumber rather than stride. They have no lips and produce sound by working their diaphragms like bellows, changing pitch; their communication is therefore described as singing. Their approximate level of cultural development is compared to the late Bronze Age of Earth's ancient civilizations.

The Cavaraad are responsible for dragging massive black stone blocks from the lowlands to the ridge lines on Sadal Suud to create the structures known as the Marching Towers — obelisks described as pieces of night, so dark that no surface features can be made out. However, Hadrian believes the Cavaraad are not the original builders but are re-using or emulating Quiet-built structures, paralleling the Umandh's relationship to Calagah on Emesh. Sadal Suud has received protectorate status to shield the Cavaraad from exploitation, after xenologist Hemachandra successfully blocked a territorial claim by House Rodolfo. They were historically traded as gladiatorial slaves in the Colosso circuit, pitted against human myrmidons. The vilicus Niles Engin formerly ran a trade line supplying Cavaraad from Sadal Suud to inner-system palatine courts. The Cavaraad possess language but have not achieved independent star travel, making them a counterexample cited against Philemon of Neruda's hypothesis that grammar-capable species are uniquely positioned for civilizational growth. Valka Onderra cites them alongside the Irchtani to argue that the sample size for Philemon's theory is too small.