A History of Homeworld Part 8: The Vaygr War

In this series celebrating the franchise's twentieth anniversary (and the recent announcement of Homeworld 3), I look at the background lore of the critically-acclaimed Homeworld series of video games.

After the return of the Exiles to Hiigara, they began the task of building a new civilisation. During the course of the reconstruction and re-inhabiting of Hiigara, they found historical records stretching back some six thousand years, giving them access to a history they had previously lost all knowledge of. They learned of the First Time, the first strike of the Hiigarans on the Taiidan homeworld and more.

Contained within these records was the secret of the Three Hyperspace Cores, and the knowledge that the First Core had been found by the Bentusi and the Second by the Hiigarans’ ancestors, used to power their warship Sajuuk’s Wrath. After that ship’s destruction, the Second Core was recovered, hidden on the lead evacuation ship to Kharak and lost under the ruins of the First City of Khar-Toba for three thousand years. Then it was recovered and powered the Mothership on its way to reclaim the homeworld.

By the time this knowledge was found, some forty years had passed since the Landfall. The Second Core had been extracted from the Mothership – still in orbit around Hiigara as a shipyard, although its efficacy was falling behind that of the new custom-built generation of orbital yards – and there was now some debate about what to do with it.

The decision fell on Karan S’Jet, who had neurally bonded with the Mothership during the journey from Kharak to Hiigara and at one key point had been blasted with a backwash of energy from the Core. Since that day forwards, she had not aged, nor had her intelligence declined. She lived in isolated seclusion, but at key moments the New Daiamid called on her wisdom. Karan’s decision was that the Core should be publicly displayed in the capital at Asaam Kiith’sid, to remind people of their past, but it should not be used again save in the utmost need. This decision – which the Galactic Council was relieved to hear – was honoured.

Makaan, warlord of the Vaygr Reaches.

Decades passed. The Exiles’ population grew, passing 300 million (the same as on Kharak before the Genocide). A new Hiigaran federation took shape, several worlds being colonised and adding their economic and industrial might to that of Hiigara itself. The peace that had endured since the rumoured Beast War continued.

But then rumours arose of a new threat arising in the Eastern Fringes of the galaxy. The Vaygr, a nomadic race of warriors and pirates, had unified with several former Taiidani Imperial factions to form a new fleet, a fleet that now struck worlds with overwhelming force. For several months the Vaygr rampage continued unabated through the Eastern Fringes. Worlds fell to their advance, industrial centres were converted to churning out more warships for their fleet and those Vaygr clans which remained independent were soon subjugated. Hiigaran agents ascertained that the Vaygr leader was a warlord known as Makaan, a charismatic, intelligent and arrogant warlord with a formidable strategic vision. Makaan also referred to himself under a new title: “Sajuuk-Khar.” The Chosen of Sajuuk, who would fulfil the vision of reuniting the Three.

Analysing the speed of Makaan’s advance confirmed what this had hinted at: Makaan had found the Third Core, sparking the long-prophecised End Time.

Only the fact that the Vaygr fleet was not yet large enough to challenge Hiigara directly spared the Exiles. They put into operation an emergency contingency plan: Hiigara’s fleets were pulled back to defend the homeworld. The Second Core was restored to the Mothership and then Far Jumped to the Great Derelict at Tanis, where the Hiigarans had established a secret shipyard and redoubt. There the Mothership would be reconditioned and rebuilt into a larger, more powerful vessel, one whose power plant could operate the Second Core at maximum efficiency. This ship would become known as the Pride of Hiigara. And Karan S’jet would once again command it.

The Pride of Hiigara in orbit around Hiigara's Angel Moon.

The War
The Vaygr learned of the Pride’s construction and struck with overwhelming, total force. They overran Hiigaran outposts right across the Inner Rim and their fleets converged on Hiigara. A secondary fleet attacked Tanis, destroying it, but not before the Pride was able to jump clear. The Pride returned to Hiigara and rendezvoused with Captain Soban, who was escorting the crew of the Pride to join the flagship. They fought off an attempted Vaygr interception and left, with Soban setting out to locate Makaan’s flagship and the Pride to rendezvous with a mobile shipyard.

Its forces bolstered by the shipyard, the Pride received intelligence from the Bentusi directing them to the Gehenna Asteroid Field. There the Pride discovered the Oracle, a Progenitor device constructed tens of thousands of years earlier. The Oracle interacted with the Second Core, transporting the Pride to the Karos Graveyard, now revealed to be the remains of a colossal Progenitor starship. The Pride, no longer under Fleet Command’s control, moved through the Graveyard towards what used to be the Progenitor ship’s engineering section, where a powerful Dreadnought-class vessel was located. The Oracle reactivated the Dreadnought, but in the process inadvertently triggered an attack by a Keeper, a Progenitor security vessel. The Keeper was neutralised and the Dreadnought recovered.

An attack on a Vaygr staging area proved that the Dreadnought’s systems were not yet fully online. Captain Soban’s recon fleet arrived and confirmed the location of Makaan’s headquarters at Balcora Gate, but Soban was captured before he could transmit the coordinates. The Pride pursued but was intercepted by a fleet of Keepers, which threatened to overwhelm its fleet. The Great Harbor Ship of Bentus directly intervened and self-destructed to obliterate the Keepers once and for all. The Pride recovered the First Core from the ruins and proceeded to space station Thaddis Sabbah, where they rescued Captain Soban and learned of the location of Balcora Gate, an immense Progenitor hyperspace gateway located close to the black hole cluster at the very centre of the galaxy. Beyond the gate lay a tremendous Progenitor starship of unparalleled power: the Sajuuk itself.

At Balcora a final great battle took place and Makaan was defeated, but not before revealing he had activated an ancient Progenitor doomsday weapon, consisting of three planet-killer platforms which even now were approaching Hiigara. The Three Cores were united and Sajuuk was activated. Karan S’jet transferred to the Sajuuk and jumped in one bound to Hiigara. The planet-killer platforms were intercepted and destroyed before a single one of their weapons could be fired at Hiigara.

The remaining Vaygr forces, deprived of the power of the Third Core, fled. The war was over.

The Age of S’jet
The combination of the Three Cores on the Sajuuk and the integration of Karan S’jet into their energies resulted in a great transformation in galactic affairs. Karan and her ship traversed the galaxy and found the greatest secret left behind by the Progenitors: the Eye of Aarran, a hyperspace gateway rivalling Balcora. But this gateway was linked to hundreds of others, great free-standing structures simply left hidden in open space. The Great Hyperspace Network was reactivated by the power of the Three Cores, allowing every race in the galaxy to Far Jump. New trade routes opened, new paths of pilgrimage and exchanges of knowledge began, and a new golden age began.

The Age of S’jet began. Under Karan’s guidance and the Hiigarans’ leadership, the galaxy would take a step forward towards everlasting peace and tranquillity…until the day that a third great conflict would come to pass.

But that is a story that is still to be told.

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A History of Homeworld Part 7: The Beast War

In this series celebrating the franchise's twentieth anniversary (and the recent announcement of Homeworld 3), I look at the background lore of the critically-acclaimed Homeworld series of video games.

The following is classified at the highest order of Hiigaran planetary security. Only the New Daiamid can permit access to these records in light of the disturbing implications they raise.
Approximately fifteen years after the return of the Exiles to Hiigara, an event took place that cost tens of thousands of lives and involved fleet actions consisting of Hiigaran, Turanic, Taiidan and Bentusi forces. Despite this, the full scale of the events involved have never been publicly revealed by the Daiamid, to the point where some doubt they took place at all. Certainly plenty of eyewitness accounts of the conflict leaked out in the subsequent decades, but they were so apocalyptic and bleak that even hardened conspiracy theorists had a hard time accepting that they could be real.

Kiith Somtaaw mining vessel Kuun-Lan.

Unleashing the Beast
The chain of events in question began in 15 AHL when a Taiidan Imperial fleet launched an assault on Hiigara. The Naabal carrier Veer-Rak was charged with the defence of the Hiigaran system and called in every ship in range to help. Dozens of ships from numerous kiith responded and the Taiidan fleet was forced to retreat after sustaining heavy losses. During the battle, unexpected help arrived in the form of the Kuun-Lan, one of Kiith Somtaaw’s mining vessels. Although not a warship as such, the Kuun-Lan’s support forces and fighter squadrons were enough to help tip the tide of battle. Kiith Somtaaw’s presence at the battle was initially unrecorded, but the records were later amended to give a glowing account of how the Somtaaw warriors comported themselves in battle.

