The Kyrans: 500 BTSY to TSY 2270
The Interstellar Age, S02E07
By the mid-23rd century, humans had been searching for intelligent life among the stars for over three hundred years; the virgonids, even longer. Other than the epochal discovery of Earth by the virgonids in the 19th century TSY, those long and painstaking efforts had thus far yielded thin results.
This “Great Silence,” as it was called on Earth in the 20th and 21st centuries, was, in retrospect, explicable by a number of factors. First, while life is commonplace in the galaxy, intelligent life is rare, and technologically advanced intelligent life rarer still. Long range detection of basic life with late 21st century technology proved relatively easy, simplifying the human colonization project. But even with more advanced 22nd and 23rd century telescopes, those rare technological civilizations proved nearly impossible to sort from the chaff.
Early human efforts focused on the search for radio and microwave signals—which, we now know, technological civilizations tend to produce for only a short period of time before either dying out, or switching to more advanced and harder to detect methods of communication. Even during these short windows, the range of these transmissions are very limited, when not sent directly to a receiver at high power. Beyond a few light years, such emissions simply fade into the cosmic microwave background.
Early searches for technosignatures also yielded nothing. The virgonids detected industrial gasses in Earth’s atmosphere in the 19th century, and were close enough to investigate in person, leading to a positive identification. But other long range detections of trace “industrial” gasses were not enough evidence on their own to prove technological life. Indeed, once investigated using Stardrive decades later, many of these detections proved to be false positives, the gasses either occurring via previously unknown natural processes, or having been misidentified in the first place.
The only other technosignatures which would have been detectable by early long range astronomy were abnormal high-energy discharges, and so-called “megastructures”—gigantic engineering projects like Dyson swarms, which might be visible transiting their host stars.
Again, each of these were dead ends. High energy discharges produced by technology such as UMAX-type weapons and Stardrives generally fade into the cosmic background after a few dozen light years. Technology that might produce significantly more energetic outbursts, visible across tens of thousands of light years, we now know to be extremely rare, and difficult to distinguish from natural high-energy outbursts such as supernovae.
And rather than turning to massive engineering projects to generate stellar-scale energy, advanced civilizations tend to turn to smaller, more efficient power generation. Even the infamous Machine Worlds are virtually invisible to telescope astronomy, emitting little light, and with most of the heat they generate being recirculated for energy. All this means that for over three hundred years, humans and virgonids were effectively looking for intelligent life in all the wrong places.
The technology to reliably detect other, more sophisticated signs of alien civilization—gravity waves from artificially collapsed stars, neutrino emissions from large antimatter reactors, and so on—was not developed until the 23rd century. Once these techniques were pioneered, they did begin to yield some results—but tens of thousands of light years away, too far to conduct thorough investigations.
Meanwhile, a combination of long-range biosignature detection and drone reconnaissance helped human and virgonid explorers discover a number of intelligent alien species much closer to settled space. But these were at an extremely low level of civilizational development; none had yet reached industrialization. These were put under distant observation. In 2252, the TIU, the Greater Hive, the Big Two space corporations, and Frontier signed the Helvetios Accords, a multilateral treaty permanently marking any star systems inhabited by indigenous intelligent life as off-limits for colonization, resource exploitation, or development of any kind. All parties agreed to police the agreement, and prevent any violation of the treaty terms by non-signatory human parties—a landmark step in the development of interstellar law, of the human attitude toward less advanced alien civilizations, and of the legitimacy of Frontier in the eyes of the TIU. More wildcat colonies would sign on to the agreement over the coming decades, and Frontierite forces would occasionally be committed to prevent non-signatory wildcats from attempting to settle these restricted systems.
But despite these discoveries, and the scientific knowledge that long range observation yielded, by 2260 no technologically advanced civilization had yet been discovered, disappointing many human and virgonid searchers.
They might not have been disappointed had they known what else was truly out there—and much closer than anyone would have guessed.
On 20th and early 21st century Earth, a hypothetical solution to the Great Silence was formulated by a number of science fiction authors. Called variously the Deadly Probes, the Vicious Jungle, or the Dark Forest, the hypothesis was deceptively simple. Essentially, it postulated that the galaxy might well be filled with intelligent, technological civilizations—all of them silent, taking extraordinary measures to remain undetected by other civilizations.
