Vaurca History

One of the oldest civilizations known in the Orion Spur, Vaurcae today are very different from their ancestors. The following is a short summary, mostly regarding the Zo'ra records that have been accessible to the public. A Vaurca character would also have a notion about what occurred during each era presented.

Early Nomadism

The earliest records of Vaurca civilization gained from limited access to Zo'ra records range from some time starting between 737,000 and 887,000 years ago. Due to the hostile climate of their homeworld caused by the thin ozone allowing radiation to blast the planet daily, many Vaurca were forced to live nomadic lives inside the vast underground cave networks to gain access to edible fungus.

Almost all conflict originated around control of food. Warfare was a matter of survival after a hive exhausted its food supply. Warrior castes became the most dominant caste within Vaurca society and nearly all hives were in constant conflict with one another. Due to the innate deadliness of Vaurca mandibles and claws warfare was fought in melee. Prisoners of war tended to be decapitated by the mandibles of the victor while the surviving hive was enslaved. The mindset appears to be an unwillingness to spare extremely limited resources with enemy warriors.

The Agricultural Revolution

Approximately 567,000 years ago agricultural methods that allowed hives to cultivate fungus had proliferated throughout the planet. No longer a resource that could be easily exhausted, many hives found an abundance of food to be a boon. The population exploded as the hives continued to operate as they always had. Unfortunately, fertile territory (in the context of cave fungus) was uncommon and conflict still broke out between hives.

Other avenues of change proliferated through the Vaurca hives, as well as an explosion of art. For understandable reasons living in caves constantly grew tiresome for many, and they began to experiment with ways to spruce up the place. With an abundance of food, Vaurca were able to spare manpower to begin ambitious feats of masonry and architecture. According to secondary sources, Sedantis I eventually developed elaborate and massive feats of subterranean engineering, with aqueducts, sewage, and entire cities being carved out of the rock. The walls and floors of the cave were smoothed out and covered in engravings, creating a form of art that wouldn't be blasted away by radiation. Thousands of years of trial and error with countless incidents of cave-ins in the early years have allowed the Vaurca to become masters of masonry and architecture.

Along with traditional warfare, queens of many hives had begun an arms race of architecture to show up one another. Massive engineering projects would be undertaken for the glory of the queen of the hive, such as a huge subterranean temple, the rerouting of an entire underground river, or a subterranean road being carved out to connect dozens of spread out subterranean cities all being commissioned. Queens at the time had also begun to develop a cult of personality around themselves, with the queens that managed to succeed in becoming the most powerful and influential on the planet. Information on this is difficult to gather due to obvious bias or mixing of legends and facts within Vaurca records. However, xenoarchaeologists are in agreement that Vaurca Queens managed to retain a vital position in Vaurca society by inflating their status as mothers to a spiritual level. As the only ones in Vaurca society that could give birth to new generations, they had become mystical gardens of life and fertility in an otherwise dead and barren world.

The Era of Augments

The development of Vaurca continued down paths similar to the development of other space-faring species. The major split from the norm occurred around 50,043 BCE Galactic Standard Time. The Vaurca had managed to achieve a technological level similar to Earth in the late 20th century. However the Zo'ra, who had emerged before this time, had a breakthrough in augmentation technology. Zo'ra began augmenting its drones with simple cybernetic enhancements. Worker drones would have their limbs replaced with more sturdy prosthetics, and later advancements in genetics had even more Vaurca hives beginning to experiment with altering workers with genetic and cybernetic enhancements.

This technological advancement continued until the Vaurca achieved a version of technological singularity with the technology in 37,650 BCE. The technology had become miniaturized and advanced enough that Vaurca hives could cybernetically engineer any aspect of a Vaurca drone. By this time, Vaurca drones had become Bound, creating the early forms of the Vaurca we see today.

