Scryve

The Scryve are the principle antagonists of Star Control Origins and the major galactic power of the region. They have dominated other races for thousands of years and are ruthless in their pursuit of peace, or their deluded version of it.

Biology

The Scryve are a centaur-like species with two arms and four heavy, powerful legs. Scryve are physically imposing, with ornate armour and advanced cognitive abilities that allow them to monitor a number of different sensors that their elaborate helmets possess.

The Scryve are masters of genetic manipulation, having devised all sorts of bioweapons and ward species augmentations and this manipulation extends to their own species. Viewing themselves as perfect, the Scryve genetically augmented their entire species to become biologically immortal, remaining in their prime for as long as they can without dying to external influences.

However, this immortality has had two notable side effects. The first is it decimates the Scryve’s ability to evolve, having remained in their stagnant biology for thousands of years by this point. The second and most devastating to the Scryve is it renders them completely sterile. No new Scryve have been born in hundreds of years and this has the effect of a slow decline in their species. Every Scryve lost to war or accident is a Scryve that cannot be replaced. Strangely, the Scryve seem at peace with this, as they don’t seem to be seeking a cure. Presumably, given their knowledge of genetic engineering, they have the capacity to at least try.

Culture

Scyve culture is dominated by their imperialistic endeavours, enslaving other species, collecting their culture for the civilian population to enjoy and just generally destroying any species that crosses them. The Scryve have an extremely decadent culture, appropriating their various ward’s cultural exports for their own amusement. This lends the selected ward species a sense of status within the Empire, but it is a shame. The Scryve are a fickle people and tend to drop these cultural matters for more lavish ones from more recent conquests.

The Scryve seem to believe they are an illuminating light of civilization in the galaxy, bringing enlightenment with their conquests. This is a distortion of their original intentions, having been benevolent dictators after the collapse of the Faction of Eight, providing worlds with technology and wealth. However, the various species they gave to would indulge in warfare and extermination, so the Scryve would have to step in. This led to their current means of enslaving all races and ensuring their position at the top, as they truly believe what they are doing is for the best. By keeping the other species under their thumb, they prevent them from destroying themselves. Instead, the Scryve believe they offer an excuse to their wards if something goes wrong.

The Scryve tend to keep themselves close to their chests, unwilling to part with any information about themselves to those they perceive as “savages”. They view the need to learn as dangerous and a threat, as with knowledge comes power and the thirst for it. The Scryve prevent any information spreading where they can by enslaving or eliminating rivals to their position. This suppression of technological advancement comes from what they view as the wisdom of the Faction of Eight. By keeping other species at a certain level of development, they are prevented from experimenting with technology they cannot handle and in turn, wiping themselves out.

The Scryve seem to possess a hierarchy within their own species, with different jobs dedicated to each caste. Only two are known of current, the Legates and the Chroniclers. Chroniclers are a caste of the Scryve Hierarchy who deal with recording history of the Scryve Empire. Legates are charged with monitoring different signals and clamping down on threats to the Empire as a whole. Each Legate wears an elaborate headpiece that contains a number of sensors and are a matter of pride for most Scryve. Legates tend to operate within the navy and have a say in the larger governing of the Empire. The Scryve navy is referred as the Naval Limb of the Scryve Empire, tasked with defending and conquering worlds, as well as snuffing out foes.

An intensely paranoid species, the Scryve will often deploy bioweapons on the worlds of races that defy them, citing it as the Act of Youthful Aggression. They operate a series of listening posts throughout their empire which is always manned by a Scryve Legate. Upon detecting a threat to the Empire, they will send out a cruiser to destroy the offending race, though a Probe is often sent first to ascertain the nature of the threat. This paranoia comes from their fear of being overthrown and the stability they had worked for being undone and races effectively dooming themselves to extinction as they did after the collapse of the Faction.

The Scryve claim that most species don’t desire freedom, they desire security. By centralising power to the Empire, the Scryve hope to create stability and guidance for other species. Unfortunately, they abuse this power and have been known to wipe out billions. The Scryve see this as a burden they must undertake, taking responsibility for their wards doing something wrong and they in turn must hold themselves accountable.

The Scryve used to use gladiator pits, where they threw enemies into pitched combat. Nowadays, the gladiator pits have fallen out of fashion amongst the Scryve and aren’t discussed widely, remaining buried in the past. The gladiator pits allowed the victims to be resurrected hundreds of times after they die, in a form of eternal limbo and entertainment for the Scryve. The Scryve are capable of recognising others as a peer if they feel a sort of kindred with them. The Scryve claim to have outgrown sarcasm millennia ago, but this is merely a part of their self-entitled view of themselves.

The Scryve place a great deal on the concept of honour amongst their own species. They value the opinions of other Scryve and hold other members of their race to a high standard. If acts such as leaving the Empire or defying it in some manner are discovered, the Scryve will attack the dissenters with intent to kill. However, the Scryve aren’t without honour for those they respect. With humanity helping to defeat them in the long run and completely decimating the Empire’s hold over the Outer Spur, a lobby in the Scryve government pressing for the acknowledgement of humanity as a peer and equal. It is being met with harsh resistance. Some Scryve Legates have been opting to test humanitys capacity for governorship over the Outer Spur, with a series of tests based around the challenges humanity would face as governors of the sector.

History

Historically, the Scryve evolved on a harsh world that provided little for them. However, in this difficult environment, the Scryve thrived and managed to leave their world. Upon first looking upon the stars, the Scryve knew they would belong to them. Upon reaching the stars, the Scryve saw the struggle that had shaped them had damaged most species, dying of disease, famine or internal conflict. The Scryve seemed to be the exception in this, as their harsh world had nurtured a strong race that relied on their own to reach their potential.

