Franchise Familiariser: Homeworld

This week sees the release of Homeworld 3, the latest in the venerable 3D real-time strategy video game series. There's never been a better time to jump on board the franchise, which has now expanded to tabletop games, mobile games and other entry-points to the series.

But what if you want to know more? Whose homeworld? Time for a Franchise Familiariser!

The original box art from Homeworld, released in 1999.

The Basics

Homeworld is a space opera saga spanning thousands of years in the history of the Hiigaran people. It tells the story of the exile of the Hiigarans to the desolate desert world of Kharak, their desperate battle for survival, the discovery of the great Hyperspace Core in the wreck of the ship that brought them to the planet, and their resulting battle to reclaim their original homeworld from the tyrannical Taiidan Empire. Subsequent entries in the series have expanded on the Hiigarans' return to galactic prominence and their survival in the face of new threats.

Almost all Homeworld video games are real-time strategy games set in a full 3D universe, allowing vertical movement and attacks to come from any direction. Each game features a series of missions, through which a narrative unfolds, as well as various multiplayer options. Many of the games are accompanied by manuals, PDFs and websites that further expand the franchise's background lore and storyline.

The video games have been developed by several companies, although the same core team including Rob Cunningham has made four of the five "main" games in the series, Homeworld (1999), Homeworld 2 (2003), Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (2016) and Homeworld 3 (2024), the first two at Relic Entertainment and the latter two at Blackbird Interactive. The remaining core game, Homeworld Cataclysm (2000), renamed Homeworld: Emergence in 2017, was made by Barking Dog Studios in consultation with Relic. The IP was originally owned by publishers Sierra (aka Vivendi), then sold to THQ and currently reside with Gearbox Software.

Both mobile and VR side-games have been developed, and Modiphius Entertainment have released a series of tabletop games based on the franchise.

Curiously, despite the franchise's age and well-developed lore, no comic books or novels have been written or set in the Homeworld universe.

The title card from my venerable History of Homeworld series.

The Canon

The Homeworld canon consists of seven video games, a remaster of two of those games, and a series of tabletop games.

The core canon consists of:

• Homeworld (1999)
• Homeworld: Cataclysm (2000), renamed Homeworld: Emergence in 2017
• Homeworld 2 (2003)
• Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (2016)
• Homeworld 3 (2024)

In 2015, Homeworld and Homeworld 2 were re-released as Homeworld Remastered, a thorough remake of the first two games with updating for compatibility with modern systems.

The spin-off games consist of:

• Homeworld Mobile (2022)
• Homeworld: Vast Reaches (2024)

The spin-off tabletop games consist of:

• Homeworld: Revelations (2022)
• Homeworld: Fleet Command (2023)

Homeworld tells the story of the Kushan people as they leave their desert planet of Kharak and journey across the galaxy to locate their long-lost homeworld, Hiigara.

Homeworld: Cataclysm, set fifteen years later, tells the story of the conflict between the Hiigarans and the mysterious organism known only as "the Beast."

Homeworld 2, set one hundred years after Cataclysm, tells of the battle between the Hiigarans and the Vaygr warlord Makaan.

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is set 106 years before the events of Homeworld and tells of the desert expedition sent to find the long-lost First City of Kharak. The game is notable for being the only one in the series set on a planetary surface rather than in deep space.

Homeworld 3 is set one century after Homeworld 2 and revolves around the arrival of the Anomaly, a mysterious force threatening the galaxy. Karan S'jet, a key protagonist of the first two games, vanishes whilst investigating the Anomaly, sparking the commissioning of a new mothership to track her down.

Homeworld Mobile is a game designed for mobile phones. Set fifteen years after Homeworld 2, it tells of a Hiigaran expedition beyond the Eye of Aarran, into the mysterious Nimbus Galaxy where new threats await.

Homeworld: Vast Reaches is a VR game set shortly after Homeworld, telling of the conflict between the Hiigarans and the treacherous Radaa.

Homeworld: Revelations is a tabletop roleplaying game published by Modiphius, using their 2d20 rules system. Players create characters and take part in narratives set during any part of the Homeworld timeline.

Homeworld: Fleet Command is a tabletop wargame/board game using large numbers of model spaceships, where players can re-enact battles from the video games or take part in new campaigns. 

The planet Kharak during the events of Deserts of Kharak.

The Backstory

For a more detailed summary, check out my History of Homeworld series.

Prequel game Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak sets the initial scene. The desert planet of Kharak is home to the Kushan, a humanoid species divided into several large, distinct family-clan structures, the kiithid. Most of the clans are united in the Coalition of the Northern Kiithid. Some years before the start of the game, it was discovered that the planet Kharak is dying. The small seas are drying up, the amount of fertile land is dropping dangerously and the planet will not be able to support life for more than another three centuries or so. The Kushan have launched satellites and even people into orbit, but are a long way from being able to evacuate the planet, and there is nowhere to evacuate to.

