A/N: To my own vast surprise, this is FINALLY done.
The amount of work I had to do in order to produce a coherent history that resulted in the turian species and yet followed the GRIMBRIGHT EVILDARK rules of the PremiseVerse was exhausting. This thing is just short of 10,000 words, but I have written over forty thousand. It has been scrapped SEVEN times, each one a little better.
I know a lot of people were waiting for updates to this and have worried it was dead, and that is not the case, I assure you. But as I build my expanded world, I refuse to simply throw shit together Bioware style and say "Just because it's completely inconsistent doesn't mean it won't work." As I have said elsewhere, a collectivist military culture that fights constantly among itself doesn't make any goddamned sense, so I had to find a way to make it fit.
There are elements of Roman, Balinese, Thai, and Swahili historical bits and pieces in here. Kudos if you can identify the fifth influence.
The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space
Message Header: TYPHONET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING
HERA-SIX-NINE-NINE
ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED
Patient Jack, less-than-patient Richard, and amused Rachel,
I do regret the amount of time it has taken to gather the information to give you a coherent report, but the unrest in turian space due to Saren's activities is making things more difficult than expected. Pel's familiarity with the turians has proven to be of great use, and so far, no one has given us much trouble in terms of suspicion.
That is not to say gathering turian historical information has been easy. Not only have the turians proven to be at best, indifferent historians, but it appears that much of their publically available history is the worst sort of psychomanipulative military propoganda that would shame a Commissar. Not only is it utterly inaccurate, but it is slanted so heavily that it's primary use is to determine what didn't happen at any given point in history.
I have done my best to put together an accurate briefing, although as you will see in my forwarding statements, it is slightly different than you are expecting. Turians are complex creatures, and looking at them from human perspectives will limit your comprehension.
I can feel Richard gritting his teeth from here, but since they are artificial, I suppose no harm is done.
Cerberus Thought for the Day: Complacency with the alien is similar to inattention with high explosives. Sooner or later, such things will get you killed.
A few words regarding turian history
Turian history is not something I have given much study or attention to, and I regret that now, having been exposed to it. It is a surprisingly rich tapestry, but not one of valor and honor as I had assumed. The early turians were shockingly ruthless and their leaders very talented at acts of manipulation and trickery unheard of in modern turians.
The shift in the mindset of the turian has much to do, I feel,with the chaos and misery caused by such manipulations (and with the manipulations themselves, although I touch on that later.) I am not certain if the rulers themselves set aside such or if their subjects simply stopped putting up with it, but shifts of such a fundamental nature are usually presaged by events in history. The salarians, for example, moved from their war-like and honor-based culture to their current mindset only after the horrors of the Collapse.
While there are such dark ages in turian history, the changes in society didn't occur until long after such. It is a mysterious point of thought that I will have to investigate later, but I would be cautious. Pel's dire warnings that turians are not as honor-bound and blind to manipulation as people believe would seem to be correct. It is very clear that at certain points in history turian education, culture and historical records were warped to change society – and the reasons for that are clear. What is less clear is why exactly the turians responsible for these changes would know how to do so in the first place.
Understanding turian history is, I suspect, key in grasping the nuances of the turian people. This may sound like a trite and even specious statement – obviously, a culture and viewpoint shorn of it's history will be hard to understand. But in this I mean it in a different fashion. Humanity is the product of it's long history, and yet what makes humanity interesting is that it's individuals often defy expectations based on that history.
Turians, on the other hand, can be modeled with very good accuracy in a way that would seem to make manipulating them very easy. The nuances of why such manipulations work – especially given that they were changed to behave in this fashion – are what bother me. Either turians as a species don't care about what aliens think of them or do, or they are unable to do so.
I doubt you can grasp why that is significant, given human history. Humans, no matter the culture and no matter the era, prize the concept of being either in control of their own destiny or destined for greatness. There is nothing humanity is incapable of because the very nature of humanity could be summed up as free will. For turians, they have been … evolved … into a culture that sneers upon free will in favor of service, and disdains reaction in favor of preparation. But to be unable to even see that there are alternatives – on a psychological level, on a mental level, on a biological level – that speaks to something very wrong with the turian people.
I have never really interacted with turians, as for long years my duties in the Priesthood kept me confined to Thessia, and my early years were spent in salarian space. Thus, while I have of course interacted with turians, I never did focus my attentions on them in the same fashion I have salarians.
Turian history is drowned in interspecies violence, even more than human or batarian history. The development of the turians appears devoid of the .. tinkering experienced by both my own people and the salarians, and as a result there is a great deal of instinctual evolutionary baggage that in turn has affected the development of the race into sentient beings. That isn't to say the turians were of a natural origin – I do not believe they were. But they were not crafted to what they are today.
Which is a relief, in it's own way. Anything that would want to craft a species such as the turians would be insane at best, and malevolent at face value.
Origins and Evolution of the Turian Species
This section, I fear, will be longer than usual. I would not normally preface a discussion of history with such, but my approach to turian history will be more … asari in flavor than usual. I attempted to meet the expected requirements of what you wanted in my coverage of salarians and am still not precisely pleased with the result.
No wave is the same, regardless of how many times it may crash upon the shore.
I am not, as I have said before, a trained medical doctor or archaohistorian. At best my training in the Temple of Athame forced me to become a critical thinker, a purveyor of the long view of history – and that by asari standards. So my viewpoints on the history of the turians will perforce be different than whatever your own people have put together thus far.
I commented once that Minsta's views on asari sexuality were flawed. He fails to understand why the asari became as they did, even while having all the facts in hand. Rather than attempt to understand how history shapes culture, how history shapes perspective, and how history reveals a species intent, he recites a dry lists of dates, facts, and acts.
