1. By Wing Commander 3 I got the impression that the Kilrathi wanted to end the war quickly. I don't know why but there seemed to be some urgency about them. Did they know something about the Nephilum coming that they needed to defeat Confed quickly?
Several reasons are given in the introduction to the Wing Commander III novelization:
- The war has bankrupted the Imperial clan.
- There are reports that the Mantu are again imposing on the Kilrathi border; Thrakhath wanted to end the war so he could focus on that next challenge (in reality, the Mantu were not a threat... but the Kilrathi didn't see them this way).
- The war had twisted Kilrathi alliances against the Kiranka and had an impact on court politics. Assassination attempts, an entirely human concept, had occured against the Emperor and the Prince.
- The Emperor is on his way out; he wants to celebrate the Sivar on Earth... and Thrakhath needs to win the war in order to be accepted as the new leader.
2. Sivar's Prophecy does anyone think that Thrakath or one of the other Kilrathi predicted Blair to be the one who "Who has the heart of the tiger, but Ii not Kilrathi Born." When they saw Blair's achievements.
Sure, with your new leading version of the quote.
The actual Prophecy intro says "one who has the heart of a *Kilrathi* but is not Kilrathi born".
While I like the suggestion, that the 'lower caste' assigned Blair the nickname (Thrakhath claims) because they believe him to be this figure, it doesn't fit the actual quotes (or the mood of the war; it's doubtful that any Kilrathi believed their war against plant-eating monkeys which they were winning all the way up to the last minutes was a form of cleansing fire).
Thrakhath, almost certainly not - he wasn't especially religious.
3. If the Kilrathi live and die by the hierarchy of the Empire, do we know of any Mass-suicide following Kilrah's destruction?
Indeed. Star*Soldier's timeline says: "M’ragrakath nar Hhallas is appointed as the main Kilrathi spokesperson and is assassinated during an international conference on Alliance Rights on Venus. Following his death, an overwhelming percentage of Kilrathi survivors commit Zu’kara, a popular form of ritual suicide. In an effort to ease tensions, the Terran Diplomatic Association sets up eighteen reservation worlds and fights to incorporate them into the Alliance." This was initially created for a Wing Commander IV timeline that was never published, and included in Origin's Wing Commander bible until it was 'canonized' by S*S.
Yes, there was a mass suicide. You can read about it in Star*Soldier, the Arena manual. It was, apparently, pretty major - possibly, most of the Kilrathi war-era casualties are actually the post-war suicide.
Indeed; the Wing Commander Prophecy guide gives us some fairly outrageous casualty figures for the war: 2.1 trillion humans and 7.4 trillion Kilrathi. A mass suicide among Kilrathi survivors (which may mean surviving warriors or everyone, it isn't clear) would explain this to some degree (it's still an impossibly huge amount, indicating that the war was going on on a much greater scale than we personally saw).
WCATV has a backstory that many people seem to be missing, a story about Thrakath (with the help of his sister, the pristess) trying to force clans under the more direct controll of the Imperial Family. Personally I belive it gives us a great insight of how the Empire work. We see some Kilrathi strongly oposing to this move, with tha whatshisname Kil even alling himself with Blair against Thrakath.
Good catch. This is actually spread across several sources. We also see it, surprisingly enough, in the movie-related stuff. The Confederation Handbook talks about how Confederation intelligence believes Kilrathi shipbuilding is being centralized under the Kiranka banner instead of the various clans and Pilgrim Stars has Kilrathi talking about these efforts at conslidation and their reaction thereto.