Ur-Quan
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The Ur-Quan are the main villains in the Star Control series of PC games.
NOTE: The term 'Ur-Quan' is usually made in-game as a reference to only the green or Kzer-Za variant of the species, while Kohr-Ah is usually the term for the Black Ur-Quan. However, this document concerns the history of the Ur-Quan race prior to their genetic sundering by the Dnyarri, and their combined history shortly after the fall of the Dnyarri Empire.
[edit] History
The Ur-Quan were large centipede-like sentient creatures with brownish skin. They evolved from solitary hunters on their harsh home planet. They were fiercely territorial, and evolved tool use and intelligence to compete against physically superior species they were in competition with. And thus, they built a society and eventually advanced into their space age.
While they were still using crude atomic vehicles to explore their system, the Ur-Quan encountered the Taalo. At first, the Ur-Quan saw the Taalo as invaders, and attacked them. However, the Taalo were patient, and eventually won over the Ur-Quan's friendship. In fact, the Taalo were the only race to ever be called 'friend' by the Ur-Quan. Eventually, the Taalo convinced the Ur-Quan to become members of the Sentient Milieu, a cooperative of alien races. With the help of the Taalo, the Ur-Quan became productive members for thousands of years. Due to their solitary nature, the Ur-Quan were frequently used as scouts and explorers, and flew single ships which landed on a million worlds. They were also the members of the Sentient Milieu most active in finding Precursor artifacts.
All of this, however, changed with the discovery of the Dnyarri. This small, psychic, and evil race was encountered during one of the Ur-Quan's scout missions. Once the pilot of the vessel was compelled by the Dnyarri, he unwillingly brought thousands of Dnyarri to the heart of the Sentient Milieu, and the Dnyarri quickly used their psychic powers to dominate the minds of the races of the Milieu. All save the Taalo, whose bizarre physiology rendered them immune, in their anger the Dnyarri compelled the other races of the Milieu to annihilate them (Sadly, the Taalo were nearing completion of an artifact that would grant psychic immunity to their friends in the Milieu, this artifact was eventually crucial to the victory over the Ur-Quan).
Thus truly began the Dnyarri Empire. The Ur-Quan were the favored slaves of the Dnyarri, and the most susceptible to their psychic powers. The Dnyarri eventually began to genetically experiment with their favorite slaves, and separated the Brown Ur-Quan into two sub-species, the Green Ur-Quan and the Black Ur-Quan. The Green Ur-Quan were the scientists and politicians of the Dnyarri empire, while the Black Ur-Quan were used as basic soldiers and laborers. As far as anyone knows, the original Brown Ur-Quan became extinct at this point.
Over the thousands of years they ruled, the Dnyarri eventually became lax in the mental domination of their slaves. A green Ur-Quan scientist named Kzer-Za used this to initiate their downfall. Kzer-Za noted that the Dnyarri 'detached' their psychic control from a Ur-Quan suffering near-lethal pain. Armed with this knowledge, and using one of the few moments of mental freedom the Dnyarri were giving their slaves, he injected his body with a lethal and painful poison, and used the mental freedom to broadcast the news across the Dnyarri empire. Ur-Quan and other Dnyarri slaves everywhere began burning themselves, hacking their own bodies, anything necessary to give them the freedom needed to kill the nearest Dnyarri. Eventually, this was refined into a device known as an Excruciator, which, when implanted into a living Ur-Quan brain, could cause enough pain to force the Dnyarri to detach, but leave the Ur-Quan's body whole and functional. The slave empire had fallen.
With their hard-won freedom, the Ur-Quan contemplated the fate of the few terrified Dnyarri left alive. The Ur-Quan decided that the crime of the Dnyarri was so great, that even extinction was too good for them. Instead it was decided that the Dnyarri would be genetically modified into dumb animals, retaining their psychic powers only to allow translation and communication with alien species, something the Ur-Quan now considered demeaning. They were now referred to as 'Talking Pets'.
The Ur-Quan were now free, and determined to never again be slaves, the two sub-species of the Ur-Quan each developed doctrines to ensure this. The green Ur-Quan, renamed the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za in honor of the Ur-Quan scientist who freed them all, devised the 'Path of Now and Forever', a doctrine that ironically stated that all non-Ur-Quan sentient life be slaves to the Ur-Quan either as battle thralls, or forever be imprisoned on their homeworlds under impenetrable force-fields. This doctrine was at odds with the Black Ur-Quan (renamed the Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah after their new leader and author of the doctrine), who felt that only their 'Eternal Doctrine'; the utter annihilation of non-Ur-Quan life, would keep them safe from slavery. Both races immediately set out to follow their doctrine, sadly turning against the very races that helped them secure their freedom. After the imprisonment of the Faz by the Kzer-Za and the 'cleansing' of the Yuptar by the Kohr-Ah, both races met in orbit over the homeworld of the Mael-Num, and began to argue over the superiority of their doctrine over the other. This quickly escalated into a war between the Kohr-Ah and the Kzer-Za, which the Mael-Num used to make their escape. This war came to be known as The Doctrinal Conflict, and devastated both sides. The Kzer-Za eventually triumphed through the discovery of an enormous Precursor Battleship, named the Sa-Matra.
Defeated, the Kohr-Ah were sent in the opposite direction of the galaxy as the Kzer-Za, with the understanding that when the two species met again, they would fight The Doctrinal Conflict once more, with the victor claiming the prize, the Sa-Matra.