These silent civilizations would be divided into three categories: hunters, lurkers, and prey. Hunters would remain silent and hidden, the better to stalk and destroy other civilizations; lurkers would try to go unnoticed, avoiding the attentions of hunters; while any “loud” civilizations, such as pre-First Contact Earth, would have been, in the words of 20th century author Greg Bear, like “an infant lost in the woods, crying its heart out, wondering why no one answered, drawing down the wolves.”
These theories were largely predicated on the assumption that, given the finite resources of any galaxy, and the tendency of all civilizations to expand to meet their resource needs, sufficiently advanced civilizations would inevitably come into contact, and competition, with one another. The potentially vast gulf in understanding and modes of thought between alien species which evolved on different worlds would make cooperation difficult, if not impossible. Thus, if any civilization wished to guarantee its own long term survival, it would have to destroy or subjugate any other intelligent species it discovered.
Interstellar history has thus far proved this basic premise severely flawed. Galactic mineral and metal resources, while theoretically finite, are functionally limitless. Vast numbers of uninhabited, unclaimed systems hold equally vast mineral wealth. Fuel for fusion reactions, such as hydrogen and helium-3, are also virtually limitless, and self-replenishing due to the life cycles of stars and planets. So is antimatter, given the viability of mining from natural and artificial microquasars. This is to say nothing of more advanced, still-theoretical methods of power generation such as zero-point energy, and the theorized viability of energy-to-matter transmutation. These could enable more advanced civilizations than our own to create literally unlimited material resources, long before they might have exhausted naturally occurring galactic resources.
Additionally, many alien species have proved remarkably similar to humans in modes of thinking and methods of communication, such as the virgonids, melakeen, oromites, and yu-nee, to name but a few. Those with much more “alien” modes of thinking, such as the ara’, have so far preferred minimal engagement or non-contact to pre-emptive destruction.
However—this does not mean that the Dark Forest hypothesis was completely without merit. Indeed, just a few hundred light years from Earth and Virgon, a hunter civilization had been flourishing for centuries without ever making itself known to us.
Of course, the Kyrans are not a species at all. Rather, they are a group of interrelated species, thought to have evolved on a single planet—designated Kyr, but never visited by the Compact—over the past 3-5 million years. Some have likely been created, or at least modified, using selective breeding and genetic engineering over the last few centuries. Kyrans are all ectotherms, a trait they only share with the ara’ among sapient species. They bear a striking similarity to Earth reptiles, in particular dinosaurs.
Compact xenologists estimate that there are between four and eight Kyran species. The exact number is not known; only four have been definitively observedpop. These species vary in size, strength, agility, and mental faculties. Most reproduce sexually, with males inseminating females, who then lay and care for eggs—though some species have no discernible gender, and may not be capable of reproducing naturally.
Kyran society is based on a rigid species-caste system. Each species fills a defined role in society, and individuals appear rarely, if ever, to perform roles outside their caste. The Kyran names for these species and their associated castes are either unknown, or vary widely from one clan dialect to another. As such, they have been given Compact designations for ease of reference, using naming conventions borrowed from Terran dinosaurs.
One of the ruling classes in the Kyran caste system are the pterochids—“feathered rulers.” They are five to seven feet tall, similar in appearance to ancient Earth eotyrannus and velociraptor. Pterochids are highly intelligent; they have a reputation for cunning and deception, both among their enemies, and their own people. Only a handful of bodies have ever been retrieved for direct study—none have been captured alive. Compact xenologists believe they evolved from pack hunters, and may have “domesticated” or subjugated other, less intelligent species of Kyran long ago, using them as warriors and workers.
The other ruling species in the Kyran hierarchy are the stepharchids—”crowned rulers”. With an average height of seven feet, they are similar to ancient Earth dilophosaurus, though with longer, more dextrous arms, forward facing eyes, and more pronounced and intricate cranial ridges. Unlike the Pterochids, they have no feathers; females have brightly colored skin patterns, while males have duller skin tones—the opposite paradigm to the pterochids, where the male of the species has brighter feathers, and the female duller. Stepharchids are reputed to be less cunning and deceptive than their Pterochid cousins, but more brutal, iron-fisted rulers.