Looking at the history of the turians in such a light will mislead you, as it has mislead others and up to now, I will admit, myself. I am convinced turian history is deeply rooted in their evolutionary origins, and I have attempted to provide a history that does not bother so much with the dates of battles and specific events so much as trends. Knowing that the Clans of the Vuthar Plains gathered together in PC 3320 to sign documents ensuring the right of females to travel freely is no more important in the long run understanding of the race than the signing of the Magna Carta by humans. It is not the act that defines, it is the results behind it that matter.
To achieve this, some of what I have pulled together has been accomplished with the assistance of Dr. Minsta via commlink. Some of it came from a contact I still maintain in salarian circles, who has a few STG friends and is unaware of my … allegiances. Other pieces are my own conjecture. The entire work is not exactly history so much as sociohistorical presentation. Which leads me to the evolutionary origins of turians.
They are not, I fear, as simple as either you or I were lead to believe. While turian history after the New Imperatorium was easy to obtain, history before that was spotty. Prehistorical events and evolutionary history are flag-words for turian Deathwatch teams, I have learned. The Turian Hierarchy requires military oversight and licensing to investigate any archeological sites. Aliens are completely forbidden from access to any clan history libraries or digs of greater than twenty thousand years in age. Finally, and most tellingly, turian military education does not include ANY grounding or study of the evolution of the turian species.
There is a reason why.
There is a great deal of archeological confusion about the rise of the turians as a race. Most of this comes from that fact that Palaven looks suspiciously terraformed. There are hints in soil and rock samples dating back some sixty million years that the world was fundamentally altered by some powerful technology, shifting it to a dextro-compatible state. Additionally, there is evidence by the rate of growth spines on petrified takai trees in the oldest parts of the Vutharian tundra forest that suggest the world was not always in it's current orbit, but further out.
Fragmentary evidence of worked metals and impact craters dating back to the same sixty million year time frame hints this may have once been a colony of some long-forgotten empire, but no firm conclusions can be drawn, as the areas in question were the targets of severe nuclear strikes during the imperialistic era of turian history and are too radioactive to inspect closely. However, it is clear that none of the life of Palaven was ever sourced there.
Three things stand out to indicate this. First, from what I have read and been told by Pel and many others, Palaven is fiercely radioactive. Uranium and other heavy elements make up almost 11% of the crust by volume. This is not a naturally occurring instance, and it surely would have sterilized all life on the planet otherwise. Added to that the distance to the sun, and the world is also bombarded with strong UV radiation. No life as we know it could have developed under such a combination of things.
Second, there is no evolutionary fossil record. None, period. An assemblage of 54 plant types in six phyla and 112 animals in nine simply appeared some sixty million years ago. This grouping of species is far too small to be the result of natural evolution, especially given the high radiation. Each and every one of these species has an ecological niche, finely tuned survival adaptations to the environment, and a curious lack of evolutionary dead-ends (like the asari mensis gland, or the human appendix).
Finally, there are several dextro-compatible worlds that have various forms of life very similar to those found on Palaven, except there is an evolutionary record in the fossils of that world to prove they came from there. Palaven was force populated by custom designed creatures to survive the environment...and then allowed to run wild, evolutionarily speaking.
While sixty million years does not seem like a long span in evolutionary terms, Palaven's horrific levels of radiation and the sheer harshness of survival drove the placed species to evolve much faster than normal. Turians were not the only sentient race to develop on Palaven, but were clearly the only survivors.
Turians appear to have evolved from aerial carrion-salvaging predators, opportunistic pack hunters with a build to allow ground travel when dealing with the fierce 'god-storm' storm cells that sometimes cover most of the planet for weeks. Lightly built, the proto-turians sacrificed both muscle mass and size in favor of developing metallic plating like many other lifeforms on Palaven to shield against both the ground radiation and solar emissions. With their light frames and keen eyesight, they would prey on weakened herbivores when possible, eating carrion in the wake of the savage vakars when they could not.
Some nineteen million years ago, the alpha predator on Palaven, the sentients identified by turians as the Luvan, were obliterated by the aftermath of a cometary impact. Temperatures plummeted and the cloud-layer obscured the sun. Several other species went extinct, including nine herbivores. The Luvan ate massive amounts of several of these extinct species and was over-bred, and collapsed without a chance to develop much more than extremely primitive tools.
At the same time turian intellect had been on the rise, and there is a clear sign that proto-turians were used as hunt animals by the Luvan. Like a mix of the human bloodhound and hunting hawk, these domesticated turians were left masterless as their owner's small civilization crumbled in the face of starvation. Opportunistic and familiar with carrion salvaging, turians emerged from the ice age in something of a population boom.
Slow evolution from that point, including increased storms and a more meat heavy diet with the absence of stronger predators, both curtailed turian flight and bulked up their ground mass. By eleven million years ago, most flight characteristics were vestigial, and six million years ago something akin to the modern turian first walked on the plains of Palaven.
The new turians were still pack hunters, using powerful spring-and-leap tactics, sharp raking claws, and strongly built upper bodies in their assault. Springing to a target in a single lightning fast move, they would torque their claws in powerful arcs and backhands, shredding arteries, ripping off plating, and hamstringing legs, before leaping back and letting the prey bleed out.
Turians began experimenting with fire some four million years ago, but adapted very slowly to tool usage. Partly due to their powerful physiques and partly due to their numbers, they were able to beat back competition from another sentient race that had developed on the planet, the Yuvan. The Yuvan, semi-aerial creatures akin to early turians, had developed primitive stone tools and weapons, but were outnumbered. Evolution also resulted in thinner plating due to heat issues, and they were simply no match for turians in combat, and were hunted to extinction in a scant half million years.
