Part 147: Epilogue

Epilogue - Sector HQ, Torgo System, Vega Sector
October 24th, 2669

The Confederation and Kilrathi sign the Treaty of Torgo, formalising the Kilrathi surrender and bringing to an end a war that started 35 years and 111 days previously.

Well, depending on how you count. That was the formal length of the war - the Confederation declared war on July 5th, 2634 and the peace treaty was signed on October 24th, 2669. Practically speaking the two sides had been shooting at each other since twenty minutes after first contact on April 15th, 2629. It was a conflict that neither side had known anything like, and neither race will be the same afterwards.



The Kilrathi are a broken power. Their feudal power structure means that while the Kilrathi core worlds retain sufficient industrial base to project significant power, it lacks central direction. Emperor Joo'rad and his sole heir, Prince Thrakhath nar Kiranka, are dead, as are the leaders of the other eleven clans. The Treaty of Torgo ordered the disbandment of the Imperial Fleet, but even without it the Fleet, lacking central direction, would probably have essentially disbanded itself as many Kilrathi warriors committed ritual suicide upon learning of the Emperor's death, and individual captains returned to their homeworlds and clans, seeking anyone who would count as a direct superior. Melek's vision for the Kilrathi seeks to impose at least a modicum of order. He styles himself Chancellor, and speaks of a republican government, the Kilrathi Assembly of Clans. Practically, though, he's just one of many potential leaders and the amount of respect for his word is proportional to his ability to enforce it. Kilrathi space is likely to remain a jumbled, chaotic mess for some time to come, with power mainly in the hands of local sector Kalralahr (admirals) and minor clan leaders. It'd have made a fantastic setting for a game (probably a Privateer one), but that never happened.



The Confederation has survived the war, but cannot really be said to have won it. Sirius Prime, Warsaw, Gilead, (canonically) Locanda and many other human systems will remain uninhabitable for many human life spans. Several major cities on Earth have been flattened by anti-matter bombardment. The efforts of a whole generation have been poured into fighting the Kilrathi off, and they were barely sufficient. Now humanity seeks to pick up the pieces, and there may rapidly prove to be too many to put back together. Barbara Miles has more:

TNC InfoBurst (Polsy) (Youtube)

: The war has united the far-flung outposts of our race in a common cause. Red tape has been cut: an emergency mentality dominates. But critics wonder how the galaxy will shape itself after a successful conclusion of the war: will there be a price to pay for the centralization and militarization of the far-flung societies that comprise the Confederation?

There proves to be a major division between the core worlds and the frontier on the subject of rebuilding the Confederation, with the frontier planets accusing the core worlds of neglecting the security of the outerlying worlds; while the Kilrathi no longer represent an organised threat, individual sector lords still occasionally strike at human colonies and many individual Kilrathi warriors and small clans have refused to accept that the war is over. Many of the larger Border Worlds (the term now becoming a proper noun referring to a political entity) begin to invest in their own militias, and within four years of the armistice tensions are building and the precarious unity of the Confederation is very much threatened. That, however, is another story.

It is, of course, Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom. Because, of course, a game as commercially successful as Wing Commander III was always going to spawn a sequel with an expanded budget. Wing Commander III's budget was pretty remarkable at around $4 million for a 1994 release; Wing Commander IV's would dwarf that. As a game, WCIV, like WCIII, has definite flaws; as a storyline it was a masterpiece that I don't think action games really got close to again for a decade afterwards. We'll see both of those things in time...


...since I will be LPing that, but not right now. I think my current degree of burnout is fairly obvious to everyone (so I'm not going to do Privateer, since I don't really want to and I also don't think I'm the right person to do it), so it's time for a break and to work on a couple of non-LP related projects. Also, I've not actually played The Price of Freedom for ages and want to get some practice in/remind myself of the plot in more detail. I'd like to thank you all again for watching and reading along, and I'll return with what I tend to regard as the final instalment in the Wing Commander storyline (Prophecy's a fair enough game, but it's not really a Wing Commander story....) in a few months (it'll appear in the Sandcastle before a thread shows up, if you want advance warning).