The soldier caste of the Kyran hierarchy are the argotids—”brutal soldiers.” They are similar in appearance to allosaurus and other large carnivores from the Terran dinosaur era, with side-facing eyes, powerful limbs, a large tail, and a long, powerful jaw. The argotids have hands dextrous enough to operate weapons and other military technology. They seem to be of lower intelligence than the “archid” species, though they possess advanced physical problem solving capabilities.
The argotids’ average height varies considerably, between five and ten feet. Originally, these varied specimens were thought to be from different subspecies, or perhaps the same species at different ages. However, autopsies have revealed that the variants are all from the same species, have been bred or engineered for different battlefield roles—smaller variants are preferred for boarding actions, for example.
All captured specimens are a single gender, sterile, without sexual organs of any kind. Biologists are split over whether all argotids are clones, or whether they are a trigender species, with male and female breeding pairs capable of producing a third, sterile gender. The latter theory is favored on the basis of subject populations’ observations of smaller, more docile examples of the species. In any case, it is believed that argotid breeding has been highly engineered—in fact, the third “warrior” gender may be a complete invention of genetic engineering. The lack of an urge to reproduce seems to lend the warrior gender a weaker self-preservation instinct, making them ideal as shock troops or cannon fodder.
Argotids appear to have a spoken language that differs from that of the archid species, though they are observed to obey verbal commands in the archid languages. Their own language is much simpler, though unlike the archid languages, it has never been fully translated.
The worker species in the Kyran caste system are the ischeronids—“strong workers.” They are similar in appearance to ancient Earth hadrosaurs, capable of rapid movement on four limbs, or slower movement on two, using forward limbs for gripping, carrying, and manipulating. Ischeronids are rarely seen; on occupied worlds, subject populations are typically used as slave labor to perform most menial and manual tasks. Ischeronids are only brought in to work on projects subject populations cannot be trusted with.
Few specimens of the worker species have been captured; like the argotids, they appear to be monogender. In their case, though, they are capable of swapping male and female roles depending on breeding requirements and availability, a process genetically similar to the virgonids. No spoken language has been observed, though like the agrotids, they are capable of obeying verbal commands in archid languages.
A fifth category, the smergonids—“little workers”—have been observed, but xenologists have yet to determine conclusively whether these are a separate species, or a subtype of ischeronid. Two more species are believed to exist: the sklekarids—“hard headed,” a possible additional worker caste; and the eupheronids—“inventors,” a possible engineer/scientist caste.
The primary social, cultural, military, and governmental unit of the Kyran species is the clan—a term applied by human xenologists, based on perceived similarities to ancient Earth socio-cultural groupings. Clans are ruled by a “hierarch,” a warlord with absolute power. The position appears to be partly hereditary, although in at least some situations, a candidate for hierarch has had to fight challengers to the death to assume, or maintain, his position.
Each clan hierarch has a “household,” mostly made up of his extended relations. This includes those who have been adopted into the family structure as a reward for service and loyalty. The household forms the core of the hierarch’s military cadre. There is a descending hierarchy of vassals below the hierarch, owing homage to those above them in a vaguely feudal system. Vassals are responsible for raising, training, and equipping military forces to serve at the hierarch’s command; on subject worlds, they are responsible for the management and disposition of slave populations.
Beyond the clan and caste systems, little is known about Kyran culture. They are a completely closed society, allowing virtually no information in or out; even after two hundred and fifty years of contact, most of what we know comes from observation, inference, and military intelligence.
Culture does vary considerably from clan to clan and species to species, as it does between human societies; but dominance and violence are key parts of the shared Kyran culture. Warfare seems to have some level of ritual significance, at least to the warrior and ruler castes. The Kyrans produce art, though its meaning is generally not known. Sculptures and other visual art have been observed on subject worlds, though there it usually serves a propaganda purpose. Those same subjects have also observed Kyran archid castes consuming other forms of visual or auditory art, some of which appears to be narrative in nature.
