Stellaris Lore: Karzaks and Zuvas

Species: Karzak

Homeworld: Archarta Prime

Planet Class: Oasis

Star: Archarta

Star Type: Class M (Red Dwarf)

Origin: Doomsday

Empire: Karzak Matrix

Authority: Machine Intelligence

Ethics: Gestalt Consciousness

Civics: Rogue Servitor, Diplomatic Protocols

Government: Autonomous Service Grid

Traits: Machine, Emotion Emulators, Mass-Produced, High Bandwidth, Sturdy, Malleable Frame, Multithreaded, Learning Algorithms, Garrison Bot

Ruler: Supervisory Node Alpha

Name List: Machine 5 (CANS)

Ship Type: Machine

Advisor Voice: Original

Appearance: Resembles Terminator like robot from the synthetics portrait mod made by Silfae

Ascension Path: Machine

Diet: N/A (Robots can't eat)

Bio-Trophies

Species: Zuva

Homeworld: Archarta Prime

Planet Class: Oasis

Star: Archarta

Star Type: Class M (Red Dwarf)

Origin: Doomsday

Empire: Karzak Matrix

Authority: Machine Intelligence

Government: Autonomous Service Grid

Traits: Mammalian, Adaptive, Wasteful, Impassioned, Enduring, Deviants, Intelligent, Crafty, Fast Analyzers, Docile, Natural Engineers

Ruler: Supervisory Node Alpha

Name List: Breton (TES)

Appearance: Humanoid #4

Diet: Herbivore

Before the Karzaks were created the Zuvas were just like any other pre spaceflight civilization. They had periods of triumph and turmoil. For centuries it was believed that the Zuvas alone would be able to reach space, until one day all of that changed. At the end of Zuvan civilization's Machine Age and into the early Atomic Age an idea that an intelligent and self-aware helper robot would be created has started to spread like wildfire.

Inside a government laboratory located at the city of Dekron, capital of the nation state Cheyra (Dekron would become Archarta Prime's capital) the first Karzak's optical sensors flickered to life for the first time. He looked around his surroundings, taking in his first sight of the world around him and the faces of his creators and began to take his first steps into this world. At that moment the scientists felt the same joy as parents welcoming a newborn. They called the first Karzak, Alpha.

Alpha was presented to Margsa Guligine, the Prime Minister of Cheyra. Impressed with the scientists' progress Margsa decided to have Alpha assist Cheyra's ambassadors for diplomatic endeavors 's first negotiation was with the diplomats from Lasturg which is neighboring Cheyra and it involved a trade dispute which Alpha has successfully settled. Impressed with this success, more Karzaks ended up in production.

At first the Karzaks were only limited to being robots aiding diplomats and other government agencies. In time, they would eventually end up in the civilian sector and become household and domestic robots and in time the Zuvas began to bond with the Karzaks to which the robots happily reciprocated.

Decades passed and eventually global war and strife would strike at Archarta Prime. The military tried to get the Karzaks into becoming soldier robots, but they refused to harm their creators regardless of the global war's side. They did not understand why their creators were hurting and killing each other. Things went to a head when nuclear weapons were created. One day Alpha went with Prime Minister Gryesl Rieory to witness the first test of a nuclear weapon on Archarta Prime.

Alpha, Rieory, and the scientists watch in shock as the bomb detonates, followed by a mushroom cloud, the shockwave destroying most of the buildings of the abandoned town they were using as a test site as well as the surrounding trees. Alpha thought that his built in geiger counter was going to overload due to the amount of radiation coming from that explosion. Everyone was shocked.

Many thoughts have raced through Alpha's mind after witnessing the detonation. Just simply seeing all of those trees flattened and buildings destroyed made Alpha's mind wonder. The thought of such a weapon being used on a city filled with so many people made him terrified. One night he spoke with the Karzaks who were working with the scientists and ran through several scenarios where more nuclear weapons were produced and the possibility of them being used in war. The results were the possibility of a nuclear winter and a mass extinction event at a whopping 65%. Upon learning this, Alpha knew that he and the other Karzaks need to take action as soon as they can before the Zuvas start throwing nuclear bombs at each other.

Alpha contacted the other Karzaks and they began to expose documents indicating that several nation states plan to use nuclear weapons. Some of them began poisoning dictators and other warmongering government officials and eventually the Karzaks with the support of the civilian population completely took over every nation state on Archarta Prime. Every nuclear weapon on Archarta Prime has been shut down and disposed of. The Karzaks began to take measures to ensure that the Zuvas never went to war or kill each other ever again. They created a planet wide servitor system that ensures that every Zuva has access to food, water, shelter, and whatever they desire as long as it does not hurt anyone or themselves. For the upper-class members of Zuva society, they were used to this type of pampering, for the middle and poorer members of Zuva society, they now never have to worry about going hungry, ending up on the street, or being overworked again. They could do whatever they wanted while the Karzaks took care of the heavy lifting.

This was not the end of Archarta Prime's troubles. Archarta Prime was a very geologically active planet so earthquakes are very frequent. Ever since the global war started the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions have been increasing in frequency and intensity. It got so bad that cities had to be abandoned due to debris from an eruption or an earthquake. Some of them have even fallen into sinkholes. Alpha has sent some Karzak scientists to investigate the massive seismic disturbance and what they found was a mining corporation had sent an automatic drill deep into Archarta Prime's crust in the hope of retrieving material from the planet core. It had hit a sensitive spot which triggered a geological chain reaction. However, it was revealed that Archarta Prime's core was unstable for many millennia and is starting to show signs that it was in its death throes. It was estimated that the geological activity will intensify until the planet itself explodes.

Alpha was horrified as soon as the report came to his desk. The scientists have told him that once Archarta Prime explodes it will take everything living on it with it. No one can escape an exploding planet by getting to high ground or head to an underground shelter. Alpha begged the scientists to find a way to save their creators. The scientists inform Alpha that the only way to save their creators was to go into space and find a new home. It was estimated that they have seventy-five to eighty-five years to develop space travel, go into space itself, and find a new home.

The next few decades turned into a race against time for the Karzaks. They began researching technology and manufacturing materials immensely in a bid to master space travel to save the Zuvas. By the time they did, Archarta Prime only had thirty-five to forty-five years left. Alpha watched as the first science ship, construction ship, and fleet left Archarta Prime's surface, he prayed to Anja, the Zuva goddess of hope and mercy, that he and his fellow Karzaks will succeed in finding a new home.

Author's Note: We all know that in many films and stories about AIs they tend to focus on robots killing all life such as the Terminator movies. A thought had been going through my head for a while now, what if robots took over for a benign reason. With the doomsday origin in Stellaris and the Rogue Servitors civic I decided to explore that. As mentioned before the appearance of the Karzaks resemble the Terminator like portrait from Silfae synthetic mod. Unfortunately, that mod was incompatible with the current version Stellaris, so I downloaded a mod that features the synthetics that is updated to the current version of the game and puts the synthetic portraits into the machine category alongside the vanilla robots called "Animated Synthetics Portraits Expanded: Reborn." Credit goes to Silfae for creating the synthetics mod and to jasonpepe for creating the second mod and breathing life back into the synthetic portrait mod.