I hope CIG leaves a bunch of stuff unsaid, so when the game releases we players can do research into lore by going to different sites in the game

The Xi’an reluctance for humanity to meet the Kra’thak possibly implies two things: Humanity would likely ally with them against the Xi’an, or humanity would spark a war.

As an OG backer, your content is my current connection to SC and i appreciate you for it. So much smoother than community drama and I get to learn the lore. Thank you

Alternative idea; they are the original empire of the vanduul and the ones we know long long ago were raider separatist that no longer resemble the originals, and that's why the vanduul have some of their advanced technology, it's just the remnant of what once was

Man I'll be dead by the time we meet the Kr'Thak in the game.

The Spirit Wars might also refer to a war based on spiritual incompatibilities, not necessarily indicating that the KrThak are an artificial species, although that would also be a possibility and not only an intersting one but also a pretty well established Sci-Fi Trope - and we know that SC is leaning heavily into golden age Sci-Fi tropes. I also find the fact interesting that the Kr'Thak didn't press their strategic advantage of having just cut off the head of the enemy to make short work of the Xi'an. Even if they were not the agressors in this war, it could've still benefited them to completely annihilate or at least conquer and rule over the Xi'an (similarly to how the UEE conquered the Tevarin and integrated them into the UEE rather than leaving them their independency) so their restraint shows us not only that they were likely not the agressors, but that they value cultural independency and variety.

I really hope they make some races discoverable much like the way a player found aliens in ED. Then as awareness builds we either get peace talks or wars.

as an alternate angle to the fear of humans teaming up with their enemies perspective, it's possible that the Xi'an (who seem to view humans as children) believe that they're helping humanity by doing everything in their power to keep them from making contact with the Kr'Thak. or, and this would be a 4D chess move, they want humans to make contact with the KrThak in such a way that they would start a war with each other, and they're pushing behind the scenes towards a way to make that happen, in the mean time making it seem as though they don't want them to make contact. in order for that to be true though, it would have to be that they believed that as things stand there would be peaceful relations were humans and the Kr'Thak to meet right now. a lot of really interesting directions all of this could go, and we haven't even scratched the surface.

who says we'll never encounter them, the games going to be running for decades with what I'd expect to have tons of DLC and new content.

Paul thank you so much, you are the historian voice of Star Citizen lore.

Xi'an and Kr'Thak might be a case of dual races, as they might have been one races at one point, but split over some issue or by colonization. As the way to say things seems to be the same if the words are indeeed from them, and given they could insert strike teams into the Xi'an space looking the same could be how they did it, also it would be a interesting twist, as it also would mean CIG don't have to make 2 races and we wouldn't know when we made contact with them either. Also it would mirror our world whit China and Japan, as it was too a split that created two wildly different people in the end, but either have and would be able to walk in the others empire without being called out for it just by look.

Spirit wars is an odd name with the culture Love the lore vids lol ty

Thanks for this video. Been interested in the Kr'Thak for some time and have always wondered what would happen if we obtained direct contact with them (outside of the Xi'an influence). This is like one of the 2 objectives I really want to do when SC goes LIVE; Make direct contact with the Kr'Thak and find a way into the Oretani System :-) Thanks again for all your lore videos, Paul!!

Your lore episodes are brilliant, it really sparks the imagination and the possibilities of what may unfold...

I wonder if the Kr'Thak could be artificial intelligences. Spirit war = ie, an AI is a "spirit" of sorts since it could exist without a physical body (of sorts)

im all for building god relations with all alien races (except the vanduul), but the kr'thak are the most interesting to me.

The "Spirit Wars" could be even more literal, where the KrThak are a non-biological AND non-solid, being some kind of energy/gas life form.

I'm fairly confident the Kr'Thak are an insectoid race. An insectoid race with a telepathic hivemind not limited by distance. Something like the bugs in Ender's Game. There could be many reasons the Xi'an don't want the UEE to make contact with them and not necessarily because they think we might be more compatible than we are with the Xi-an. The real question I have is whether the Xi'an have encountered the Vanduul and how do they view each other?

I appreciate you taking the time to pull this kind of info together. Just in my own research it gets a little fragmented trying to keep track of everything.

Great episode, and thanks for sharing!

Kr'thak are a machine race, calling it now.

Been waiting for this one for ages, hell yes

These guys sound really cool. Hope we get to meet them.

Great show! Hopefully, like with the Hadesians, we see some in-game Kr'Thak artifacts eventually appear in in-game that we can hunt down.