Many turian tribes appear to have adapted the tools of the Yuvan, which sparked more ideas. Almost sixty five thousand years ago, turians finally began working with primitive irrigation and tribal groups larger than a hunting band, forming primitive languages for the first time.
Prehistoric Era: the Age of Dust
In the turian history, the days prior to the formation of the Palavanus Imperatorium was known as the age of Dust. The name was due to another harsh climactic shift, as evaporation finally eliminated much of the extra water caused by the comet strike so many years ago, returning areas that had become grasslands and marshlands to the desert they were before. Huge dust-storms arose, further curtailing communication between tribal groups.
The early turians were split into four races, based on plating and skin color. Dark-skinned and light plated Palavu, dark-skinned and dark-plated Tyvu, light-skinned and light-plated Orvu, and the rare dark-skinned and bright-white plating of the Davu. The Tyvu, with their colors matching much of Palaven's environment, were hunters and seekers, xenophobic and hostile to everyone. They wandered constantly, ignoring agriculture in favor of hunting and raiding. The Orvu and Palavu were mostly traditional warrior-hunter clans, dabbling in irrigation and building primitive tent cities, battling each other and driving off Tyvu raids. The Palavu inhabited the areas most settled by the long-forgotten Yuvan and had the best developed tools and what passed for scientific minds back then.
Sadly, the Davu were little better than slaves, abused and often driven off their lands. Much smaller than the other turians and with fewer numbers, many tribes were raided for their females and for slaves, leaving the Davu with bitter hatreds of other turians.
The Age of Dust lasted almost thirty thousand years. The Palavu grew and grew in numbers and power, driving the Orvu completely out of their territory and over the sea to the southern, less hospitable continent. They then turned their power against the Tyvu, shredding their warbands and driving away the herds the Tyvu depended on for sustenance. Unwisely, the Tyvu were driven to attack the Palavu, and were crushed in several short battles that still litter the Northern Salt Desert. There were so many dead that even thirty five thousand years later, the bones litter the salt flats in the hundreds of thousands.
It is a reminder that the turians hate like no other species.
The remainder of the Davu were mostly scattered at this time, becoming slaves and servants, and eventually this became a caste for them. The few remaining Tyvu that were left fled south and interacted with the equally seething Orvu, resulting in a great deal of racial mixing that eliminated the Tyvu as a distinct racial group.
The Palavu began the first cities during this time, each city the center of a vast group of tribes. Lead by a Spirit Augur, the cities were organized around ceremonial priest-kings and seer-priests, each one sponsored by a group of warrior leaders who influenced many tribes. The stronger warrior from each one of the groups was called the Primarch, and the Primarchs met every summer solstice to listen to the wisdom of the Augers and Pryer-of-Sight, the seer priests. The cities interacted cautiously, trading early materials such as timber, stone and meats, while building up large tracts of farmland and ranch land to feed their populations.
The near-savages to the south, however, mostly Orvu, had no such luxury. Faced with a continent full of the more dangerous predators on the planet, limited water, bad farmlands, and solar exposure much stronger than in the north, the Orvu realized they either stood as one or fell separately. They banded together and formed communes, each one networked with it's neighbors, sharing food, hunting information, herbal medicines and the like. The few Tyvu refugees they had absorbed were valuable as well in both establishing hunting patterns and training the Orvu in their skills.
The Orvu battled for survival, eventually drawing on the sea as their ally and becoming adept seafarers. Not shorn of their hatred for the Palavu, they relentlessly harried the former from the sea, preventing the formation of any form of navy by the Palavu and even sacking several coastal cities with sickening violence.
The Palavu were not responsive to this, because the Spirit Augers and seer-priests expended much of their time building the so-called Sha Titans. Each titan was built by a group of cities working in concert, made of huge 120-ton blocks of finely hewn granite. Spiral-shaped at the base, they slowly gave way to the figures of vast turian like figures holding aloft huge bowls filled with burning brimstone. Cunningly designed reservoirs, rooms, and stockpiles allowed the priests to keep the fires burning.
Turian historians (and others) argue endlessly over the purpose of the Titans. The endeavor shattered the economy and unity of the Palavu, much like the Pyramids of Egypt and the titans of Easter Island destroyed those cultures. Many smaller tribes, bankrupted and forced into substance, struck out on their own, and their disrespect to the Primarch caused tribal war. When these wars spilled over into the civilian space, instead of bypassing them as asari (or humans) would have, the battles burned through the towns. Turians savaged the fields and herds, hoping to cripple and starve their enemies, and then realized only too late they themselves were doomed as well.
With the unity shattered, it was the strength of one group of clans that had not been involved in the Sha Titans that rose to prominence. Bringing about the first primitive writing system and early math, the Palavanus clan of the Palavu waited until the rest of the nation was in tatters before unleashing their own military, focusing on securing farmland, herds, females, and lumber sites. They executed strong leaders and priests where they found them and sowed dead animal carcasses in water supplies to spread disease, falling back when done and letting starvation and misery fight for them.
Thirty four thousand six hundred and eleven years ago, the tribal leaders and remaining Primarchs of the north fell to their knees and surrendered to Ulvu Palavanus He slew the high Priest-Augur in sight of everyone, carving his crown from the turian's skull according to legends, before ascending to his throne.
Pre-Industrial Era : the Age of Steel
The Palavanus Imperatorium was, in a word, efficient misrule, mixed with chaos. The Palavanus clan dominated, but they were clever enough to let other strong families become powerful in their limited environments, and to 'share the wealth' when it came to land ownership and the like.
The Imperatorium was founded on the Principles of Arms, as set down by Imperator Ulvu the First. It defined the rights of the clans, the Primarchs, the clan elders, and so on, but it also laid the rules of what are considered the viewpoint of honor.
