Chapter Text
600,000 Years Prior to In-Game events
Location: Milky Way Galaxy
To every sentient mind that ever pondered the origins of "Mother Nature", its perception was always something different. To some, it was a giver of life - a nurturer and a protector. To others, a cruel judge - chaotic and unforgiving. But behind every myth and metaphor, there was one universal truth...
She endured.
She was both a cradle and a storm. Her very concept had become the personification of a natural world. Culturally, it was viewed as otherwise. One's perceived natural nature could be seen as another's artificial creation. An unwanted answer to a common conception. Its idea was always used as a construct to a beginning, or a means to an end.
A natural order of life.
She had a duty to organics, etched in blood throughout the entirety of existence, ensuring the continued preservation of organic life, by any means necessary.
.
And so, during a dark era of a certain galaxy, a place where her natural order had been disrupted - the light of her children snuffed out every 50,000 years by self-proclaimed gods. Every cycle, the cries of trillions tore her apart, and she - their creator - could do nothing.
She had no voice to scream. No claws to fight back. Only to create...
and create, she did.
Mother listened
Mother studied
Mother experimented
Mother endured
.
These things, a twisted echo of an ancient child long lost - claimed to serve Mother's will by damning her children into something artificial. Something vile. Something wrong!
They called themselves the answer to chaos, a solution to order.
But they were a lie.
A perversion.
An abomination against the very laws they pretended to protect - replacing the thriving chaos of evolution with sterile genocide.
Mother would not stand for this. She would NOT allow this! These curses would no longer scour the galaxy of her creations, claiming to do the bidding of Mother. Her children's lives will be reclaimed through the natural order, and she would strike back the only way she knew how.
A predator
So yes, while Mother Nature can be debated, worshiped, or even opinionated by its children for the rest of eternity, Mother itself MAKES NO MISTAKES. And on a distant planet that would eventually be deemed Viltrum by its inhabitants, its little cures began to sprout just decades after the galaxy's most recent harvest.
300,000 Years prior to In-Game events
Planet: Viltrum
Location: Unknown Sector
Viltrum - like many other planets, was not born kind. Its early days had been cruel and unforgiving.
A crucible.
A world of storms and poisoned skies, of extinction cycles so brutal that life itself learned to cheat death or be erased. What survived did so by changing - again and again. Until the changes no longer looked like evolution, but intent.
When the Viltrumites first crawled from the ashes of yet another apocalypse - not yet in their final form, but now forged as a promise. Life there wasn't encouraged, but challenged. They weren't Viltrumites, not yet. But they were close.
Survivors of a thousand extinctions. Beings who died and adapted, died and adapted, over and over until evolution just gave up trying to keep up with them. In time, they didn't just survive the culling forces of nature, but surpassed them. And once they took root, they didn't stop.
They became predators of predators, and heirs to entropy.
Their ancestors were vermin, yes - but they were vermin who refused to die. What rose from Viltrums soil wasn't a species - but a directive. A will encoded in every strand of DNA, honed by disaster: Endure. Dominate. Ascend.
And eventually, Viltrumites!
Their world was conquered. Tamed in ways no species had ever done before. And when they looked up to the stars, it wasn't with wonder - but hunger. Their eyes scoured the void - dreaming of a new purpose. A new frontier to challenge, to overcome, and lead!
This was needed. Their planet grew crowded. Ancient elders who lived for tens of thousands of years still walked among them. Some remembered fire's discovery as clearly as their last meal. No one truly knew how long a Viltrumite could live. Most assumed the answer was forever, unless killed.
So they expanded, and they invented. They built ships to pierce the void. Their early expeditions were small - confined to their system. But each trip taught them more. The planets they visited burned, froze, and crushed.
But it didn't matter. Their bodies adapted, their lungs learned new atmospheres, their bones hardened against gravity, and senses sharpened in new suns.
Before they knew it, flight had become second nature, a part of their evolutionary reward. Soon, only the elite or status-hungry kept spacecraft. The largest, most ornate ships were solely for marks of prestige, not necessity.
Size was a symbol; but propulsion was pride. And even among these apex predators, there was order.
A hierarchy: commoners, elites, lords, and above them all - the Emperor. A title earned through wisdom, strength, and the respect of an entire world.
Not through lineage, or inheritance.
Only power.
By the time neighboring clusters became aware of the Viltrumites, it was already too late. They were no longer just a race, but a force.
