Now that the accords of the Union between Pa-Sentient Races has occurred, Terran scientists, historians, and philosophers are being allowed a much deeper look into Orion Society, and what they are finding is sending shockwaves through the Terran half of the PSU. Apparently during their rise as an interstellar power, the Khanate of Orion has regularly and increasingly used demonstration nuclear strikes and outright genocide against other alien races that they have come into contact with, to force their surrender. With a long history of outright aggression against other alien races, it was no wonder that war broke out almost immediately when Humanity ran into the Orions in System VX-134. Considerable recent study has gone into researching the central Orion archives on New Valkha and the results have been surprising: until the Orions met Humanity, they had conquered and wiped out every race they ran into, resulting in the deaths of billions of sentients within the short time span that the Orions have been active among the stars (starting in 2041 AD). A deeper, more detailed study has been concluded on this issue and the results will now be spelled out here. During their expansion to the stars, the Orions of the Khanate ran into many different species and all of them were assimilated into the Khanate with the singular exception of the Gorm, whose valiant struggle against their attackers won them praise and honor in the sight of the Orions. However, the Gorm were not the first alien race that the Orions encountered, that short-lived honor fell to the Likrinish, a pre-industrial sentient race located near the core Orion systems surrounded Old Valkha. Now the Terran Federation has taken a high-minded and, yes, progressive, approach to industrial and pre-industrial societies: a hands-off approach no matter what. However, the Orions have no such compunctions and when they discovered the backwaters Likrinish (in 2043 AD), they immediately moved to conquer them, a move hardly befitting a race as “noble” as the Orions. Using heavy orbital nuclear strikes that destroyed the Likrinishs’ forty-three largest cities and causing an estimated 800 million deaths, the Orions eventually forced an unconditional surrender from their low-tech enemies, after strikes that went on for nearly 3 months. The tradition of “expansion by conquest” had its roots laid in the Likrinish home system and expanded from there. During that same year the Orions found the fabulous warp nexus near the Great Nebula of Orion and expanded geometrically across the stars. Within decades the Khanate of Orion grew form a small micro-empire into a powerful, organized, and highly militarized society, hell-bent on conquering new worlds no matter the cost.
This mentality has become very clear to Terran researchers and is proven by the Orions next encounter with an alien race, the star-spanning Drolian Federation. A pocket empire located near Amropolous, the Drolians were a somewhat peaceful race but when the first contact between the Orions and Drolians occurred (in 2068), the Orion commander on the scene wanted to force the issue an deliberately “crowded” a Drolian vessel, sparking the Drolian Incident which led to all-out war between the two empires. Within two years the Orions brutally attacked and conquered the Drolian Federation using, again, widespread nuclear strikes on the Drolians; countless billions perished in these nuclear firestorms. In fact the Orions had a consistent policy of nuking every Drolian outpost and habitation that wasn’t located on a habitable world, a policy from which the Drolians could only conclude that the Orions would pen them up on their worlds and “keep them there” according to the Drolian merchanter Ullaek Kan/nock, interviewed by my researchers several weeks ago as he passed through New Valkha on a freighter run to Seltra Minor. By the mid 2270s, the Khanate of Orion had expanded into such a large area and colonized so many worlds, including adding the entire Drolian Federation to their empire, that running into alien races was becoming exponential. In late 2077 the Orions stumbled upon the water-breathing race known as the Mercogran, octopi-like beings located near the heavily populated Orion Zanibar System. Again, using nuclear strikes without warning, the Orions rolled over the small polity that the Mercogran had built from scratch, not even bothering to fully communicate with these harmless aliens before firing upon them. In fact the Mercogran homeworld was so heavily bombed by the Orion Navy that it has taken over 200 years for radiation levels to drop to acceptable levels and the heavy loss of life is still discussed even to this day, centuries later.