A malfunctioning satellite uncovers an unidentified but incredibly powerful energy signal coming from deep within the Great Banded Desert, a vast, borderline uninhabitable region on the equator. The Coalition launches an expedition to find the source of the signal, but they are attacked by the Gaalsien, an exiled kiith who inhabit the deep desert and have gained access to advanced technology from an unknown source. The Gaalsien are religious fanatics, believing that the pursuit of high technology and space travel will bring about a prophecy that will destroy the Kushan people. The Coalition desert carrier Kapisi breaks through the Gaalsien lines and discovers that there are myriad wrecked starships across the desert, some having apparently materialised in solid rock. The Gaalsien have ransacked these ships to gain access to new technology. The Kapisi refits with some of this new tech itself. Eventually it defeats the Gaalsien flagship and finds the source of the signal: a wrecked spacecraft known as the Khar-Toba. According to legend, Khar-Toba was the First City of Kharak, and the explorers find a vast city buried under the sands, centred on the ship.

In the succeeding decades, Khar-Toba is thoroughly explored and excavated. Two objects of immense interest are found. The first is a technological object generating the energy signature, apparently a quantum waveform generator capable of faster-than-light travel: the Hyperspace Core. The second is a map, made of stone that is not native of Kharak: the Guidestone. The Guidestone's three-dimensional coordinates pinpoint the location of a spot near the Galactic Core known only as Hiigara, the ancient word for "Home." This confirms the xenogenesis theory, that the Kushan are not native to Kharak, as they share no DNA or other genetic similarities with the planet's few native animal species. The Kushan instead came to Kharak some three thousand years ago, fell into a dark age of primitive barbarism, and then climbed back out to a level of technological development.

With the impending extinction of all life on Kharak, the Kushan agree to band together as never before and build an immense starship. This vessel and a support fleet will travel to Hiigara and reconnoitre the situation before returning to begin a mass evacuation. The vessel - known only as "the Mothership" when a more aesthetically pleasing name cannot be decided upon by all the parties involved - and its support structures take almost sixty years to build. More than 600,000 people are chosen to accompany the vessel and its crew of 50,000 in tightly-packed cryosleep chambers. Karan S'jet was chosen to undergo the dangerous neurosurgery required to merge with the Mothership's central processor to become Fleet Command.

Unfortunately, when the Mothership launches and tests the Hyperspace Core, the hyperspace interdiction field it was generating around the Kharakian system - causing interloper ships to materialise in solid rock or crash instead - vanished. A sensor network monitoring the field reported this development to its superiors. By the time the Mothership returned from its hyperspace test flight, it found Kharak burning in space, having been hit by multiple weapons of mass destruction. More than 300 million people had been killed. The Mothership returned in time to capture one of the attacking ships. Interrogating its crew, the Kushan learned that they came from the Taiidan Empire, a vast space confederation spanning much of the galaxy. The Kushan people, known to the Taiidan as "The Exiles," had been banished to Kharak more than three millennia ago with the agreement to never develop hyperspace technology or leave Kharak. Breaking that agreement - which the Kushan had no knowledge of - led to the destruction of Kharak.

The Mothership and its fleet were grossly outnumbered and outgunned but possessed one advantage: the Hyperspace Core they possessed was at least an orders magnitude more powerful than the drives used by the Taiidan. The Mothership and its fleet could jump thousands of light-years at a time, as opposed to the dozens of the Taiidan ship, allowing them to simply outrun the Taiidan border fleets all the way to Hiigara.

The journey of the Mothership from Kharak to Hiigara is covered in the original Homeworld, and sees the Kushan learn that they are the descendants of an ancient interstellar empire which grew too greedy and powerful, and was overthrown by a coalition of other races including the Taiidan and the incredibly powerful Bentusi, an "unbound" species of traders who have merged with their ships to live forever in space. The Bentusi do not hold the descendants responsible for the crimes of their ancestors, especially as the Taiidan Empire itself has become morally corrupt, brutal and tyrannical. The use of forbidden weapons of mass destruction spurs a civil war within the Empire, and censure by the Galactic Council. Eventually, aided by the Bentusi and the Taiidan Republican movement, the Mothership makes it to Hiigara. Its fleet destroys the Taiidan flagship and kills the Taiidan Emperor. The Empire collapses, with warlords and the new Republican government vying for power. The 650,000 survivors of Kharak reoccupy Hiigara, becoming known as the Hiigaran people once more. Karan S'jet survives extraction from the Mothership but with a mysterious side-effect: she no longer ages.

Fifteen years later, as depicted in Homeworld: Cataclysm (aka Homeworld: Emergence) a ship of the mining Kiith Somtaaw becomes embroiled in a secretive conflict. A million-year-old starship from another galaxy is discovered, harbouring a lifeform known as the Beast. Capable of subverting both biological and technological systems, the Beast takes over several Hiigaran and Taiidan fleets and destroys multiple Bentusi vessels (who are very susceptible to its influence), forcing many others to fleet. The Somtaaw make several technological breakthroughs and finally destroy the Beast with their advanced weaponry. The conflict is covered up to prevent mass panic, with the Somtaaw instead honoured for helping defeat an unspecified Taiidan warlord plot against Hiigara.

