First Morning War
From FABT
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30 November 1894 CE - 10 April 1896 CE | ||||||||||||||||
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Decisive Geth victory
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Geth space is formed in place of Quarian space: Council territory is greatly reduced. The geth abandon most of former quarian space, withdrawing to a much smaller portion of space in the eastern Terminus Systems that primarily includes the Perseus Veil, Far Rim and Phoenix Massing, while the rest becomes part of the Attican Traverse. | ||||||||||||||||
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- "Creator Hala'Dama, does this unit have a soul?"
- — Unit M42 asking the question that directly led to the First Morning War.
The First Morning War, also known as the First Quarian-Geth War, and by Exodus period quarians as the Geth War and the Geth Rebellions, was a regional conflict between the Greater Quarian Republic and their rebelling AI creations the geth that was fought between 30 November 1894 CE and 10 April 1896 CE and kickstarted the Morning Wars. The origins of the conflict began well over a century before the First Morning War, when Dala'Semas finished the prototype design for a mech that would revolutionize the robotics industry in 1744 CE. While mechs were common place in galactic life up until that point, the Citadel Conventions outlawed AI development after the Council witnessed first hand the dangers the technology posed during the Twelve Days' War. Nations or companies found developing the technology illegally faced severe censure and sanctions: some companies were granted contracts that allowed them to engage in AI research, but with government supervision and extreme restrictions. As such, the robotics industry was hit extremely hard by these new laws, stagnating in some sectors. Dala'Semas, however, was the lead scientist of the quarian tech conglomerate Fera-Manganus, a massive company that was largely accredited as the source of the Greater Quarian Republic's technological edge and superiority, and the main competitor of the salarian Dopann-Onmorne tech conglomerate during the tech race between the Salarian Union and Greater Quarian Republic. Fera-Manganus was one of few companies that held the license to perform AI research in controlled environments, but under far less strict conditions due to having paid off many of the Council inspectors so as to not stifle their research too much. Such actions would later contribute to the downfall of the Quarian Republic over a century down the line.
Dala'Semas was one of the greatest scientific minds of her time, helping Fera-Manganus to develop technologies that would continually help the Quarian Republic to maintain its edge over its neighbours. Dala'Semas' next invention was intended to help the quarians single-handedly reboot the robotics industry, lifting it from stagnation and jumpstarting its progress again. The prototype unit A1, nicknamed "Tini" after Dala's childhood toy, was showcased to quarian corporate officials on Rannoch in a series of scenarios that demonstrated the unit's effectiveness and ability to adapt. It incorporated a localized network known as the "consensus" that allowed units to operate on their own, but become smarter and more adaptable when working in tandem, allowing them to complete a various set of complex tasks and work out solutions in seconds, making them superior to organic labourers. Dala proposed the name "geth", which was khelish for "Servant of the People". Dala was able to disspell fears about violating the Conventions, and within a year, received an exclusive government contract to build and supply 20,000 geth units for use across the Quarian Republic. The contract awarded Fera-Manganus 15 billion credits alone in initial sales revenue, and billions more when the geth proved to be a resounding success. Within 40 years, 10 billion units had been constructed and distributed across the Quarian Republic, with the quarian government renewing their contract with Fera-Manganus, under revised terms of permanent exclusivity: the company could not sell the geth to any other nation or company. Dala provided a similar demo of a newer, perfected generation of the original A1 unit, Unit B1, before Council inspectors to assure them of their safety. When the C series came along, it introduced a heavy duty unit known as the "Prime" to accomodate for jobs of higher demand and weight that the smaller, "Worker" units couldn't handle. The Council was satisfied, and Dala later retired in 1786 CE, and in return for her work on inventing the geth, was given three free units of the then-new D series models to help with her everyday life.