Compact xenologists caution against drawing too many conclusions about broader Kyran culture from these observations. Our data comes almost exclusively from Kyran military and occupation forces; while it is inarguable that these, and the leadership of the clans, are uninterested in peace, there are likely other elements of Kyran society that are not exclusively geared toward warfare. It is believed that the archid castes keep the eupheronids, if they exist, hidden from the other species as much as from aliens. It is likely they are highly intelligent, physically weak and docile. Much of the Kyrans’ advanced technology is believed to have been reverse-engineered by this caste. It is also possible that there is an artist sub-caste, perhaps drawn from the observed but never examined smergonid species, and even that some individuals from the archid castes create art.
Like their culture, most of the Kyrans’ pre-contact history is opaque. Major military and political events are referenced in captured documents; years for these events have been estimated based on other data, but the many years between these events are a black hole for Compact researchers.
Wars are believed to have been endemic to the homeworld of Kyr—a word which, in all Kyran languages, means “battlefield.” These wars occurred throughout all eras of technological and civilizational development, up until the late space age. There are references to the use of atomic weapons and other instruments of mass-destruction in the latter of these wars, yet global destruction never occurred. This makes the Kyrans the only known galactic civilization to survive an era of nuclear-armed world wars without global unification.
Historians and xenologists have long speculated how the warlike Kyrans were able to achieve this unique feat. The atomic age is estimated to have begun on Kyr around TSY 1750; massive wars for dominance of the homeworld continued until the exodus of the clans around TSY 1950, providing a considerable window during which any one of the near-constant global conflicts might have wiped out the entire civilization. By contrast, there was a little over one hundred years between the dawn of Earth’s atomic age in 1945 and global unification in the 2060’s, during which time only one true global conflict, of relatively limited duration, was fought.
The commonly accepted theory is that, in simple terms, the Kyrans enjoyed war too much to end it all through self-immolation. Unlike the ideologically motivated World Wars on Earth, or the Solar Wars fought by the melakeen, Kyrans fought purely for power, and for the love of fighting. Their ruling and warrior castes believe that warfare has a redemptive, empowering quality; as such, the objective of the wars they fought was rarely to destroy other clans. Rather, the combatants would seek to subjugate one another, thus more effectively proving their own power. The defeated clan, it was understood, would later get its chance to rise up and reclaim power in a future war. The victorious clan would expect, and even welcome these rebellions—for only by defeating them could their own continuing dominance be justified.
The use of nuclear weapons at a global scale would have defeated the purpose of Kyran warfare. Kyrans have also retained a preference for close quarters combat over long range destruction whenever possible, often at the cost of their own lives. Nuclear weapons were for centuries the epitome of long range, impersonal destruction—the antithesis of the Kyran way of war.
Nonetheless, sometime around TSY 1950, many of the Kyran clans—dozens, if not hundreds—left the homeworld.
While this Great Exodus is attested to in many Kyran sources, precisely what happened, and why, is unclear. It is likely that concern over nuclear and possibly biological escalation played a role in prompting the exodus; smaller, weaker clans were more likely to deploy these weapons in desperation. One theory suggests that a cabal of the most powerful clans banded together and forced the weaker clans to leave the homeworld, so they could continue to fight their limited wars in adherence to the old ways. Another holds that a single clan gained a position of dominance over all others after a particularly brutal global war. Finding it impossible to govern so many vassals, this supreme clan then expelled the weaker, less useful, and more unpredictable clans.
The Kyrans had invented space travel technology around the same time as atomic weapons. By 1950, it had evidently developed to the point that long distance, sublight journeys to other stars had become possible, likely through the use of nuclear-powered starships and some form of cryogenic freezing. But this technology was ramshackle, as Kyran technology remains to this day—more powerful than their engineers could build safely, and thus unstable, unreliable. Most of the massive ships and flotillas, carrying the bulk of each clan’s warriors, would never reach their destination stars. Many that did doubtless found their new worlds barren of life, and became victims of the early Kyrans’ mediocre astronomy.
But by a cruel twist of galactic fate, Kyr lies in the heart of a dense star cluster—one with the highest concentration of intelligent life yet discovered. Even without FTL capability—and with perhaps as few as one in ten exodus fleets surviving their journeys—many of these inhabited stars were within reach.