The Kuun-Lan then jumped to the outer edge of the system to investigate the disappearance of a Kiith Manaan destroyer, the Bushan-Re. The Somtaaw found the ship, repaired it and set it on its way, but not before picking up an automated signal from a derelict probe of unknown origin. The probe was recovered, but the Kunn-Lan’s research team were baffled by it. The ship jumped to the nearby Coruc-Tel system to rendezvous with the research vessel Clee-San, only to find it under attack by Turanic forces. The Kunn-Lan drove off the Turanic Raiders and liberated the Clee-San.

The Clee-San crew prepared to inspect the alien probe, but before they could do so some kind of organism left the probe and began to infect the Kunn-Lan’s systems. The entire lower hanger module was compromised, forcing the rest of the ship to jettison it. The Clee-San pursued and discovered that the module had been overrun by a biogenic organism which could subvert both mechanical and organic systems. Before more could be learned, the Clee-San was also infected and subverted by the same organism. The Kunn-Lan attempted to engage and destroy the infection before it could spread further, but a Turanic fleet jumped into the system and was immediately subverted. Heavily outgunned, the Kunn-Lan jumped to the nearby Aiowa system to ask for help from the Bentusi. The subverted ships pursued and attacked the Bentusi trade ship. Although the Bentusi were able to defend themselves from the enemy’s weapons, they were vulnerable to the subversion beam. Rather than be taken over by an alien force, the Bentusi ship chose to self-destruct. The Kunn-Lan was able to take evasive action and flee the system, along with a Kiith Manaan carrier, the Caal-Shto, that had arrived to help.

Whilst the Caal-Shto returned to Hiigara for reinforcements, the Kunn-Lan continued to investigate the new threat. Analysis of the alien data pod confirmed that it was over a million years old and was part of a ship called the Naggarok, which had travelled from another galaxy. An extremely prolonged period in hyperspace had resulted the Naggarok being infected by an alien organism, dubbed “The Beast.” The Beast was able to absorb and take control of organic and inorganic matter to improve itself. The Somtaaw realised with horror that the Beast could spread exponentially and overrun this part of the galaxy within weeks unless stopped.

A fleet of carriers near Hiigara.

The Counter-Attack
The Kunn-Lan crew learned that the Imperial Taiidan outpost on Gozan IV had been conducting research into the Beast. It slipped a commando team onto the planet to steal the data and then conducted an emergency hyperspace jump to a nearby debris field, where the crew salvaged an immense siege cannon. They were found by the pursuing Taiidan forces, but also the Beast mothership which had grown out of the captured Kunn-Lan hanger module. The siege cannon destroyed most of the Taiidan forces, but the Beast was able to regenerate quickly after the attack. The Kunn-Lan jumped to rendezvous with its sister ship, the Fal-Corum, and helped fend off another Beast attack. The Somtaaw crews discussed the intelligence and realised that a viable strategy would be to recover a piece of the Beast from the original Naggarok and then use it to adjust the siege cannon beam to a frequency which the Beast would not be able to recover from.

Using astrogation data from a Turanic starbase, the Somtaaw located the Naggarok only to find that the Beast had gotten there ahead of them, and formed an alliance with a Taiidan Imperial force to help repair the command ship. The Somtaaw recovered a sample of the Naggarok and hyperspaced to a Bentusi system to ask for their help in fine-tuning the Siege Cannon. However, they found the Bentusi in a blind panic over the threat of the Beast: the Bentusi had spent thousands of years as an “Unbound” race, having become one with their starships and not restricted to existing solely on the surface of planets. The Beast threatened to imprison and constrain the Bentusi within their ships, turning them into slaves or prisoners. As a result, the Bentusi had triggered a failsafe: a hyperspace gate (presumably built with the assistance of the First Core) which could carry them out of the galaxy altogether.

In a desperate gambit, the Kuun-Lan disabled the hyperspace gate and tried to force the Bentsui to see reason: after a brief stand-off, the Bentusi agreed to provide assistance. They fine-tuned the siege cannon. The Kuun-Lan then used the cannon to destroy the Clee-San and the Beast mothership which had formed around their old hanger module. The Somtaaw then hunted down the repaired Naggarok, which was attacking a massive Taiidan Republican military installation, the Nomad Moon. A pitched battle resulted, complicated by the Beast taking over the Moon. Bentusi reinforcements proved critical and the Kuun-Lan was able to disable the Moon and then stopped the Naggarok by disabling it with a powerful EMP charge. A colossal amount of fire directed at the Naggarok disintegrated it, along with any last remaining traces of the Beast.

The Beast mothership, formed out of the hanger module of the Kuun-Lan.

Aftermath

The so-called Beast War was a significant military conflict, spanning several systems and entailing a high number of casualties. However, the conflict was carried out by ships exclusively using Short Jump drives, severely limiting the area over which the damage was spread. In addition, the conflict did not take place in proximity to an inhabited, major world (apart from Hiigara, which was far too well-defended for the Beast to risk an attack), severely preventing the number of ships and people who could be subverted by the Beast. This also prevented news of the Beast and the level of threat it represented from spreading, preventing a major panic.

In the aftermath of the conflict, it was classified at the highest levels of both the New Daiamid and the Galactic Council. The Bentusi did not want the rest of the galaxy to know about their weakness to the Beast. In addition, although all traces of the Beast had been apparently destroyed, there was always the marginal risk of additional debris or pieces of Beast-infected ships being found and starting the infection over again. Prohibiting the information from spreading was seen as a more effective way of keeping the events of the war as secret as possible. The Taiidan Republic also agreed to this stipulation.

The reasons for the Taiidan Imperials keeping quiet are less clear, but the fact that they were defeated by the Beast several times and then treated like fools by it suggests it was a matter they wished to forget as soon as possible.

One outcome of the conflict that was made public was the honour of Kiith Somtaaw. For their triumph in “a clandestine military campaign against Taiidan Imperial forces,” the Somtaaw were elevated to the rank of an honoured warrior kiith and given a new symbol and nickname: the “Beastslayers.” The technological improvements gained during the conflict were integrated into Hiigaran forces as a whole.

Of course, more than a century after the alleged events it is now rather difficult to confirm if they did indeed take place; certainly, some experts in the field do not believe a word of it.

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A History of Homeworld Part 6: The Reconstruction

In this series celebrating the franchise's twentieth anniversary (and the recent announcement of Homeworld 3), I look at the background lore of the critically-acclaimed Homeworld series of video games.

In the Galactic Standard Year 9510 – 1216 of the Kharakian Dating System – the Exiles returned home. The almost-50,000-strong crew of the Mothership and the fleet it had accumulated over the course of the six-month Homeworld War began the slow process of thawing out their 600,000 brethren, cryogenically frozen for up to a dozen years before the Genocide.

The Mothership in orbit around Hiigara, now converted into an orbital spacedock.

The return to life was, for many, traumatic. They went to sleep on a world of approximately 300 million people and woke to learn that almost all of them had been killed, a great war had been fought, and the homeworld recovered at tremendous cost. For many the recovery was difficult, almost impossible. The joy of finding themselves on a verdant new world was offset by the knowledge of the losses that had the trip had incurred. 

Establishing a working civilisation and industrial base was essential. The Taiidan had occupied Hiigara for over three millennia and considered it their world, but the fall of the Emperor had sparked an exodus. Millions of Taiidan had fled the planet in every ship that could carry them, returning to their own homeworld or one of its numerous colonies. Some remained behind and surrendered with honour, in many cases being remanded into the custody of the Taiidani Republic that had arisen in place of the brutalist Empire. Taiidan cities were occupied, factories converted to Kushan – Hiigaran – use and surrendered Taiidan ships were used to bolster the Mothership’s own fleet. Resource-gathering missions were launched into the small asteroid clusters in Hiigara orbit, and elsewhere in the system. 

The Mothership, now converted into an orbital shipyard, began pumping out ships by the score. With Taiidan Republic and Bentusi help, the Hiigarans secured a buffer zone out to ten light-years from Hiigara itself. Several systems in this vicinity were colonised as mining and military bases to defend against incursions by Turanic pirates or Taiidan Imperial warlords. 

The New Daiamid was established in the capital city of Hiigara, now named Asaam Kiith’sid. The kiithid assembled, but soon a problem was discovered: seven kiithid (S’jet, Manaan, Soban, Naabal, LiirHra, Paktu and Kaalel) now represented slightly more than half of the Hiigaran population and dozens more were massively underrepresented, in some cases with only a few hundred survivors in the population. Some kiithid, such as Gaalsien, had no representatives amongst the Mothership crew or the “Sleepers” and were presumed extinct in the Kharakian Genocide. Some of the larger kiithid took advantage of the situation to offer a new home to members of smaller ones, a helpful "merger," although some kiithid saw it as a hostile takeover and resisted furiously. 

