Battle Thrall

The Battle Thralls of the Ur-Quan Hierarchy are the species who have pledged to serve the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za by helping them enslave other sentient races. Their duties include providing military support for the Kzer-Za and watching over slave-shielded worlds while their masters pursue more important matters. It is unknown if Battle Thrall status is permanent or if the adoption of a program of Battle Thralls has only been instituted by the Kzer-Za to help put down local conflicts, such as the local wars with the Alliance of Free Stars, and are afterwards slave-shielded. Certainly it seems unlikely that the Kzer-Za fleet has simply left whole civilizations of Battle Thralls free to operate their own affairs indefinitely before moving on to others, given their actions within our own region of space, but the details of administration of the Hierarchy outside of our local wars are unknown.

Battle Thralls have rights to travel through space and to retain some autonomy on their homeworlds. If the Kzer-Za judge a particular planetary government to be properly constituted and legitimate, they appear to deputize it as a local government, as was done with the Veep-Neep monarchy among the Yehat. In other cases they have been known to forcibly dismantle governments that appear intractable in their violations of the Ur-Quan Slave Laws and install new ones, such as their intervention in establishing the Thraddash Culture 19 following the end of Culture 18.

Though they retain control over domestic affairs, Battle Thralls' status depends on their ability to assist the Kzer-Za in their wars, and their military conduct is harshly regulated by Ur-Quan authority. They are not allowed to commit acts of violence against other Thralls or fallow slave species, and the deployment of their military forces is directly controlled by Ur-Quan commanders; violations of the Slave Laws, when discovered, are punished with swift reprisals against homeworlds.