In the following decades, the Hiigaran people discover that the mysterious and ancient Progenitors, who existed more than ten thousand years ago before vanishing overnight, leaving behind many obscure ruins, built three great hyperspace cores, capable of jumping clear across the galaxy. The Bentusi discovered one, whilst the ancient Hiigarans discovered the second. The third remains missing.

One hundred years later, in Homeworld 2, the Vaygr, an obscure species from the remote eastern reaches of the galaxy, suddenly invaded the rest of civilised space. The Vaygr quickly overran frontier settlements from numerous species, apparently jumping far beyond the abilities of their opponents. Karan S'jet realised that the Vaygr and their charismatic warlord, Makaan, had discovered the third great core. Makaan was now on a crusade to unite the three cores, which according to ancient, garbled history, would open the way to Sajuuk, one of the most famed Progenitors (and a key character in Hiigaran mythology). A new Mothership, the Pride of Hiigara, was constructed in record time.

In the Vaygr War, Hiigara came under siege but the Pride of Hiigara scoured the galaxy for clues on how to defeat Makaan. Eventually, in the ancient starship graveyard at Karos, it discovered a Progenitor Dreadnought. Making use of its power, the Hiigarans were able to destroy several Vaygr fleets. During one battle with Progenitor drones, the Bentusi flagship, the Great Harbour Ship Bentus, self-destructed to destroy the hardy foes. The Pride recovered the Bentusi core and pursued Makaan to Balcora Gate, a great hyperspace entry point to the black hole cluster at the centre of the galaxy. There the Pride finally destroyed Makaan, seized the third core and was able to reactivate Sajuuk, now revealed to be a Progenitor flagship vessel. Karan S'jet took command of the Sajuuk and raced back to Hiigara to destroy the last Vaygr forces threatening the homeworld, including the use of Progenitor planet-killing weaponry uncovered by Makaan.

Making full use of the Sajuuk's power and the three united cores, Karan S'jet discovered the Eye of Aarran, a vast hyperspace gateway. Unlocking the gate revealed the existence of an entire network of gates floating in the space between stars, linking all of the galactic sectors together with instantaneous travel. A new golden age of interstellar trade and diplomacy began. Or so it appears...

The Homeworld galaxy - what we call M51a - during the events of Homeworld and Homeworld 2.

The Setting

The Homeworld saga takes place in M51a, what we call the Whirlpool Galaxy, located 23.5 million light-years from Earth. Although the Homeworld series mostly revolves around humanoid or human-looking species, it has nothing to do with Earth at all, and Earth does not appear or is even mentioned. Some fan theories suggest that the mysterious Progenitors may be humans from Earth, or our descendants in a distant future, but there is little corroborating evidence.

The following are key factors in the setting:

The Progenitors

A mysterious, ancient civilisation who dominated the galaxy more than ten thousand years ago before vanishing overnight. The vast mega-structures in the Karos Graveyard and the derelict at Tanis are remnants of their civilisation. They had total mastery of hyperspace and built the Three, the great hyperspace cores allowing for Far Jumping. They also built the Great Hyperspace Gate Network. Only one Progenitor name has survived through history, Sajuuk, who built the ship of the same name and the Cores. Sajuuk became a religious figure to the Hiigaran people.

The Bentusi

Oldest of the known races, the Bentusi arose to become a spacefaring civilisation some millennia after the fall of the Progenitors. The Bentusi found the First Core and used it to become dominant in matters of trade. A peaceful species, the Bentusi founded the Galactic Council as a forum for interstellar diplomacy. They later forsook their homeworld and merged with their ships, becoming creatures of space: the "Unbound." The Bentusi were adversely affected by the Beast War, most fleeing the galaxy, leaving behind only their Great Harbour Ship, the Bentus. The Bentus was destroyed during the Vaygr War. The First Core was claimed by the Hiigarans.

The Hiigarans (aka Kushan)

The Hiigarans area a humanoid species who act as the primary protagonists of the Homeworld series. The Hiigarans established a galactic empire some four thousand years ago, but became rivals of the Taiidan, whom they believed had corrupted the Galactic Council into always taking their side. Discovering the Second Core in secret, the Hiigarans used it to launch a military attack on the Taiidan homeworld, crippling their fleets. The Bentusi forced the Hiigarans to surrender, but they (apparently) destroyed the Core rather than surrender it. In secret, the Hiigarans took the Core with them to Kharak, but forgot about it when their high-tech civilisation collapsed. The survivors took three millennia to rebuild a technology base and rediscover the Core, and then used it to return Hiigara. Only 650,000 Hiigarans survived the annihilation of Kharak by the Taiidan to repopulated their homeworld, but by over a century later the population had boomed to the hundreds of millions thanks to a high birth rate, genetic engineering and adopting outcasts from other species.