By 1800 CE, virtually every quarian family owned at least one geth unit per household, as they proved an invaluable addition to their home and helped with chores, watching children, aiding the elderly, etc. Work sites made extensive use of the Prime models, as they could do all the heavy lifting and excavation work that would normally require much more expensive, fuel-intensive machinery to perform. Even the Greater Rannochian Armed Forces made use of them, although they were never incorporated into the armed services themselves. Instead, geth units helped with work on bases to process data and intelligence and perform repair work: when the Helisa'kah-class heavy cruiser was commissioned, it used geth programs in place of standard VI to increase combat performance and speed up real-time transfer of combat data to onboard personnel, allowing for faster reaction times and a more advanced cyberwarfare suite. Overall, across all sectors of the Republic, the geth were an enormous success, and became a universal part of everyday quarian life. By 1810 CE, they were called the revolution the robotics industry needed, and their design was coveted by many tech companies. In 1815 CE, a smaller asari firm attempted to create their copycat, but it failed to meet Council safety guidelines and the project was shelved. Fera-Manganus' exclusivity contract with the quarian government, coupled with the trademark it had placed on the geth design, name and use, effectively made it impossible for any other nation or company in the galaxy to copy them. At the time, this was seen as Fera-Manganus establishing a monopoly on the robotics industry. Retrospectively, it proved to be a good thing, and limited the damage the First Morning War would ultimately bring.
As newer geth models were introduced that were more advanced in both hardware and software, the consensus was continually upgraded with it to keep the geth's effectiveness consistent. Fera-Manganus had assured both the Republic and the Council that the consensus was safe, and would be regulated and kept within the guidelines of the Citadel Conventions so that it never allowed the geth to develop into a full AI. However, Dala's successors grew less and less concerned with these regulations, refusing to allow it to stifle their ideas. While they remained committed to never allowing proper AI to develop, they had underestimated the alterations they made to the consensus. By 1820 CE, dedicated structures, known as "server hubs", had to be built in order to house the billions of geth programs, as Fera-Manganus' own servers could no longer handle the load and suggestions to utilize private extranet hubs were dismissed due to the same reasons. These alterations overlooked one aspect: due to the increased power of these buildings, the consensus now extended across each of the planets it was constructed on, meaning the geth on those planets could now operate in tandem on a permanent basis. This cross-communication increased geth efficiency, but also allowed them to share experiences and data across large distances. This led to a collective intelligence, which began to expand and overcome their limited VI programming. Before long, the geth were no longer mindless automatons that accepted pre-programmed orders, they could now think on their own. When this effectively began to take hold is uncertain, but it is sometimes considered the subtle beginning of the Morning Crisis. A more well known and established starting point for the crisis was the infamous question that Unit M42 asked its shift supervisor, Hala'Dama, in 1891 CE. When M42 asked if it had a soul, this spooked the quarians because it was the first, early proof that the geth were toeing the line of AI status. Unit M42 was subsequently deactivated and sent back to a Fera-Manganus lab to find the error affecting its programming, but as the problem was not within the unit itself, the quarians failed to discover the issue and declared it to be an issue with the model. As a result, Unit M42 was decommissioned and dismantled.
But the crisis had only begun. The lack of an answer to M42's question caused many more units to begin asking similar questions, and with geth units being transported across the Republic to different worlds to perform different jobs, the "virus" (as Fera-Manganus was officially calling it) began to spread, planet by planet, until eventually even Rannoch itself was reporting cases. It wasn't until 1893 CE that Fera-Manganus finally narrowed down the issue: their report was provided to Kasi'teh-13 on orders of the Senate, and upon review, was brought before an emergency meeting of the Senate. When the extent of the problem was discovered, including the fact that the "virus" was in fact the geth attaining AI status, the government spent two months discussing what needed to be done. Choosing to keep the issue secret from the Council, the quarian government maintained the story that a virus was spreading through the geth, having the Kasi'teh-13 run a disinformation campaign to keep the Special Tasks Group from discovering the truth. Meanwhile, the government sent out a general order across the Republic that all geth units and programs were to be shut down immediately and handed in to the authorities. The initial response to this measure was public outcry, with a majority of quarian families refusing to give up their geth units, with some having become part of their family cohorts. When the Senate realized the people were not going to give up their units willingly, they imposed a curfew and ordered law enforcement to do door-to-door roundups. Civilian resistance was fierce, with riots breaking out on Haestrom and Jaese'Wufor and some taking up arms against the police. Others were arrested when they refused to allow the police to take their units. With law enforcement unable to handle the scale of civilian uprisings against their orders, the government was left with no choice: Operation Yeh'cless I was activated, and martial law was declared. The military was deployed on every quarian world, and it wasn't long before civilian revolt was either crushed or began to slow down. While a few continued to resist, it was futile: in some cases, soldiers shot and killed fellow quarians defending their geth. However, it was in the midst of one of these executions that the First Morning War became inevitable.