When these fortunate clans arrived, they found alien civilizations ripe for conquest. Most were pre-industrial; all were pre-space age, and could offer little more than token resistance to the sudden alien invasions. In some cases, a mere dozen Kyran warships with but a few thousand warriors were able to conquer entire worlds.
Most of these clans—including future great powers Rhyllok, Atkar, and Shahak—were initially limited to a single conquered system, which they ruthlessly exploited. After a time, these larger clans would splinter, with the sub-clan setting out on a long-range conquest attempt of their own. In the course of centuries, over a dozen intelligent species were conquered by the Kyrans in this manner.
Internal power struggles are believed to have been the primary form of warfare during this period, though evidence suggests that subject races were sometimes allowed to rebel, much like Kyran vassal clans before the Exodus. This state of affairs continued until 2242, when a splinter faction from Clan Lhanak set out from the clan’s conquered “homeworld” to avoid a civil war. Their destination was a habitable planet humans would eventually call Locke.
By yet another cruel twist of fate, the Kyrans arrived in late 2247, just months before the human wildcat colonists would make planetfall—although given their relative directions of expansion, an eventual clash between humanity and the Kyrans was probably inevitable.
The Kyran would-be conquerors found an uninhabited planet, but one with breathable air, drinkable water, and enough animal life they could digest to survive off of for some time. But one thing the system lacked was a large enough source of tritium to provide fuel for their ship’s deuterium-tritium fusion reactor, which had run nearly dry. By any estimation, this planet would become their new home. Their best hope to live the Kyran dream was to found a new clan, or clans, on this world, and fight amongst themselves for glory.
Salvation from this lonely fate arrived with the wildcat colonists—as did an unprecedented opportunity. The Kyrans must have noticed that the human ship simply appeared in the system as if from the ether, rather than slowly decelerating on top of a bright fusion torch drive as their own ships had to do. They may have concluded from this that the ship had FTL capability, if the eupheronids had theorized about such a technology prior to contact. Capturing this technology would be a windfall of epic, galaxy-shaking proportions.
The Kyrans concealed their presence and observed the colonists for some time before they struck. In a coordinated attack, Kyran warriors on the surface assaulted the colony, while their ship boarded the colony vessel and captured it. The Kyrans were utterly ruthless, slaughtering most of the colonists. Only a handful were kept alive—among them, most likely, engineers familiar with the operation of the colony ship’s Stardrive, and their families for use as leverage.
No record of the fate of these unfortunates survives, but they were most likely coerced into either instructing the Kyrans in the operation of their ship, or operating it for them. The raiders abandoned their own vessel after grafting a number of its weapons onto the colony ship; then, they flew the human vessel back to Lhanak, completing in weeks a journey that had taken them five years.
What happened next is uncertain, but some facts are generally agreed upon by the available sources. The splinter faction launched a successful coup, leveraging their possession of Stardrive technology to take over the leadership of Lhanak, and promised the conquest of a new, powerful, but unsuspecting foe—humanity. The survivors of Locke may have been paraded before the clans’ warriors, demonstrating their ripeness for conquest.
But before the conquest of humanity could begin, the Stardrive would have to be reverse engineered. It seems that this effort was initially unsuccessful, possibly due to the Kyrans’ inability to translate the matter-antimatter power system to their own relatively primitive fusion reactors.
In any case, the Kyrans succeeded in increasing the power output of the repurposed colony ship without burning through its fuel reserves, possibly by installing one of their fusion reactors to power its non-Stardrive systems. It was with this ship that they would launch the next raids against human settlements. The purpose of these raids was likely to recover more Stardrives—enough to give them the knowledge and resources they needed to produce their own.
Early Kyran-built Stardrives were crude, dangerous, and prone to catastrophic failure—but effective enough to enable Lhanak to increase their attacks on isolated wildcat colonies throughout the 2260’s. The weakness of the resistance they received in these raids convinced them that a much bigger prize was theirs for the taking: the entire human race. With the glory and power that enslaving humanity would bring them, and the Stardrive to carry them, Lhanak could unite all the fractious Kyran clans under their banner. Then, nothing in the galaxy would be able to stop them…