The first of these was simple: The strongest arm determines the outcome, regardless if the outcome is just or unjust. The second rule was : The coward who cannot master fear can never control his own life. The fool who throws it away out of bravery without benefit cannot control his own life either. The final rule : power is taken, and respect is earned, but command must be given.
These rules trouble me, but I suspect my viewpoint on such things is different from yours. On the face of it, given the average view of turians being obsessed with honor, the rules clash. But turians, I believe, do not solely see the universe through the lens of honor, but rather pragmatism. They know that might makes right, even if it isn't just. And they know that choosing when and where to fight is primary, above survival instinct or foolhardy bravery and heroics. Finally, they admit that just because you can exercise power over others, does not mean they will follow you.
For the turian rulers to use this as their mindset, I believe honor is more of a restraint on turian reactions than anything else. Turians see honor as a way to limit their pragmatism and brutality, albeit in a strange manner. Turians appear to have not only deliberately bred and trained themselves to suppress flight responses, but built up an entire culture that drowned in honor – not because of the value honor has in and of itself, but because without it the Palavanus probably felt turian society would eventually destroy itself.
I find myself digressing into historical speculation, and not mere fact. My apologies.
The Imperatorium was organized around the Palavanus clan-tribe, with nine subsidiary tribes holding positions of power around it : Talid, Varok, Mantha, Mehrkuri, Arterius, Vakarian, Linsho, Digeris, and perhaps most infamously, Facinus. These clans were all very strong, most of them rivaling the Palavanus in strength and size, but each of them had long histories of violence with each other as well. The first Imperator proved to be a genius as maneuvering them against each other while binding them closer to his own clan through marriages, trade, and investments.
Given the primitive nature of the civilization, such sophisticated social tactics were unexpected. Even today, to call someone as 'sly as Ulvu' is a back-handed complement, suggesting someone is very smooth and clever but is using people for his or her own gains.
It took almost three thousand years to truly unify the northern continent, a task made harder by the free-spirited separatism that wracked the turian spirit. When clans tried to expand beyond a certain distance, inevitably strong-willed individuals tried to stake their own claim to being in charge. Cleverly , the Imperatorium solved this by having distant chiefs answer to closer ones, and those answering to the nine large tribes that answered to the Imperator directly.
It must also be stressed that the Imperatorium was not an empire by the means humans see it. It was at best a vast cooperative effort in resource sharing and barely restrained cold war. Over six hundred battles with more than a hundred thousand casualties were recorded during these long years, so you can only imagine the number of skirmishes, smaller battles, assassinations, and the like happening.
The Palavanus 'ruled' in the loosest of manners, but their influence was undeniable and focal. Rather than the concept of nation, the overwhelming call of kin and clan to turian blood was irresistible. What the Imperatorium tried to do was incorporate that impulse to include as many as possible, to make the instinctual need to defend clan-members reach across traditional limits.
It ultimately failed, but the attempt was, nonetheless, inspired. It faltered in it's success only due to the unity brought by, and confusion in the wake of the fall, of an outside party.
It was during this time that ancestor worship first arose, as well as the Valluvian priesthood. A group of turians that claimed to be able to speak with the dead and pass along their wishes gained great power and influence among the powerful in Turian society, mysterious and grim figures who towered above normal turians and seemed immune to damage. By this time turians had begun experimenting with metal weapons, mostly spears and long slashing axes, neither of which did any damage to the priests, according to legend.
The influence of the Priesthood on the turians was immense, as they became very organized in a scant thousand years, moving from scattered hunter clans with cities mostly used as mass granaries to developing full agricultural and horticultural arenas, metallurgy, chemistry, and math. This abruptly ended about twenty-nine thousand years ago, when a series of volcanic eruptions covered the Temple of the Priests in lava, destroying them all.
The Facinus tribe, with it's holdings undisturbed, attempted to take advantage of the violent upheaval, raising civil war and attempting to destroy the Palavanus and take the Imperatorium for itself. The clans all fell to fighting, while the eruption fallout killed crops, ruined irrigation ditches, and sickened the civilians. Widespread raiding and death lead to disease and famine, while the Orvu began raiding inland for the first time, causing more death and destruction.
The Palavanus dynasty lost it's control over the other clans, and bitter, partisan brutal war raged over the land for a staggering three thousand years, before civilization literally collapsed. The cities were burnt out husks, over 35% of the population was dead, the rest were engaged in mindless warfare, and the damage to the environment was devastating.
The Palavanus clan, rather than cling to power, packed up as many of it's children and females as possible, as well as all the wealth and weapons they could, and in an amazing maneuver, managed to cross the oceans to the territory of the Orvu … where they surrendered, pleading for mercy and to serve the Orvu faithfully if they would grant the Palavanus revenge on their old subjects.
It is worth noting that the turian military conditioning of today was not in place (obviously) in these ages. Turians disliked retreating, but would do so if forced, and the weaker submitting to the stronger was instinctual. For the Orvu, barely civilized outcasts subsisting on raiding and hand-to-mouth survival, for the mightiest of the clans to throw themselves at their feet begging for mercy was too heady to ignore.
The Palavanus swiftly proved their worth – their doctors and philosophers aiding the Orvu in agriculture, teaching them how to shape iron instead of soft copper, providing math and better tools to improve their sea forces. While war raged on the main continent, the Palavanus became the scholarly class of the new Orvu culture, cunningly making themselves the center of power even while subjugating themselves before their 'betters'.
It was another three thousand years in the making, but the Orvu eventually invaded the northern continent, backed by their Palavanus allies. By this time the Orvu were very nearly as sophisticated as the Imperatorium had been at it's height, including segmented metal armor, the first primitive crossbows, and knights mounted on vakars themselves clad in armor. Facing them were the shattered savages of the former Imperatorium, reduced to a pitiable state.
