Savage Sathar Motivation

Zuraqqor –  The Zuraqqor are a space-faring race of intelligent, bipedal insects, each having small, vestigial wings, two compound eyes, and two antennae. {Are early victims to the I’Krl Exeat domination of species in the Frontier regions.}

S’sessu – {S’sessu is a peaceful offshoot of the Sathar, long ago escaping the dominance of the I’krl masters.}  S’sessu are almost identical in appearance to Sathar, the most obvious difference between them being body coloration. A Sathar’s skin is yellow or brown, but a S’sessu has a bright pink- or green-tinted skin. The S’sessu do not have the patterns of dots or stripes on their heads that the Sathar have. Otherwise, all other descriptive information on Sathar can be applied to S’sessu.

Sathar History

On a warm moonless world orbiting a typical G sequence starm – Satha Prime – , great worms tunneled through the abundant wetlands.  These Great Worms – massive in size – were ancient and simple, feeding off common fungus and algae in the depths of the wetlands.  They were simple and quiet creatures.  Few knew they were actually ancient sentient beings that once ruled a vast empire.  Since their fall, they search of a simple world to retire and devolve to a simpler life.  They finally settled on one proto-world to live – the world that would become home to the Sathars.

The world’s fauna had not passed the invertebrate stage when the proto-satha arose on it’s evolutionary path.  The proto-sathra followed the migration patterns of the Great Worms,  feeding off the deep roots the beasts’ trails exposed as well as the carcasses when they died.  Nomadic proto-satha tribes developed regionally much like ethnicities, with differentiating colorations of the proto-satha skins.  Predominantly,  the darker colors were from the equatorial regions where the light colors were from the more northern or southern regions towards the poles.  These followed herds of the great worms and religions grew around the worship of the Great Worms.

As thes symbiotic relationship between the proto-satha and Great Worms evolved, so did the proto-satha. The Great Worms (who had not revealed their own sentience to any tribe) watched as the proto-satha slowly developed their own sapience. The tribes guided and cared for the great worms who, in turn, provided everything they needed. Centuries turned into millennia and, in time, the proto-satha became more and more arrogant and disrespectful of their “partners.”  Factions within (primarily in the equatorial regions) began to see the Great Worms less as gods and more as herd animals and things to be hunted.

This lead to the realization of just how few Great Worms were actually on their homeworld.  Before long, the Great Worms were all but extinct.

Factionalism 

Religion and regionalism divided the sentient satha into two primary groups – the equatorial Sathar and the non-equatorial S’sessu.  Due to evolutionary as well as territorial coincidence, the S’sessu had the population advantage. War between then was never a question because for every Sathar, there as at least 5 to 10 S’sessu.  It wasn’t until the radical shift in Sathar society to start herding and hunting the Great Worms was war a possibility.  The much more fundamentally religious S’sessu saw this as blasphemy and saw it was their divine right to impose their will on the Sathar.

The wars that followed were endless.  Tribes grew into kingdoms, which in turn grew into nations, but the division between the S’sessu and the Sathar remained. The Sathar, hardened by their more harsh regional ecosystems, proved to be much more suited for war their their softer, more philosophical brethren.  Eventually, as more and more territory was taken by the Sathar by the S’sessu, the scales of population began to tip in the Sathar’s favor.

Revelations

His name was S’slaa’uth, although they did not know it.  His kind has taken a vow of silence that had lasted millenia – penance for their multi-millenia spanning empire that was built on nothing more than hubris, greed and sloth.  When it collapsed under it’s own sins, the remaining survivors vowed to live a life of ultimate peace – the life of a non-sentient animal.

However, as he watch as his people die out, more from their own age than from the hunting the Sathar imposed on them, S’slaa’uth realized that their children were doomed to repeat these sins.  He was the last surviving Great Worm and while he stayed silent as his brethren had over the centuries, their children were wiping each other out for the same petty reasons his people destroyed itself.

He could stay silent no longer.

The Day the Great Worm Spoke is a day held in reverence to all S’Sessu and some Sathar.  It brought forth a peace accord that ended the wars between the Sathar and the S’Sessu.  By then, the S’Sessu numbers were about 25% that of the Sathar.  The savage Sathar was now the dominant species of the planet.  Fearing this, despite the peace accords and the promises to let the last Great Worm live out it’s life, the S’Sessu sought to escape the new Sathar dominated world.  Space travel was the only answer.

The S’Sessu and the Sathar both worked on their own space exploration programs, for their own reasons.  The Peace Accords held but their was a tense cold war that shadowed the world.  Only the elite bishops of the Church of S’slaa’uth new what happened to the old one, but most believe it had passed on.  As the Sathar colonized their system, the S’Sessu build generations ships to launch themselves into space in hopes of finding a new homeworld.  By midway through their first expansion, the S’Sessu had already left the system.

The Zuraqqor

In a nearby system, known as Zoraq, a sentient race of insects had evolved in parallel with the Sathar, although their story was muchg different.  Early in their development, the Zuraqqor made contact with the I’krl via an ancient gate left on their world. It wasn’t long before this species was infected with the doctrine and bio-tech of the I’krl Exeat.  The Zuraqqor’s evolution was directly influenced by the I’krl.

However, not all of the Zuraqqor felt the Exeat was benevolent.  Just as the Exeat was gaining a foothold in this region, a anti-I’krl terrorist group attacked the much revered and worshiped stellar gate.  Many were killed and the gate was destroyed.  The Zuraq contingent of the Exeat was stranded, at least until they could build another gate.  Unfortunately, Zuraq lacked key elements to make it work.  Along with an uncountable number of klicks, kroath, and magus, there were a number of n’sss and gardhyi  populated Zuraq as well as karadan and bareem {Zethra slavers} are present.

With help from the now stranded Exeat races, the Zuraqqor learned space travel fairly early and were already colonizing their system before the Sathar’s had reached that level.  By the time the Sathar were colonizing their own system, the Zuraqqor had colonized other planets outside their own system.  It was during this time that the Roge Zuraqqor Nations – those that did not completely fall in line with the I’krl doctrine – split off from their homeworld and formed bands of pirates and raiders in the region.

The Awakening

It was a I’Krl Zuraqqor scouting mission into the Sathar system that triggered the war that changed everything for the Sathars.  Something deep within the Sathar’s psyche was trigger – perhaps something implanted by the Great Worms – that took the Sathar’s war-like nature to a new level.  Perhaps this was what S’slaa’uth was concerned about.  It was one part irrational self-preservation and one part berserker rage.  But unlike the Yazirian Battle Rage, it never shut off.  Something about the Zuraqqor the Sathar sensed.  Some theorize that they sensed the I’Krl influence in their genetics, but whatever it was, the war that followed was larger than either race had seen.  Regardless, this thing became known as the Sathar Awakening.

This war gave birth to two things – (1) the beginnings of the Sathar warmachine and (2) The close relationship between the Rogue Zuraqqor nations and the burgeoning Sathar Empire.  Driven by the sheer fear of the I’krl Exeat presence, the Sathar built their empire on the unending need to build bigger and better armies, weapons and ways to kill their enemy.  The Awakening drive the Sathar to new levels of ruthlessness in the name of self preservation.  Whole species were either enslaved, annihilated or left with a dead world in their wake.

The Sathar philosophy from then on was centered around the drive born from the Awakening.