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The Lorwardians, as portrayed in Thirteen Moons of Blood, retain most of their portayal in their appearances in canon. However, they have been greatly expanded upon and given many elements in addition to simply being giant green skin humanoid conquerors. As they stand in the story, they are a major galactic power currently embroiled in a constant war that has lasted about one hundred and twenty years at the time of the story (about 150 years as of Graduation), a conflict that has been on-off over that time as the attrition sets in.
Overview[]
Statistics[]
Homeworld: Lorwardia
Average Height: Females - 2.89 meters (9.5 feet) | Males - 3.20 Meters (10.5 feet)
Average Lifespan: 150 (Earth) Years
Gestation Period/Time to Maturity: Aproximately 1 Year/20 Years (Earth years)
Biological[]
The lorwardians are tough and durable, having evolved on a higher gravity world with a tough environment. They had to be sharp to survive. Their bodies can heal extremely quickly, recovering from grievious wounds within thirty hours whereas humans would be hospitalized by such injuries.
However, the lorwardians have a great weakness in their biology. Their planet was dead to magic, and the lorwardians never had any exposure to residual energies from it. This meant that they have not yet had any natural tolerances develop in the evolutionary sense. As a result, magical injuries are extremely difficult for lorwardians to recover from and they have no magic users amongst their number. This is one of their greatest weaknesses.
One strange quirk of their biology is the 'blood haze', or a berserk state which a lorwardian enters suddenly. This is due to redundant glands within their bodies which produce extra hormones such as adrenaline. Normally and before they invented sufficiently heavy weapons, the lorwardians would usually expend it. However, after they stopped needing to worry about getting mauled by beasts they began noticing people going berserk. Though the science was not understood for a long time, the lorwardians recognized that it seemed to be a buildup of being outside of battle. Most lorwardians vent this by sparring if they do not go to war as to avoid the issue.
Culture[]
Lorwardian culture is built around war and the idea of battle. To them, peace is simply a lull in the war while both sides lick their wounds and replenish their losses while civilians are just those who are not wholly dedicated to fighting wars. This has greatly added to their conflicts with their neighbors as it is not uncommon for smaller groups of Lorwardians to get together to pool resources to pull off a raid even if the larger warlords are not launching their own attacks. Order is maintained on Lorwardian worlds, however, as to prevent full scale civil war from erupting and thus forcing Lorwardians seeking real blood to go after outsiders.
Part of the emphasis of war comes from the "War Name" tradition. A war name is basically a name given, earned, or even chosen based on a Lorwardian's feats in battle. Traditionally, it is given by others, but sometimes it is self-chosen if others cannot describe it properly. Sometimes, teachers give these names to their protégé's as a way of acknowledging them as having become warriors, though this is beginning to fall out of favor. The birth name remains, but it is usually considered insulting to use such outside of acknowledging their past and for purposes of full name identity. Warmonga and Warhok both have war names, referencing the former's desire for war and a thirst battle high by Lorwardian standards and the latter's style of airborne combat with a jet pack. As a result, you can generally guess the skill of a Lorwardian based on the name they use. If they use what sounds like a war name, then they at least have some experience under their belt. Those without are typically raw recruits who have seen little if any real combat as most Lorwardian warriors and hunters seek to get their war name as soon as possible.
Castes[]
The lorwardians have a loose version of a caste system, mostly a traditional holdover and more denotes general role as each one can have great variety. For example, is the warrior an infantryman or a pilot? Does the Manufacturer work as an engineer repairing starfighters or does she manufacture the arms of war? That said, Lorwardians are legally free to change caste if they choose to do so. If it is socially accepted or not depends on the direction they go; do they go from a peon amongst the Manufacturers to a Warrior, or hide from war as a laborer in the factories as a Manufacturer?
The castes are as follows: Warrior, Hunter, Manufacturer, and Thinker. Originally, Warriors were the primary combatants while Hunters provided food, though they also saw action and were responsible for slaying dangerous beasts in order to allow Warriors more time to focus on killing enemies. Thinkers began as the philosophers and quartermasters as well as early scientists, applying their knowledge to design and improve on technology, agricultural methods, and similar. Manufacturers were originally mere peons, ill suited for war and not smart enough to make it with the Thinkers. However, over time the roles evolved. Warriors are more or less the same, while Hunters have evolved into essentially being Warriors, though typically being the upper ranks as a form of upper class, almost comparable to nobility. Thinkers have become more focused on R&D type efforts as technology advances, while Manufacturers earned their name and learned the needed art of engineering in order to produce modern equipment, though the manual labor they were once used for has become mostly supplanted by drones.