By 36,500 BCE the working caste of bound drones could work 24/7 stopping only to eat. Soldiers were augmented with all sorts of experimental weapons and abilities. However, the augments and genetic alterations forced those altered into very specific castes. A worker raised and given augments for battle wasn't an effective mason or diplomat. While previously Vaurca society was stratified, the 'worker' Vaurcae of old at least had a chance to enter into different fields. The modern Vaurca society saw a caste system where Vaurca were literally defined from birth and built into that role. This also created the modern definitions of bound and unbound: Bound Vaurcae are members of the worker caste, literally bound to their role and station. The Unbound are Vaurca above the working caste that would be allowed to seek their own destiny in society, forming a form of noble caste.

Eventually, the Unbound, supported by a limitless supply of slave labor, began to form a more and more secluded society separate from the working caste. From Human and Skrell xenoarchaeological discoveries, it is known that Unbound Lii'dra scientists and artists eventually unlocked the technology behind virtual reality, and specialized it to create entire virtual worlds for themselves. Sharing their discoveries, Unbound with access to VR would lock themselves away for hours or even days at a time, sometimes leaving VR for only a few minutes at a time to let their bound workers feed them without having to even having to leave their seat.

Eventually, the VR technology pervaded all aspects of Vaurcan society. Co-opted by the Queens and Lesser Queens of each hive they made the technology achieve a religious symbolism and importance unequaled by any technology before or since.

It is near the end of this Era that most scholars agree that the original conflict between the Lii'dra and Zo'ra first began and that the nature and scope of the war caused a technological regression that continues to this day.

The First Hive War

Occurring around 30,000 BCE, The First Hive War began. It was not the first modern War. It was, however, the first conflict to involve every single hive, both minor and major. According to records obtained from Titan Prime, the conflict began during a technology summit at Xtykt'lotec after which the entire city was taken by Lii'dra forces. This brazen act dissolved the Court of Queens, launching old enemy hives against each other with the breakdown of diplomacy, as well as the Lii'dra themselves, who blitzed through the first half of the entire war virtually unopposed by the resulting chaos. Like a plague that swept across the planet, entire tectonic plates would go dark, and embattled hives would focus much of their defenses at the edges of their respective territories to protect themselves rather than each other.

Because of the scope of the war, this was the first real industrialization of war. It brought together entire hives for the one purpose to make conflict. It is in this time that many of the current Lesser Queens were born, with some individual Vaurcae emerging from this conflict as heroes in their own right. The turning point of the war began with the first Lii'dra defeats. At the hands of K'lax, Lii'dra were unable to breach their plates defensive network, a complex set of machines that prevented any lifeform from approaching within miles of their territory. This resulted in forcing the Lii'dra to attack the Zo'rane plate through the Ryitu’kya Abyss. This battle is considered the single most important in Vaurca history. Such was its importance that even some Queens themselves participated in this conflict. It is from this battle that the Zo'ra emerged victorious, halting the Lii'dra scourge so they could be routed by an assembled force of many hives, brought together by the C'thur.

The Lii'dra defeat here signaled the beginning of the end of the war. From here, increasingly bloody battles would blanket nearly every tectonic plate. Forced to attack the K'laxian positions after their defeat within the Ryitu'kya Abyss, the Lii'dra broke the K'laxian defensive line with nothing less than a billion lives. By some accounts, in the aftermath of the Siege of the Kol'axta Plate, entire underground caverns were filled to the brim with corpses from both sides. The First Hive War officially ended August 27th, 29,930 BCE after the sinking of the city of Illuau'tia, the historic Lii'dra capital, and seat of their hive. With just over 80% of the planets Vaurca population slain in the conflict, a mass depression blanketed the survivors in their pyrrhic victory over the Lii'dra, that not even the surviving Queens themselves could mend. It was from this bleakness and death that the Vaurcesian idea of the Afterlife spawned. Envisioned and proclaimed by High Zo'ra the Afterlife technology was gifted freely to all surviving hives, she declared nevermore would such death haunt their species. For truly, based upon their newest technology, the Queens relieved their hives of death and despair by making real the idea of life after death, that the death witnessed here would never again be an issue for the generations after.

The Great Evacuation

After the Lii'dra conflict, The proliferation of VR and bound labor created a lull in conflict on Sedantis I. Farming techniques had become advanced enough that the populations could be reasonably fed, and all other desires were being filled in virtual worlds. By all accounts it would have been completely possible that the Vaurca never left their homeworld due to the development of VR. However a combination of push factors forced the great Vaurca hives to embark on extensive plans to expand into space.

