On This Date In Wing Commander History - KIS Sivar Destroyed (July 18, 2012)

Dundradal

Dundradal

Frog Blast the Vent Core!
In the contested Vega Sector, Crown Prince Gilkarg nar Kiranka, Kalralahr of the Kilrathi armada was secretly overseeing the development of the Proton Accelerator Gun, also known as the Graviton Weapon. Developed on Warhammer XII, the Graviton Weapon could destroy an entire planet by increasing the gravitational force of the planet 137 times. This weapon would be used to crush the Terran colonies with ease, and the KIS Sivar would serve as the platform for this weapon.





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After the loss of Venice in 2654, the Kilrathi had no choice but to abandon the Vega Sector. Gilkarg ordered the Sivar to fire on Warhammer XII to erase all evidence of the super-weapon's development, and in the test that followed, the Sivar completely destroyed the planet and all life on it. The Sivar and its task fleet then relocated to the Epsilon Sector, where they planned to destroy the Goddard Colony. The Sivar fired on the planet, killing all 250,000 Terran colonists on the planet before fleeing into deep space with its strike fleet. The Confederation sent the TCS Tiger's Claw to investigate. They found the colony world utterly devastated by the Kilrathi weapon. One pilot in particular was deeply affected by this massacre, Zachary "Jazz" Colson. He blamed the Confederation,and the Tiger's Claw in particular, for the loss of Goddard. Colson spent the next decade as a traitor to the Confederation before being killed by Christopher Blair.

In the campaign that followed, known as Operation Thor's Hammer, the Tiger's Claw pursued the Sivar and its large fleet of escorts. In several weeks of fighting, the Tiger's Claw managed to destroy the Sivar's escorts and eventually caught up with the Sivar itself in the Vigrid System. On 2655.199, after a prolonged assault by pilots Christopher Blair and Joseph Khumalo, the Sivar and its super-weapon were completely destroyed, and the Tiger's Claw thereafter retreated back to Confederation space.

The loss of the KIS Sivar and the Proton Accelerator Gun was a severe blow to the Empire's efforts to defeat the Confederation, and the technology was lost to the Kilrathi. The Confederation, however, was able to examine pieces of the wreckage including the Proton Accelerator Gun itself. The technology found its way into Confederation ships as the Phase-Transit Cannon was based in part on that found in the Sivar.

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Original update published on July 18, 2012
 
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What? Thrakra? Who the F*** is Thrakra? I thought he was named Gilkarg?
Where does this description text come from in the first place? I think it doesn't exist in my WC1-SM manual. I might be wrong though.
 
Aginor said:
What? Thrakra? Who the F*** is Thrakra? I thought he was named Gilkarg?
Where does this description text come from in the first place? I think it doesn't exist in my WC1-SM manual. I might be wrong though.
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Perhaps the Super Nintendo Secret Missions documentation?

I know it's not in the PC docs.
 
I believe this came from a games magazine (I do not recall which one) - but of course, both the description and the image were originally supplied by Origin.

Edit: Bah, Capi3101 beat me to it.
 
Yes, that's from the intro cutscene added to the SNES version of the game.

The SNES version also has two possible endings -- whether or not the Kilrathi admiral was executed depends on what difficulty you were playing the game at.
 
What? Thrakra? Who the F*** is Thrakra? I thought he was named Gilkarg?
Where does this description text come from in the first place? I think it doesn't exist in my WC1-SM manual. I might be wrong though.
Click to expand...

As others have noted, it's from a supplement created by Origin for Computer Gaming World magazine in 1991. The line art you see is left over from Wing Commander I; the various ships you find in the addons were originally rendered for that game and then cut for space... and so they had 'Claw Marks' art (which was actually the line art provided to the outside company rendering the ships) made. It would be nice to find the other drawings someday!

The two transports were originally alternate models for the Drayman and Dorkir. The 'Diligent' would have been the Drayman's tanker configuration... and the Lumbari would have been the freighter version of the Dorkir (the one used in the final game was originally the tanker.) The Snakeir wasn't a carrier, either... it was the Kilrathi "Spikeri" corvette model (which is why you can see a big cockpit at the front.)

I can't venture a guess as to why the star post artwork wasn't included in Claw Marks, though (or why Venture art WAS, since it's not in the game!)

The Thrakhra thing is interesting, though, because it reminds me of how there was an ENTIRELY different backstory/world for Wing Commander I (partially from Origin reps) on bulletin boards in 1990. If you posted about 'Thrakhra' to Compuserve around that time everyone would have known you were talking about the Kilrathi prince, which is sort of fascinating that that just disappears over time.

As for Gilkarg, it's hard to believe but The Secret Missions actually predates that name by six years. He was just 'the Admiral' in the game... Gilkarg comes from the 1997 Kilrathi Saga manual! (... how it wound up in Action Stations is anybody's guess; I would think it either comes from an early manuscript of that book or it was caught and changed when someone at Origin did their editing pass... Dr. Forstchen knowing a bit of single-reference arcana from a reissued manual seems unlikely. No offense, but they guy couldn't keep his own character's names straight.)
 
The loss of the KIS Sivar and the Proton Accelerator Gun was a severe blow to the Empire's efforts to defeat the Confederation, and the technology was lost to the Kilrathi.
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Never understood why this would be the case. The Kilrathi didn't keep any plans of the Sivar or the PAG? All the scientific, engineering, and technological know-how was lost to them? All their scientists and engineers who worked on it were dead? Keep in mind, for a weapon of that scale, you're probably talking a team of hundreds of people that would be familiar with the technology, and certainly tens of people that would be intimately familiar with it (think Manhattan project kind of team sizes, or bigger).

Is this why?

Gilkarg ordered the Sivar to fire on Warhammer XII to erase all evidence of the super-weapon's development, and in the test that followed, the Sivar completely destroyed the planet and all life on it.
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Because this is just silly. If you routinely kill all the scientists and engineers who have a breakthrough and give you new technology, you'll never develop an new technology, and Confed would have easily defeated the Cats early on.

I could understand if the specialized facilities needed to develop the ship and its weapon were destroyed it could take years (or even a decade+) to rebuild it and build another, but the people wouldn't be starting from scratch. I don't believe it would have been any harder to take the engineering team off the planet than to blow it up with them on it (in fact, many were probably already off). And you're telling me that the Kilrathi never invented something like the CD-ROM to take a copy of their plans and technical specs with them before they blew up the facility?
 
Hey, there had to be some reason why the Emperor ordered Gilkarg's execution - a screwup of that magnitude (namely nuking the science team, the facilities, all the damned plans for the weapon, and then the weapon itself) would probably warrant it.

That what Gilkarg gets for not stocking up on blank media. Let that be a lesson to you, kids.
 
Never understood why this would be the case. The Kilrathi didn't keep any plans of the Sivar or the PAG? All the scientific, engineering, and technological know-how was lost to them? All their scientists and engineers who worked on it were dead? Keep in mind, for a weapon of that scale, you're probably talking a team of hundreds of people that would be familiar with the technology, and certainly tens of people that would be intimately familiar with it (think Manhattan project kind of team sizes, or bigger).

Is this why?
Click to expand...

Well, first of all, it just isn't the case. The Wing Commander II Joan's Fighting Ships update addresses this directly by noting that "... presumably the Kilrathi have more Sivar-class dreadnoughts, but none have been spotted since that first appearance."

That noted, Super Wing Commander also deals with this somewhat by following The Secret Missions with a series of additional missions where the Tiger's Claw hunts down and destroys the research facility where the Sivar was developed.
 
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