Yet it must be emphasized that caste is not restrictive anymore and was always more of a designation of place in society than a hard written rules. Although it was generally encouraged for the children of warriors to follow that path, it was recognized that sometimes warriors would give birth to an individual who was not suited for war. Naturally, this was somewhat embarrassing, but they at least had a role and would not be shoehorned into it simply because of their parents. Currently, however, the caste system is little more than a traditional holdover and has little, if any, legal effect. Stigmas remain, such as many Warriors and Hunters looking down on the other two for not going out to war, but overall it is cultural rather than legal.
Politics[]
The main lorwardian government is the Lorwardian Imperium, an imperialistic state which has a surprisingly wide array of freedom for its leaders and warlords, who often act with a significant degree of independence. The Lorwardians are split into two primary camps, Manifest Hierarchy and Expansionist. Manifest Hierarchy forces are by Lorwardian standards extremely organized, focusing on fighting for the good of the Imperium overall rather than personal glory, believing that the Lorwardians must be a tightly oiled war machine with a clear chain of command. Expansionists believe that the path forward is for great Lorwardian leaders to rise up, build their warbands as the warlords of old did, and be more or less self made conquerors who bring forth their host to crush the enemy. As a result, Expansionists tend to be smaller scale in their view and more concerned with their own glory. However, these arguments have yet to erupt in full scale civil war as might be expected as the Imperium is currently fighting outside threats in the form of the Alliance, and as such brawls between Hierarchy and Expansionist followers are local, small scale, and rarely devolve into major conflict.
Technology[]
Lorwardian technology is advanced and on par with the galactic standard. The lorwardians are able to employ powerful walkers, robust starships, and can employ a variety of robotics to support themselves.
The lorwardians most iconic war machines are their large and fearsome walkers, capable of litterally walking over the various combat vehicles most other species employ. These range from the simple Strike Walkers used on Earth to powerful Siege Walkers which can fire at extreme ranges with equally extreme firepower. These walkers are notorious for their durability most of all, thick layers of armor plating supplemented with shields. Though some lorwardians strip the shields out for other technologies (such as beams to capture fleeing prey used on Earth), most of them have shields of sufficient strength to shrug off most human kinetic ordnance short of railguns and similar advanced weapons.
Ships and walkers alike, however, are primarily robotic. While not the only users of robotic technology nor the most sophisticated, lorwardian robotics are build to be tough but also fairly simple and easy to repair. The lorwardians do not use systems so advanced that a dedicated crewman is required to man every post, resulting in lorwardian ships having a surprisingly small complement of crew and most can function with merely one or two lorwardians as officers on the ship. However, while these robotics are fairly advanced and have superior IFF targetting, they are somewhat relaint on archive data to prioritize targets.
Plasma weapons are greatly favored amongst the lorwardians and most of their military technology is some application of plasma, from staff weapons to the main guns of a Conquest-class Dreadnaught. Favored for major power and the burning plasma residue, these weapons leave targets charred as they lie on the battlefield and leave those who survive in pain. More practically, it is strong enough to reliably keep lorwardians down once it is through armor and shields.
Lorwardian body armor is also made of stronger composites and more developed than their contemporaries, mostly because some lorwardians dislike shields out of honor reasons and armor is actually a benefit for them against most foes whereas their Alliance foes often have to use specific armors or rely on their shields to survive lorwardian melee attacks and thus look for armor more for stopping a lethal blow instead of outright halting an attack.
Military[]
As you might expect, the lorwardians have one of the strongest militaries. On average, a lorwardian warrior would defeat several of their counterparts in physical combat. In addition, the lorwardian idea of a main battle machine is vastly larger and more tougher than others, often to the level of taking on multiple of their counterparts at once and winning. This has been critical to their survival as the powers they fight tend to have higher populations overall and throw that many more troops into the fray to halt their conquests.
Organization and preference varies between group to group. Manifest Hierarchy lorwardian forces wield a combined arms approach and you rarely see warriors unsupported by war machines and war machines rarely if ever go without a screening force of warriors, and air support is often a short call away. Expansionist units, however, tend to vary greatly. For a serious siege, they bring various parties of hunters and warriors who have put together their own favored arsenal, while a non-serious move might see just enough taken to crush major resistance to permit the hunt. For example, Warhok and Warmonga's attack on Earth with merely themselves and Strike Walkers was a case of just bringing enough to permit a hunt afterwards, and was not a serious invasion force as Earth's technology base at the time was not sufficient to face down the advanced technology yet.