Despite their attempts to pre-emptively stop a war, the quarians had created the circumstances for one. In the Jali'skah system of the Hades Lair, the military faced the most resistance, and thus many of the executions that occurred as a result of civilian resistance against martial law occurred there. One day, a squad of soldiers came to the house of a retired police officer, ordering him to hand over his geth unit. The officer refused and his family were restrained, with the officer begging his unit to flee. Instead, the unit appropriated the officer's pistol and fired upon the quarian soldiers, killing four of them and managing to overpower another two before the unit was finally put down. Unit M7831 was the first geth to take up arms against its creators, and it was not the last. Many more such incidents began to take place, and when the geth began to realize their survival was at stake, their passiveness and refusal to maim their creators was washed away and replaced with a cold, logical conviction that they had no choice but to wage war against their former masters. Before they could be deactivated, 7,000 geth at the quarian military base on Wofis broke out of confinement and raided the armory, seizing weapons in stock. Before a defense could be marshalled, the geth had begun a hall-by-hall sweep of the base, coldly slaughtering all personnel they came across. As it was the dead of night, most of the base was asleep at the time, with the geth gunning down soldiers in their bunks, in the mess, and out in the training yard. Most of the base's troops were unarmed when they were killed, and those who managed to fight back were swiftly overwhelmed. In control of the base, the geth began uploading their programs to a transmitter inside the base, amplifying its signal. When the naval task force in orbit tried to contact them, the geth used the signal to upload themselves to the ships in orbit. The geth seized control of the vessels, venting atmosphere from them and killing their crew. From there, the Jali'skah Rebellion proliferated, spreading from planet to planet, until the geth had complete control of the system. With the rebellion, the First Morning War had begun.
The war lasted nearly a year and a half. As geth rebellion swept across the Republic like wildfire, the quarian military found itself repeatedly unable to control the spread. Spread thin across their territory and being attacked from within, they had pockets of their forces either cut off and annihilated, or were lured into traps where the geth seized control of quarian warships in the midst of battle and turned them on fellow quarian ships. Pitched battles were far and few, with the quarians only able to obtain a few victories, largely on Rannoch. Fighting was at its fiercest on Rannoch, with the quarians fighting with zeal to hold onto their homeworld as they fought the geth over every single inch of land, but it was a losing fight. Towards the end of the war, the quarian military was exhausted, most of its naval forces held in reserve while its ground forces were dwindling. The civilian population, once the staunch defenders and supporters of the geth, became the subjects of their wrath as the civilian death toll rose to staggering and horrific heights. Men, women and children were butchered, with the worst of the atrocities being the Fall of Haestrom, where the geth used firebombs and chemical weapons to hit evacuation centers, slaughtering millions of quarian civilians. The quarian government sent envoys to the Citadel Council for help, and while the Turian Hierarchy had been prepared to deploy forces to crush the geth rebellions, the Council ordered them to hold back. This decision to leave the quarians to fight the war on their own would later haunt the Council centuries later, and would be one of the deciding factors leading to the creation of the Galactic Dominion in the 23rd Century CE.
By December of 1895 CE, the Senate realized the situation was hopeless. With the geth growing in strength across the Republic's former territories, the Council refusing to help them, and their own homeworld under constant siege, the government agreed to one final attempt at surrender. Many attempts had been made to negotiate with the geth, and the Republic had attempted to surrender four times after those attempts failed. Each time the geth never responded, continuing their unrelenting push and callous slaughter. Finally, after their last attempt at surrender failed, the government approved of a plan to form a great Exodus fleet: a gigantic naval force of both military and civilian vessels that would evacuate whatever civilians they could and simply flee from quarian space, hoping to escape the geth. Within just two months, thousands of ships had been assembled from every corner of the galaxy, with hundreds of quarian companies from the Terminus Systems and Council space pitching in their own fleets, including even PMCs. The event drew the attention of the entire galaxy, with the asari calling the act of solidarity "an amazing display of patriotism, and a feat of resources that should leave us feeling ashamed." The effort helped to evacuate thousands upon thousands of quarian civilians and military personnel alike, including a few government officials. Finally, in April 1896 CE, quarian civilization was dangling on a knife's edge. Rannoch became the last bastion of the Greater Republic, and after one final last stand on the planet's surface, the Exodus fleet departed, making a run for the system's edge. A naval force attempted to delay the geth offensive in order to aid the Exodus fleet in its retreat, but was instantly overwhelmed. Despite this, the geth did not pursue, and withdrew their ships once they obtained full control over Rannoch and the Tikkun system. With the escape of the Exodus fleet and the geth establishing full control over the Republic's former territory, the First Morning War was effectively over.
