emperor

Actually it is. IIRC he loses it fighting the Varni when one of their pilots goes kamikaze on his flagship during Varni-Kilrathi War.
 
Yes ,along with others like Hari

Varni Destroyed easily by the Kilrathi ,as they were not advanced technologically.

Only Humans and Mantu , where able to stop the Kilrathi.:D
 
Varni were actually technologically more advanced than the Kilrathi, but they were not focused on waging war.

The Varni are alive following the war between the two. We met several during Action Stations. Varni are described as big lizards.

I don't think the Mantu or Hari every get descriptions.

Here is some brief info on them. You can read the ICIS manual for stuff on the Mantu, while the Hari are mentioned in Fleet Action.

The Mantu were a race of paranoid explorers that ran into the Kilrathi and fought a war. The Kilrathi played them up following the conflict. They become the Kilrathi boogey man.

The Hari were a race that traveled in massive colony ships going from planet to planet using up all the resources before moving on. So they aren't so much an empire as a lot of burnt out planets.
 
The Hari were completely wiped out, the Varni were enslaved. So, there are still Varni around, they're just serving the Kilrathi. We don't know what happened to the enslaved races after the war...
 
Now the Varni were the ones that pretty much took out a capital ship with fighters right? With constant coordinated attacks on the shields.
 
thats quiete interesting..

Do you still think the kilrathi keep slaves,after the treaty of torgo and the new leadership of melek (?)


keeping slaves is wrong and evil and even melek would admit this, after his change of behaviour
 
Now the Varni were the ones that pretty much took out a capital ship with fighters right? With constant coordinated attacks on the shields.

Yes and the attack broke down once the Varni Wing Commander was killed. The Kilrathi were able to rally and destroy the Varni forces.
 
Was there any talk of slaves in any of the docs from the cancelled Priv 3? Don't forget human pirates (in Gemini at least) traded in slaves too.
 
Varni were actually technologically more advanced than the Kilrathi, but they were not focused on waging war.

Yes you are right:)
I think that Varni didnt even have Jump capabilities , that was the reason I said that.

Anyway, there are lots of interesting races that we dont know a lot about them or whats their current status (Dolosians,Mopoks etc) , hopefuly a new installment :D will shed some light
 
I think that Varni didnt even have Jump capabilities , that was the reason I said that.

I believe you're thinking of the Hari--they had massive generational ships that went from star to star at sublight speeds and then would multiply and eat up the resources of planets they found... ultimately destroying them and creating more ships to spread further in the process.

thats quiete interesting..

Do you still think the kilrathi keep slaves,after the treaty of torgo and the new leadership of melek (?)

keeping slaves is wrong and evil and even melek would admit this, after his change of behaviour

Yes, I think it is possible and even likely. The ICIS manual has an article about the Midway's first operation against a group of Kilrathi pirates... and it says the Confederation wll execute the pirates themselves and turn over the women, children and slaves to the Kilrathi government. More broadly, consider the universe map that came with WCP--the former Empire is a red sea of Kilrathi clans andnot a quilt of freed slave planets.

I think there's three things to consider:

- Slavery is a cornerstone of Kilrathi culture. Their entire system is built on the backs of races like the Varni, Wu, Ka, Sorn, Gorth, etc. The alien slaves aren't just fetching water and serving dinner--they run industry, they advance the science and so on. Action Stations even talks about how Kilrathi planets are set up, with a tiny population (tens of thousands) of actual Kilrathi supervising whole races of slaves. It's something that would be extremely difficult to simply 'turn off'--the Kilrathi would need to ease away from slavery generationally, if they were so willing.

- The war wasn't so much won as it was ended. This is where the World War II analog breaks down--the Kilrathi weren't defeated tactically... their culture was shocked into agreeing not to keep fighting. The Confederation in 2669 knows that the Kilrathi have the dvantage in men and materiel and that if they chose to press the fight they would almost certainly win--so the terms of surrender (and how they are enforced) have to be mindful of that. The Confederation can't sit down and dictate a paradigm shift in how society works for every single Kil... because that gives them something to keep fighting for.

- Kilrathi culture is more complex than just Melek. Melek acts like a fuzzy human and the Confederation seems to reward him for that fact... but he doesn't speak for the entirety of the former empire. He is recognized as Chancellor by the Confederation but he is viewed as a traitor by many Kils... and the reality of the political situation is far messier than just Melek trying to build a new homeworld and stay out of the universe's way. The former clans are fighting a violent five-sided civil war to crown a new emperor and the Confederation doesn't want to become involved in that, much less forcing them to completely change their culture. (In the same vein, we should remember that slavery is wrong and evil to us*... and entirely normal to the Kilrathi. There was no reset switch where they suddenly grew human morals--in fact, the pecularity of their defeat requires that they adhere to a fairly alien set of values in the first place.)

* - and as someone else pointed out, there's some human slavery in Wing Commander. We see it in dark places in Privateer and there's also a very interesting line in the Privateer manual. In describing slavery in Gemini we're told that it's horrible, almost "like the 24th century". So, apparently it's a habit human society hasn't managed to permanently kick yet.
 
Back
Top