Some of the major civilizations in the universe of Stellaris Invicta.
Warning: Spoilers are unmarked.
Season 1
Greater Terran Union
A military regime that saved humanity during the war with the Tyrum from 2089-2096, and the period of anarchy that followed. They are devoted to making sure that Earth is never threatened by invasion again.
- Red and Black Totalitarianism: An authoritarian regime with prominent red and black iconography.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Against the Tyrum, which culminates in them annihilating the Tyrum homeworld with a planet-destroying colossus.
Tyrum Consciousness
An alien race that invaded Earth in 2089, and were narrowly repulsed after seven years of war.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Their homeworld is destroyed by the Union's colossus, the Sword of Terra.
- Hive Mind: They share a collective consciousness.
- Horde of Alien Locusts: A straight example; they want nothing more than to devour all in their path.
- Insectoid Aliens: They resemble quadrupedal bugs, and are classified as arthropoids in-game.
- Keystone Army: The destruction of their homeworld also kills their Hive Mind, leaving the surviving Tyrum inrevocably insane and no longer capable of threatening other civilizations.
- Sympathy for the Devil: While the whole galaxy considered them a major threat to civilization, the GTU's complete genocide of their species and destruction of their homeworld is nonetheless viewed as horrifying by the other empires of the galaxy.
Season 2
Confederate Republics of Antares
An alliance of eleven human Lost Colonies spread across a trinary system they have dubbed Antares.
- The Alliance: The Confederacy is a loose alliance of eleven nations within the Antares system.
- Benevolent Conspiracy: Officially, the Antares colonists never heard from Earth after arriving in the system and have no idea what's become of mainstream humanity. In reality, garbled messages were in fact received for years following their arrival, hinting that something terrifying has befallen the homeworld. This was covered up to keep the citizenry form panicking, and to keep them focused on making the Antares colonies livable. As the United Terran Protectorates become more active on the galactic scene, the masquerade is eventually dropped.
- Heroic BSoD: The whole nation goes through a years-long period of shock and mourning when the fate of Earth is finally made public.
- Lost Colony: The Earhart flotilla was supposed to colonize a planet orbiting Antares B
, but instead found themselves in a strange trinary system with a number of habitable, though inhospitable, worlds. With nowhere else to go, they named their new system "Antares" in honor of their original destination, and founded nineteen colonies on these planets and moons, eleven of which survived to become spacefaring again. They are driven to find their way back to Earth to see what became of the birthplace of humanity. - Standard Human Spaceship: They use the game's "Mammalian" ship designs, which are dark grey, hard-edged, and have lots of greebles. The official artwork smooths them out a little, but they still qualify.
- Sympathy for the Devil: The destruction of Vrul-Ho, the homeworld of the Vrul Salvation League, utterly horrifies the populace of Antares.
Cloister of the Spirits
The government of the Pneumoi, and the first alien civilization encountered by the Antares Confederacy.
- The Alliance: Forms one with the Antares Confederacy, called the Moya Pact.
- Arch-Enemy: They and the Kelarr Confederation of Clans seem to loathe each other, and the Pneumoi repeatedly refused to let them join the Moya Pact.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Pneumoi values and motivations can be baffling to outsiders, even their friends in the Antares Confederacy.
- Commonality Connection: According to their myths, they came into being after arriving on their homeworld on a comet. They are quite intrigued by Antares' descriptions of the Black Stone of the Kaaba in Mecca.
- The Load: Though friendly, they quickly begin to drag the Moya Pact into unnecessary wars, and are eventually booted out of the alliance.
- Silicon-Based Life: The Pneumoi are a lithoid species, described as resembling living rocks. It took a while for Antares to even recognize them as living beings.
- Starfish Aliens: "They resembled rocks or crystals more than anything that might be considered alive, at times dazzling, luminescent, almost magical in their movements. How precisely their electromagnetic fields conferred life and sentience would be studies for generations."
- The Theocracy: A benevolent example. The Pneumoi are peaceful spiritualists who take great interest in the religions of Antares.
Vrul Salvation League / Vrul Republic
An antagonistic species, located on the northern border of Antares.
- Big Bad Wannabe: For all their bellicose threats, the self-inflicted destruction of Vrul-Ho effectively kneecaps their civilization, and the survivors are annexed by Antares soon afterward.
- Brain Drain: The Vrul Republic, the successor state to the Salvation League, ultimately fails due to the pro-democracy Vrul migrating to Antares and leaving their own worlds in the hands of authoritarian strongmen.
- Card-Carrying Villain: They introduce themselves by vowing to "drown Antares beneath a tide of blood".
- Dug Too Deep: They over-mined their homeworld, Vrul-Ho, resulting in its core collapsing and killing the majority of its population.
- The Elites Jump Ship: "Salvation was reserved only for their aristocracy. Their government had no desire to save their population, instead working them to death on the promise that they would one day be saved."
- The Empire: Described as resembling the worst aspects of Earth's dictators on steroids. Slavery and genocide is the norm within their space, and they made little effort to evacuate most of their population from their doomed homeworld.
