Krogan Rebellions

The Krogan Rebellions were a major conflict between the krogan and the Citadel Council that began in 700 CE and continued for decades. The war grew out of the very gratitude the Council had shown the krogan for ending the Rachni Wars: rewarded with conquered and pristine worlds, the krogan bred and expanded without restraint until they began seizing territory from other Citadel races. When the krogan refused to halt their advance, the galaxy turned its weapons on the species it had once uplifted, and the Rebellions ended only with the unleashing of the genophage. (Mass Effect; Mass Effect 3)

Causes#

The roots of the Rebellions lay in the concessions the Citadel Council made to the krogan in thanks for their role in the Rachni Wars. The krogan were given the planets they had cleared of rachni along with several pristine, habitable worlds. Because their homeworld Tuchanka was so harsh, the krogan had evolved an extremely high birth rate to sustain their numbers, and on gentler worlds with abundant resources and few predators their population exploded. Within a few centuries the krogan had spread across the galaxy like a plague. (Mass Effect)

The Council grew alarmed as the krogan began annexing the territory of other Citadel races, and the krogan grew more aggressive as those races moved to defend their worlds. The breaking point came when the krogan attempted to settle the asari colony of Lusia. Ordered by the Council to leave, the krogan refused. Their representative, Overlord Kredak, stormed out of the Council chambers and dared the galaxy to take the worlds back. War followed soon after. (Mass Effect; Mass Effect 3)

The course of the war#

The Council had prepared in secret. Its finest salarian operatives and asari huntresses had been gathered into a covert observation force, the Office of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance, the body that would become the Spectres. They opened the war with crippling strategic strikes: krogan worlds went dark as viruses flooded their networks, sabotaged antimatter refineries vanished in blue-white annihilation, and command stations were shattered by pre-placed suicide freighters. Yet the krogan could replace their losses with ease, and a krogan victory began to look inevitable. (Mass Effect; Mass Effect 2)

The Council then turned to the turians, relative newcomers to the Citadel who possessed a massive fleet and a deeply militaristic culture. Operating from hidden command centres, the turians destroyed many krogan bands. The krogan answered with characteristic ferocity, using asteroids as weapons to render three turian worlds completely uninhabitable. This was precisely the wrong approach to take with the turians. Their doctrine did not stop at defeating an enemy; it required that the enemy never be able to threaten them again. Rather than break turian will, the brutality only united every turian against the krogan. (Mass Effect; Mass Effect 2)

The genophage and surrender#

Recognising that the krogan rarely surrendered and could call upon effectively limitless reinforcements, the turians turned to the salarians, who had engineered a bio-weapon called the genophage. The agent was designed to produce a genetic mutation that left only roughly one in a thousand krogan births viable. The salarians had intended it only as a deterrent, but the turians held a very different philosophy of warfare, and once it was in their hands they deployed it almost at once, in 710 CE. (Mass Effect)

Krogan numbers began to dwindle, and as the turians pressed a renewed military push, the krogan realised their position was hopeless. The female warlord Shiagur used her rare fertility to draw the strongest males to her band, but even she could not hold out, and turian forces killed her at the Battle of Canrum, the last great krogan push of the war. Besieged on all sides and facing the extinction of their species, the krogan surrendered. Hostilities continued for a time as rogue warlords and insurgents refused to yield and had to be hunted down, and some fled into frontier systems to become pirates. Placed on the Mass Effect timeline, the Rebellions came four centuries after the rachni were declared extinct. (Mass Effect; Mass Effect 2; Mass Effect 3)

Legacy#

For quelling the Rebellions, the turians were rewarded with a seat on the Citadel Council. The krogan, by contrast, were left deeply embittered. As Urdnot Wrex would later put it, in thanks for wiping out the rachni the galaxy had neutered them all. A movement on the Citadel sought to have the Krogan Monument removed from the Presidium in the aftermath, but the Council refused. The Rebellions did not erase the fact that the krogan had destroyed a galactic menace during the Rachni Wars, even as they had become a menace in turn. (Mass Effect)