The Taiidan

A humanoid, space-faring species who established an empire to rival Hiigara some four thousand years ago. After the Hiigarans were exiled to Kharak, the Taiidan Empire became the premiere force in the galaxy. However, over the millennia they came more decadent and corrupt. The Empire's attack on Kharak using banned weapons of mass destruction spurred civil war and rebellion. The Taiidan subsequently splintered into independent warlord kingdoms and a democratic Taiidan Republic, allied to Hiigara. The primary antagonists of Homeworld, and play a supporting role in Homeworld: Cataclysm.

The Turanic Raiders

Pirates of the Outer Rim, employed by the Taiidan Empire as mercenaries. The Turanic Raiders aided the Empire in its attack on Kharak. Minor antagonists in Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm.

The Kadeshi

Inhabitants of the Great Nebula. A splinter-group of Hiigarans/Kushan whose ships did not make it to Kharak, instead foundering inside the Nebula. The Kadeshi are fiercely insular and xenophobic. Minor antagonists in Homeworld.

The Beast

A powerful and hostile biotech organism of unknown origin. The Beast was discovered by extragalactic explorers who endured unusually long exposure to hyperspace on their way to the galaxy. The Beast was discovered and inadvertently released by Hiigarans of Kiith Somtaaw, but with the help of the Bentusi they were able to overcome and defeat the Beast. The primary antagonist of Homeworld: Cataclysm.

The Radaa

Duplicitous interstellar traders who are instrumental to Hiigara rebuilding its technology base after the reoccupation of the planet, but later turn on the Hiigarans. The primary antagonists of Homeworld: Vast Reaches.

The Vaygr

A species of raiders and warriors from the galactic east, divided into warring factions and groups. United the warleader Makaan after he discovered the Third Core, but defeated by Karan S'jet during the Vaygr War. The primary antagonists of Homeworld 2.

The Keepers

AI-controlled spacecraft and artefacts left behind by the Progenitors, and almost impervious to harm. They seem to be in perfect working order despite the passage of at least ten millennia. Minor antagonists in Homeworld 2, after a brief appearance in Homeworld.

The Nimbus Galaxy

Another galaxy, located an unknown distance from the Whirlpool Galaxy and only accessible via the Eye of Aarran gate network. This galaxy is home to the Tanoch Empire, the Yaot Federation, the Amassari Remain, the Iyatequa Traders and the Cangacian pirates. The main location for Homeworld Mobile.

The Anomaly

An unidentified phenomenon which appears to be destroying the Great Hyperspace Gate Network; its appearance sparks the events of Homeworld 3.

The artwork of British SF artist Chris Foss and his contemporary Peter Elson was a key influence on Homeworld.

Behind the Scenes

Work on Homeworld began in 1997 as the first project at Relic Entertainment, a new video game studio based in Canada. The original idea was to create a video game inspired by the art of pioneering science fiction artists Peter Elson and Chris Foss, and using a similar premise to the 1970s show Battlestar Galactica (a remake of which began airing shortly after the release of Homeworld 2).

Homeworld was released in late 1999 and was an immediate hit. Publishers Sierra (later Vivendi) were keen on a sequel, but Relic were contracted by Microsoft to make a new game for much more money, which became Impossible Creatures. Sierra instead commissioned Barking Dog Studios to make an expansion, Homeworld: Cataclysm, but the expansion ended up becoming a larger and more original game, so they released it as a stand-alone title in late 2000.

Relic released Homeworld 2 in 2003, but the game did disappointingly. Budget limitations meant the original concept, of "Dust Wars" fought amidst vast space derelicts, was dropped in favour of a linear campaign similar to the original game. Shortly after release, Relic were acquired by THQ and put to work on Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, which was released to enormous success in 2004. The company then made the similarly successful World War II historical RTS Company of Heroes (2006).

After the release of Company of Heroes, many of the founder and original team at Relic left to found Blackbird Interactive in 2007. The company began work on Hardspace: Shipbreakers, a "spiritual predecessor" to Homeworld revolving around exploring wrecked spaceships on a desert planet.

Also in 2007, THQ bought the Homeworld IP from Vivendi, leading to speculation that Relic would make a new game, but with the original development team now at Blackbird, there was limited interest in pursuing the project. Relic instead made Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (2009) and Company of Heroes 2 (2013). In 2013 THQ collapsed and Relic was acquired by Sega; Sega refused to buy the Homeworld IP, which was instead acquired by Gearbox.

Gearbox and Blackbird Interactive entered discussions on a collaboration, which resulted in Hardspace: Shipbreakers becoming an official Homeworld prequel game, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, released to a solid reception in 2016. The two companies also collaborated on Homeworld Remastered (2015), a thorough revamping of the original games.

