The Iconian Refuge is the oldest of the younger races in the galaxy. Iconians evolved during the reign of the Precursors and served them for a long while. Later, the Yor were created to serve as a mechanical replacement for the servant Iconians. When the great civil war between the Arnor and Dread Lords finally came, the Dread Lords granted the Yor sentience and filled them with a cold hatred for organic life. The Yor nearly wiped out the Iconian race, but a small group escaped to a distant planet where they took refuge. After a great period of time tucked away from the rest of the galaxy, the humans discovered them and gifted to them the hyper-drive technology. They finally had what they needed to create a vast empire and, perhaps more importantly, take back their home planet from the vile Yor Collective.
As the Iconians are the oldest of the younger races, understanding the Iconians requires knowing a bit about the history of the galactic civilizations. In the beginning, as far as we can tell, there was the Precursor civilization. For a long while we had no name for them but they called themselves the Arnor.
The Arnor came across the primitive Iconians and educated them, nurtured them, and guided them to full sentience. During this time, the Iconians were servants of the Arnor. It is important to understand the vast difference between the Precursors and the Iconians in terms of evolutionary status. The Arnor were as far advanced from the Iconians as we are from mammals such as horses or other "beasts of burden."
But as the Iconians advanced, an increasing number of the Arnor objected to the servitude of the Iconians. Of course, like many moral debates, there was a practical side: the Arnor had grown quite dependent on the service of the Iconians. But the Arnor came to a solution: they would replace their Iconian servants with artificial beings. And so came into existence the Yor, whose story is told elsewhere. In time, the great Precursor empire split in two and warred upon one another. The group of Arnorians who lost the war—for reasons that are unknown to us—were labelled as the Dread Lords. Before they and nearly all the other Arnor disappeared, a final act of malevolence was performed: the Yor were made truly sentient beings.
In the bloodbath that followed on Iconia, the Yor were victorious in the most total sense, as every Iconian was killed. Or more to the point, nearly every Iconian was killed. A handful escaped on sleeper pods and drifted for hundreds of thousands of years until the sleeper pods made it to a new world. On this new world the story of the Iconians would have come to an end if it were not for a human scout ship that arrived. The humans, ever the master diplomats (though as some say of the humans, there is an iron fist inside their velvet glove), provided the Iconians with Hyperdrive. In the past several years, the Iconians have worked to expand into the galaxy and one day reclaim their home world from the vile Yor.
Race Info[]
- Official Name: Iconian Refuge
- Alignment: Good (75)
- Short name: Iconian
- Leader: Emperor Iso the Wise
- Homeworld: New Iconia - Class 14 (17 when fully terraformed)
- Adjacent Habitable Planet: Iconis V - Class 3 (between 9 and 18 when fully terraformed in TA)
- Homestar: Iconis
Starting Technologies[]
- HyperDrive
- Xeno Engineering
- Starship Defenses
- Xeno Industrial Theory
- Xeno Economics
- Armor Theory
- Stellar Cartography
Racial bonuses[]
Dread Lords[]
Inherent bonuses are special bonuses that each preset race has on the top of the standard 10 points. In Dread Lords, the inherent bonus will disappear if you try to customize that ability by selecting an option (whether higher or lower in value) in that category. In the expansions, the bonuses will stack.
Dark Avatar[]
Super Ability: Super Adapter
Twilight of the Arnor[]
Super Ability: Super Adapter
Note that, in Dark Avatar and Twilight of the Arnor, the Iconions get only 7 points for customization, as opposed to the usual 10.