The extremely thin ozone layer of Sedantis I had begun to be measured since the start of their modern era in the early CE era. By 150 CE the Vaurca scientific body between hives had conclusive evidence to show that the ozone would be completely stripped off the planet within another 200 years. While the planet had been bombarded with radiation, life had still managed to etch out a living, but when the ozone layer was completely gone all life on the planet would be killed by the excessive amounts of radiation, rendering it a barren, lifeless rock.

Hives took different approaches to the impending apocalypse. Many hives felt they could simply increase the depths of their subterranean cities to avoid the increase of radiation, and that the subterranean eco-systems would continue to thrive beneath the surface, while other hives began to try to look past the taboo of the deadly sky and consider expanding their hives into space.

Hives devoted massive amounts of bound labor to both projects. For the next 50 years some Vaurca hives constructed the massive hive-ships we see today. In another display of the sheer ingenuity of Vaurca engineering and architecture they had managed, after very heavy losses in early failures, to create and utilize an orbital industry to work on the hiveships. These ships are also called ark-ships, and were used to transport thousands of Vaurca to other star systems. While fusion power was available to Vaurca at the time they did not yet possess warp or bluespace capabilities, meaning travel to other systems was extremely slow.

This reality meant that hiveships had to be capable of supporting a population in deep space for hundreds or even thousands of years. They became battleships, colony ships, mobile incubators, carriers, refineries, and production facilities all in their own. They spread through space as nomadic wanderers occasionally settling on habitable worlds, but given the lack of bluespace capability, this was a time consuming process.

Despite being years or even hundreds of years apart, Bound Drones were still unquestionably loyal to their original Queen, and followed directives given by her during their travels to the letter and without compromise. Lesser Queens were brought on the hiveships to help keep the population stable, but the original High Queens of the hives on Sedantis remain legendary religious figures, with the Lesser Queens taking on a ceremonial role as mothers. Unbound present in the hiveships were almost entirely connected to VR, which allowed them to function in their worlds, which may have been the only reason they managed to function as a society in deep space for so long.

The ultimate fate of Sedantis I is unknown to Vaurcae encountered in human space in 2458, as contact is still impossible.

The Two Thousand Year Gap

Multiple attempts of colonization, as well as conflict between the surviving known hives, happened during their Exodus. This section aims to outline some of the major events from the Era.

The Zo'ra Trail (2,000-1,3000 years ago)

Shortly after the evacuation, the hiveships coordinated to occupy a new planet and rebuild their society. The small planet, called Gii’moss, was nothing like Sedantis, with much more biodiversity and a more jungle-like appearance. However, it had traces of phoron in its atmosphere. The Hives would quickly coordinate to massively spread k’ois plantations, systematically eliminate the native flora and fauna and increase the phoron composition to match that of Sedantis. Proving to be fatal to the ecosystem and fearing another incident which would render the place completely inhospitable, it was rapidly evacuated after a few years of colonization.

Other similar attempts occurred in different ecosystems, such as the legendary Vutx’ic, which was said to have lakes of liquid phoron. However, k’ois and the disregard of local life made it so that catastrophes were inevitable. Even after the introduction of some more careful layouts of k’ois farms, many of the first waves of colonies would wither because of the ecological devastation.

The first signs of a major dispute between the Hives occurred with the blames placed towards Zo’ra by the C’thur in regards to their aggressive methods to colonize. It is still believed by some C’thur that their original Hiveship was sabotaged by the Zo’ra during this stage. However, it is more probable that the C’thur Hiveship, which was smaller and inferior, had begun to fail shortly after their departure from Sedantis.

The Celis Conflict (1,300-1,000 years ago)

The original C’thur Hiveship had to make an emergency landing on the planet of Celis, which is notable for its similarities to Sol III in terms of size and atmospheric composition. Completely useless now, C’thur hailed for help and both the Zo’rane and K’laxian Hiveships landed for aid. Because of the inhospitable conditions for them at first, it was at this stage when the first prototypes of the phoron tanks were built and quickly perfected to the design still in use today. Celis was less than ideal to colonize, but a large barren desert proved the perfect place to cultivate k’ois, and the complex natural cave tunnels served as the basis for the city foundations.