Thanks for sharing

Love your videos bro keep it up 👍

Love yur content Paul

i just want to fly through the buildings of a species i have never seen before.

my theory they are the origin of regeneration tech. which uses interspace to communicate in real time over basically unlimited distance.

they could be humans in cryo sleep travelling to another star system before jump gates were discovered. They unintentionally slipped into a jump gate or jump gates for 100s of years and woke up and stopped and settled down but they heavily use AI

What i think is they are normal race like others. Advanced, but extremely eficient. They can be another nation of Xi'an. Different culture, separated from each other for millenia. They are patient, their actions seems calculated to last details like xi'an does. like if you put chinese empire next to egypt in 200bc.

My first thought when I heard of the strike against the imperialist house is that there was clearly inside help. Maybe one of the other great houses helped to orchestrate the attack in order to creat a chaos latter for their own use…

Moar Loar!

Awesome

Very interesting 🤔

Paul this was fucking awesome as usual.

Interesting theory. Inhadnnot thought of them that way, but it is plausible!

its the AI from that one Human arch ship they sent to explore stars before they discovered jump points

So fascinating. Perhaps for their instant interstellar communications they’ve mastered Quantum physics?

Good hunch. Wouldn’t be surprised if CIG free on a kind of AI tech like the Expanse’s rings either, being able to open up wormholes. Could lead to eventually a faster way for humanity gaining some of the tech to travel quicker across our known systems.

I thought this was going to be an easy one. I planned on keeping 2 SCU of frozen ice cream on board. If I did come in contact with the Kr'Thak I'm thinking Ice cream is the way to go.

Maybe they are other humans and that's why the xian don't want the UEE to make contact.

Krthak are cats in space. I know because there's one on the forum ^_^

I'm hoping Kr'thak are feline like race like the Kilrathi from Wing Commander. Don't really want a "Borg" like species in this universe. At 6:12 it shows concept art for a Xi'an Capitol Ship surrounded by Volpor bombers. What if CiG decided those ships have been better suited to be used by the Kr'thak instead.

Good video! I like your theory that they are AI, but disagree on one point. If an AI race I doubt they were created by the Xi'an because their name does not fit in the Xi'an language convention as you pointed out. The Kr'thak could have renamed themselves, but I think the Xi'an would still refer to them by the name the Xi'an had given them, even if out of spite or disrespect. Then again, I'm assigning human behaviors to an alien race (that is fictional and was created by humans). (Edited to fix a word and correct my spelling of Xi'an to match Paul's because I expect his spelling is correct and mine was incorrect.)

Be interesting if that ship that got lost due to ai going wrong had something to do with it, maybe a time jump point sent it back in time or something

I hope we see tham one day but only ther border and maby Artefakt.

I hope that when (if) they are in-game, we are not just ‘handed’ the KrThak, but CIG allows the players to meet them in small doses, over a decent period of time and our relationship with them is a result of that first contact. Whether or not CIG are going to be the gatekeepers of how we interact with the alien species will set the tone for the game long term. If the direction is being driven by the community’s interactions, or curated and micro-managed by CIG, will be a huge question when the game is the massive, released universe that we all hope it to be.