In 2019 Gearbox and Blackbird used crowdfunding platform Fig to fund early development of Homeworld 3, the first mainline new entry in the series for over twenty years. Increased awareness of the franchise also led to Modiphius Entertainment creating spin-off products, namely the tabletop roleplaying game Homeworld: Revelations and tabletop wargame Homeworld: Fleet Command. Gearbox also expanded the video game franchise with Homeworld Mobile, developed by Stratosphere Games, and Homeworld: Vast Reaches, a VR title from FarBridge.

Homeworld 3 is due for release on 13 May 2024.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Age of Empires IV

The venerable real-time strategy series is back. A year ago, after a sixteen-year gap, Microsoft released Age of Empires IV, the latest in one of the most beloved strategy series of all time. It has a very strong heritage to live up to, so the question is if it has succeeded, especially with new franchise developers Relic coming on board. Relic have a solid pedigree, but their last game was the very underwhelming Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III, so a lot was riding on this game for them as well.

The answer to whether this game is a success is, "kind of." The first surprise is that, despite the name, Age of Empires IV is not a sequel. Up to this point the series has always proceeded linearly forwards in time: the original game covered the empires of antiquity, so Rome, Egypt etc, and the second covered the medieval period, whilst the third game took us into the Age of Sail and colonisation. You might be forgiven for thinking Age of Empires IV would take us forwards into the Napoleonic era. Instead, Age of Empires IV is a remake of Age of Empires II. Once again we're in the Middle Ages, and once again we're fighting the Battle of Hastings, guiding the Mongols across Eurasia and fighting the Hundred Years' War between England and France.

Age of Empires IV is perfectly adequate at doing that. As with prior games in the series, you usually start with a town centre and a bunch of villagers whom you can set to work on building up resources: food, wood, stone and gold. You then expand your settlement by adding blacksmiths, universities, markets, barrackers, archery ranges and so on, as well as watchtowers and walls. Age of Empires IV tweaks the formula, mainly by adding a secondary research facility known as the Arsenal and moving some upgrades around between buildings, but it does not significantly rework it. There are some features like now being able to station your units atop walls rather than just behind them, but mostly it's low key changes.

The 3D engine is nice but not a huge advancement on the 3D engines of Age of Empires III and the now-twenty-year-old spin-off, Age of Mythology. The graphics are in fact a tad disappointing for a 2021 release, especially since they are so inexplicably resource-hungry. My PC (16 GB RAM, 12 GB graphics card) which can handle Cyberpunk 2077 and Spider-Man with everything turned up to max (albeit only in HD), chugged regularly with the considerably more visually underwhelming Age of Empires IV. Also, not much is done with the 3D engine. You can zoom in and out a bit and spin the camera a bit and that's it. This isn't Total War or even the much more versatile 3D camera of Relic's own Company of Heroes series.

More baffling, given the modern graphics and physics at work, is a lack of features from older games. In earlier games in the series you got a damage bonus from being on higher ground, but that disappears in this game and both attack and defence bonuses are missing, meaning units on walls with cover are just as vulnerable as if they are standing exposed in a field, which is a bold choice for both a modern game and also for the developers who made RTS cover such a huge feature of their Dawn of War and Company of Heroes series. There's also no ballistic or physic tracking of arrows: arrows will automatically hit their target (even blatantly swerving in mid-air to hit them like a smart missile) even if the target is moving at speed, which is baffling. In earlier games keeping your army active and smartly moving was a key tactical skill, here it is entirely absent.

Balancing against that is somewhat greater factional differences. Earlier games were notorious for having very samey sides, with maybe one or two unique units and maybe a single unique building or upgrade. Age of Empires IV does go a bit more into making the sides different, with French cavalry being much more hard-hitting than anybody else's, whilst the English have superior longbows. Most interesting are the Mongols, who can pack up their entire base and move it around the map in a matter of seconds which can give rise to unorthodox strategies (a Mongol wonder that can heal all the units around it becomes a mobile field hospital). I do feel this is has been a tad exaggerated. The factions are still mostly very similar, certainly a long way from the balanced-but-asymmetric design of, say, the StarCraft games or even Relic's own Company of Heroes series.

Age of Empires IV does impress with its amount of content: the game ships with four complete campaigns (Normandy, Muscovy, France and the Mongols), eight civilisations, a robust single-player challenge mode, skirmish maps and of course multiplayer. Focusing on just the single-player content, I got about 40 hours out of the game, which is reasonable and a long way from those RTS games which ship with one campaign lasting maybe a quarter of that. Presentation is also excellent, especially the FMV movies which accompany the campaigns with lots of video footage of the actual locations, with CG imposed on top of the real topography to depict the battles. There's also bonus videos on things like how to make a bow and how different tactics developed. There's a nice history documentary feel to the game which is unique and intriguing.

Less appealing are the bugs: as well as the choppy performance, the game's autosaves are disruptive to gameplay. Units will often go into idle mode for no apparent reason: villagers in particular may need to be manually told to do something two or three times before they actually do it. You can't tell a villager to build a wall halfway across the map and expect them to do it, you have to manually watch over them to make sure they don't do 25% of the task and then just doze off (literally, as idle villagers now go to sleep standing up), which is infuriating. Individual missions also have a plethora of bugs, with triggers often not triggering, enemy units not showing up when they're supposed to, or taking some weird path that leaves 50 men wedged behind a bush. It's also concerning that many of these bugs remain extant in the game almost a year after release. There's also the lack of basic QOL features, like being able to easily assign WASD to camera controls.