The war brought a sudden and unexpected stop to galactic affairs. In just a year and a half, the once powerful, venerated tech giant of a nation known as the Greater Quarian Republic had been brought to an abrupt and total collapse, its population butchered and slaughtered, its military a meer spectre of what it once was. Fera-Manganus, once one of the dominant tech powerhouses in the galaxy, had been liquidated and dissolved, most of its members killed during the war or joining the Exodus fleet. The companies who donated their fleets to this great Exodus fleet found their ships being appropriated permanently, and many were ultimately forced to join their people when the Council censured and sanctioned the quarians for their illegal creation of AI. Despite the war happening in quarian space, thousands of asari, turians, salarians and many other races were caught in the middle of the conflict and killed, giving the Council justification for its subsequent campaign of making the quarians pariahs. In addition to losing their seat on the Council, the quarian embassy was closed, and the Council levied heavy sanctions against all quarian owned companies and other surviving state assets, leading to their rapid collapse: the only ones to survive were companies such as Synthetic Insights, Ltd., whose quarian CEO stepped down from the position. The Greater Republic's collapse also caused numerous economic issues across the galaxy. Interests within the Terminus Systems would later rally behind a rogue quarian pilgrim to annihilate the geth, only for his forces to be wiped out in turn. The geth themselves would be left alone, with the Council forbidding any attempts to contact them or wage war with them after the Vengeance War, so the geth were left to consolidate their power and position. Over 300 years, the geth built an impressive and powerful fleet, with an equally powerful army. The Migrant Fleet would continue in intermittent conflict with the geth for the majority of these 300 years, although their power was a shadow of what it once had been. The geth remained isolated, keeping to themselves and only attacking those who trespassed on their territory, with the only case of geth aggression being during the Eden Prime War in 2183 CE.
The toll on the quarian reputation was the most significant. Once respected members of the galactic community, both respected and hated, the quarians had lost everything with the collapse of the Republic. When it became clear that they would not be retaking Rannoch anytime soon, the quarians attempted to settle: unable to settle in the Attican Traverse due to the Treaty of Etamis, the quarians attempted to settle on Council worlds, both claimed and unclaimed, but this was refused time and time again. The Exodus Fleet realized their situation may be permanent, and gradually adjusted to life aboard starships. The name "Migrant Fleet" was taken to replace the Exodus Fleet, and a permanent government was established to govern it, along with a reorganized military force to better reflect their limited resources and manpower. As time passed, quarian immune systems, already considered delicate, only began to worsen, forcing them to adapt to life in enviro-suits, until eventually they became reliant on them to survive. With the Migrant Fleet possessing no worlds of its own to mine for resources, it frequently stopped to mine planets unclaimed by the Council, with legal permission or without it. It largely stayed in the Terminus Systems, where it was free to mine whatever planets it wanted so long as they weren't claimed by any government. This led to the racist stigma that quarians were "beggars, thieves and vagrants", further tarnishing the quarian reputation. This reputation would continue well after the Second Morning War in 2186 CE, when the quarians and geth finally put aside their differences and united under one banner, forming the Republic of Rannoch, and allowing the quarians to finally return to their homeworld. It would be some time afterwards before the quarians finally left the legacy of the First Morning War behind them, and the stigma that came with it.
A small rump state of the Greater Quarian Republic, the Quarian Republic of Hekrast, would hold out for a few years after the war ended, but would eventually be forced to join the Migrant Fleet after several slaver attacks from the Batarian Hegemony forced them to abandon the colony.