Once, on a lush and verdant world in an isolated sector of space no one in the galaxy cared about, there lived a race of sentient beings called the Narn. They lived and toiled to bring in a good harvest every year and gave no more thought to raising a galactic empire as they did trying to learn to fly or whether there was life on other worlds. From past experience, they knew the latter to be true, but it did not concern these peaceful, agrarian people.
Unfortunately, it should have. They should have been concerned when alien spacecraft made landfall on their primary continent and disgorged hundreds of pale, strangely furred men called Centauri. They should have known that creatures from other planets could rarely be trusted, especially when they came in the guise of friends. They should have been ready to defend themselves when those ships came, their holds empty in anticipation of returning to Centauri Prime with a hold full of slaves. They should have been concerned, but they were not.
What followed was more than a century of oppression, brutality, and enslavement. Families were wiped out for being ‘too aggressive’ or ‘not suitable to peaceful service’. Cities were burned as an example to other Narn that would not accept their new masters. Ancient lore was lost and the quiet agrarian people of the Narn that was became the embittered, hostile Narn that is.
A brave few led a desperate many against the silk gloved fists of their Centauri ‘masters’. They had little success at first, but as their tactics grew more desperate, their successes mounted. The Centauri had thought them broken; they were not. Their enslavers were not prepared for the Narn to turn their own weapons of war against them, nor were they ready to see farm equipment turned into implements of destruction and even children’s toys fitted with poison or explosives. The war to free Narn was bloody and vicious, but it worked.
Eventually, the Centauri withdrew from the Narn Homeworld and wrote it off as a bad investment. They could not know the terrible price that investment would continue to exact. The Narn were free, but now they had the taste of Centauri blood and like a feral beast kept caged too long, they thirsted for more. The Centauri had been forced to abandon a few ships in their exodus from the Narn system. These were refitted and used to pursue the Centauri out of the solar system and across space into occupied territory. These Narn could not beat the Centauri yet, but they had learned where they could find them when they could.
Few races can claim to have jumped from the hunter/gatherer stage of societal evolution to the space age in a matter of decades, but few races in the galaxy have been driven by hate the way the Narn have. Revenge has fuelled every advancement the Narn have made; it has taken them from a single world untouched by others to a small empire of their own among the local stars. Their hate has been the beacon guiding every Narn in an unyielding quest to repay the Centauri for the indignities and horrors visited upon them and their ancestors.
Hate can be a powerful motivator, but it can also be a blinding one. The Narn were justified in their war to free to themselves and perhaps even in the right when they sought retribution for the years of abuse they suffered, but their regime has become the thing they fight. Other races, ones that inhabited nearby solar systems, also know the pain of conquest at the hands of the Narn. The Narn tell themselves that the military actions are needed, that resources must be acquired if their crusade against the Centauri will ever succeed, but the yoke of their oppression feels no different to those they enslave in the process.
It has been said that to defeat the monster, one must become it. There can be no greater example of this truth than the metamorphosis of the Narn into what they have become. There is, however, an inner peace that even a hundred years of slavery and warfare cannot extinguish or destroy left within them. The Narn are a study in contrasts. They are a brutal, savage race capable of much bloodshed and violence, but they are also inherently spiritual and given to lengthy philosophical debates and contemplative reflection. |
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