Zorlacians

The Essential

There is a word in ancient Vras—kror'veth—that resists translation into any galactic common tongue. It means, approximately, "the fire that remembers being shaped." A blade is kror'veth. So is a scar. So is a civilization that has been broken and reforged across twenty-six thousand years of occupation.

The Zorlacians emerged 75,000 years ago from the volcanic depths of one of the harshest worlds ever to birth sapient life. Their planet pulses—magma flows carry the heat-signatures of events ten thousand years past, seismic tremors beat in patterns too regular to be merely geological. The world is not sapient, not in any way galactic taxonomy recognizes. But it is present. And it shaped its children in its own image: heat-resistant dermis with a metallic sheen, circulatory systems that regulate thermal extremes, regenerative abilities that mirror the way volcanic rock heals itself through accumulated pressure.

The occupation began in 24,000 AD—a calculated strike that exploited Zorlacian hubris. A civilization intoxicated by its own magnificence failed to notice the predator surveying its mineral wealth. The homeworld fell. The forges went silent. But the volcanic heart that forged the Zorlacians also forged their refusal to die.

From hidden Forge Worlds on volcanic planets the Draken consider too inhospitable to monitor, the resistance continues. They have learned patience—the slow accumulation of magma beneath the surface, building pressure across centuries until the moment of inevitable release. In 37,500 AD, they helped found the Outer Rim Alliance alongside the Krythorians and Vyxians, proving that even a species forged in isolation could learn to build coalitions.

The Zorlacians are neither heroes nor villains. They were war profiteers who armed both sides of the Great Galactic War. They were colonial overlords in the Arm'Zor Cluster before they became the occupied. They are a species defined by paradox: the pressure that created them is the pressure that destroyed them, and the occupation that should have broken them may have forged something stronger than the golden age ever produced.

In the Stories