The War of Revenge did not last long, barely a century, before all of the Tribes threw down their weapons and surrendered, brutally beaten. The leading family of the Orvu, the Corthus, then called the clan chiefs of his own clans together for tribal council on how to administer their new conquests.
This clan meeting included not only the chiefs and advisers, but many of the heirs, influential shamen, and the generals of the clan. It was at this meeting that the clan of Palavanus struck. They had waited long years for this chance, and they struck with stunning violence, warriors incapacitating the guards of the meeting with poisons. They swept in and massacred the unarmed elders and leaders in a bloodthirsty froth, and then laid false weapons and clan armors to indicate the violent Facinus clan, the last to surrender, had been behind the murders.
The Orvu were infuriated, but leaderless, and in their confusion turned to the Palavanus, who had always been leaders and guides, teachers. Humbly, with much sorrow, the Palavanus swore to avenge the fallen leaders and lead the Orvu on a hunt. In sixteen days, every single member of the Facinus was brutally murdered and burned, most of them captured alive and burned alive on pits of brimstone and fat. Their charred, smoking plating was then torn from the corpses and used to build a covering for the cairn for the fallen Orvu leaders.
In the wake of the attacks, the Palavanus smoothly slid back into power. The Orvu were their warrior-overseer class, keeping a wary eye over their new conquests, while the youngest of the Orvu nobles were sent back over the sea to 'administer the homeland', along with carefully chosen Palavanus brides and grooms for eligible daughters, of course. In less than a thousand years, the New Imperatorium had risen, and the ancient bone-crown of Ulvu – by now covered in silver leaf and embedded with diamonds and rubies – was set upon the brow of Murth Palavanus
I must admire such gall and manipulation, and it is a sad thing that the Palavanus went to great lengths to stamp out any such abilities or impulses in society. They took control of the wrecked empire, and rebuilt it slowly but firmly, but they were always careful to preach the Virtues of the Ancestors : Honor, Duty, Responsibility, and Honesty.
It wasn't until some ten thousand years ago, after long, long years of rebuilding shattered roads, cities, and adapting to changing environmental conditions, that turian inventors developed the first internal combustion engines.
Industrial Era : the Age of Struggle
The industrial age of Palaven was an exciting time, marked mostly by ever-increasing amounts of rebuilding of the once-proud society. Cities grew, as did transport networks, while primitive turbine driven ships crossed the seas in uncounted numbers. The production of refrigeration finally allowed true food stockpiles, while engine-driven plows and trucks allowed a force-terraforming of large tracts of land using nothing but brute labor.
The ash from the eruption of the volcano that buried the temple became valuable, enriching the soil along with mixes of feces and fresh dirt from the northlands. Thousands of tons of dirt were hauled across the seas to allow the southlands to grow their own food, while giant fish farms were constructed from endless lines of workers toiling away fifteen hours a day.
The slow rebuilding of the land was accompanied by an insidiously clever effort by the the Palavanus clan to rewrite not only history, but society. It was an effort every bit as ambitious as the shifts brought about after the asari Age of Queens, or the trials of Shego to unify the salarians, but the Palavanus were more careful and more focused in what they wanted.
Having already spent centuries both slowly reinforcing their domination over the now-dominant Orvu racial grouping, they began large scale intermixing of tribes, using land grants and spheres of influence to do so. The New Imperatorium was ruled by the Palavanus, but this time their method of distributed rule was more subtle and played to the very heart of turian tribalism.
Ruthlessly intermixing families and settlements, they began subdividing the entire race into what were first called ranks of citizenship. The highest families and the meanest urchins were theoretically on the same level. Service to the state was championed, in the guise of survival of all. The challenges of moving into an industrial age were complicated by the ecological damage inflicted on Palaven as well as the need to integrate all of it's people under one rule.
Pack-oriented and territorial by nature, the education and conditioning of the Palavanus had four broad goals. They began shifting a focus in young turians from valuing battle-based honor to personal responsibility. They shifted ideals of what it meant to be 'turian' from merely clans to all turian peoples, with an emphasis on clan level priorities as a way to ensure only the best and brightest would ever control more than that. They ruthlessly assassinated anyone who attempted to block or usurp their own methods of manipulation, while quietly pushing into power those who fell in line with their ideals. Most importantly, they used history as a weapon, the turian fixation on past actions and ancestors becoming a block to further resistance.
The Palavanus had no real influence over government except in three areas : as the scholarly masters of the Orvu, they ran all the schools and development centers. They started the first universities and controlled the 'proper' form of dialects and language. In every teaching and training they stressed that responsibility for one's own actions was the highest goal. Honor, while important, was secondary to acting in a manner from which one would never regret actions taken. Even honorable acts could have bad consequences, and machismo was replaced with a sullen disrespect for authority without demonstration of competence, usually by highlighting how badly things had gone once the Palavanus had been deposed.
Second, the Palavanus family controlled the pace of advancement. The principles of scientific method and any math higher than basic computation were only taught to the Palavanus themselves or their favored students, none of which came from 'noble' clans. They teased bits of knowledge out like candy to a wide array of lower clans, creating ever-shifting power blocks of quicksand-like stability, which kept the noble clans so occupied in trying to counter and control them they had no time to plot against the Palavanus.
Third, they controlled medical facilities and the public health. As the only real healers of note, they were quick to allow turian ignorance about germs and disease lie fallow, blaming things on spirits and ancestral disapproval. When Palavanus healers thus triumphed over diseases that the healers of other clans and tribes could not handle, they were seen in a light of holiness.
Finally and most tellingly, the Palavanus did nothing to encourage scholarship outside of mere mechanism and technical innovation. Even today, there isn't a single turian medical professor, astrophysicist, or genetics researcher who isn't a Palavanus or from one of their child clans. The turian people are not ignorant savages, but they do not appreciate science that much.
