Krogan

The krogan were a species of large reptilian bipeds native to Tuchanka, a world of harsh environments, scarce resources, and vicious predators that conditioned them for extraordinary toughness. Once technological advancement made survival easy, they turned their weapons on one another and reduced their homeworld to a radioactive wasteland. The salarians later uplifted the krogan into galactic society to fight the Rachni Wars, but after the rachni were destroyed the rapidly breeding krogan became a threat in turn, prompting the turians to unleash the salarian-engineered genophage that crippled their fertility.

Biology#

Natural selection on Tuchanka shaped the krogan for survival. Their wide-set eyes gave them 240-degree vision, and large shoulder humps stored fluids and nutrients much like an Earth camel, letting them endure long periods without food or water. Their thick hides were nearly impervious to cuts and highly resistant to toxins, radiation, and extreme temperatures. Most remarkable was their physiological redundancy: krogan possessed multiple instances of major organs, including two hearts and four lungs, and a second circulatory system of neuroconductive fluid in place of a traditional nervous system, making them almost impossible to paralyze. The legendary "blood rage" rendered them unresponsive to pain and willing to fight to the death regardless of injury. Such hardiness allowed an individual krogan to live for well over a thousand years.

Before the genophage, krogan reproduced and matured at an astonishing rate, with females laying clutches of up to a thousand fertilized eggs in a year. Under the genophage, the odds of a successful birth fell to roughly one in a thousand.

A ruined homeworld#

Ancient krogan society had once been rich with cultural, architectural, and artistic achievement, but their birth rate exploded once industrialization made survival easy, and they turned to fighting one another over dwindling resources. Four thousand years ago, at the dawn of their nuclear age, escalating wars culminated in the release of weapons of mass destruction that transformed Tuchanka into a radioactive wasteland. The krogan were reduced to primitive warring clans struggling through a nuclear winter of their own making, a state that endured until the salarians discovered them two thousand years later.

Uplift, rebellion, and decline#

The salarians liberated the krogan from their primitive state, providing advanced technology and relocating them to a habitable world, but not without an ulterior motive: the Citadel was then locked in war with the rachni, and the salarians hoped the krogan would serve as soldiers. The plan succeeded. Within two generations the rapidly breeding krogan drove back the rachni, pursued them to their home worlds, and eradicated the species. Hailed as saviors, the krogan were granted conquered and Citadel worlds to colonize, honored with the Krogan Monument on the Presidium.

But without Tuchanka's harsh conditions to check their numbers, the krogan population swelled and spilled onto worlds already inhabited by Citadel races. When they began settling the asari colony of Lusia and the Council ordered them to leave, war broke out. The Krogan Rebellions raged for nearly three centuries; the krogan sustained massive casualties but their birth rate kept their numbers climbing, and their victory seemed inevitable. In desperation the Council turned to the newly discovered Turian Hierarchy, which unleashed the salarian-engineered genophage on the krogan home worlds. With near-total infant mortality, the krogan could no longer replenish their numbers and were forced to surrender. The turians were rewarded with a Council seat; the krogan were left a scattered and dying people, many becoming mercenaries while resenting the races that had condemned them.

The Reaper War#

In 2186, with the Reapers invading, the turians needed krogan aid to defend Palaven, and the krogan agreed to help, and to assist in the wider war, in exchange for a cure for the genophage. Depending on Commander Shepard's earlier choices, a salarian scientist could develop a cure with the help of Eve, one of the last fertile females. The events at the Shroud on Tuchanka could resolve in several ways: the cure might be dispersed genuinely, sabotaged secretly, or faked, and the krogan's commitment to the war and their long-term fate varied accordingly. In some accounts the genophage was cured and the krogan began to repopulate; in others the sabotage held and the species remained on the brink of extinction.

Culture and clans#

The harshness of Tuchanka shaped the krogan psyche as surely as the body. They tended to be blunt, self-reliant, and unsentimental, respecting strength and neither surprised nor offended by treachery; their worst insult was to call someone "not worth killing." A deep fatalism, the social legacy of the genophage, led many to see no point in building for a future they believed they would never have. Even peaceful occupations were viewed through a martial lens, for the krogan were without doubt a warrior people.

Krogan society was organized into numerous clans, among them Urdnot, Nakmor, and Weyrloc, and clan membership allowed a krogan to own property and serve. Tradition was steeped in ritual, including the Rite of Passage in which a young krogan faced the wild fauna of Tuchanka and, in Clan Urdnot, a thresher maw. Females, scarce and precious, lived in separate clans and focused on bearing the next generation, their survival protected by harsh taboos against harming them. Their dead were honored in ritual burial grounds called the Hollows, where the skulls of ancestors reminded the living "where we all come from, and where we all go."

Military and demilitarization#

Traditional krogan warfare had relied on attritional mass-unit tactics, but after the genophage the krogan could no longer afford such casualties and shifted to the Battle Masters, individual warriors each a match for ten ordinary soldiers, callous and brutal yet methodical. Since the Krogan Rebellions the krogan had been demilitarized and forbidden from constructing warships, a ban enforced by the Council's Demilitarization Enforcement Mission throughout the Krogan DMZ. Whenever a warlord violated the ban, rival krogan usually ended his ambitions before Citadel forces needed to act. Relics of their former might, such as defunct ground-to-space batteries, still dotted Tuchanka as monuments to a lost age of glory.