Taken on its own merits, Age of Empires IV is perfectly fine (bugs excepted). It's safe, but the gameplay loop remains compelling and there's some interesting strategies to tease out. However, the game has to deal with a 500-ton elephant in the room called Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. This ultra-HD remake of Age of Empires II only came out three years ago and has seen three expansions released since then, the most recent only in April. Age of Empires II has less bugs, more responsive and easily customisable controls, a stronger interface, more focused gameplay and, although only being in isometric 2D, has sharper, more vivid and far better-performing graphics. It is also a more interesting tactic experience, with ranged weapons performing better from hills and tougher stone buildings (those in IV tend to collapse far too easily to just guys with swords and torches, even massive fortresses).

Age of Empires IV (***½) is solid, and will no doubt be expanded with interesting future content. But it's also a game that arrives being almost pre-redundant, since Age of Empires II Definitive Edition does almost everything that IV does in the same time period, but better, with less bugs and a far vaster amount of content, and will take you a lot longer to play through. The game is available now on PC.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Relic Entertainment announces COMPANY OF HEROES 3

Relic Entertainment have announced a third full game in their Company of Heroes real-time strategy series.

Company of Heroes 3 is the follow-up to the original Company of Heroes (2006), which focused on the campaign in Normandy, and Company of Heroes 2 (2013), which depicted events on the Eastern Front. This time the game focuses on the Mediterranean Theatre, with a campaign which takes in battles in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, with the Allies versus the German Wehrmacht. The theatre was selected after discussions between Relic and fans on their forums (presumably at the expense of the Pacific, which we can guess will form the basis of a future fourth game).

Unlike the previous games, which had a linear story-based campaign, Company of Heroes 3 has a dynamic, non-linear campaign which unfolds on a large campaign map, similar to the Total War series (both Relic and Total War developers Creative Assembly are owned by Sega). Players can deploy and move units on the campaign map and use things like naval support and air power to clear the way for the ground forces to advance. Standard real-time battles unfold when ground forces meet in combat. This mode was previewed in the previous Ardennes Assault expansion for Company of Heroes 2, but CoH3 develops the idea in a lot more depth.

The actual battles are now brighter and sunnier, taking place in the desert or on the Mediterranean shore, and there is more focus on detailed infantry combat. Units can fortify buildings as before but they can also breach and storm fortified buildings. Single-player mode has a new "tactical pause" feature which allows players to pause the game and issue orders, a familiar technique from other strategy games but a first for this series.

Allied players will now get rewards for minimising collateral damage to civilian buildings, such as gaining intel from grateful locals or recruiting partisans to add extra firepower to their units. Allied players will also be able to sortie American or British forces, or on some missions a mixture of the two.

Company of Heroes 3 will launch in late 2022, though players will be able to take part in a pre-alpha demo study starting today.

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 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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A History of Homeworld Part 1: The First Time

In the first of a new 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.

The galaxy during the First Time.

The Rise of the Bentusi
Attend carefully, for the mysteries of the past hold many clues for the future and events to come. Wisdom can be gleaned from studying the ancients, their triumphs and their mistakes.

In the most ancient of days, the First Time, there arose the Bentusi, a race great in scientific knowledge and engineering prowess. They built great ships to explore the gulfs between the stars, and delighted in learning new knowledge and contacting new races. They were among the first of the modern races to travel from one star system to another, traversing the galaxy through advanced drives that propelled them at close to the speed of light.

But as they explored the galaxy, the Bentusi found the ruins of an even more ancient, stranger civilisation. Tens of thousands of years before the Bentusi reached the stars, another race had gotten there first. They had built an empire spanning thousands of systems, plumbed the very mysteries of hyperspace to exceed lightspeed and built megastructures that defied easy understanding or comprehension, even for the enlightened Bentusi. Their power had appeared supreme, commanding fleets of intelligent starships and constructing utterly vast space habitats thousands of kilometres in length.

These “Progenitors” were overthrown and destroyed almost overnight. The vast ruins at Karos and Tanis stand testament to the fact that they encountered something that could not be resisted, and they were destroyed or forced to flee the galaxy altogether. The Bentusi, unnerved, could find no evidence of whatever fate had befallen them.

The Great Harbour Ship of Bentus, the flagship of the Bentusi Fleet and the carrier of the First Hyperspace Core for millennia.

What they did find, hidden in a Progenitor derelict, was something remarkable. A hyperspace core of tremendous power, with the ability to allow extremely large starships to cross thousands of light-years in a single bound, to Far Jump. Despite their best efforts, the Bentusi could not replicate the Core. Markings on the derelict suggested that the core might be one of three, but the fate of the other two was unknown. Instead, the Bentusi designed and built the largest starship in their history, the Great Harbour Ship Bentus, and attached the First Core to it.