agree

As much as I don't really care for "Borg" type races...as long as they aren't "assimilating" everything? Then I'd like to see an AI race with a more..."human" makeup. I'd like a mix...an AI server running the race would be cool. The twist being they are either fully data or they can only upload into their original body and makeup through vat babies. So they feel artificial but aren't. When you go through Kr'thak space it's not lived in...just industrial constructs to support a server matrix. The few vat babies we see outside of this space are there with differing agendas for why they left their immortal home in cyberspace. I added a TLDR don't worry... They don't care about expansion because they are not concerned with the material world. They dont desire to expand because they can expand infinitely into their server matrix. So their only concerns are stability of the material world around them. They build server farms instead of food farms. They covet cold worlds and leave nature rich worlds entirely alone because they don't need that to live a happy life. Through information density they can prolong their percieved lifespan to feel almost eternal. It wasn't till the Xi'an started blowing up their databanks and many of them were disappearing out of their matrix that they became alarmed and built a force to quickly combat the Xi'an intrusion. So when we eventually move into Kr'thak space...it's relatively a civilization on auto-pilot with very sharp teeth if you happen to bother them. All we see are giant monolithic server farms and energy collectors (geothermal and solar arrays wrapped around the suns in their systems. They also, like the Xian, have a mix of hyper-advanced tech and are also behind. No shielding, no regen beds, etc...because they didn't know they needed them. So they are playing a bit of catchup and are on par with us as long as we see through their shields. So what makes Kr'thak space different, when we get there, is that it's FILLED to the brim with monuments and structures MASSIVE ones...server farms and energy farms...but nobody lives in them. Possibly they even have body production facilities that grow them in vats to be used to upload a consciousness into in the case of an emergency and they need to defend themselves. So some immortal being who existed in the matrix uploads back into a physical form to do a task for X amount of time and then they go back in to live immortally again when their body is deteriorating. Many who obtain a physical body take time to acclimate to it, and question the nature of their sudden limitations of their consciousness and wrestle with the questions of who they are now outside of the hive. Their bodies are frail and they never were able to modify them to be like the Xi'an and live longer because they saw themselves losing their identity and consciousness...so they stopped. What if the Xi'an are their failed experiments! So they could be focused on information gathering (giving them an active presence and agenda)...because they simply are fascinated with the material world as they for so long have been divorced from it and their civilization was dormant for millenia until the Xi'an arrived and woke them from their slumber...they slowly have built a movement because of the Xi'an event to go back to the material world...out of fear and duty to protect...but also out of fascination that a world devoid of sentient life when they entered their slumber is now filled with new life: Xi'an, banu, human, tevarin, and vaandul. Their primary focus is information gathering and study of these new civilizations and all of their characteristsics as well as the logging of space to account for ALL data possibilities to prevent another Xi'an situation. Finding a Kr'thak means finding someone to sell information to or buy it from. As they need capital to incentivize us to give them information so they collect data to sell to us so they can recieve seemingly arbitary data back from us for coin....small things, like settlement locations, scan data of the settlements, artifacts of culture, species information in the possibility of millenia from now one of them becoming sentient and a threat. They can be an essential means of making money for explorers. You also have the opposite...those who come to the material world for sport, hunting with their cloaking tech to kill for fun and then eventually go back to download themselves back into their matrix. The Kr'thak don't condone this but they don't stop it either...which could be a source of drama. And you also have some that have left entirely, to live a material life in the material world and to die there. Ones that join the UEE (they can't join Xi'an because they don't trust them) simply because they value a mortal life in the material world and had their share of the immortal realm and don't see a point in it any longer. You find some in Kr'thak space defending and holding its borders to clarify the rules...but most leave the matrix to go beyond the borders of their known universe to the truly unknown (and not infinitely recycled in the matrix). They seek novelty. The only beings populating their space is a maintenance network of automated robots that get produced in factories and then recycled back into them when they are destroyed. They've built a perfect loop. Paradise planets are almost entirely untouched because they don't care about them. So we can colonize it...it's just, not really ever ours. Remnants of their proto-civilization before they uploaded their consciousness still scattered about. Many Kr'thak look to rebuild and recollect that former heritage but they are few in number. And it's entirely possible a small sect never entered the matrix and have existed on paradise planets living out the mortal cycle unscathed for millenia...or died out due to a cataclysm and only their artifacts remain. The thing about Kr'thak is they dont actually know how their tech is made...the AI makes it for them. They simply maintain what is there through instructions they were given. --- I think instantaneous information transmission through wormhole generation would be dope. They never were able to push matter through the wormhole and it come out the other side so they never invented another form of jump point...BUT they did learn how to transmit data through. Which could be how they have a multi-solar information based AI matrix that runs their civilization. Possibly they have engines that can be fed data...these engines have a wormhole that connects directly to their main AI matrix that they feed information about the outside world to protect their civilization from threats beyond the Xi'an. I do think given the context of their actions in the Spirit Wars my bet is their big "tentpole identifier" (such as Xi'an getting levitation tech or Vaandul getting regen or Tevarin getting shields) will likely be space camo...full ship stealth that makes them undetectable to the eye and you need to scan to even see them. Which would explain how they positioned themselves in such high security area with such large tech without being detected...and that tech may have been developed during that war. So the Xi'an were expanding into their territory and destroying their server farms and resource networks were getting sacked and then they went online and instead of an all out pitched battle war...they just did one action...nuked the shit out of their main power structure and left the Xi'an in chaos and afraid to ever touch the Kr'thak. This would make them a terrifying race to run into, and in all possibility ALREADY in UEE space. Especially if they can use that tech to hide themselves, Wakanda style, from the outside world. I just hope PLAYERS dont get this tech...because it's just a greifer tool. So keep them just far enough away that we never can reverse engineer it. Having to tab scan to see your enemy would be MAD scary as it pings around you like a shark dipping in and out of the surface of the ocean...but for pvp it would be deeply overused and get annoying. And you could find them building server matrix's on cold planets, such as Microtech, that appear out of the blue when their camo shielding matrix goes down for some reason. These become new adventure points for players, giant monoliths of a mystery, and so on. A mass unveiling that could happen once we crack some code on how to find them. TLDR: What if they were a mind uploading immortal race that existed as dormant for millenia using cloaking tech...a tech they used to destroy the Xi'an imperial house in one big move after the Xi'an began to loot their server farms and they saw people disappearing in their matrix. Their instantenous information transmission is how they achieved the ability to be a multi-solar society that exists in this immortal network. Their only concern with the material world is to build server farms on cold environments and have built energy farms as well...geothermal energy plants, solar arrays wrapped around the sun of their solar system, etc. Infinite renewables. Renegades from their immortal network exist as diplomats who live for a period and then download themselves back into the matrix when they die. Some cults are a threat to us who use the material world for sport hunting and enjoyment. Their ships can cloak and you'll randomly run into them as they enjoy hunting you...especially if you have weaponry because they want a good fight. So they aren't pirates, they tend to pick out soldiers and attack vehicles and don't care about the stuff on them. Which makes them terrifying as the only way you can see them is through scanning pings. Making them an end-game threat greater than anything we've faced...but at the same time not world ending because they don't care. As long as we aren't threatening their paradise and servers they don't care.

