#thoenzo1

Oh man buckle up, the Ur-Quan have a LONG history. Which makes sense, since the game is subtitled The Ur-Quan Masters and all.

So a long LONG time ago, the Ur-Quan developed on a hostile world as apex solitary predators, which gave them an intense territorialness that made it SUPER hard for them to cooperate or even be near each other without wanting to kill each other. While they did eventually create a functioning society, it was extremely difficult for them, and even now, there’s never more than one Ur-Quan in a given ship (the rest of the crew are battle thralls). Back then, the Ur-Quan were brown.

Eventually, the Ur-Quan found/were found by the Sentient Milieu, an alliance of six different sentient races in the galaxy. One of the races was the Taalo, a race of rock-like beings that I think may also have been silicon-based, I forget. The important thing though is that the Taalo were the only race the Ur-Quan had ever encountered that did NOT trigger their instinctual KILL THE INTERLOPER RIP OUT ITS LIFE territoriality. For once, they could actually be close and socialize with another race without freaking out all the time, and the Taalo and the Ur-Quan became very close friends. For a long time, the galaxy was at peace. The Ur-Quan made great scouts due to their solitary nature, so they spent their time exploring new worlds.

One Ur-Quan scout made a fateful discovery on an unknown world - a race of mushroom/toad-like creatures called the Dnyarri. The Dnyarri were psychic, and they used their powers to control and compel other beings to follow their will. The Ur-Quan, as it turned out, were extremely subsceptible to the Dnyarri’s mind control. In no time at all, the one scout was carrying Dnyarri to other worlds, where they quickly took over and mentally enslaved each race in the Milieu.

Except the Taalo. The Taalo’s unique rock-like physiology not only made them non-threatening to the Ur-Quan, but it also prevented the Dnyarri from controlling them. Obviously, the Dnyarri couldn’t let this stand. So they ordered the Ur-Quan to kill all of them. The Taalo were desperately working on a shield that would protect and save their dear friends from the Dnyarri’s compulsion, but they weren’t able to finish it in time. Helplessly, the Ur-Quan were forced to systematically wipe out the only species they’d ever trusted or cared for, as well as their one hope for escaping the Dnyarri’s control.

But it didn’t end there. The Ur-Quan were particular favorites of the Dnyarri because their minds were so easy to control, so the Dnyarri decided to do some genetic tinkering on them, splitting the Ur-Quan into two sub-races - the green Ur-Quan (thinkers, scientists) and the black Ur-Quan (builders, doers). The single brown Ur-Quan were no more.

The Dnyarri’s slave empire lasted for thousands and thousands of years.  Finally, there was a breakthrough. A green Ur-Quan scientist, Kzer-Za, discovered that a Dnyarri would “disconnect” from a slave about to die (since the Dnyarri would also die) and couldn’t control a slave that was in unbelievable pain. The Dnyarri at this point were lazy and complacent, and Kzer-Za took advantage of a moment of carelessness. He injected himself with lethal acid as he broadcast a message to every Ur-Quan on the planet about what he’d learned. Instantly, every Ur-Quan was stabbing themselves, ripping off limbs, setting themselves on fire… anything that’d break the Dnyarri’s mental hold long enough for the Ur-Quan to find that Dnyarri and kill it.

The road to their freedom was long and unbelievably painful in a very literal sense. Ur-Quan were willing to do anything, ANYTHING, to make sure the Dnyarri could not control them again. Eventually this ended with the invention of the Excruciator, a device that would ceaselessly put you through blinding, searing pain. If a human had one implanted it would kill them instantly, that’s how severe that pain was. And the Ur-Quan would wear these Excruciators for months, YEARS on end, while fighting this war. This also messed them up.

Finally, they’d killed off almost every Dnyarri, but the Ur-Quan wanted revenge for what had been done to them. Since they’d tampered with the Ur-Quan, they decided they’d tamper with the Dnyarri in return. They genetically modified the Dnyarri so they were no longer sentient, creating a race of subservient “talking pets” that they used as translators to lesser species, the most demeaning role they could think of.

Then the Ur-Quan had to figure out what to do. The millenia of enslavement under the Dnyarri, everything they’d done and endured to get out of it, had left them deeply scarred. The thought of joining another alliance like the Sentient Milieu was impossible. But what other options were there?

The green Ur-Quan, who named themselves Kzer-Za after the martyred scientist, decided on a doctrine they called The Path of Now and Forever. This doctrine was simple - every sentient race the Kzer-Za encountered would be given a choice. They could either become the Ur-Quan’s slaves as battle thralls, or they could be imprisoned, forever, on a planet. That way, no one would be able to control the Ur-Quan again.

The black Ur-Quan, who called themselves the Kohr-Ah after their leader who rose up at this point, had a slightly less complicated idea - The Eternal Doctrine. Basically, all sentient non-Ur-Quan life in the galaxy was a potential threat, and must be cleansed. This was the only way they could make sure they’d never be controlled again.