For millennia, the Bentusi presided over a galaxy at peace. They forged the Outer Rim Trade Routes, allowing dozens and then hundreds of spacefaring races to trade together in peaceful cooperation. The Bentusi identified promising races and gave them the gift of “normal” hyperdrives (derived from the technology of the First Core), allowing them to Short Jump across dozens of light-years at a time. As the centuries passed, the Bentusi became creatures of space, merging with their starships to become “Unbound,” not limited to a single world or system.

During this time many thousands of Progenitor ruins and artefacts were uncovered by numerous races. Progenitor records were almost non-existent, with no histories or detailed accounts left behind to explain their origins or their fate. But a few symbols were found that could be translated. These eventually gave rise to the myth of Sajuuk, the Great Maker, He Whose Hand Shapes What Is.

Chief among those races who were found and helped by the Bentusi were two humanoid species. One originated on a world close to the Galactic Core known as Hiigara. The other, relatively nearby, was located on a world called Taiidan. Both the Hiigarans and Taiidan were civilised and grew rich from trade, but both races also grew resentful of the Bentusi’s overwhelming power, and in particular their ability to Far Jump, leaving the “lesser races” standing still in comparison.

Hiigara, the homeworld of the Hiigaran people, as seen from space.

Sajuuk’s Wrath
Some five centuries after Hiigara and Taiidan became interstellar players, the galaxy was rocked by a series of military conflicts, which in turn spread more conflict and chaos across the stars. These conflicts revealed that even the Bentusi could not be everywhere at once, and by the time the Bentusi had restored peace (forcibly, in some cases), dozens of powerful confederations had formed, chief among them the Hiigaran and Taiidan empires. Acknowledging the new reality, the Bentusi proposed the founding of a Galactic Council as a forum for peaceful debate and discussion between the new powers. The Hiigarans and Taiidan eagerly agreed and were among the Council’s sixteen founding states.

The Hiigarans and Taiidan may have cooperated to reduce the power of the Bentusi, but they were also rivals. Their empires were approximately equal in power, with between forty and fifty major planetary systems each under their control. Their military technology was roughly matched and their empires located in a similar region of space, the Hiigarans claiming a wide swathe of the Shining Hinterlands around the Galactic Core and the Taiidan slightly further out, towards the Inner Rim. Border conflicts erupted, including several major enough to be called small wars. The Council stepped in each time to negotiate an end to the conflict, but the Hiigarans came to believe that they were being treated badly, with each resolution seeming to favour the Taiidan side. In particular, the imposition of a thirty light-year-wide “buffer zone” between Taiidan and Hiigaran space which encroached strongly into territories claimed by the Hiigaran Empire was seen as a move directly benefiting the Taiidan. The Taiidan were accused of using bribes or blackmail to coerce the Council into making decisions in their favour, a claim outright rejected by the Council. Decades of simmering resentment from the Hiigarans to the Council and to the Taiidan began.

During this period, the Hiigarans made a shattering discovery. In a derelict starship in a remote system, they located the Second Hyperspace Core of the Progenitors. Extracting it, they gained the same ability as the Bentusi, to Far Jump across thousands of light-years in an instant. Like the Bentusi, they had to design and build a special starship to use it. This they named Sajuuk’s Wrath, as the Hiigarans came to believe that Sajuuk himself had forged the Three Hyperspace Cores for a greater purpose.

The Hiigarans’ purpose was more straightforward: survival. Over the preceding decades, the Taiidan had grown more powerful, eclipsing the might of Hiigara. Their empire had grown larger and the Galactic Council continued to make judgements in favour of the Taiidan. The Hiigarans feared that they would be overwhelmed and annexed by the Taiidan gradually over time. To avert this fate, they put into motion an audacious plan.

Every Hiigaran military ship gathered in the skies above Hiigara. The Sajuuk’s Wrath activated its Far Jump capability, opening hyperspace portals to deep inside Taiidani space, far behind their defensive lines. The Hiigaran fleet passed through and annihilated everything in sight. The fleet then jumped to the next defensive strongpoint, destroying everything they could find, and then again. Their jumps were so vast that they outran the warnings that Taiidan tried to send back to their leaders. The first the Taiidani central government knew of the danger was when the Hiigaran fleet emerged out of hyperspace above their homeworld.

The Sajuuk’s Wrath led the armada in bombarding Taiidan from space, destroying its orbital defences and then targeting the surface. According to Hiigaran records, the fleet expertly and surgically targeted military installations and government facilities only, ignoring civilian targets. Taiidan records suggest a more general bombardment that killed millions. The government was annihilated and the Taiidan military decapitated in a single blow.

The Hiigaran fleet returned home approximately sixty-seven hours after departing on its mission. In that time, it had laid the Taiidan Empire low. In the following days, the Hiigarans mounted a widespread offensive along their frontier, retaking dozens of worlds lost or ceded to the Taiidan over the preceding centuries.

