Qotraua

Qotraua means 'rippers' in the Vesk tongue. These vesk ostensibly appear like any other isolated community of scavengers, seeking to salvage whatever valuables they can to put food in their bellies.

A closer look, however, reveals a structured and organised group of salvagers who methodically target the oldest technologies, stripping whatever they can unbolt and rarely selling any of it on the scrap markets the other salvagers frequent. This would be because the rippers work in secret for the Veskarium, attempting to find whatever technology they are told to find by more research-oriented members of the empire.

They've staked many claims over the decades they've been operating on the Shroud and try to pass themselves off as common, gas-addled salvagers - including making grandiose allegations of descending from the original creators, having had their brains transplanted with various famous historical figures, and similar absurdities.