While inter-hive cooperation was encouraged the first years, territorial disputes began soon after. A major issue was with the k’ois supplies and how they were being divided, with Zo’ra claiming the most because of them. With tensions having been on the rise since the time of the Zo’ra trail, this was when the K’lax Hive began its independence move, with opposition met from Zo’ra. A k’ois famine, perhaps because of the planetary conditions, cut most of the supply in a short time, and a war seemed inevitable. It was in this scenario that C’thur took control of the Kloxa’xia. While the C’thur Hive claims it was gifted by K’lax because of their damaged ship and their diplomatic aid to avoid a full-scale war, K’lax instead claims it was stolen while their guard was down. Whatever the case may be, trying to remain on Celis was seen as futile, and after C’thur went on their way, Zo’ra and K’lax soon followed.

Zo’rane scientists believed that, unlike the other catastrophes, Celis could still be salvaged and a terraforming plan was proposed. Because of the potential of a planet-size k’ois farm, Zo’ra left their smallest hiveship behind to reconnect with the rest of the fleet eventually. The fate of those left behind Celis is unknown, and contact was never re-established.

The Nomadic Approach (1,000-500 years ago)

With their relationship fractured, the three hives separated, having little communication with each other. Their approach to the issues with their previous colonies, however, was similar, with having temporary settlements, mostly to cultivate k’ois and to seek ideal environments, while also having the queens and most of their populations to remain on board the hiveships. Although this proved more successful, the uncertainty of not having a place to call a home took a toll on many of the Vaurcae in this timespan. Another problem all hives faced, near the end of this period, was the overall phoron shortage. While the k’ois production was stable, it was still not enough to sustain the species.

Zo’ra had used their second hiveship as a means to store food for this very purpose. However, things took a drastic turn when a meteor impact breached the ship, leading to its destruction. Now without proper means to sustain themselves, a new plan had to arise.

The Last Ordeal (500 years ago until contact)

With little options left for their survival, a new strategy emerged. To save up resources, most of the Unbound underwent stasis. Most of the dealings in this epoch occurred within VR, even more so than ever before. With an uncertainty and a fear that the life support systems would make it hard for their survival, the life inside the VR was, at times, uncertain. Many of the Xakat’kl’atan were reunited in the sentiment of soothing the others, while those few Unbound that remained active developed means to scan for phoron. The sensor readings for this were, at best, broad and unreliable, and at worst, outright a lie.

It is believed that the other hives developed a similar technology. Perhaps stolen from the Zo’ra efforts, C’thur and K’lax once again almost reunited, after developing a plan to work together and combat the phoron scarcity. Because of poor communication, however, the rendez-vous in Glorashi was thought by K’lax to be a trap, which has re-sparked their tension.

Ultimately, the three surviving hiveships that have made it to the Spur were in bad shape. Most noticeable is the conditions in which Titan Prime was discovered. While the Kloxa’xia and the Klo’xzera were in better shape, this doesn’t mean the conditions inside were much different.

Developing different strategies and allied with distinct nations, the Vaurcae seem to have settled in and found a home within the Orion Spur. Scarcity and unpreparedness for such a long journey have left them with little resources and an inability, at large, to reproduce many of their former designs. Facing new difficulties and adapting to their new lifestyles, their next move is yet to be known.

Contact with Humanity

None of the civilized species of the galaxy had any idea that the Vaurcae existed until an eventful day in November, 2456, when the drive plume and heat signature of a massive ship burning its engine in order to slow down for an approach was detected near the Romanovich cloud in Tau Ceti. While the galaxy was taken aback by this information, the Republic of Biesel acted immediately. A small scout vessel was dispatched to the ship, which was revealed to be a 30 kilometer (18.23 mile) vessel, mostly engine and radiator. Dubbed 'Titan Prime' by the media, Tau Ceti and news places over the known galaxy were bubbling with excitement as the object approached its apparent destination: Biesel.

