Kett: Conquerors of Heleus

The kett were a hostile, militaristic species that the Andromeda Initiative encountered in the Heleus Cluster, the conquerors of an empire stretching back to their homeworld of Sarhesen. Unable to breed by natural means, they grew their numbers and their dominion through exaltation, a process that captured members of other species and remade them, body and mind, into obedient kett. They regarded all other races as lesser beings and revered exaltation as a sacred rite, making them one of the gravest threats the Initiative faced in the new galaxy.

Biology#

The kett were bipedal, digitigrade humanoids whose skeletons held three hundred and thirty-two bones. Dense bone also grew externally across their arms, legs, torsos, and heads as armor-like extrusions, which Dr. Lexi T'Perro judged as strong as a krogan's frontal plate, varying in shape and placement from one type of kett to another. Their eyes were pale white and receded, and their blood was a brownish green. There were no visible distinctions between male and female kett of the same type; those with marginally higher voices among their generally low-pitched kind were considered female.

The kett possessed no reproductive organs and could not breed by natural means. It is believed that long ago their genetics reached a point of stagnation, and rather than die out they began adding beneficial genes from other species into their own genome, a practice they called harmonization. Their mastery of genetics allowed them to retain useful traits taken from many species, so that a kett might survive for limited periods in inhospitable environments, even vacuum, without a protective suit. Their lifespan was undetermined, though the Archon of the Heleus contingent had been active in the cluster's affairs for more than seven decades.

Exaltation#

Out of harmonization the kett developed exaltation, an artificial process and the foundation of their society. By means of a serum they could rapidly convert a captured member of another species into an obedient kett, and they used it both to build armies and to replenish their own numbers. The transformation was thorough and, so far as was known, permanent and irreversible: nothing of the original body was left, so that a kett exalted from an angara retained only traces of angaran genome, with internal scans showing kett organs rather than the species it had been. Among the peoples of the Heleus Cluster subjected to exaltation were the challyrion, who became wraiths, and the angara, who became Chosen and Anointed.

The kett revered exaltation as a sacred ritual, holding that the species selected for it were ascending to greatness even as they helped the kett ascend in turn. Subjugated beings were first called Chosen and could rise to higher tiers such as Anointed, and the facilities where exaltation was carried out were treated as temples and holy ground. After the Initiative arrived, the kett grew interested in exalting Milky Way species and began developing a serum for the krogan, but the process was incomplete, and the partially exalted prototypes, called Behemoths, were left mindlessly hostile to kett and non-kett alike.

History#

Exaltation first unified the kett homeworld of Sarhesen, and in time the other worlds the kett conquered. They were not native to the Heleus Cluster, which they called Sector 1-19-NYKZ, and began invading it in 2744. When they encountered the angara they lured them into a false sense of security with gifts and offers of friendship, then kidnapped their leadership and seeded information that set the angaran worlds quarrelling among themselves. Uncoordinated and divided, the angara were swiftly defeated, though the kett would go on contending with scattered resistance movements and at last with the unified Angaran Resistance led by Evfra de Tershaav.

The Archon assigned to the cluster eventually began to deviate from kett protocol. He blocked all research on angaran genetics from reaching his superiors, using it to empower only the troops under his command, and took an obsessive interest in Remnant technology. This opened a rift between the Archon and his second-in-command, the Primus, which escalated until the Primus made contact with the human Pathfinder in an apparent bid to bring the Archon down, though it was implied the offer was a ruse. Jaal Ama Darav voiced his disagreement with any such dealing if he was present.

Society and government#

The kett were highly militaristic and held other species in contempt as lesser beings, experimenting on prisoners whose genetic traits they found useful and killing those they did not, and refusing other races even gendered pronouns. They were known largely by titles tied to their rank, their personal names rendering as barely pronounceable strings of consonants. Though exaltation imbued every assimilated individual with hardwired loyalty, the kett still kept distinct personalities that could clash, and factions formed among them, with dissidents to whoever held local influence routinely executed.

Their government was an empire ruled from Sarhesen by a body called the Senate, and may have functioned as a eugenocracy. Some twenty-one ancestral lineages descended from ancient pure-blooded kett stood at the head of their society, while the forces stationed in a given star cluster were led by an Archon, also called a campaign leader. These Archons enjoyed a high degree of autonomy but answered ultimately to the Senate and were required to report on their progress every fifteen cycles. Alongside the kett proper, the empire counted at least a dozen vassal species, among them the eealen, the thusali, and the sirinde. The kett tongue was called Tonaizhet.

Military#

The kett military was a formidable instrument, successful enough to conquer at least a dozen species and forge an empire of unknown extent. It fielded dreadnoughts, one of which, the Verakan, served as the personal flagship of the Heleus Archon and was large enough to keep fighters flight-ready and to admit dropships through controlled openings in its containment fields. Troops were delivered by dropships that hovered over the battlefield to disgorge their complement before flying off, and the kett readily turned captured beasts into weapons of war, fielding wraiths as war hounds and fiends as living siege units.

Perhaps the deadliest weapon in the kett arsenal was their grasp of psychological warfare. By studying how the angara lived they had turned the angaran worlds against one another, and even after seventy years of fighting the Archon was able to set the angaran Vehn Terev against his own people by exploiting his resentments. The kett also adapted their tactics in the field, rigging captured vehicles to explode when the Resistance stole them and learning when to break off pursuit. Their forces were organized in clear ranks: Chosen and Anointed, both exalted from angara, formed the rank and file and the equivalent of non-commissioned officers, while Destined acted as battlefield commanders and scientists, Ascendants as commanders wielding energy barriers, and exalted creatures such as wraiths and fiends served as shock and siege units. Their armor and weapons drew on the same biotechnological mastery that underpinned exaltation, their gear bearing names from their own language such as the Dhan and Hesh shotguns and the Soned and Thokin rifles.