A key moment came seven years after the Landfall. Kiith Naabal attempted to almost forcibly absorb Kiith Somtaaw, which had been reduced to barely 15,000 members. Naabal wanted to use the Somtaaw’s mining expertise to enrich themselves. The Somtaaw resisted, helped by the Soban and Paktu. Several smaller kiithid chose to unite with Somtaaw, raising their numbers to over 25,000. In a furious series of debates in the New Daiamid the Somtaaw proved surprisingly victorious and not only secured their independence but were granted access to the Mothership fabrication facilities. In a matter of months, the Somtaaw had established a fleet of three ships: the mining cruisers Faal-Corum and Kunn-Lan, and the research frigate Clee-San. The Somtaaw used these resources to carve out mining territories in the Hiigaran system and beyond. 

Hiigara seen from space, with the lights of an old Taiidan city still visible.

Hiigara’s position in the galaxy was controversial. Some races, looking at the history records of the First Time, were nervous about giving the Hiigarans a place on the Galactic Council, but the Bentusi and the Taiidan Republic spoke for them. Hiigara’s claim to the surrounding systems was recognised, and support and supplies provided until the Hiigarans could stand by themselves. The Bentusi profited from early trade with Hiigara, in thanks for their support during the Homeworld War. Hiigara and the Taiidan Republic also signed a treaty of peace and alliance, with war criminals implicated in the Kharakian Genocide extradited to Hiigara for trial. 

The Taiidan Empire had effectively collapsed, placing the fate of its 360 billion citizens in doubt, but sixty star systems remained loyal to the new government on Taiidan. Ninety more collapsed into civil war, or were seized by former Taiidan admirals and generals keen to restore the empire. These warlords spent more time fighting one another or the Republic than challenging Hiigara, but several times (in 4, 9 and 11 After Hiigaran Landfall) they mustered enough forces to invade Hiigaran space. The second and third attacks penetrated the Hiigaran system, but all were thrown back in disarray. Hiigara was secure, but the Exiles would have to fight to continue to protect it.

Some Hiigarans did more than defend themselves: circa 3 AHL the newly-awoken Iifrit Tambuur-sa, the sole survivor of Kiith Tambuur (after his wife was killed in the Taiidan attack on the cryo-trays in Kharak orbit), declared paaura (eternal vengeance) on the Taiidan Imperials and launched a bloody campaign of retribution, claiming over three hundred kills in the next dozen years. 

The Hiigarans had endured many challenges in the aftermath of the Landfall, but had overcome them. But a new threat was arising which no one in the galaxy had foreseen, and one that was so dangerous, disturbing and disquieting that almost all knowledge of it was suppressed, an astonishing feat considering the tens of thousands killed in the process.

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A History of Homeworld Part 5: The Homeworld War

In this series celebrating the franchise's twentieth anniversary (and the recent announcement of Homeworld 3), I look at the background lore of the critically-acclaimed Homeworld series of video games.

Following the defeat of the Hiigarans and the driving of their people into exile in a remote corner of the galaxy, the Taiidan emerged as the strongest and most powerful of the galactic empires. The strongest race on the Galactic Council – bar only the now avowedly non-interventionist Bentusi – the Taiidan expanded their empire far and wide. They established their new seat of government on Hiigara, although Taiidan remained their most populous world.

Emperor Riesstiu was hungry for more power and influence, but also cautious. He knew that the Bentusi, should they be provoked out of their neutral stance, could destroy the Taiidan with the very same technology the Hiigarans had used to lay them low, so adopted a cautious path of expansion mixed with consolidation and aggression tempered by compromise. For three millennia, the Taiidan ruled as the pre-eminent galactic power, but its rulers always restrained their worst instincts.

During this time period the galaxy entered a period of stagnation; technological development proceeded extremely slowly and, with almost the entire galactic disc mapped and explored, there was a lack of brave new frontiers to explore. Various expeditions to the neighbouring satellite galaxy and even other galaxies altogether were proposed, using the Bentusi’s Far Jump capabilities, but nothing came of them. For three millennia, as the Exiles on Kharak collapsed to a medieval level of technology and then rose again, the galaxy spun in peace, but an uneasy peace punctuated by the slowly growing brutality of the Taiidan.

In 9035 GSY, whilst the Heresy Wars still raged on Kharak, the long peace was interrupted by the arrival of the Turanic Raiders. A race of space pirates, the Raiders waged unceasing war on the Outer Rim Trade Routes, stealing vast quantities of cargo. The Raiders soon learned not to test the might of the Bentusi, but had no fear of the ships of other races and became a serious menace. In 9410 GSY (four years after the Second Core was found in the ruins of Khar-Toba) Emperor Riesstiu IV the Second made an alliance with the Turanic Raiders, giving them free reign to attack other races as long as they steered clear of Taiidan ship sand worlds.

Emperor Riesstiu IV had already been among the bloodiest and most unhinged of the Taiidan Emperors, but his clone-successor was possibly deranged, soon becoming known as the Mad Emperor. Riesstiu IV 2nd was so bold as to be reckless, constantly baiting and testing the patience of the Galactic Council and even the Bentusi. In 9503 GSY, the Bentusi broke their long neutrality to censure the Taiidan and suspended all trade contact with the Empire. The Frerrn Aggregate, a powerful Council race along the Far Rim, found itself in almost a state of war with the Taiidan due to a series of border conflicts.

At the same time, Riesstiu IV 2nd was cracking down hard on dissidents within the Empire, including a nascent democratic movement which was demanding the replacing of the monarchy with a republic, restored to Taiidan rather than captured Hiigara. The Mad Emperor’s brutal measures brought several Taiidan worlds and naval fleet elements to the edge of outright rebellion.

If there was one weakness in the Mad Emperor’s armour it was the fate of the Exiles. His predecessors had sent ships to the edge of the Kharak system to monitor their fate, with orders to sterilise the planet completely should the Exiles show even the vaguest signs of developing hyperspace technology. Instead, many of the Taiidan ships simply vanished and failed to return. 

Taiidan forces eventually discovered the presence of a massive hyperspace interdiction field surrounding the Kharak system, presumably the result of Bentusi intervention (the possibility that the Second Core had survived the destruction of Sajuuk’s Wrath and been taken to Kharak seems to have been discounted). An experimental drive managed to briefly penetrate the field and allowed a weapons platform to be deployed in Kharak orbit, but the ship carrying out the work was then pulled down to the planet’s surface and the platform never activated (until, ironically, its discovery by the Kushan themselves).

A prophecy had been uttered at one point that the Exiles would escape from their prison and return to Hiigara, toppling the Taiidan Empire along the way. Despite their best efforts to stamp out the superstition, it continued to be repeated and Riesstiu IV 2nd became convinced that if the Exiles ever did escape their planet in his lifetime, he would need to take swift action. He had a Taiidan fleet positioned as close to the field as possible with orders to completely annihilate all life in the system should it fail. He also granted the Turanic Raiders the right to strip the system of anything of value afterwards.

In the year 9510 GSY, 1216 by the Kharakian Dating System, the inhibitor field shut down and the Taiidan guard fleet immediately responded.

The Kharakian Genocide.

The Kharakian Genocide

It was only a matter of hours after the Mothership departed to the outer edge of the Kharak system that a fleet of alien warships appeared in the skies above Kharak. The planet’s missile defence system immediately responded, destroying several of the Taiidan warships out of sheer surprise, before the Taiidan responded, obliterating first the Scaffold and then the orbital fighter squadrons and missile launch platforms. The space around the planet secured, the Taiidan then dropped several atmosphere-deprivation bombs on the planet.

These weapons of mass destruction, whose use was prohibited by the Galactic Council, detonated with tremendous force across Kharak’s northern hemisphere. The multi-gigaton blasts annihilated vast swathes of the planet, its cities and people by themselves. The blasts then ignited the atmosphere, burning the planet’s biosphere from the ground up. Nothing could survive. Approximately 300 million people were killed.

Satisfied that the job was done, the Taiidan fleet withdrew, aside from several frigates left behind to mop up any remaining orbital assets.

The Kushan Mothership had jumped to the outer edge of the Kharak system to rendezvous with the Khar-Selim, only to find the ship already a wreck. Turanic Raiders were already swarming through the outer system, seizing resources. The Mothership fought off the Raider forces that had eliminated the Khar-Selim and jumped back to Kharak, only to find their planet burning in space. They also found the Taiidan assault frigates commencing an attack on the cryo-trays which had been left behind in orbit. The Mothership’s own fighter and corvette squadrons were able to destroy the Taiidan ships and capture one intact. The cryo-trays were recovered. The Kushan race was now reduced to just 650,000 survivors.