The Scryve arrived on the galactic scene around 10,000 years ago during the reign of the Faction of Eight, an octet of space faring races that held sway over their sector of space for millennia. The Scryve claim all members of the Faction of Eight are gone, lost to time and each race was fairly cruel, each hardened by millennia of war. The Faction operated like a meritocracy. New species would have to destroy a member of the Faction completely to claim their place amongst the others. There could only ever be eight, a tenet the Faction held in high regard. The Scryve were left struggling against one of the Faction’s members and were able to emerge victorious, taking a seat on the Faction and they were indeed the last race to do so before the Faction’s destruction.

The Faction would allow no mercy once combat began, but the Scryve aimed to be better, to never be as cruel as the Faction had become over its millennia long history of violence and bloodshed. The Scryve aimed to show kindness and peace to the species of the galaxy, something that flew in the face of the Faction of Eight. Whilst the Faction were powerful and more advanced than the Scryve, they had grown stagnant, ceased to grow as a culture and becoming complacent. The Faction’s system depended on technological parity with the younger alien species they found. To ensure this, the Faction forbid developing their own technology beyond a certain point, to ensure younger species would have a “fair fight”. The Scryve spent a few decades in secret developing technology to give them an edge over the other seven members of the Faction. Eventually, the Scryve would annihilate all members of the Faction, save for one, the Urpox who managed to survive with a single ship to their name and being forced to spend the next ten thousand years in stasis.

Initially, the Scryve sought to leave the aliens they had freed alone, free to do as they pleased. As these civilisations rose up, the Scryve began to see the effects of larger civilisations and their equally sized mistakes and understood the wisdom of the Faction. By ensuring a cycle of stagnant violence, the Faction had held a sort of perverse peace over their tenure, ensuring that species only advanced to a certain degree and took their place on the Faction, keeping the younger races below them with cycles of combat. Whilst the Faction would subdue a species and kill billions, the Scryve observed that once these same races were free to explore and develop on their own, disaster would become inevitable as they created powerful weapons or opened the wrong parts of dimensions, only to be devoured. Seeing this horror, the Scryve devised a new plan, to ensure peace no matter the cost. This was the Scryve Empire.

The Empire would reign for the next ten thousand years, absorbing species and dominating entire cultures. In time, the Scryve would begin to introduce genetic manipulations to their client species, eventually elevating two to become their principle wards, the Llani, who would become the Measured and the Drenkend, who would become a race entirely comprising of clones. This trend of manipulating races continued, ensuring the loyalty of those who the Scryve altered and reducing the risk of rebellion within the Empire. However, not all would be stable within the Empire over its long reign.

The first recorded trouble the Scryve ran into was with the Xraki. This species had long been members of the Empire, even serving aboard every ship in the Naval Limb as the Scryve’s marine corps. This would come to an end however, as the Scryve had been experimenting with a Precursor Origin in the Xraki system, a form of interdimensional gateway. This Origin would open up to the dimension of the Gluttonous Eyes and the entire Empire would erupt into civil war as the Xraki were infected. Entire worlds were claimed and half of the Scryve navy fell to the Xraki within a year. This ultimately forced the Scryve to unleash the Pinthi on the Xraki, forcing them back to the Origin and sealing them within it, fearing that they would break free and seek revenge.

In the intervening years, the Scryve would encounter threats to their power about once a century, an upstart race similar to humanity with the drive to destroy the Empire from within. Every time, the Scryve would find and eradicate these threats to their power, killing hundreds of species in the process. Eventually, the Empire would run into a threat they couldn’t contain, that of the Outsiders or the W51 phenomenon. This force began to consume  entire species, world and civilisations from within the Mid-Spur, heading deeper into Scryve space and decimating the forces of the Empire. The Scryve even debated on opening the Origin and turning the Xraki on the force, but refrained in case it was part of the Gluttonous Eyes.

Eventually, the Scryve would abandon the Mid-Spur, where factions like the Syndicate and the Liberators would form, waging war amongst themselves and forcing a mass exodus of refugees from the phenomenon through Scryve space. This was merely the first of the Scryve’s problems, as the Xraki had spent years weakening the Empire from the inside out and had even sponsored a former ward race, the Phamysht to wage war against the Scryve in exchange for advanced weaponry and an extradimensional meal. Two years before humanity took to the galactic stage, the Scryve would experience their greatest mistake since the Xraki, as the Pinthi finally turned against them and began waging a war of attrition against the Scyrve. Entire colonies were eradicated as the Pinthi had no ground or planets to give and their ability to rapidly reproduce meant that they took little casualties during the war.

The final months of the Scryve Empire would see the rise of the Federation of Allied Species, with humanity at the helm. This powerful alliance would recruit the Pinthi and a series of former ward species to rebel against the Empire and even would unleash the Xraki by mistake, spelling the doom for the Empire. The combined arms of the Federation and the Xraki caused the Scryve to retreat from the Outer-Spur and leave them principle ward species without orders. The Scryve retreated to the Inner-Spur, the centre of their government and set in motion attempts to stabilise their borders against the remaining Xraki and the Syndicate. Some within the government began to debate whether to view humanity as equals or to try and destroy them. This caused a few Legates to try and contact the Captain of the Vindicator and provide him with tasks to prove humanity’s worthiness of governing the Outer-Spur. This was met with fierce debate within the Empire and it is assumed it will remain hostile to the Federation for quite some time.