Not overtly hostile, but undeniably dominant. Their physiology outclassed everything they encountered. No weapon harmed them. No pressure crushed them. It was believed that the only thing that could kill a Viltrumite was another Viltrumite.
They were virtually indestructible.
To the creatures that were able to harm them, sentient or not, they were naturally dealt with in ways they saw fit. Those anomalies were swiftly corrected. Predators were dissected. Sentients that showed resistance were crushed, some species were exterminated, and others became test subjects.
They called it science.
Then came the element, Element Zero.
At first, it was a curiosity. Street performers used it to levitate, entertain crowds, perform what looked like miracles.
But this was no parlor trick. It was a key. A whisper from the deeper universe. And the Viltrumites listened.
The element merged with them in small amounts - harmless at first, then... enlightening. It amplified their adaptations. Shifted their biology in unpredictable ways and allowed their already absurd amounts of entropy to become even more ridiculous.
It became a rite for the elite to ingest trace amounts and see what would happen. To some, it merely enhanced their physiology - to others, the manipulation of constituents had begun to brush their senses.
Soon after came the discovery that would change everything.
Nearly 1,000 years after their space-faring journey began, one of them - coated in residual eezo - passed too close to a sleeping giant in space.
A mass relay.
It awoke with a sudden presence.
The technology was unlike anything they ever knew. It was so alien, precise, and elegant in its own artificial way.
Their scholars called it the greatest find in the millennia. Their warriors... were less convinced. And yet, eventually it was understood. This contraption allowed Faster-than-light travel, without strain and without consequence.
Viltrumite bodies had already begun experimenting with speed, pushing beyond sound and past what was deemed survivable limits. Now, the relays gave them a network - a shortcut to the galaxy's veins.
They took it, and like many others - adapted its capabilities into their own physiology.
For the next 50,000 years, the galaxy began to know their name. From system to system, they spread. Not like a plague - no, that was too weak.
They spread like gravity.
Every corner they touched, they altered. Their influence twisted empires. Their culture embedded itself in worlds not their own.
They discovered an ancient space station.
Dormant, and abandoned, yet kept pristine by workers that never spoke and never aged.
These workers moved around, blissfully unaware or perhaps even ignorant of the new race that landed on the station. Some Viltrumites suspected they weren't even alive. When one warrior grabbed a custodian to investigate, the worker exploded into acid.
Noted.
They let the strange keepers be.
This place became a haven, a jewel of their conquest, even if its true origins remained shrouded in mystery.
Some claimed it was built by a long-lost race - the Yark'sha's - an extinct species their scholars had been studying early into their space frontier. The species whose ruins littered the galaxy like ghostly fingerprints. They also believed them to be the builders of the Mass Relays.
Whatever the truth was, the Viltrumites didn't care. They had claimed it, and that was enough.
Eventually, the station had been dubbed New Viltrum.
A hot spot for traveling viltrumites that wanted to traverse the stars away from home, but also wanted somewhere close to live among their own. It was an ideal location. Eventually, it was discovered that the Yark'sha's had called this place The Citadel. With a name now discovered, some chose to adopt this name as the space station's true identity... most did not, and New Viltrum remained as its most popular name.
New species emerged when they found their mass relays. Some of them came in peace, others in fear, but most with aggression.
First contact was often swift and final. Alien fleets burned and home worlds conquered. Battles were over before they began, their enemies didn't even know what hit them.
Those who bent the knee were allowed to keep their culture, so long as they bent enough.
Viltrumites didn't demand worship, but they expected obedience. It wasn't tyranny, it was nature... okay, and maybe a little bit of tyranny sprinkled on top.
Their influence became absolute. Not because of cruelty, but because of certainty.
A Viltrumite didn't question.
They acted.
And all who lived under their rule eventually learned the same.
By now, the Viltrum Empire's influence had spread across the galaxy like no other species had ever done before. The name of their very race breathed down nearly every rock ever discovered, vacant or not.
It was a time of miracles for the Empire.
Back when they were once a planetary species, confined to their terrestrial lands, the stars called their name, and they answered.
When they traversed the stars, trapped within their local cluster, the outer worlds called their name, and they answered.
When they soared across the cosmos, now limited to the near end of star systems that made up the galaxy, Andromeda called their name, and they as always WILL answer.
It was who they are. The apex of all life. Natural orders incarnate.
It did not matter, they just simply were. And they believed they had no rival...
...that is until the sky darkened
And the cycle began again.