The Mothership in the Great Nebula.

The Journey

The crew of the Mothership had to overcome immense shock and grief to ensure the survival of their race. With Kharak rendered completely uninhabitable, they now had no choice but to follow the path laid out by the Guidestone, to Hiigara. The odds seemed ridiculous, especially once the interrogation of the Taiidan crew was completed. The Taiidan Empire was vast, spanning a considerable portion of the total width of the galaxy, with a population of billions spread across dozens of planets and their capital standard planted firmly on Hiigara itself. The Taiidan navy consisted of thousands of ships, compare to the single Mothership. The chances of victory seemed slim.

However, the Kushan possessed several advantages. The first was surprise: the Taiidan did not know that the Mothership even existed, let alone had survived. The Mothership’s Hyperspace Core was also capable of jumps dozens of times greater than those of the Taiidan. The Mothership could jump past Taiidan fleet lines and make its way to Hiigara in a few months, whilst it would take the Taiidan years to recall their entire fleet to defend Hiigara. The Mothership’s ability to harvest resources and build new ships in deep space also allowed it to rapidly expand itself from a single vessel to the flagship of a substantial fleet of vessels consisting of fighters, corvettes, frigates, destroyers, heavy cruisers and carriers. The Kushan also had remarkable salvaging abilities, boarding and seizing control of enemy ships under heavy fire, allowing them to swell their fleet further. Although the Kushan were ludicrously outnumbered, they were still able to bring their entire firepower to bear in a single engagement, whilst the Taiidan were scattered in an attempt to find them.

In this manner, the Kushan undertook one of the boldest and most impressive military campaigns in galactic history. From Kharak they travelled into the Great Wastelands and destroyed the Taiidan fleet that had attacked Kharak. They then reached the outskirts of the Great Nebula. There, for the first time in three millennia, they were confronted by a Bentusi trade ship. The news of the Exiles’ return was greeted with cautious optimism by the Bentusi, but some trepidation for the behaviour of the ancestors. But the Kushan proved surprisingly merciful for a race which had lost so much, accepting the surrender of enemy forces where it took place and accepting diplomatic mediation with the Bentusi.

The Exile fleet passed through the Great Nebula, coming under attack by the Kadeshi, an off-shoot of their own race who had abandoned the flight to Kharak three millennia earlier. The Exiles defeated the Kadeshi and seized some of their ships to add to their fleet. Beyond the Great Nebula, in the Sea of Lost Souls, they neutralised an ancient alien vessel which had been seizing control of passing ships for centuries. Even the Bentusi had been unable to subdue it.

The Exiles entered Taiidan imperial space by destroying a guard post near an active supernova, then closed in on the Galactic Core. By this time news of the great “victory” at Kharak had reached Hiigara and the Emperor loudly proclaimed the achievement, but the result was not what he expected.

The final battle over Hiigara.

The Galactic Council censured the Taiidan for their use of a forbidden weapon and the Bentusi petitioned the Council to restore Hiigara to the Exiles. The Emperor, furious, launched a concerted attack on the Bentusi. The Bentusi refused to respond with their full force, but defended themselves. One trade ship was actually in danger of being overcome by a large Taiidan fleet until it was rescued by the Exiles themselves. The Emperor’s obvious insanity now split the Taiidan Empire, with a new, free republic being declared on Taiidan itself. Dozens of Taiidan worlds fell into civil war.

The final act began when the Taiidan Republican Navy made contact with the Exiles and formally allied with them. Fleet Captain Elson guided the Mothership fleet to the vast starship graveyard at Karos, from where vital intelligence was extracted showing a way into the Hiigaran system, bypassing most of the Taiidan defences. The Emperor, now aware of the growing precariousness of his situation, had called as many ships in as possible to defend Hiigara, but found this was much less than expected; the allied Kushan and Taiidan rebels were able to smash his fleet in a final pitched battle over Hiigara. They then fired on and destroyed the Emperor’s flagship.

As fire reigned down on Hiigara, the Taiidan forces on the planet surrendered and agreed to withdraw. The Taiidan Empire fell, almost half of the member worlds joining the new Taiidan Republic, the rest becoming independent worlds, or falling to various warlords styling themselves the new Emperor.

It had taken the Exiles – Kushan no more, now once again Hiigarans – six months and thousands of lives to reclaim their homeworld. Hiigara was again theirs, a planet they could barely have dreamed of in the burning sands of Kharak. A world of vast blue oceans, bright blue skies and cool breezes, teeming with animal life.

The Mothership took up station in orbit as a defensive redoubt and then a shipyard. The fleet it had accumulated became the core of an even larger navy dedicated to defending the planet and the system. The slow process of unloading the cryo-trays and thawing out the half million survivors of Kharak could now begin, but not before all of those who had fought their way to Hiigara were allowed to stand on the surface and breathe its air. The last to do so was Karan S’jet, who had guided the fleet more than 35,000 light-years through war and fire. She survived extraction from the Mothership core and became the figurehead of the new era.

The Exiles had returned to their Homeworld. But their struggle was not yet over.

The fall of the Taiidan Empire.

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A History of Homeworld Part 4: The Guidestone

In this series celebrating the franchise's twentieth anniversary (and the recent announcement of Homeworld 3), I look at the background lore of the critically-acclaimed Homeworld series of video games.

The Guidestone, recovered from the Khar-Toba Observatory and providing a three-dimensional vector from Kharak to Hiigara.

The discovery of Khar-Toba changed Kushan overnight in fundamental ways. It proved that the Kushan people had once been far more advanced and powerful than they were now, and it provided tremendous backing to the Xenogenesis Theory.

With the defeat of the Gaalsien, who had been forced to scatter into the deep deserts, and the establishment of runways allowing relatively fast air transit to the northern cities, the scientific and engineering communities of the Coalition descended on the site. Soon it was abuzz with activity, the ancient city once against becoming inhabited after near three millennia of abandonment.

The wrecked spacecraft was not huge (although it was still many times larger than the largest object the Kushan had ever put into space), but the abandoned city of Khar-Toba was gargantuan. The site was unnaturally well-preserved. After three thousand years, the desert sands should have completely buried the site under metres of sand, but instead it remained open to the elements. Rachel S’jet, now a senior figure in the attempt to understand the site, attributed this to the same quantum force that had dragged alien spacecraft out of hyperspace and entombed them in solid rock.

Locating the source of the quantum interference was prioritised, but overlapping signals and the sheer size of the site made it impossible to find quickly. Early discoveries included ancient records and inscriptions that gave archaeolinguists a head start on decoding the languages of their ancestors, as well as rapid advances in metallurgy, engines and weapons gained from studying the Khar-Toba and the other wrecked ships discovered along the way, not to mention the now-disarmed orbital weapons platform.

Two years after the discovery of Khar-Toba, the explorers finally found the source of the quantum disturbance: a large piece of engineering technology. Oddly, it was not located in the ship’s own engineering or power system, but hidden in remote corner of what they believed was the ship’s hold. The artefact became known as a Hyperspace Core, and scientists and engineers alike were baffled by its fundamentals. But, gradually, they began to experiment with the Core and learned how to modulate its energies to open brief gateways into another dimensional realm, hyperspace, which could be used to circumvent the speed of light in normal space.

The Hyperspace Core and the ship’s great fusion power plant were both moved to Tiir, along with many of the most prominent artefacts of interest. After several years, the exploration of Khar-Toba fell to archaeologists alone, as the technological and scientific interest fell elsewhere. Exploring the ancient city proved challenging given the climactic conditions, especially since, with the removal of the Core, the site began to fall prey to the encroaching desert sands.

In 1135 KDS, twenty-five years after the city’s discovery, the archaeologist Mevath Sagald found inscriptions pointing to a location known as the “Observatory Temple.” The temple lay outside the city bounds of Khar-Toba, in an area buried under the sands, but careful excavations confirmed the presence of an underground structure. In the carefully-sealed inner chamber of the temple, she found a curious, large chunk of rock, sitting alone on a raised plinth. The rock had been smoothed over and chiselled into. Carved into its face was a map of the entire galaxy. A line extended from a position on the outer spiral arms, representing Kharak, to one near the Galactic Core. Numbers along the line provided three-dimensional vector coordinates. Next to that dot was inscribed one word in the ancient Kushan tongue: “Hiigara.”