More aliens came under attack by the Khanate of Orion as that entity expanded amongst the stars. The cat-like Essota (discovered in 2091) were bombed back to the stone age and their home system interdicted. The Koalian States, a pocket empire located near Corellius, was occupied after heavy nuclear strikes upon planetary population centers forced their surrender. The Tssilka Federation was destroyed and their homeworld occupied in 2115. The Corellian Revolt (in 2156), while an internal Orion matter (the Corellians are Orions after all), was brutally suppressed by firebombing any colony, outpost, and habitation that refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the Khan. The genocide of Orions and aliens alike Starfire History ORION GENOCIDAL BEHAVIOR Now that the accords of the Union between Pa-Sentient Races has occurred, Terran scientists, historians, and philosophers are being allowed a much deeper look into Orion Society, and what they are finding is sending shockwaves through the Terran half of the PSU. Apparently during their rise as an interstellar power, the Khanate of Orion has regularly and increasingly used demonstration nuclear strikes and outright genocide against other alien races that they have come into contact with, to force their surrender. With a long history of outright aggression against other alien races, it was no wonder that war broke out almost immediately when Humanity ran into the Orions in System VX-134. Considerable recent study has gone into researching the central Orion archives on New Valkha and the results have been surprising: until the Orions met Humanity, they had conquered and wiped out every race they ran into, resulting in the deaths of billions of sentients within the short time span that the Orions have been active among the stars (starting in 2041 AD). A deeper, more detailed study has been concluded on this issue and the results will now be spelled out here. During their expansion to the stars, the Orions of the Khanate ran into many different species and all of them were assimilated into the Khanate with the singular exception of the Gorm, whose valiant struggle against their attackers won them praise and honor in the sight of the Orions.
However, the Gorm were not the first alien race that the Orions encountered, that short-lived honor fell to the Likrinish, a pre-industrial sentient race located near the core Orion systems surrounded Old Valkha. Now the Terran Federation has taken a high-minded and, yes, progressive, approach to industrial and pre-industrial societies: a hands-off approach no matter what. However, the Orions have no such compunctions and when they discovered the backwaters Likrinish (in 2043 AD), they immediately moved to conquer them, a move hardly befitting a race as “noble” as the Orions. Using heavy orbital nuclear strikes that destroyed the Likrinishs’ forty-three largest cities and causing an estimated 800 million deaths, the Orions eventually forced an unconditional surrender from their low-tech enemies, after strikes that went on for nearly 3 months. The tradition of “expansion by conquest” had its roots laid in the Likrinish home system and expanded from there. During that same year the Orions found the fabulous warp nexus near the Great Nebula of Orion and expanded geometrically across the stars. Within decades the Khanate of Orion grew form a small micro-empire into a powerful, organized, and highly militarized society, hell-bent on conquering new worlds no matter the cost. This mentality has become very clear to Terran researchers and is proven by the Orions next encounter with an alien race, the star-spanning Drolian Federation. A pocket empire located near Amropolous, the Drolians were a somewhat peaceful race but when the first contact between the Orions and Drolians occurred (in 2068), the Orion commander on the scene wanted to force the issue an deliberately “crowded” a Drolian vessel, sparking the Drolian Incident which led to all-out war between the two empires. Within two years the Orions brutally attacked and conquered the Drolian Federation using, again, widespread nuclear strikes on the Drolians; countless billions perished in these nuclear firestorms. In fact the Orions had a consistent policy of nuking every Drolian outpost and habitation that wasn’t located on a habitable world, a policy from which the Drolians could only conclude that the Orions would pen them up on their worlds and “keep them there” according to the Drolian merchanter Ullaek Kan/nock, interviewed by my researchers several weeks ago as he passed through New Valkha on a freighter run to Seltra Minor. By the mid 2270s, the Khanate of Orion had expanded into such a large area and colonized so many worlds, including adding the entire Drolian Federation to their empire, that running into alien races was becoming exponential. In late 2077 the Orions stumbled upon the water-breathing race known as the Mercogran, octopi-like beings located near the heavily populated Orion Zanibar System. Again, using nuclear strikes without warning, the Orions rolled over the small polity that the Mercogran had built from scratch, not even bothering to fully communicate with these harmless aliens before firing upon them. In fact the Mercogran homeworld was so heavily bombed by the Orion Navy that it has taken over 200 years for radiation levels to drop to acceptable levels and the heavy loss of life is still discussed even to this day, centuries later.