The Hiigarans believed that the Galactic Council would, as normal, dither and prevaricate in the face of overwhelming, resolute force, as the Council had often done in the face of Taiidan aggression. However, the Council saw the Hiigarans wielding the Second Core as an existential threat to the galaxy. They feared that the Hiigarans would conquer all of known space, and they issued them with an ultimatum: to surrender the Second Core, to withdraw from all conquered worlds and to stand down and scuttle the bulk of their fleet in the buffer zone between Hiigaran and Taiidan space.

The Hiigarans agreed, but only on the condition that they would surrender the Core to the Bentusi. This was deemed acceptable, but the gambit was a ruse. The Hiigarans launched a sneak attack on the Bentusi using the Sajuuk’s Wrath. They very nearly succeeded, with the first shot coming close to disabling the Bentus’s hyperdrive. But ultimately, they failed. Bentus used its Far Jump drive to summon a vast fleet of reinforcements and in short order the Hiigaran fleet was annihilated. The remnants fled back to Hiigara, the Bentusi in pursuit. The commander of the Sajuuk’s Wrath rejected the call to surrender and instead triggered the ship’s hyperdrive, making a jump directly into the gravity well of the Angel Moon, Hiigara’s largest satellite. The Wrath crashed into the surface of the moon, exploding impressively. The Wrath was gone and – apparently – the Second Core with it.

The Bentusi supported the claim that the Core had been destroyed, a claim in itself suspicious, as the Bentusi had wielded the power of the First Core for millennia. They knew (as we do now) that the Cores, as products of Progenitor technology, were nigh on indestructible and almost invulnerable to physical harm, and the Second Core had almost certainly survived. Yet they made no move to retrieve the Core, a decision which remains a topic of fierce debate.

The Hiigarans offered unconditional surrender. Their empire was dismantled, their conquered worlds liberated and their fleets scuttled. They were left with barely a token defensive flotilla. For the Bentusi, the war had sapped much of their morale and reserve. Sickened by the violence they had unleashed, they renounced their role as the galaxy’s peacekeepers. They remained on the Council but now dedicated themselves to peaceful trade and exploration only.

The Taiidan were not so merciful.

Looking towards the Galactic Core from the Outer Rim.

The Exiles
Admiral Riesstiu, the highest-ranking surviving member of the Taiidan Navy, had committed himself to the rebuilding of the Taiidan military. The homeworld had been decimated, but dozens of other planets survived with an enviable industrial output. Fleets around the edge of the Taiidan Empire, the forces the Hiigarans had jumped past to achieve total strategic surprised, remained intact. A vast armada was assembled. Riesstiu used advanced technology to extend his lifespan by first decades and then possibly centuries. Declaring himself the Emperor of Taiidan, he led the fleet on a war of retribution against Hiigara. Hiigara’s colonies were overrun and conquered in a matter of weeks. The Taiidan fleet closed in on the near-defenceless homeworld and stood poised to incinerate it from orbit when Riesstiu stayed his hand. The Galactic Council and the Bentusi had made a plea for mercy and Riesstiu was aware that the Taiidan’s moral superiority would be lost if they behaved even worse than the Hiigarans had. He announced that the Hiigaran population would be spared. Their planet would become the new throneworld of the Taiidan Empire and the Hiigarans would become slaves of the Taiidan.

The Hiigarans balked at this last point, preferring death to servitude. The Taiidan may have granted them their wish, but again the Council requested clemency. Keen to maintain his authority with the Council, Riesstiu agreed to instead send the surviving Hiigarans into exile on the very fringes of the galaxy. They would take no weapons with them and would leave all of their most advanced technology behind. A fleet of large bulk freighters was assembled, enough to carry millions of people across the galaxy, albeit in some discomfort and with only marginal capacity for food and water.

The Hiigaran people set out on their journey, which would be long, arduous and fraught with danger. Only capable of Short Jumps, the fleet took generations to reach its destination, spending vast amounts of time crawling at sublight whilst their antiquated jump drives recharged. Ships were lost due to malfunctions, mis-jumps and mutiny. Several vessels abandoned the fleet within the Great Nebula, a vast region of star formation on the Outer Rim, preferring to settle the hidden region of Kadesh rather than carry on to their designated destination. But eventually, several surviving ships made planetfall on a remote desert world on the outermost fringes of the galaxy, 35,000 light-years or more from Hiigara. The largest surviving ship became the nexus for a great city, “Khar-Toba” (the First City). The desert planet was named “Kharak,” and the Hiigarans adopted a new name for themselves, the “Kushan.” One of the mightiest empires in the history of the galaxy had been reduced to a handful of survivors in a single city on a barren world.

But they did have one advantage left to them. Before the flight, Hiigaran engineers had secretly landed on the Angel Moon and recovered the Second Core from where it had fallen years earlier. Powered down, it was secreted in the hold of the lead refugee ship and taken with them to Kharak.

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