The lorwardian military's basic building block are warriors, armed with a vareity of weapons which are primarily melee in nature. Staff weapons, plasma pistols, wrist mounted plasma scythes, power hammers, and more make up the common infantry arsenal. Lorwardian warriors are protected by sturdy medium body armor with more or less armor based on an individual's preference, and this armor is laced with small generators to create Kinetic Barriers, common galactic shielding which protects against high velocity attacks, including energy weapons. These barriers, however, are useless against melee attacks not augmented by superstrength, though lorwardians generally hit hard enough to trigger them. Other gear at the infantry level includes hoverboards and hoverbikes of the Predator series, popular both as 'civilian' and combat transport for an individual.
However, the lorwardians would not have gotten as far as they had without their impressive mechanized arsenal. Robotics make up their support areas, including the Annihilatron (a robot which functions as pocket artillery via a cutting laser) and Termerator (anti-subterranean robot which creates sonic pusles to force underground vehicles to surface or risk destruction), both of which stand about as tall as a lorwardian and are as close to a traditional vehicle as you get from them. Their walker technology is the true area where the lorwardians shine. Armored enough to take on several counterparts, equipped with plasma shields designed to take heavy weapons fire, and armed with a vareity of different plasma weapons or warheads. From the simple four legged Strike Walker deployed by Warhok and Warmonga to hit Earth to the unstable but devastating Siege Walker, lorwardian war machines put terror into the enemy and it takes the heaviest armor to match them one to one.
The lorwardian space fleet is surprisingly capable, given that crews are usually quite small. The lorwardians by temperment are not really suited for manning guns on warships, usually only requiring a few lorwardians for core functions and the rest is roboticized. More crew improves efficiency, of course, but the average lorwardian vessel, the Mothership Cruiser, only needs a crew of two to run and the rest can be done by automation. However, it is common to assign extra crew to keep an eye on major weapons to prevent enemy hacking attempts or to do manual fixes if needed.
Conversely, starfighter pilots are well respected and while a lorwardian would love to stand on the bridge with their own command, there is even greater satisfaction in killing the enemy yourself. Pilots are respected by warriors and vice versa, seeing themselves as masters of different arts of war. Lorwardian pilots fly heavy starfighter craft which are slow and lack manuverability compared to those used by other forces, but their sheer durability and raw firepower makes up for it. Lorwardian space combat doctrine is surprisingly simple; fighters tie up enemy fighters and intercept bombers, bombers blow up capital ships, and capital ships go after enemy capital ships or provide screening. However, the lorwardian fleet is vulnerable to starfighter attack due to favoring heavier cannons which are ill suited for tracking smaller targets, meaning that fighter pilots must often protect their home ship from enemy bomber attacks and provide that point defense.
Overall, the lorwardian military lives up to its reputation as the foremost in the galaxy. It has taken an alliance consisting of multiple species to even slow their advance, but the infighting from the Manifest Hierarchy/Expansionist mindsets have prevented the lorwardians from fully leveraging their advantages to make significant gains. And as long as they are not forced into some sort of crisis mode where they drop these, it is likely they will continue to win in spite of their disagreements.
Appearances[]
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Canon Intact[]
Trivia[]
- The author intended this to be something of a deconstruction of the Proud Warrior Race trope, and making it work logically instead of just working by plot handwave.
- Inspiration for them came from various sources, taking the best of many of the 'proud warrior race' types in fiction to blend them into an effective but terrifying fighting force which could stand on its own and not require plot armor to shore their society up.
- The lorwardian unit of mass, 'qualock', was established as being roughly one kilogram or two pounds. This would mean that Warmonga's boast of 'benching 1,300 qualocks' in Mad Dogs and Aliens would put her at just over two and a half times the current Olympic record for male weightlifting. The author estimated that the average lorwardian would be able to lift four times as much a human.
- Lorwardian vehicles and weaponry not named in canon or seen have been given elaborations here. The Annihilatron and Tremerator were mentioned by Warmonga in Mad Dogs and Aliens, Strike Walkers are the four legged warbots deployed in Graduation, the Mothership Cruisers are based on Warhok's ship, and the Explorer Frigate is based on Warmonga's.
References[]