- Homeworld Evacuation: A deliberately half-assed one. They didn't bother to save the majority of their population, just the elites and whatever slave labor they'd need to colonize a new world.
- Industrialized Evil: Their ruthless desire for more resources drove them to enslave much of their population and over-mine their planet's core, with apocalyptic consequences. They also didn't bother to evacuate most of said slave labor, just what they'd need to restart the process on Torix.
- Omnicidal Maniac: They desire to exterminate all alien species in the galaxy.
- Super-Strength: Vrul are far stronger than humans.
United Terran Protectorates / Greater Terran Empire
A Vichy Earth regime created by the Screk Empire after they conquered Earth, intended to serve as a proxy military for the Screk. They inhabit the northern rim of the galaxy.
- Not-So-Harmless Villain: Despite being a sizable military power in their own right, they're dismissed by Antares as a hapless collaborate regime for much of the series. That changes during the Confederacy's war with the Screk, when the Protectorates launch a massive counterattack that puts Antares on the defensive and eventually forces a white peace. The Protectorates then reform into the Greater Terran Empire, an even more savage and belligerent power.
- Vichy Earth: A collaborate regime forced upon humanity by alien invaders.
Anthorian Empire
An imperial state located to the galactic southeast of the Cloister of the Spirits.
- Arch-Enemy: They seem to have it out for the Cloister of the Spirits, waging at least three wars against the Pneumoi and their allies.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: They team up with the Kelarr Confederation of Clans against Antares and the Cloister of the Spirits.
Beldross Empire
An imperial state located to the galactic south of the Moya Pact.
- Balkanize Me: After losing their war with Antares and the Pneumoi, their outlying systems are turned into a buffer state between the Cloister and the Beldross.
- The Empire: Described as warlike and imperialistic.
- Feudal Future: Much of their warmongering is driven by disputes between the nobles and warlords that make up their government.
- Paper Tiger: Their military turns out to have been severely weakened by earlier campaigns, making them easy prey for Antares warships.
Kelarr Confederation of Clans
A civilization located to the galactic northwest of the Moya Pact.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: They team up with the Anthorians against Antares and the Cloister of the Spirits.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Antares earns grudging respect form the Kelarr after winning their war, leading to talks about a possible alliance.
Baanthurian Khanate
The Resurgent Empire of the ancient Baanthurian race, lead by a mysterious figure known as the Great Khan.
- The Horde: After unifying under the Great Khan, the Baanthurians begin to expand in all directions, bringing them into conflict with Antares.
- Resurgent Empire: The Khanate is their attempt to rebuild Baanthurian civilization after the old one collapsed millennia ago.
- Space Cossacks: Baanthurian space is a lawless wasteland on the fringe of galactic society, at least until they unified under the Great Khan.
- Try to Fit That on a Business Card: The Great Khan's true title consists of countless honorifics that are "beyond translation".
- Villain Respect: Antares' defense of Melaka so impresses the Great Khan that, after touring the battlefield and speaking to survivors on both sides, he decides to name hundreds of his own ships after the defenders.
Vran State
A theocratic race of precursors that regard the other civilizations with disdain or annoyance.
- Big Damn Heroes: A fleet of Vran pilgrims reinforce Antares' defenders against the Great Khan as a thank-you for finding the Head of Zarqlan.
- The Theocracy: Devoted to the ancient religions practiced by their civilization at its height.
- Vestigial Empire: Like the Screk, the Vran used to be a galactic superpower before regressing into a Fallen Empire clinging to a handful of systems and planets.
Screk Empire
One of the oldest civilizations in the galaxy, the Screk rule what little remains of their hyper-advanced empire with an iron fist. They are the empire that invaded Earth in the late 22nd century, turning humanity into the United Terran Protectorates.
- Proud Scholar Race: Their culture is devoted to the preservation of knowledge.
- Technologically Advanced Foe: Centuries, if not millennia, more advanced than humanity.
- Vestigial Empire: The Screk used to be a powerful, benevolent, respected member of the galactic community. After centuries of war against the Unbidden, they regressed into an oppressive feudal society controlling a handful of core systems and relying on slave races to preserve their empire.
Thimodian Republic
A nation that earned the ire of the Screk, resulting in a genocidal war and an entire planet being permanently shielded from the wider galaxy.
- City in a Bottle: The planet shielded by the Screk.
- Fate Worse than Death: Those trapped on the shielded planet were "doomed to be toyed with like ants by bored Screk nobles". Thankfully, Antares eventually rescued them.
Multiple seasons
The Unbidden
An extradimensional race of Energy Beings that sustain themselves by devouring the biosphere of habitable worlds.
- Energy Beings: Their ships are described as being a strange assemblage of light and radiation rather than matter.
- Greater-Scope Villain: In season two. Their first invasion of the galaxy, thousands of years ago, was what created the Antares Miasma and turned the Screk into The Empire; their imminent second invasion is what drove the Screk to attack Earth and turn humanity into Battle Thralls.
- Multiversal Conqueror: The Unbidden travel from universe to universe, stripping all life from them before moving on to the next.