Is it possible that the karthac are the rapid evolution of the first IA tech created by the mesers (or who ever it was) 🤷‍♂️ the AI tech that went missing on that first Carrack ship maybe 🤔 Could the Xi'an possibly know this as well, 🤔 maybe this is why the Xi'an asked for all of our records and star charts 🤔 Maybe they have also realised that we are oblivious to what we created and now realise it is better to keep us in good favour encase we become useful in some way 🤔

I really hope CIG doesn’t do what I think JRR Martin did, rewrite the story cause the fans figured it out. Internet has become a curse for writers because forums allow discussion of theories. JRR’s fans were smart and extrapolated clues and figured out the ending, and Martin felt robbed of his surprise. Hence why the last book is taking so long. Now CIG may not keep the same mysteries intact, or change them to fit the narrative. But as the story gets fleshed, keep the clues consistent with the story.

They're human!! Or Kilrathi :} (idk hopefully something more clever)

Sounds like there technology may be like the star trek Romulon ships that way could of got that far into there space and declook to fire that could be why they called it the spirit wars. Even Badylon 5 called the clooked ships species shadows and there war the shadow wars so it could all be because of there technology.

I like turtles 🐢

I dont think theyre AI homie, i think personally the term "spirit wars" could hint at them either being an off branch of the xi'an themselves, or rather if not more interesting, since the species name is given by itself and nobody else, maybe it could be insectoid, a decent guess of what it may be like for a sentient bug to speak

The Xi'an remind me of china so I bet the Krthak are the good guys, like the Xi'an don't want humans to meet them because they would be like "yeah these xi'an guys just rolled up in our space and said our planets belong to them with and always have then showed us a map with a nine billion dash line"

Maybe they are the reason humanities AIs keeps on messing up.

A comment for the Comment God.

Would like to see any alien in game (rock bug doesn't count as it's a resource prop).

Titan AE game

This game is being built on a Xi’an-scale lifecycle.

Oh I'll meet them allright, I'll just have to sneak by the Xi'An military. No biggie.

This makes me want just do a zerg rush through x’ian territory once the game release to get this new civilization and then see the political hot mess that happens afterward

First

Are you against digital sophonts IRL? I'm just curious as it has implications in guiding expectations since there is a strong factor in depicting digital sophonts negatively in order to give human stories an intractable foe to overcome. I doubt that this species would be digital simply because it is such a strongly used trope and it would play poorly in a Chris Roberts game like this one. Chris Roberts games tend to place humans as their own worst enemies in whatever storytelling mode they're in. A digital sophont culture as an enemy... or even a neutral party would be anathema to that story progression. Good human stories that carry deep meaning always shape around correcting the wrongs we have done ourselves and making things right - that is the ultimate achievement of any human story... showing how we take responsibility for what we do and learning from our mistakes to be a better people. Something tells me the story behind the Xi'an will be one that... well... they faced that mirror and failed to solve *their* mistake, accumulating hubris instead of earning redemption. I have a feeling the Kr'Thak... which I got a feeling is going to be a Xi'an name for them... will be a surprise for humanity - perhaps a bit of a guide if the story has us going in a direction where we lose too much of our way... and the Xi'an will learn a valuable lesson through our choices there. Given general gamer mindset - I do not expect those choices to be positive because everyone will be itching for a fight.

I love the look of the Xian, but it is so boring that every "alien race" in sci-fi are just humans in makeup, even when it's only in a video game and everything is virtual.

ThE AliEnS YoU'LL NeVeR Meet....... holy fuck, way to encourage zero gameplay.

Who cares the game is a dumpster fire.

This is one of the worst lores in game history ever. They should've just left the aliens out. CIG can barely keep up with production let alone writing a story.