“Home.”

The Scaffold in Kharak orbit.

The Project

Mevath Sagald presented the Guidestone to a stunned meeting of the Daiamid, the ruling council of the Northern Coalition (by now, the de facto government of the entire planet of Kharak). The Guidestone was subjected to scans and tests confirming it was more than three thousand years old and made of a form of rock completely unlike anything on Kharak. The Guidestone swept away the last vestiges of doubt: the Kushan people had originated on another planet, Hiigara, and had come to Kharak for reasons unknown. With Kharak three centuries away from being unable to sustain Kushan life (and that was being generous), they had both the means to escape the planet and directions to follow.

In 1155 a global plebiscite was held to decide what to do with the information. With the knowledge that Kharak was dying, the result was almost unanimous: the kiithid of Kharak would join forces as never before to build a large starship capable of making the journey to Hiigara. The ship was to ascertain the status of Hiigara and then, if circumstances permitted, begin a planetary evacuation.

For four years, the greatest engineering and scientific minds on Kharak met to plan the expedition and design the ship. Using the latest scientific advances gleaned from the wreck of the Khar-Toba, they were able to make firm plans for a huge vessel, kilometres tall and capable of holding hundreds of thousands of people in cryo-stasis. As technological understanding of the technology from the Khar-Toba site – particularly the invention of Phased Dissembler Arrays (PDAs), which made stripping resources from asteroids and reconstituting them into manufactured goods possible in just hours – grew, so the plans for the ship grew more ambitious.

In 1159 the design for the ship, to be known as the Mothership (the Daiamid failing to agree on a more artistic name), was finalised. But before construction could begin, the resources needed for the project needed to be amassed (which took twenty years by itself) and a massive construction space station, the Scaffold, needed to be assembled (which took another ten years).

In time, the cryo-stasis technology needed to take the population to Hiigara was also perfected. The plan was for the Mothership to be large enough to take half a million people in each trip, but for the ship to be large enough to hold the required living quarters and food for so many people, it would be too big to actually move. Instead, the people would go into stasis and be backed into the ship in tight racks which would allow them to be moved en masse. To test the technology, pilot Rei Magann was placed in stasis and his ship was set on a six-month circular flight path around the Kharakian system. At the end of the journey he was revived with no ill effects (other than some vivid dreams).

Support vessel Khar-Selim.

By 1204 KDS construction of the Mothership was well underway. The Gold List, a list of candidates for the first, pathfinding mission to Hiigara, had been assembled. Six hundred thousand people were on the list – none under the age of 17 and none over the age of 50 – and began entering cryo-stasis a full dozen years before the estimated date of launch. Two years later, the support vessel Khar-Selim left Kharak on a ten-year voyage to the outer system, with the plan being to rendezvous with the Mothership when it undertook its first hyperspace test flight and make sure the hyperdrive was working properly.

Of all the pieces in this immense puzzle, the Hyperspace Core caused the engineering and scientific teams the most consternation. The artefact was immeasurably ancient, apparently even at the time of the founding of Khar-Toba, but still seemed to be operating at maximum efficiency. Even after ninety years of testing, its properties and underlying principles were only vaguely understood. It was known that to function at its full potential – which would allow it to traverse the entire width of the galaxy, more than 125,000 light-years in a single jump – would require vastly more power than the Mothership was remotely capable of generating. After a great detail of work, the Kushan were able to deliver enough power for it to operate at 2% of its total potential, allowing the Mothership to jump 2,500 light-years each time, although the Mothership was required to recharge the system afterwards.

Another problem was that the Mothership was so immensely complex that even the most advanced computer systems on Kharak were unable to process the vast amounts of data pouring through the system. To avoid information paralysis, a direct neural interface was built and a human brain was connected directly to the system. Karan S’jet, a neuroscientist and one of the greatest minds of her generation, volunteered for the procedure and was directly connected to the Mothership Core, becoming Fleet Command.

As the Mothership drew near completion, so attention turned to the prospect of the voyage itself. More than 50,000 people would crew the Mothership during the voyage, from fighter pilots to potential capital ship crews to engineers to medics. The existence of numerous wrecked ships across the Great Banded Desert has been classified by direct order of the Daiamid, but it confirmed the existence of alien life. Some of these ships, such as the one at Torin Crater, were heavily armed, suggesting these aliens might be hostile. As a result, the Mothership was also designed to defend itself from possible attack.

Technical readout and specifications of the Kushan Mothership (source).

The Mothership itself was equipped with point defence weapons (mostly built around mass-driver principles), but to defend the ship it was decided a fleet of ancillary vessels was required, including fighters and frigates. Massive PDAs were built which could assemble capital ships as required, as long as they were fed with resources. The Mothership wasn’t just a colony ship, but a mobile shipyard and a flagship as well.

Some in the Daiamid voiced concerns that, without the Hyperspace Core providing its protective shield around the entire system, Kharak would now be open to potentially hostile ships arriving in orbit. As a result, an elaborate orbital missile defence system and orbiting fighter squadrons were also built.

The Guidestone provided a three-dimensional vector to a spot near the Galactic Core, but the precise location of the Homeworld was still ambiguous, not helped by over three thousand years of galactic drift and rotation. The Guidestone provided the coordinates of a relatively small area which the Mothership would need to comb in search of Hiigara. It would be helped in this by the unique composition of the Guidestone itself, which would help narrow down its system of origin.

Finally, in 1216 KDS, one hundred and six years after the discovery of Khar-Toba, the Mothership was completed. The 600,000 “sleepers” were loaded onto orbital cryo-trays, but these were not yet loaded onto the Mothership (for fear of a cataclysmic mistake which would destroy all of them). Instead, the Mothership was launched from the Scaffold, aligned on the beacon of the now-distant Khar-Selim, and made its first hyperspace test-jump.

The second the ship jumped, the hyperspace shield which had surrounded the Kharak system for three thousand years vanished, and the powerful surge of energy from the activation of the Second Core tripped a series of warning satellites surrounding the outer edge of the interdiction field, alerting the Taiidan Empire that the Kharak system was now vulnerable.

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A History of Homeworld Part 3: The Anomaly in the Desert

In this series celebrating the franchise's twentieth anniversary (and the recent announcement of Homeworld 3), I look at the background lore of the critically-acclaimed Homeworld series of video games. This instalment covers the events of the prequel game Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, and contains spoilers for that title.

A map of the territory covered by Operation Khadiim, 1110 KDS.

In the year 1073 of the Kharakian Dating System, the Daiamid, the ruling council of the Northern Coalition, was given news most stark. The planet was dying. The oceans were drying up much faster than previously suspected, the desert was advancing on every front and the natural aquifers needed to grow crops were failing. In less than three centuries, Kharak would become inhospitable to Kushan life.

The Daiamid kept this news to themselves (to the point of quashing independent scientific reports hinting at the same), even as they began debating what action to take. For decades, the kiithid had been struggling with another scientific revelation, one made by geneticists from Kiith S’jet. DNA scans had revealed that the Kushan people had absolutely nothing in common with the native species of Kharak, with the very genetic makeup of the planet being unable to give rise to advanced, intelligent life. The evidence suggested instead that the Kushan people had come to Kharak from elsewhere, another world altogether. 

The Xenogenesis Theory proved controversial, especially as it seemed to back up the religious fundamentalist view that the kiithid had been banished to Kharak for committing a sin among the heavens. But it also now hinted at an escape route: if the Kushan had come to Kharak from another world, then, if that world still existed, they could return the same way. The Daiamid turned their attention to the metallic debris rings circling Kharak, believing that they might be remnants of whatever spacecraft were used to bring their ancient ancestors to the planet. If they could learn more, they might find a way of escaping the planet before the end.

Kiith S’jet, always the most scientifically vigorous of the kiith, turned its full attention to the task. Pieces of the orbital debris had been studied for decades, leading to massive breakthroughs in fabrication techniques and technological development. The kiith constructed an advanced orbital satellite network, Project Viin Cal (named for the ancient Kushan god of hunters), which was to scour Kharak’s orbital space outwards for millions of kilometres for the slightest hint of the technology that brought the Kushan to Kharak. The system went online in the year 1100 KDS.

For six years the satellites scoured near-Kharak space and found very little: some more debris, but nothing that would lead to a major breakthrough. The scientists grew more frustrated even as they felt time running out for their world.

In 1106 KDS, one of the Viin Cal satellites malfunctioned and spun off its axis, its scanning field turning to encompass Kharak. A technician named Leykab Jaraci was tasked with bringing the satellite under control. After struggling with the recalcitrant satellite for hours, Jaraci regretfully gave the order for the satellite to self-destruct. He then ran the last scan from the satellite.