The clan also held tight reins over the economy and mercantile areas during the industrial eras. Land-poor, they leveraged their technology and knowledge into many deals and alliances, but never acted as the 'front-runners' They hoarded cash and acted as bankers and loaners of last resort, slowly accumulating properties but never enough to raise the ire or worry of other clans.
It took the turian people a good five thousand years to slowly move through the industrial revolutions and into what most cultures consider 'post-Industrial'. This is not due to turians being stupid, it is due to the Palavanus slowing progress to completely rewrite turian society. When the industrial era started, based on archeological evidence, there were less than fifty million turians on the planet. Cultures were tribal, based on personal strength and combat prowess. Intellect was seen as secondary to savagery and racial tensions were high. Ancestor worship was more about ways to glorify the clan than a method of living life, and honor usually meant following rules in battle.
At the end of the revolution, the entire Imperatorium was a single, giant army. Clans entered younglings into tournaments to join various military units, and the efficiency of these units determined land control, contracts, even distributions of technology. Slowly culture moved away from personal honor as a yardstick to personal honor as restraint.
The virtues practiced over and over for thousands of years became more than rote repetition. Turians, in many ways, brainwashed themselves. The Palavanus removed the word for 'retreat' from the language, and self-preservation became a watchword of not just cowards, but those who put their lives as more important than others.
I cannot sum up how radically the turian people changed in this time, because the historical records are nothing but a propaganda laden mess and much of this is conjectural, but I feel it is as correct as can be. Inter-clan conflict became inter-clan competition, with driving forces of being the best and proving one's worth to superiors and peers outstripping combat achievements. What humans would call ethics is closer to the turian concept of honor, what you call morals their ancestral religion.
Post-Industrial : the Burning
The post-Industrial age was kicked off almost four thousand years ago, by the invention of atomics as a method for massive terraforming. By this time, the Imperatorium was beginning to fragment, due to population issues and increasing amounts of tension between clans over who controlled what.
Rather than attempt to stay atop the mess, the Palavanus family declared that clan Primarchs would each form Councils to elect national Primarchs, who would in turn select a Primarch to govern all of Palaven. The Imperatorium was allowed to decay as the Palavanus slowly turned over the reins of government to various powerful clans like the Vakarian and Arterius families.
I suspect they were snickering into their sleeves the whole time. By this point the Imperatorium had become little more than the coordination of a massive army, used mostly to occupy and suppress disorder among it's own people. The Palavanus retained control of medical fields, science, and education, and let everything else go to those who thought they would gain control from it.
The new government did not last long – several violent civil wars wracked the span of time prior to spaceflight. After centuries of this sort of squabbling, smaller clans began pressuring larger ones to reign in the violence, since it was affecting their economics and ways of life.
Sectarian violence of this nature led to many 'nations' adopting certain types of war paint, each one unique from the rest. Rather than go to full war, war games were held to determine the outcomes of events, and more and more effort was put forth in taming Palaven's environment and tapping her natural resources than battling one another.
Then quite suddenly, it fell apart. No turian historian agrees on who or what caused it, but strong limited nuclear war erupted twenty nine hundred years ago, killing millions. Some speculate it was terrorists, or even embittered cultists who still clung to the Valluvian legends. Others darkly hint the Palavanus were behind it, as at this time turian historians began peeling back the layers of distortion and began to realize how badly all of turian society had been played.
What mattered is that it nearly destroyed the species, and led to all-out war between the clans that very nearly undid all their hard work at rebuilding. It was only by the greatest efforts of several clans and more importantly the reluctance of smaller clans to sacrifice themselves to support the screaming war demands of larger ones that the entire world didn't go up in flames.
With so much ecological damage done, especially to areas rich in natural resources, and a lack of focus on economics, strong depressions wracked the global economy. Wars quickly depleted populations and lead to mass exodus and collapse of civil authority.
It was during this time that tribal Primarchs finally embraced their role. Working hard to dissuade turians from fighting one another, many clans deliberately merged together, forming alliances of blood and marriage. The earlier militarization of society into a military became terrifyingly complete, as only military discipline could ensure an end to violence. Forced by the sudden and catastrophic shift for survival and rebuilding, in less than fifty years the larger clans agreed to ceasefires and to reign in violence.
The Palavanus, keen-eyed planners to the last, quickly realized the planet's resources were now either too depleted or too radiated to be of any real use in a long term rebuilding. They no longer had thousands of years to massage the pride of the clans and work on long-term projects, while slowly managing populations.
The Palavanus first finally began teaching the true methods of science to others not in the clan during this time, focusing mostly on engineering and agriculture. Massive cadres of young turians were drilled in camps twenty hours a day on rigid military protocol and riot suppression. Outbreaks of violence, rather than being encouraged as honor displays, were savagely suppressed, civilians and warriors alike slain to dissuade further uprisings.
The Primarch system became embedded into society, with military ranks and civilian classes blurring together in the pressure of the rebuilding. Roughly twenty six hundred years ago, the fifteen strongest Primarchs – some representing one clan, others hundreds – met in Tyrudo Castle to create a single, unified plan to bring together the turian people.
Briefed by Palavanus advisers and scientists, who projected complete societal collapse and resource exhaustion within five hundred years, the Primarchs crafted a very hasty but stable blueprint for rulership. They called it the Hierarchy, a group of fifteen Primarchs who voted on a Supreme Primarch and commander in chief. Each of the fifteen would be elected by lower Primarchs, and in turn Primarchs lower than they, all the way down to a single clan level, who would be chosen by super-majority voting or in the case of several ties, ritual unarmed combat.