More aliens came under attack by the Khanate of Orion as that entity expanded amongst the stars. The cat-like Essota (discovered in 2091) were bombed back to the stone age and their home system interdicted. The Koalian States, a pocket empire located near Corellius, was occupied after heavy nuclear strikes upon planetary population centers forced their surrender. The Tssilka Federation was destroyed and their homeworld occupied in 2115. The Corellian Revolt (in 2156), while an internal Orion matter (the Corellians are Orions after all), was brutally suppressed by firebombing any colony, outpost, and habitation that refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the Khan. The genocide of Orions and aliens alike would have probably continued indefinitely but as luck would have it, the Orions ran into Humanity and of course the rest is history.
The First Interstellar War (begun in 2205 AD) came somewhat as a surprise to the Terran Federation and it is still unclear why the Orions chose not to use orbital nuclear strikes against humans, a doctrine that would have surely prompted human admirals and politicians to adopt a genocidal policy against the Orion peoples. Likewise the Orions, after being forced to the negotiating table in ISW1, did not pursue this policy either in ISW2 (begun in 2225 AD), a conflict which inevitably involved the Ophiuchi race as well. Immediately following that disruptive war with the humans, the Orions found themselves at war again in the heavily contested Gorm-Khanate War (begun in 2228 AD). The Gorm, luckily for them, beat back most of the Orions advances but realized that they couldn’t resist indefinitely the Orion advance and sued for peace, an event which led the Khan of the Orions to add the Gorm to the Khanate as near-peers. However, the darkest days on nuclear destruction were to come as the Orions found themselves the reciprocants of genocidal tactics for the first time in their history.
In 2230 AD the Orion system of Trexx was found to be depopulated and residual nuclear radiation in the atmosphere of the planet confirmed that the inhabitants were wiped out by nuclear bombardment. Orion warships raced to the scene and aliens ships were discovered landing colonists on the twin worlds of Trexx and were annihilated by the local Orion commander without mercy. The aliens, later known to be the Pilgar, were just as genocidal as the Orions, but even more so. The Pilgar were a fantastically sinister and bigoted society who were extremely paranoid as well and were have found to have destroyed utterly at least 4 other races before they stumbled onto Orion-occupied Trexx. The resulting 10 year war, the longest to date in Orion history, was a see-saw affair, with the Pilgar seizing several strategic system from the Orions, and wiping out their local populations, while the main Orion fleet chose to ignore such thrusts and focused on the main objective: the Pilgar Homeworld. Finally smashing through the asteroid forts that guarded the system, the Khanate of Orion ruthlessly and meticulously destroyed every last Pilgar across their empire, an orgy of destruction that killed countless billions and is still referred too to this day as the Pilgar Genocide by (nearly) proud Orions.
The Pilgar conflict had enlarged the Orion Navy to such a degree that when they next encountered another alien race, the issue of surrender became moot. The Unatha were discovered in 2242 AD and since they had not left their system via the only WP in the area (a closed one) they had little resistance to offer and signaled their surrender once Orion battlefleets ranged on their homeworld. However, the Orion admiral on the scene was a recent veteran and wanted to make sure the Unatha go the message: do not oppose the Khanate of Orion. He systematically bombarded every major city on the planet, killing at least 2 billion civilians and completely wiped out all other habitations in the system, including the vast Unatha space station in orbit of their homeworld just for spite.
In the year 2248 AD the Khanate of Orion had apparently spent its bloodthirst from the Pilgar Genocide for when they ran into the Almaggee race near the Nert Sector, the Orions appeared to be negotiating for the Almaggee surrender when again a local Orion naval officer “crowded” the Almaggee fleet that had assembled for first contact, sparking a conflict for which the Orions were truly not prepared. While having a much smaller force of warships, the Almaggee, being a water-breathing race, had come up with some truly unique weaponry, including drive-homing shells containing anti-matter, fast fire pulse lasers, particle drive missiles, and battle satellites that continually fired on approaching warships. The resulting conflict took nearly two years to resolve but after utterly destroying all life in Almaggee Prime using nuclear weapons, the Orions went on to conquer the entire Almaggee Empire. A year later, Rehfrak was colonized and Orion genocidal attacks as policy finally came to an end.