After a few weeks, the object passed the Romanovich cloud and dispatched over twenty drones to key locations in Tau Ceti. Some of these locations included the NTCC Odin, the NSS Von Braun, NSS Arcadia, NSS Aurora, NSS Exodus, and NMV Retaliation, and one to each planet. Although all drones dispatched to the location turned back immediately, one did not. The one that was headed for the NSS Aurora stayed, and in fact, contacted the station through use of the station's own intercommunication system; displaying a single, unintelligible message. After a period of three hours, the crew were dispatched to the probe and entered, finding a hollow vessel. In the middle was a single alien computer, and in a corner of a room were Vaurca eggs, presumably for use in early colonization.

Research crew of the NSS Aurora, including Dr. Phoebe Essel and team were able to interact with the computer, painstakingly finding ways to translate the cryptic language it was attempting to speak in, and after usage of a pAI, were able to teach the machine Tau Ceti Basic. After some conversation, the computer detached itself and was brought aboard the NSS Aurora for first contact. It had been sent in order to document the indigenous species of the solar system. The computer tapped into the bluespace connection of the Artificial Intelligence of the station, uploaded core data files onto its hardware, and then departed, causing a minor panic on the station as the security forced feared an intelligence leak.

First radio contact was established with Tau Ceti President Joseph Dorn and Titan Prime, which was filled with Zo'ra. It was learned that the vessel was sent approximately 2 thousand years ago and had only now entered human space to find habitable planets to colonize. It was also learned that Titan Prime housed six million Vaurca on it, a staggering number.

Titan Prime eventually reached Biesel, settling into a stable orbit around the planet. Observation showed that the ship was worse for wear after traveling for 2,000 years of relative time, having launched from Sedantis in 32,000 CE. Many of its systems were failing or had already failed. The life support was barely working and the hull had lost most of its integrity. After heavy negotiation with the Tau Ceti government, it was agreed that in exchange for being allowed to settle on Biesel the Vaurca would agree to 'pay rent' in the form of providing Nanotrasen and the Tau Ceti government with a quota of their bound and unbound for Nanotrasen's workforce. Due to the complexity (and pointlessness) of paying bound Vaurca they would instead earn 'credit' towards their continued stay on Biesel to pay back the cost of housing them.

Settling in Tau Ceti

Ferries, re-purposed cargo ships, and civilian shuttles evacuated 2 million inhabitants of Titan Prime, ferrying them mostly to New Gibson and Biesel, respectively. Evacuations are still undergoing, and most Vaurca live in refugee camps or state-provided housing in special sections of the two planets. The Interstellar Aid Corps has performed most of the work evacuating and housing Vaurca, and they are critical of the government's treatment of them.

Roughly 1.5 million Bound and Unbound Vaurca live in scattered underground ice caverns or within crowded biodomes upon icy New Gibson, and 3 million live in squalid ghettos upon Biesel. After NanoTrasen's forced eviction of the majority of Vaurca living on the Titan Prime in June of 2458, the slums of Biesel experienced an influx of nearly 1 million additional Vaurca contributing to a famine that has lasted to this day. In January of 2459, IAC Officials began moving yet more Vaurca to Luthien and Caprice, making Biesel authorities extremely worried about the cost of the continued evacuation of Titan Prime,and the ultimate fate of the ship itself once completed. The integration of Vaurca into a cultural and socio-economic system not designed for them is ongoing, and is confounded by the growing hostility towards them upon all sides.

The fear of further hive ships entering known space has lead to Tau Ceti and the Sol Alliance working to actively suppress attempts by Vaurca to construct FTL capable communications or ships to contact their homeworld and potentially spread the information to more Vaurca hives in their home systems. While the Zo'ra of Titan Prime managed to leak secrets of these technologies from the Aurora, they remain unable to build FTL communication that is capable of interacting with the STL communications presumed to still be in use in Vaurca controlled systems. As well, many Vaurcae are unsure of the ultimate fate of their homeworld, as their two thousand year travel has had them pass the time predicted to have brought the ultimate death of Sedantis.