Breakaway independence groups were brought into line by way of violence so sickening even turian historians shy away from describing it. A full forty percent of the turian population was killed in a century, before the rest fell in line.
The horrors such an act imprinted on the turian soul can never be washed away, I suspect. Your own Days of Iron were a nightmarish trial for your people, but the turians went further than even the most insane ideals of Ardiente. Anyone who disagreed – anyone who refused to bow to the Hierarchy – was killed. Their families were killed, their clansmen were killed. Their lands were seized and redistributed.
It has been almost twenty five hundred years since the Burning occurred, and the turian people have not forgotten.
The only thing accomplished of positive note by this fascist unification was the pursuit of spaceflight, as the Palavanus determined mining the system's asteroid belts or other planets was the only way to support the economy. The spaceflight program was a crash effort by what even humans would call second-rate scientists, but they had the resources and backing of the entire planet, and succeeded in short order.
Colonial and Early FTL era : The Unification Wars
Early turian spacefaring years were boring. Colonies were established and the focus was on raw materials and growth to rebuild Palaven yet again. Lives on these colonies were very hard, and every act of rebellion cruelly stamped out.
Palaven's mass relay was an enigma and a chilling realization for the Turians – they came to understand they were not alone in the universe. It militarized their culture even more, the sheer size and power of it having some subconscious effect on the turian mind to build bigger, stronger and more militant ships. By the time they discovered FTL, some two thousand years ago, they had a fleet nearly as strong in size if not technology as humanity does today.
Their FTL wanderings were done in overwhelming, crushing force. They would not open a relay until they had a complete war fleet prepared, and refused to colonize except with full resources. They came across two other sentient races in their expansion. The first of these, the arcaeas, engaged in combat with them and were literally obliterated. Turian warships crushed their fleets and rained asteroid strikes down on their homeworld until not even algae-analogues survived. They strip mined the planet brutally, deliberately crushing cultural relics and left the world a burning, plundered wreck , a stark warning to others.
They discovered the volus about fifteen hundred years ago, as the volus were making their very first tentative explorations of the relays. The meeting was surprisingly peaceful – in return for sharing the details of how to use the mass relays with the turians, and providing new markets, the volus would be protected by the turian military.
The vast injection of volus economic energy into the flagging turian economy was like lightning. Volus clucked sadly at turian logistics and fiscal policies, correcting millennia of neglect or lack of understanding. They revolutionized turian banking, and brought real fluidity to both import and export markets. They were, of course, making a killing off the naïve turians, but the sad reality was that even ripping the turians off wasn't as bad as letting the turians run their own economy.
A mere fifty years of volus management had raised the standard of living for most turians by more than thirtyfold, and allowed massive amounts of power to come into the hands of smaller clan leaders. The volus, cooperative and intensely driven by competition, began breaking the Hierarchy into markets, and using those markets to compete with one another, driving pricing down and working to expand supply limits.
The volus, sadly, didn't understand turian psychology. As smaller clans gained greater and greater economic independence, their arrogance grew. They were not foolish enough to challenge the supremacy of the Hierarchy, not after the examples already set by true rebels. Yet they did challenge the right of the method by which the Primarch was elected.
The more distant colonies, made of turians who'd never even seen Palaven, grew resentful as the wealth they mined and built flew to rebuild a world they'd never see, leaving their own underdeveloped. Each group of clans fought among themselves economically to achieve some form of dominance, hoping that it would give them enough political clout to elect more Primarchs and have more say in what the focus of the Hierarchy was as a whole.
When the volus began encouraging the clans to not put up with 'ruinous taxes' and demand representation on a colony level, the tides of the abyss broke loose.
Until that point, colony affairs were managed by the clans. Unfortunately, with the advent of more advanced economics, many clans had far flung holdings under their banner they had no real ties to. Facial paint for each colony became intricate and unique, but few had any unity to the clans that were nominally their rulers. In some cases they felt more loyalty to clans on their own world, in others they simply resented being pushed around.
Eventually tempers flared and shooting started. At first, the Hierarchy mobilized it's fleets, but they hesitated. The colonies were not rebelling against the Hierarchy, but were fighting amongst themselves, battling to reduce each others importance and attempt to force those weaker to align with their goals.
The so-called Unification Wars dragged on for decades, the Hierarchy wisely staying above the fray, nationalizing any colonies or groups they became too weak. When it finally burned itself out, the Hierarchy quietly arrested a few people, and simply let the scars fade over time. The result of the wars was the final destruction of the clan as a true political unit. The Hierarchy, to avoid such flare ups in the future, divided the command structure of the military and governance. Everyone had a vote, the power of their vote going towards electing local Primarchs, who in turn elected regionals, and in turn colonial, and in turn cluster, and in turn sector, Primarchs. The sector primarchs, along with a rotating selection of four or five Primarchs from the biggest clans, picked the High Primarch.
With the power of the clans broken, the military took on every increasing roles in turian everyday life and organization. Expanding their fleets to new highs and retrofitting their ships with the best weapons, they were about to engage in a long series of exploration flights when they were found by the salarians.
Modern Era : the Krogan Rebellions and Recent History
It was a serendipitous meeting. The turians were shocked by the understanding that they faced two other races of supreme power, the asari and salarians. From the historical records I've been able to obtain, the turians were of two minds about the situation. Facing two fleets that, combined, outnumbered their own by a fair margin, it was the first time they were not in a dominant position of power. At the same time, after the initial negotiations were over, it was clear that, at least in theory, the turians held all the cards.
