This investigation is sponsored by Paradox Interactive.
One by one, the highest ideals of the Star Union were abandoned and betrayed.
As it spread across the stars, personal freedom gave way to collective security, economic
equality exchanged for corporate domination.
When the expeditionary forces of the Union encountered the alien Kir’ko, any remaining
belief in the virtues of friendly cooperation or non-interference held little sway.
To the Star Union, the Kir’ko were an abomination; an endless swarm of toxic insects united under
an overwhelming psionic hive mind.
Union pioneers landed on their jungle world, only to be eaten, or to collapse into insanity
within the swarm’s psionic fields.
The presence of Nectar, a priceless neuroactive substance, sealed the Kir’ko’s fate.
The Star Union’s armies fell upon the planet with the endless swarms of the Kir’ko crushed
beneath superior technology and strategy.
The core of the swarm, the Kir’ko Hive Queens, were lobotomized by Union bio-engineers, robbed
of their psionic potential and reduced to mindless breeders.
They would produce generations of carefully evolved slave workers and hardened warriors,
perfected through rapid evolution by their new oppressors.
The hive mind was broken but traces of its memory remained.
Amidst the endless numbers of the swarm, a scattered collection of individuals, perhaps
the first of their kind, managed to retain some higher psionic connection.
They escaped to the fringes of the Star Union, finding work as spies, mercenaries, and assassins.
Whether the void-storms that increasingly raged across the unstable Outworlds or the
Union’s own use of hyper-evolution unleashed the Kir’ko’s psionic power, remains a
mystery.
Reports of Kir’ko slaves exhibiting higher forms of problem solving, rumors of acts of
defiance, all were overshadowed by the Cataclysm.
When the Kir’ko emerged from the ruins of the Star Union, they had been born anew.
On countless worlds the Kir’ko have revolted against their masters, forming new hives and
unleashing new swarms.
As their numbers swell, their connection grows, with individual Kir’ko commanders, known
as Swarm Heralds, somehow able to project a suitable replacement for their martyred
Hive Queens.
This psionic connection manifests itself across all of the swarm, but whether it is some long
dormant power or a manifested evolutionary response, no evidence remains.
Newly hatched Kir’ko carry with them a memory of the past, dreams of their lost homeworld
and a terrible longing for their shattered hive mind.
Its power can be felt even outside of their race.
Some who have encountered them claim they can speak with the voices of loved ones, and
many have willingly embraced the swarm, eager to be added to its chorus.
The Kir’ko are masters of design and creation, but where other races utilize concrete and
steel, the swarm crafts its great works from living biomass.
Its enemies are reduced to their organic components, reformed and repurposed into whatever their
hive requires.
They have come to mimic their enslavers, changing their very genetic code as required, and even
harnessing the power of technology to supplement their organic forms.
Organized into a strict caste system, the Kir’ko produce endless variants of workers
and soldiers, freed slaves and engineered servants.
Yet all are valued equally, for they believe they are empowered together, or not at all.
Certain lifeforms provide a unique insight into their psychology, one strain of creature
known as the “Tormented” seem unable to cope with the loss of the hive mind and now
project their hatred and suffering as powerful blasts of psionic energy.
Another creature known as the Transcendent seems to suffer the wounds inflicted on its
brethren, absorbing pain and redirecting it against its foes.
It is the Kir’ko life form known only as the “Deep One” that might hold the greatest
secrets however.
It is an immense leviathan that resides beneath the seas, engineered into existence from some
deep and profound memory of the hive mind, an ancient reflection brought back into the
galaxy.
If the hive mind of the Kir’ko is slowly reforming across the ruined worlds of the
Star Union, then it may be only a matter of time before their race is once more united.
For now, however, the swarm is fractured.
Some within believe that only the blood of the subjugators is the antidote to the poison
of servitude, while others proclaim that retribution will only bring about another cycle of despair.
What drives them all however is the belief that their beloved, their Queen of Queens
still lives.
It calls to them from the depths, demanding to be found.
In the centuries since their liberation, the swarm has evolved from dreamers and artists,
to relentless engineered warriors.
If this queen exists, will it recognize her own children?
Thanks to Paradox Interactive for sponsoring this investigation into the hives of the Kir’ko.
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