The results briefly overwhelmed the data processing systems in mission control. Not just single pieces of metallic debris, but huge signals had been detected, larger than entire Kushan sandcrawlers or desert carriers. These signals did not come from space, but from the Great Banded Desert, from Kharak itself. And, at the end of the scattering of signals, deep in the heat of the desert, was one huge signal which was generating energy readings on a par with Kharak’s sun. Leykab Jaraci became, in Kharak’s scientific community at least, a superstar and his name was given to his discovery: the Jaraci Object. But as the scale of the signals became clear, it gained another: the Primary Anomaly.

The wreck of the carrier Ifriit Naabal upon its discovery at Hell's Gate.

Operation Skaal Brii
The Daiamid met in emergency session. The Primary Anomaly and the associated signals gave them a hope beyond anything they’d felt before, not just for breadcrumbs of ancient technology that might allow them to reach the stars, but possibly semi-intact technological items and maybe even well-preserved examples of the ships that brought their ancestors to Kharak in the first place!

Reaching the Primary Anomaly was going to be difficult. The location of the object was deep in the Great Banded Desert, thousands of kilometres from the nearest suitable landing site. Long-range aircraft might reach the site but would not be able to touch down. Even worse, the location was within the range of territory occupied by the desert raiders of Kiith Gaalsien. Any attempt to buzz the area with aircraft might lead them straight to the Anomaly.

The Gaalsien had retreated from the north at the height of the Heresy Wars, but they had not died out. Instead they had set up new bases of operations in the highlands of the Great Banded Desert, particularly the Beladin Formation, Sarathi Basin and Garaaki Highlands. Somehow, despite the unrelenting heat and hostility of the lands, they had prospered. Their technology had improved dramatically and they had mastered hover technology, allowing their vehicles to float above the particulate matter and sandstorms that confounded Coalition military forces.

The Gaalsien now presented a formidable military threat to the Coalition. In 1075, Kiith Naabal and Kiith Soban lured the Gaalsien into attacking the Stormbreaker Wall and then outflanked and ambushed the attacking force in the Night of Fiery Daggers (Siifar Kor’shesh). Ten thousand Gaalsien troops died in the battle, with no quarter given. The threat of the Gaalsien had been reduced for a generation, but it had also awoken a fierce hatred in the Gaalsien for the Coalition, and a yearning for vengeance.

After much discussion, the Daiamid agreed to launch an expedition to find the Primary Anomaly. The Ifrit-class heavy carrier Ifriit Naabal was adapted for a long-range, deep-desert mission using silent running to reach the Anomaly undetected. The Northern Coalition Military Council (NCMC) offered severe objections to the mission, noting that the Ifrit-class was old and outdated, and the few remaining carriers were being retired in favour of a new design, the in-development Sakala-class deep desert carrier. In particular, the Ifriit-class was not designed for long-distance missions far away from resupply for months at a time. They argued for patience and the adaptation of the new Sakala-class design for the mission.

They were overruled and the Ifriit Naabal was launched mere months after the discovery of the Primary Anomaly. With a complement of 1,256 and commanded by the capable Captain Deckhard Naabal and first officer Lt. Jacob S’jet, the Ifriit Naabal set out with high hopes for success.

All contact with the Ifriit Naabal was lost less than a month after launch. Attempts to locate the carrier from the air failed, and it was unclear if the carrier had been lost to accident or Gaalsien action. The NCMC after-action report was scathing, reiterating the point that the Ifrit Naabal was not suitable for the mission it had been given and blaming the loss of 1,256 personnel on impatience and lack of strategic planning.

A second mission was put into the planning stages, but this time it was going to be done with greater care, detail and planning.

The Gaalsien did not accommodate these plans. 

The carrier Kapisi departing Epsilon Base.

Operation Khadiim
The Sakala-class deep desert carrier was a formidable machine. Bigger and much more heavily armoured than the Ifriit-class, with a complement of 1,850 souls, the Sakala-class was designed to operate continuously without resupply and away from home port for months at a time. The original design had been for a spearhead force capable of punching through to the Gaalsien heartlands located several thousand kilometres to the south of the northern highlands, close to Kharak’s functionally uninhabitable equatorial band, but as it turned out this was just what was needed to reach the Primary Anomaly.

The taskforce would comprise five carriers: Kiith Siidim’s Sakala; Kiith S’jet’s Kapisi, Kiith Naabal’s Fiiskire (to replace the lost Ifrit Naabal), Kiith Hraal’s Akalon and Kiith Soban’s Amida. With each carrier capable of building its own attack tanks, aircraft and resource gatherers in the field, this was a colossal military force capable of handling anything the Gaalsien could throw against it.

Unfortunately, the plan required the carriers to be built and actually launched. The Gaalsien forestalled this plan by launching a steadily escalating series of offensives starting in 1107 KDS and continuing into 1110. Coalition Intelligence concluded that the Gaalsien had somehow intercepted plans regarding Operation Khadiim – or perhaps from the earlier Ifriit Naabal expedition – and were aware that a new operation would be launched to find the Primary Anomaly. One saving grace was that the Gaalsien had not located the Anomaly themselves, with satellite coverage continuing to show the area was free of Gaalsien occupation.

NCM Command ordered that the mission launch date was to be brought forwards by three months, but the contributing kiithid had already gone into overdrive to finish the carriers early. The Sakala was launched first and had already proven itself in several combat operations before the Kapisi rolled off the production line. The Fiiskire, Akalon and Amida were still not complete when the Gaalsien launched their main offensive in 1110 KDS, striking hard against the Stormbreaker Wall and the fortified main defensive wall surrounding the three primary NCM field bases: Charlie, Epsilon and Juno. Kapisi had to prove itself under fire as it fled the destruction of Epsilon Base and had to undergo its final desert refit at the Boneyard military base even as the installation came under attack.

Fortunately, the Gaalsien offensive had limited resources and, when part of the attacking force breached the Stormbreaker Wall and opened an attack vector to Tiir itself, they chose to focus on exploiting that advantage. In the chaos, both the Kapisi and Sakala were able to slip past their lines and begin the long journey into the Great Banded Desert. 

Tiir, capital city of the Northern Coalition, under attack by Gaalsien forces.

The two carriers rendezvoused at a point east of Cape Wrath, known as Hell’s Gate. Here they beheld a sobering sight: the wreck of the Ifriit Naabal. The carrier had been overcome by the desert sands during a superstorm that had wracked the planet for thirteen days. If had foundered barely a hundred kilometres from the edge of Coalition territory.

The two carriers planned to head east, holding a course north of the Beladin Formation and Garaaki Highlands before swinging quickly south to the Primary Anomaly. This would allow them to avoid most of the worst desert heat and the heart of Gaalsien territory. However, this plan was interrupted by intelligence gleaned from the Ifriit Naabal which identified a key point of interest at the “Kalash Site,” located due south in the Sarathi Basin. The Kapisi diverted to the site and discovered it to be a vast, wrecked spacecraft of unknown origin. Analysis of the wreck revealed many technological innovations to the Kapisi crew, who began retrofitting their carrier with the new technology. It also became clear to the crew that these wrecks were scattered all through the desert, and were the source of the Gaalsien’s technological advancement.

The Kapisi and Sakala turned east and punched through the Gaalsien lines, whilst news from the home front became direr: the Gaalsien main army had reached Tiir and launched a massive assault on the capital. The carriers then made a surprising discovery: a group of starships that had apparently materialised partially inside solid rock. Salvaging Gaalsien intelligence files, the Kapisi crew discovered evidence of “quantum waveforms,” a theoretical method of faster-than-life travel through a medium known as “hyperspace.” The alien ships had been traversing through hyperspace in the vicinity of Kharak when they had been forcibly dragged out of hyperspace near the planet, or in this specific case, inside it. The Kapisi crew realised that the Primary Anomaly might be the source of the hyperspace interference.

Unfortunately, during its offensive the Gaalsien managed to recover intelligence from Epsilon Base pinpointing the coordinates of the Primary Anomaly. The K’Had Sajuuk, the supreme religious leader of the Gaalsien, took a large fleet and made for the Anomaly, and would arrive weeks before the Coalition forces could reach the site.

The Coalition carriers passed through the Whispering Gallery, a long canyon in the Garaaki Highlands and an effective shortcut to the open desert beyond. Hounded by Gaalsien forces all the way, they eventually reached the flat Khashar Plateau, an effective natural runway which allowed resupply aircraft to land from Tiir. During this operation, Kiith Siidim betrayed its Coalition partners by ordering the Sakala to shoot down the resupply craft bound for the Kapisi, to try to starve it of resources. The Siidim, whose religious extremism from the Heresy Wars was not as moderated as first thought, believed that it was their destiny to find the Primary Anomaly and use to ascend to the stars…alone.