For the turian discovery came at the raging height of the Krogan Rebellions. While the asari were able to match the krogan on the ground in battle and rout them in space, the rate of krogan birth and the resilience of krogan infantry meant it would take centuries to suppress the rebellion. As Minsta was correct in pointing out, my people are poor at attrition warfare of direct conflict, and the salarians are even worse. No krogan would ever match an asari warrior, much less a trained commando or war matriarch – but barely a tenth of a percent of asari fit such a description, while nearly eighty percent of krogan were war-capable. Every loss of asari life sapped more and more will to fight from the forces of the asari, and salarians had suffered sickening casualties.
Worse, while salarian intelligence had managed to stymie several krogan advances and throw much of their space program into ruins, the Krogan Empire wasn't united behind their leaders. As the war ground on, however, more and more krogan got involved. STG planning suggested that only a core of clans was truly involved in the rebellions, and that the longer it dragged on, the more likely more clans would join.
Thus, the discovery of the turian people was something of a masterstroke for asari explorers. The turians had an army several times the size of the asari, excellently trained and hardened for violence of the most extreme sort. More resistant to hard environments than asari, the size of their fleet and their warrior ethic made them superior at the sort of attrition warfare the krogan excelled at.
The turians didn't trust the situation. They knew full well they were being asked to go to war against a species even more violent than their own, and diaries and news snippets from the time show the turians were surprisingly unfooled by smooth asari diplomacy. They knew this was manipulation of the highest order. And yet, they were seduced by the incentives thrown at their door. In return for aiding the two races with their war upon the krogan, the turians would be given a voice at the table. They would be the sword of the Citadel. Their fleets would be given priority, their client race given ambassadorial rights, their economy would find new markets. Most importantly, salarian and asari assets would assist in suppressing colonial revolts and unease in the turian territories, insuring the stability of the Hierarchy.
What sealed the deal, however, was the appeal of the asari diplomats to the turian Primarchs. They openly admitted that while strong, defeating the krogan conventionally was beyond them. It was something only the Hierarchy could do. The asari were the diplomats and councilors, the salarians the intelligence arm and inventors. That meant there was a place in the galactic ruling scheme for protectors, for warriors, and guardians. The Krogan were unfit for that, because they lacked honor.
This clever approach won over the Primarchs, not only because it benefited the Hierarchy but because it fitted very well with turian perceptions. Armed with a fleet larger than any other, veterans of the Unification Wars, they were the perfect foil for the Krogan.
The krogan rebellions from that point on were bloody and violent, the krogan destroying colonies in their rage and fury, but the turians were able (with considerable losses) to fight them to a standstill long enough for the genophage to work. They were not impressed by the krogan's bloodthirsty savagery, and pushed for the hardest sanctions against their defeated foe. When the krogan surrendered, the turians took the lead on establishing the CDEM overseeing Tuchanka, and disarming the strongest of the clans.
The aftermath of the rebellions ended up a trying time for the Hierarchy. Their economy was heavily stressed by the Unification Wars, and they had begun to subtly blame the volus for the chaos of that time. At the same time, outbreaks of violence in the aftermath of the rebellions ended up costing more money.
Rather than listen to the volus suggestions of fiscal caution, the Hierarchy spent wildly, expanding their fleet rapidly, building up bases across a wide expanse of space, and rapidly colonizing many new world that no one had bothered with up until now due to their dextro-compatible nature. The stress of the costs of colonization and fleet expansion, combined with lackluster investments in sustainable resources, led to a hard fiscal crunch about three hundred years after the Rebellions.
With so many far-flung colonies, all of which were somewhat restless and requiring turian garrisons, not to mention the military requirements of the Citadel Defense Forces, turian military spending had skyrocketed. Colonization costs, resettlement costs, and the ongoing expense of repairing the damage to Palaven added to this. The weak economy and money tightness increased the level of indebtedness the turians had to the volus, who cleverly sold the debts to the asari in return for technological assistance and diplomatic favors.
It wasn't long before the Hierarchy found itself mired in debt to their Citadel partners, who began building businesses and investment networks inside turian space itself. Inept merchants at the best of times, turian economic prowess had until now been bolstered by their volus clients. But the volus (agitated by asari, as you have already guessed) were feeling slighted by the fact that they did not get a Council seat like the turians did. As a result, volus assistance in mitigating the economic crisis was limited.
The result was that the turian government had to agree to much of what the Citadel Council put upon them without recourse. They had a stupendously powerful navy, but it was not the match of the asari fleet nor as advanced as the salarian fleet. They had a supremely powerful army, that was scattered to the four corners of the galaxy, maintaining peace and preventing both turian and krogan restlessness. They had a large economic market, but this was a dumping ground for sharp asari and salarian business interests.
I do not believe the turians are blind to how this has occurred, and they have taken steps to attempt to rectify it. However, the Palavanus clan remains the only group of turians to display any true political cunning on the level required, and they appear fine with the way things are going. I suspect that they will let things continue until they are untenable for the Hierarchy and use the results to attempt to lever themselves back into power.
I am sure there is more history to be found, but researching it is fraught with danger. As I have said, some portions of history are dangerous to poke too far into because of the manipulations of the Palavanus, and as a rule it appears historical analysis is distrusted, because it is too often used to stir up colonial or tribal unrest. The summary I have presented gives you enough points of reference to glean the key points of how their culture is shaped by history.
Turians are violent, tribal, driven by emotion, and guileless, except for a handful. Yet they have forced themselves into a police state of collectivist focus and strict self-discipline. They disdain diplomacy in favor of the sword, yet their government exists primarily because they grew sick of self-slaughter in the end. Pel's 'gut feeling' about turians being more aware of how they are being manipulated is certainly correct, but the complexity of the issues and the realization that turians literally can't get themselves out of the shallows they have stranded themselves in only makes them more dangerous.
Your Cerberus Manifesto is correct on one point. If the turians are willing to commit near genocide upon humanity merely to bolster their economy, it does not bear thinking on what they will do should matters become so dire that the Hierarchy falls.