The Kulviir

A brief history of the Galaxy, book 22
''The coming of the Scourge was a dark day for the entire spiral arm. At the time, it was believed that the alien fleet belonged to a single entity, but ongoing research has borne out a more realistic conclusion. Originally it was believed that perhaps the aliens were an extragalactic entity which had spilled into our spiral arm, but the truth appears to point to an origin in the inhospitable core. How this is possible beggars the imagination of most analysts.''

''Intelligence reports, though somewhat sparse at the time, suggested a force of vast quantity. It was said to have attacked everywhere in known space, aside from the Veil, at once. The enemy came in ceaseless waves, but because many of their forces were numerous but ill-suited to durability engagements, smart commanders could win strategic victories with concentration of force and wide-area attack patterns, such as nuclear projectile attacks in mass and concentration. Concentration, it seems, was key; every primary source suggests that the average Terran ship could destroy the average Scourge ship easily, but there were so many of them, and every victory often saw the aliens recoup losses through savage repurposing of both scrap and natural resources.''

''It came to be that the xenoi could only be stopped by luring them into one spot; no reliable sources can tell us how this feat was accomplished. Some suggest a signal attracted the aliens by some unknown means, while others suggest an old enemy of the Scourge returned and lured them in for the killing blow. What is known beyond a shadow of a doubt is that the Flame was brutal. It wiped all Scourge within its blast pocket, which was essentially all of them. It also badly destabilized spacetime at its epicenter and violently destroyed anything it touched via hyperspace, while damaging the cores of empires to the point of total economic collapse. In the game of interstellar war, there could be no heroic ‘deus ex’.''

-Excerpt by Curator Vipsanius, Legio II, and Arman Schaeffer, University of Morningstar

Society
Chaotic. Kulviir grudgingly respect strength; a clan may have its own Viir, but there can only be one –true- Viir. As a result, power plays are a constant fact of life in Kulviir space, and when a clan is not directly engaged in war, which is a rare occurrence, they are in preparation for war.

Kulviir began their most basic sapient stage as parasitic lifeforms. For this reason, they view things in terms of life resources and the ability to hold those resources. While many species evolved different motives and even have concepts of self-sacrifice, a true Kulviir has no such thing: destruction of competing life and annexation of its resources is the constant goal and, to a Kulviir, the concept of self-sacrifice makes one weak. If someone is willing to give up their resources without a fight, after all, why shouldn’t others take advantage? Self is all that matters to them.

On the other hand, their self interest has a tinge of rationality. They work together in order for the clan to be enriched- since the clan’s enrichment directly correlates to what every individual can take, and no Kulviir values others over itself, when everyone benefits, every one benefits to some degree, although fighting over the resultant booty isn’t entirely uncommon or clean- and suspend attempts to claim power when a superior is strong. To attack a much stronger enemy, after all, is to forfeit one’s life resources.

Different clans have different foci for their efforts, however. The Ibuk Vorda are not a high technology ‘caste’, but their ability and willingness to stripmine resources, and efficient coping with high-turnover in their slaves, gives them vast numbers and a very nomadic lifestyle; during the Scourge war, they made up the bulk of the attacking fleets, like marauding Mongol horsemen. Juzi Zukibor focused instead on crushingly high technology, and though it did not marshal the same vast resources as its then-pets, its vessels were easily a match for all purely Terragen machines, and only found something like parity against the handful of Progenitor-derived hulls in Terran possession.

Guli Guuva were a special case, and remain so; foul beings even by Kulviir standards, their forms are twisted to not only thrive in radiation, but emit it on short wavelengths. Their attack ships focus simply on weight of missile fire, and their ability to overwhelm point defense and eliminate ships in tidal waves of pinprick nuclear blasts is a terrifying sight to behold; not sophisticated, but brutal and very durable, the Guli Guuva nearly all left the near-arm before the conclusion of the Scourge War, and their presence is presumed to remain in Kulviir space to this day.

Military Resources
Vast. Kulviir are uniquely suited to the Core of the galaxy by both their physiologies and philosophies toward hosts, and so they can exploit resources there and on the periphery very easily. However, Kulviir are very rarely united in any endeavor at all; the last time was during the Scourge War, when Juzi Zukibor believed- with good reason- that either the Kedaviir themselves or a powerful successor state lived in the Sagittarius arm. While this was an extremely impressive display of military power, it is an altogether rare one. Kulviir are scavengers and tech thieves as much as they are body-users: owing to their origin as a parasitic creature, they often leave prespace or early development spacefarers alone, as their primitive technology is not useful. They do not, as a typical rule, run their hosts to death unless the gain is better than the loss of mobility. Their view of other life is, in human terms, utterly sociopathic but it is also pragmatic.

Individually, clans take different views on how to go about their internecine battles for resources. Juzi Zukibor, before its effective downfall at the end of the Scourge War, emphasized technological sophistication as a means of achieving ascension and their warships and ground forces reflected this in their exceptionally effective designs and technologies. Ibuk Vorda emphasized speed and violence; lacking staying power, their vast swarms of individually weak ships were known during the war to swoop in on enemies with little regard for self-preservation and pound them with high volumes of kinetic weaponsfire. Guli Guuva, by contrast, used smaller numbers of heavy, structurally reinforced and well-armored craft loaded to the gills with nuclear weaponry, and their penchant for mass destruction was tempered only by the deliberate speed with which they acted on the battlefield.

All Kulviir, however, are marked by a nearly suicidal lack of morale in combat. They think nothing of their slaves and little of their own bodies, save perhaps for the Viir, whose first responsibility is always his own life and power. Because of this and their vast resources, the Kulviir spread like a plague, and must be fought with similar violence; every losing battle, and every subsequent rest period after one, runs the high chance of the alien forces regenerating their numbers through captive slaves, scrap salvaging and planetary stripmining. It is theorized that the Kulviir core worlds must have few if any resources left, but this isn't rightly known, as no one has ventured there.