Fortunately, the Kapisi was able to recover enough material from the crashed craft to press on. The upgrades the carrier had installed from the alien wrecks also made it superior in battle to the Sakala. The Kapisi trapped the Sakala and destroyed it at Torin Crater.

It was also discovered that Lt. Jacob S’jet from the Ifriit Naabal had been imprisoned by the Gaalsien instead of being killed four years earlier. He had escaped and made his way to a wrecked ship in Torin Crater. Here he discovered that the ship had launched an orbital weapons platform before it had been pulled down to the planet’s surface by the Primary Anomaly’s quantum and gravimetric forces. Using the barely-functioning control systems on the ship, he was able to active the orbital platform, which now fired on any ground vehicle near the Anomaly, forcing the Gaalsien forces to retreat. This allowed the Coalition forces to regroup and reach the Anomaly.

At the same time, word came from Tiir of a great victory. The Gaalsien forces had erred in engaging in street-to-street fighting in the capital, as they had gotten bogged down in a war of attrition they could not win against the numerically superior Coalition forces, which had regrouped and counter-attacked. Tiir had been liberated and the Gaalsien forces thrown back in disarray.

Rachel S'jet becomes the first Kushan to lay eyes on Khar-Toba for almost twenty-nine centuries.

The Kapisi reached the Anomaly and discovered it to be a wrecked spacecraft far larger than any other they had discovered. Rachel S’jet, the expedition’s chief science officer, scanned the wreck and discovered the ruins of a vast city sprawling around the craft. Khar-Toba, the First City of Kharak. The legends were real.

In order to reach the Anomaly, the Kapisi had to deactivate the weapons platform (lest it fire on them). Once the Gaalsien realised this, they attacked in force. A final battle at Khar-Toba took place, but Rachel was able to fine-tune the platform to emit much narrower-beam blasts. In concert with the Kapisi’s augmented weapons, they were able to destroy the K’Had Sajuuk and end the threat from the Gaalsien.

The war had been costly, with tens of thousands of lives lost and the walls of Tiir breached. But the Coalition – battered by war and internal dissent with the Siidim (who now, weakly, proclaimed that the Sakala had been acting without their authority) – had won, and now beheld its prize. Khar-Toba was vast, sprawling for hundreds of square kilometres around the wrecked ship. It would take years to survey and explore the site. With the Gaalsien neutralised, resupply posts were established and soon scientific and archaeological teams were swarming over the site. The technology they recovered resulted in a near-overnight generational jump forward in Kharak’s knowledge and ability.

But far greater discoveries were to come.

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A History of Homeworld Part 2: The Exile

In the second of a series celebrating the franchise's twentieth anniversary (and the impending arrival of Homeworld 3), I look at the background lore of the critically-acclaimed Homeworld series of video games.

Kharak in ancient times.

At this point it may be instructive to consider the social structure of the Hiigaran people and their exiled descendants on Kharak, the Kushan.

Each Hiigaran family unit is part of a larger clan or house, known as kiithid (singular: kiith). Each kiith can contain dozens, hundreds or thousands of families. Each kiith has a different focus, ideology or religious belief; although each kiith will have a wide variety of opinions and beliefs, these will ultimately support the kiith’s primary ideology. Those who feel unable to follow the kiith’s path can apply to leave the kiith and be adopted into another. Some kiith have formed out of those who felt out of place in other kiith, and are looser arrangements. Kiith can break apart, merge or dissolve with the passage of time.

The most powerful individual family within the kiith is known as the Kiith-Sa. This title is also appended to the name of the leader of that family, and thus the entire kiith. Each kiith may have its own way of nominating or securing a leading family or individual, but in past epochs it was the most experienced or senior member of a kiithid who took this position; after the Dark Ages of Kharak there emerged a disturbing tendency for the richest or most politically astute of a kiith (who was often not the wisest or most intelligent) to gain the post.

As the centuries passed, the kiithid became more democratic, with internal referenda held on decisions of great import rather than the Kiith-Sa being left to decide for everyone.

Khar-Toba seen from above. The small white object at the centre is the crashed starship itself.

Age of Khar-Toba
The Kushan people made landfall – somewhat roughly given the status of the starship wreckage found on and above the planet – on Kharak in Galactic Standard Year 6510. The First City, Khar-Toba, spread out around the ruins of the largest-surviving ship. How many people survived the journey to Kharak is unknown, but given the sheer size of Khar-Toba and the other transports, it appears to have been in the hundreds of thousands.

At least six kiithid are known to have been represented in Khar-Toba: Kiith S’jet, famed for its scientific discipline; Kiith Somtaaw and Gaalsien, the religious kiithid; Kiith Naabal, famed for its industry; Kiith Paktu, a kiith of farmers; and Kiith Manaan, the kiith of artists and orators. It appears for a time that the six kiithid worked together to survive the harsh conditions on Kharak.

Kharak was already an ancient world, more than six billion years old. At one time it had been pleasant and temperate, partially covered in vast seas. But the seas had retreated, possibly as solar radiation from its star had slowly increased with age. At the time of the Kushan arrival, there were only three small salt seas near the north pole and a larger ocean surrounding the south pole. The lands inbetween were a mixture of desolate wastes and dune-covered deserts. The Great Banded Desert, which girdled the planet along the equator, was fiercely hot and barely habitable. During the height of summer, temperatures could approach 100°C, the boiling point of water (and human blood), making it impossible to venture outside. Khar-Toba’s location, barely nine hundred kilometres north of the equator, was decidedly suboptimal.

For a time, survival was possible thanks to the surviving reactors and power generators from the crashed ships. These were adapted to cool the city, recycle water and allow some semblance of civilisation to continue. However, they gradually began to fail. Without the underlying technological base from Hiigara, it was simply not possible to fabricate the components needed to keep the technology functioning. The Kushan attempted to rebuild a technological base, but were stymied by their lack of resources. Metals were also scarce.

At some point, perhaps a century or two after the landing, the power systems failed altogether and the Kushan people had no choice but to abandon the First City altogether. They left the city in the winter, most striking north for the rocky plateaus and mountains which offered some respite from the stifling heat of the Great Banded Desert.

Kharak as seen from orbit.

The Dark Age of Kharak
For a period of almost eighteen centuries, little is known about the Kushan people. The loss of high technology was a serious blow, forcing them to fight with spears and swords and farm only with the most primitive of tools. The loss of data recording devices meant that their history had to be written down, or related orally. At times it appears that serious cataclysms – storms, plagues, war – struck the kiithid, which they barely survived. Knowledge of their history dwindled and then vanished. Only a few garbled legends survived, including the reverence of the Great Sajuuk as a god, and the myth that the gods – perhaps including Sajuuk – had cast down the Kushan people onto Kharak as punishment for an ancient wrong.

Eventually, though, the Dark Ages ended. New languages came about and new histories were written. Better farming techniques allowed larger populations to form. 1,784 years after the landfall on Kharak, in the Galactic Standard Year 8294, a new Kharakian Dating System (KDS) was implemented. At this time, it was clear that the kiithid had prospered and grown larger; as well as the original six kiithid, many smaller ones had formed, including the religious Kiith Siidim.

By 100 KDS, the kiithid had penetrated deep into the northern polar regions, to the areas abutting the Seas of the Three Sisters, three small saltwater seas located near the pole. Kiith Gaalsien gained respect among the kiithid for its bold explorations of this region, helping open up the area for settlement. However, over the next 175 years Gaalsien’s influence waned compared to more innovative, less conservative kiithid. Ironically, this caused Gaalsien to retreat even more into religious dogma.

Also, by 100 KDS, Kiith Somtaaw had claimed the peaks and valleys of the Khontala Mountains as its main stronghold. The walled cities of Hameln and Gydeo were built, the latter on the slopes of Lungma Jin, the tallest mountain on Kharak. In 178 KDS the Somtaaw founded the Shimmering Path, a pilgrimage route leading from the Oracle of Tala (on the desert plain of the Kasaar, at the feet of the mountains) to the Temple of Mysteries, located at the very peak of Lungma Jin. The Star-Metal Scrolls, sacred artefacts written by Jakuul (a Somtaaw variant name for Sajuuk) himself, were placed on display in the Temple of Mysteries. In total, thirty-three shrines and temples led from the Oracle of Tala to the Temple of Mysteries. Other named temples were the Purifying Flame, Silent Wayfarer, Truth Seeker and the Dome of Heaven, the latter located within Gydeo’s walls. The Somtaaw opened the Path to all seekers of wisdom.

