Races enslaved by the Kilrathi

Aginor

Aginor

Vice Admiral
Another question I've been wanting to ask for a long time now:

What do we know about races enslaved by the Kilrathi, what they were used for, and their fate after the war?

My thoughts to that:
- I don't know how many races the Kilrathi enslaved. Do we have a list somewhere?

- The Kilrathi need good engineers and similar people because they have claws and therefore can't be very good mechanics. Did they keep races as slaves only for a certain purpose? And if yes: which ones and for what kinds of work?
(IIRC we know they didn't even invent their first spaceships!! How did they develop new ones?)

- If the slaves were freed after the war, how did the Kilrathi manage to keep their economy running?
 
Space Point!

Races enslaved by the Kilrathi seem to have been used for everything - the Varni alone served as everything from household servants to heavy industry labor to weapons designers. Their entire society seems to be based around slavery.

Now, we don't know for sure, but I'm going to suggest that the Kilrathi slave races were *not* freed after the war ended. We know the Confederation was very nervous about not forcing the Kilrathi to give up too much... and here's an interesting reference to them in the ICIS manual: after the Midway defeats the group of Kilrathi pilots, the Confederation releases "women, children and slaves" back into Kilrathi custody.

It's worth nothing that there were supposedly few if any human slaves at the end of the war - Thrakhath ordered them all executed in Fleet Action. Kilrathi slave labor would be other conquered species, most of which aren't part of the Confederation. And of course the Kilrathi aren't the only race that uses slave labor - you can sell people on the frontier in Privateer, too.

... and all that said, there *does* seem to be the slightest glimmer of a Kilrathi abolition movement. Hobbes talks about how one of his reasons for defection (and presumably this is a belief of the Ghorah Kharran rebels) was that the keeping of slaves was a disgrace.

(As for Kilrathi hands - I'm going to guess that this isn't an issue. We do know that there are Kilrathi weapons designers... claws do retract, and although they look like cat paws they presumably must be more utile.)

Kilrathi slave races fall into two categories - larger star nations that they went to war with and conquered (of which we know several - Gorth, Sorn, Ka, Eyoka, Wu, Varni, Firekkans... Terrans) and individual planets of primitives which they conquered (Dolosians, Dioscuri - this would have been the fate of the Mopokes)
 
I was wondering if the Kilrathi would ever *eat* human prisoners during the war. It would be quite terrifying if they did. But they are huge tigers, after all.
 
Fruitcake said:
I was wondering if the Kilrathi would ever *eat* human prisoners during the war. It would be quite terrifying if they did. But they are huge tigers, after all.
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I can only remember one time that Kilrathi ate a human, and I believe that was considered a gesture of respect for her skill as a warrior. Either that or it was just another way to piss Blair off.
 
Fruitcake said:
I was wondering if the Kilrathi would ever *eat* human prisoners during the war. It would be quite terrifying if they did. But they are huge tigers, after all.
Click to expand...

Yes, they did - it's a common taunt ("I shall feast on your entrails"), and Thrakhath tells Blair he ate Angel at a victory feast.
 
I've never heard of slave Kilrathi - their society does divide between nobles and serfs, but the kilra'hra seem to be far above alien slaves in terms of status.
 
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