The Kzer-Za and the Kohr-Ah obviously did not see eye to eye(s) on this. They both went about their business for a time with the remaining members of the Sentient Milieu their unfortunate victims. Finally the Kzer-Za and the Kohr-Ah met over the last remaining race and ended up clashing, starting a civil war. During the course of this war the Kzer-Za found an ancient Precursor battleship they called the Sa-Matra, which they used to rout the Kohr-Ah forces.

Even so, the Kohr-Ah were still their brethren, and the Kzer-Za were filled with doubt. Was their Doctrine really correct? Was this really how they could ensure their safety? Unable to decide, the Kzer-Za instead told the Kohr-Ah to follow their doctrine going one way, and the Kzer-Za would go the other. When the two races met again, they’d resume their Doctrinal Conflict to see whose ideology would be triumphant (and whoever won would get the Sa-Matra, which means “great trophy” in Ur-Quan). Star Control 2 takes place when the two Ur-Quan races meet again, and they are in the middle of their second conflict during the game. Which on one hand is lucky for you, since it means the Kzer-Za are really distracted and can’t take too much time to keep track of what you (or most of their thralls or slaves) are up to.

However, the Kohr-Ah have gotten a lot stronger since the first conflict, and if you spend too much time in the game dallying around, eventually the Kohr-Ah will win. They will then systematically go through the starmap, killing everyone in their path, until they destroy the Earth, at which point the game ends. So you want to make sure you beat the game before that happens.

This is a lot of history, but what are the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za actually like, you may be wondering? Perhaps surprisingly, the Ur-Quan are not cruel or malicious, and they aren’t liars. They’re intelligent and fairly eloquent and they don’t take pleasure in hurting or killing people. They believe their Doctrine is the solution that will kill the least amount of people, and in a way, that their Doctrine will protect other races in time from danger. They won’t allow any kind of warfare among their slaves, including between different factions of the same species, and they systematically destroy all military technology/research (and often several cultural heritage sites) when they subjugate a species. They get very annoyed when you break their rules, but they’ll usually give an errant species warnings before they act.(The Thraddash, for example, tried to start one of their frequent civil wars between Cultures while the Ur-Quan were around, but the Ur-Quan intercepted and destroyed all their missiles and told them to knock it off. The Thraddash, undeterred, decided to resort to poison to kill that current Culture’s leaders instead. Once the Ur-Quan found out, they killed the people responsible, appointed new leaders randomly, and told the Thraddash that if they did that again they’d exterminate their entire race. So far the Thraddash have listened.)

The Ur-Quan are willing to show you mercy, at points… if you surrender to them, for example, they tell you that they will spare your crew and only kill you personally and the other commanding officers responsible. If the Kohr-Ah win the conflict, the Ur-Quan will desperately tell you to run and hide somewhere, and that they have failed in protecting you from their brethren. They actively hope you’ll find some way to survive in secret.If a defeated race chooses imprisonment, the Ur-Quan will allow that race to choose where they want to be enslaved, or in one case, even find a world for them to be enslaved on if they don’t have one. They’re even surprisingly patient with races like the Thraddash, who are mostly big fight-picking nuisances, or the Spathi, who in spite of being their battle thralls try to avoid and run away from combat as much as possible. When the humans lost the war, the Ilwrath wanted to sacrifice all of us to their dark gods, but the Ur-Quan wouldn’t let them do it, since we were technically under their protection at that point. Often, if you interrupt them or bother them in the middle of their war, they tell you that they can’t deal with you right now and that they have to win the fight against the Kohr-Ah, for your sake. They are one of the oldest living races in the galaxy and often it shows.

The Kohr-Ah, in comparison, are succinct and often seem emotionless. They believe in their doctrine absolutely and that killing someone so they can be reborn as an Ur-Quan is in itself a kind of gift. According to them, they have wiped out over five thousand other sentient races before the game starts, and they have no remorse about it or doubt in themselves whatsoever. Appealing to their sense of mercy is completely futile. That said, while they do disagree with the Kzer-Za and think of them as effete bureaucrats, they have no intention of wiping them out of the stars like everyone else. Once the doctrinal conflict is resolved, presumably both Ur-Quan subraces will find an uneasy peace with each other, though no one would be left to see it…

On a more gameplay-related note, the Ur-Quan have a GREAT theme, super intimidating and heavy. The Kohr-Ah theme, in comparison, is much slower and quieter. In battle, their ships are extremely powerful, so you really don’t want to fight either of them if you can help it (they are both beatable but it’s not easy and it depends heavily on what ship you send out against them). I think Starcon2 found a really clever way to handle this actually - the Ur-Quan and Kohr-Ah are supposed to be incredibly old and powerful races with gigantic fleets, basically an unstoppable force that completely outclasses all others, and their ships are both OP to reflect that. BUT, if the player constantly had to fight/get curbstomped by the Ur-Quan, that’s not a fun gameplay experience. So to let the Ur-Quan have incredibly powerful scary ships AND not blast you into next week immediately, the Ur-Quan are always busy fighting each other. You CAN get into encounters with either of them if you’re flying through their spheres of influence, but they won’t seek you out on purpose. I just think that was a really clever way to do that.