In 416 KDS, Kiith Soban, the warrior kiith, was founded by the warrior-general Soban the Red when his original kiith refused to take vengeance against a rival kiith for a dishonourable attack. Soban led his people beyond the Sparkling Desert to take vengeance and then sold their services to other kiithid for a price.

Inter-kiithid cooperation was common at this time, as the kiithid had plenty of space to spread out and settle. But as the years passed, populations grew and resources grew scarce, so disputes between the kiithid began to increase. The most damaging move came in 462 KDS when Kiith Siidim issue a proclamation that it was the only true kiith of “divine origin”. All of the other kiithid were formed on Kharak and no more than “Gritiidim” or “sand people,” subhuman in Siidim eyes. Particularly offensive to the Siidim were the Paktu, the kiith of farmers and hunters. Although they fulfilled a valuable function, the Siidim considered them particularly dirty, grubby and unclean. Starting in 488, the Siidim began driving the Paktu from the territories adjoining their own.

The Paktu, who had been facing persecution elsewhere, responded boldly. In the winter of 490 KDS almost fifty Paktu families set out from the northern plain of Albegiido. Using great wooden ships propelled over the sands by the winds of the seasonal storm, the Chak m’Hot, they crossed the Great Banded Desert from north to south in the space of a few months. The crossing was hard, especially when they reached the titanic Hunon Mountains and had to find a way through the peaks. Eventually they reached the far side and glimpsed the Majiirian Sea, the largest on Kharak. The Paktu established a new settlement on the shores of the sea and, thousands of kilometres from the other kiithid, prospered. In 493 an expedition returned to the Paktu lands in the north and led to a mass exodus of all the Paktu into the far south.

The Siidim’s orthodoxy and fanaticism soon found other targets. In 513 KDS they made war upon Kiith Manaan, proclaiming the Manaani to be hedonistic, corrupt and godless. They conducted a great slaughter of the Manaani at their own holy site, Ferin Sha, the Dancing Grounds. The Manaani retaliated, launching a series of devastating raids into Siidim territory that caused great loss of life. In 520 the Siidim widened their war to target their most powerful rivals, the Gaalsien, over differences in dogma, particularly the reason why the gods exiled their entire people to Kharak in the first place. This conflict widened into a war that dragged most of the Kushan people into its blood-letting, the Heresy Wars.

Religious iconography of Kiith Gaalsien, the most fanatically religious of all kiithid. The Gaalsien are devoted to the worship of Sajuuk the Great Maker, He Whose Hand Shapes What Is. In Gaalsien lore, Sajuuk exiled the Kushan people to Kharak for a great sin. If they ever try to leave, the Kushan will be slaughtered by fire.

The Heresy Wars
The wars are often described as a Siidim-Gaalsien conflict, which is inaccurate. The wars allowed many ancient, old arguments between the kiithid to flare up and be addressed. Some kiith chose a path of neutrality, such as Kiith Somtaaw which was able to fortify its mountain strongholds and defend the passes (which had the unfortunate effect of forcing them to effectively close the Shimmering Path in 675), but most engaged in the conflict on one side or another. The Siidim even launched three massive military expeditions across the Great Banded Desert, seeking to claim tribute from the Paktu, but were defeated each time. By 656 KDS the Manaani had dropped out of the war, having inflicted significant damage on the Siidim, to focus on trade. They also allied with the Paktu, who allowed them to build a new Dancing Ground in the southern polar region.

In 698, the Gaalsien launched a major assault on the Paktu but were defeated in the Battle of the Majiirian Sea. The military offensive used up a lot of Kiith Gaalsien’s spare capacity, and over the next twenty years they suffered a series of devastating reversals. In 717 the Gaalsien destroyed their own temple city of Saju-ka (killing thousands of pilgrims from other kiithid) and withdrew into the central desert wastelands. Before leaving they uttered a prophecy that the northern kiithid had offended the gods and their decadence would one day bring down the wrath of Sajuuk. The following year, the other kiithid declared the Gaalsien outlaws for their actions.

In 789 Kiith Somtaaw discovered rich iron deposits below the Red Creek Valley in the Khontala Mountains. They began their transition from a religious kiith to a mining one. They sold metals to all sides in the conflict. In 800 Kiith Hraal was founded by five families from other kiithid, united in surviving the chaos of the wars.

In 810 KDS, Kiith Naabal emerged from an isolated mountain valley where they had been dwelling for centuries. A kiith dedicated to engineering, technology and the pursuit of power through technological advancement, they had made many gains unknown to the other kiith. They had developed advanced metallurgy, refining techniques, advanced explosives and steam power. Naabal was willing to share its discoveries with the other kiithid in return for peace. A great summit was held at the hidden Naabal city of Tiir, marking the end of the Heresy Wars. It was also agreed that the kiithid would send representatives to meet in a great council, the Daiamid, to adjudicate disputes before they could descend into all-out war. By 830 KDS the Daiamid had been established in Tiir, which was now acknowledged as the de facto capital of Kharak.

The Stormbreaker Wall under attack by the forces of Kiith Gaalsien.

The Age of Reason
For the next two hundred years, the people of Kharak underwent an industrial and technological revolution. Rapid advances were made, which saw the development of first steam engines and then primitive aircraft. Jet technology followed, along with the first primitive computers. In 1024 KDS the Coalition of the Northern Kiithid – as those kiithid loyal the Daiamid had become known – launched its first manned spaceflight. The decision to go into space was controversial, and religious extremists tried to destroy the spacecraft. One religious leader even managed to penetrate to the launch platform and martyred himself by standing under the main engine when it activated.

This was a period of great innovation, which some kiithid adapted to better than others. In 1012 Kiith Hraal underwent an internal schism when an ambitious subfaction, eager to capitalise on space technology, seceded from the rest of the conservative, old-fashioned kiith. These secessionists allied with like-minded discontents from Kiith Liir to found Kiith LiirHra. Oddly, this was also the name of an ancient kiith from Hiigara; it is unclear if this was just a coincidence or if the new kiith had taken the name deliberately. There was some precedent for this, with Kiith Soban taking at least the sigil of a kiith from Hiigara that had become extinct during the Dark Ages.

Contact between the northern kiithid and the southern was limited, but in 1026 KDS the Coalition Intelligence Arm surprisingly found itself in contact with the Gaalsien over a common threat that had arisen: the Khaaneph. The Khaaneph were not a kiith, but a loose alliance of rebels, heathens and raiders who did not believe in any religion or ideology. They had utterly rejected the kiithid system itself, and now acted as anarchies and agents of chaos in the desert wastes. They fortunately never became numerous enough to become a true threat to the Coalition, but remained a major irritant for centuries to come (even moreso to the Gaalsien).

In 1057 the Northern Coalition embarked on its boldest project: Project Stormbreaker. A giant ridge of sand baffle walls was built along the entire southern face of the Barrier Mountains. A kilometre wide and thousands of kilometres long, the wall was mean to break up storms as they passed overhead and to hold back the encroaching desert stands. The wall was also fortified, becoming a key defensive bastion against Gaalsien raids out of the south. In 1074 the Gaalsien attacked the wall but were halted by an alliance between Kiith Naabal and Kiith Soban. Ten thousand Gaalsien soldiers were killed in the Night of Fiery Daggers (Siifar Kor’shesh), a major setback that it took the Gaalsien a full generation to recover from.

Four years later, a manned space mission into high orbit made a startling discovery: metallic debris. The atomic composition of the debris was like nothing seen on Kharak, and it gave clues to Kharakian industry that allowed them to make great strides in metallurgy and manufacturing, as well as the development of fission and fusion power plants. In 1068 Kiith Naabal launched Siila’s Eye, a new generation of environmental satellites.

These satellites made an environmental assessment of Kharak that was startling and sobering. In 1073 the final report confirmed that Kharak was dying. The desert was spreading ten times faster than previously thought. The Seas of the Three Sisters were drying out, and would be gone in 200 years. The natural aquifers which fed the Coalition irrigation systems were also shrinking six times faster than previously projected. The final conclusion was that in less than 350 years, Kharak would no longer be able to support life. The records were shared with the rest of the Daiamid under top secrecy, but not the general population for fear of causing panic. The Kushan had three and a half centuries to find a way off their planet, but there was nowhere to go. No other planet in the Kharak system could support them. The Kushan were, it seemed, doomed.

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