Hiigara. Our Home

The only Kiith which deserved that title was a Kiith of spirit

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Homeworld is not really a great game, if I’m being quite honest. I replayed it recently-ish, when the remaster came out, and it was disappointing. It’s not really that fun as a game.

Homeworld is essentially a real time strategy naval combat game, only in space. In reality, naval combat is not actually all that interesting, because the ocean doesn’t really have terrain. Space also doesn’t really have terrain, but it has a third dimension, the Z axis, that is completely and totally strategically pointless.

With that said, Homeworld has, and always will have, a special place in my heart.

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First, the personal connection. When my mom married my stepdad, he was a computer geek and he liked playing games. He bought Homeworld and we would play it together. Or, try to, anyway; back in the late 90s, multiplayer PC games were janky at best. I didn’t have my own PC to play on, so he let me use his laptop and, for some weird reason that makes no sense to me now that I have a computer science degree, the IRQ¹ ids for the graphics card and for something else I don’t remember collided, and the game would never run on the laptop. And so, there is a comfy nostalgia to this game.

Secondly, this game was made before the internet. Not, like, literally before the internet, but before the internet was a reliable thing that normal people could use. And because of that, it had a manual. A really big one. And back in the day, when games had manuals, they put art in there. That PDF is 57 pages, and the first 21 one of them are game lore and content, not instructions at all. I miss the days when games had manuals. I have very fond memories from my childhood of my parents driving me home from Blockbuster, and me reading the game manual of whatever game I picked up

When’s the last time a video game gave you its lore like this? Super Mario Bros 2 game manual.

(And the game I always picked up, until I beat it anyway, was Final Fantasy 3². Then it was Earthbound³)

But finally, this game is aesthetic as fuck. Especially in 1997, when video games looked like ass, this game was beautiful to me. The story. The music. For fucks sake, Yes⁴ recorded the credits song

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The actual gameplay loop of Homeworld consists of a series of RTS levels, where your mothership exits hyperspace in a given area, disgorges your fleet, and you have to take care of some objective that is always either “blow up the enemy ships” or “survive not being blown up for long enough”. I didn’t know this until recently, but the game was originally intended to be a Battlestar Galactica⁵ game, but they couldn’t get the license to do it, so they had to improvise.

But I’m glad they did, because the story of Homeworld has resonated with me for almost thirty years now. It has resonated with me so much, that you are currently reading the blog of Soban, the Stranger.

The sigil of Kiith Soban

Although Kiith Soban's symbol was found in Khar-Toba's ruins during Operation Khadiim alongside six other Kithiid symbols, it's highly unlikely it was theirs, as the kiith did not exist at the time. The most likely possibility is that the sigil originally belonged to Kiith Lehi, Soban the Red's original Kiith.

The modern incarnation of Kiith Soban's origins lie in a man called Soban Lehi, who led a small group of families after their home at the western shores of the Second Sea was invaded by Kiith Balel, a more powerful kiith that were allies of the Siidim. As a result of this, the Lehi homelands were conquered and Soban and his followers were among a small group of survivors. Soban brought his small band across the Sparkling Desert. When he brought news of his home's destruction to the Kiith-Sa of the Lehi, he offered his leadership to an army that would strike back at the Baleli. Perversely, the Lehi-Sa did not intend to attack this rival kiith - he intended to join them and the Siidim.

When he heard of this, Soban reportedly ripped the colours of the Lehi from his own body and left it behind forever, together with his followers, and declared that he would never belong to any kiith that would not listen to the blood of children crying from the ground and that the only kiith which deserved that title was a kiith of spirit. In 416 KDS, Kiith Soban was born from this Grey Brotherhood.

The first act of the newly formed Kiith Soban was an attack on Kiith Balel, which had driven them from their ancestral home. After this brutal attack was over, there was nothing left of the Sobani holdings, it was said that not a blade of grass was left green, as Soban ordered his followers to raze the land. From that day forward Kiith Soban has become known as a truly deadly warrior kiith. However, because of a lack of any holdings they became a purely mercenary kiith, like no other.

The Sobani took part in every major military conflict in Kharak's history, and were considered a very precious addition to any army. They were known for fighting any enemy with no regard given to the risk or the cost, yet at the very second their contract expired they would remove the colours of their client kiith and return home no matter the distance involved. The only way to renew service was through their Kiith-Sa, and therefore it was a common occurrence for Sobani warriors to leave a battlefield at inopportune moments.

- The Homeworld Wiki

Incidentally, the fifteen silver points⁶ for knowing that this is where I draw this blog identity’s name, are no longer on the table

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I don’t really care about Soban Lehi’s story. I just thought he had the coolest sigil when I was picking usernames. But the story of Homeworld has sat with me for a long, long time.

The story of Homeworld is the story of a people discovering that they are aliens in their own home, and risking it all to find their true home.

I have felt homeless for a long time. I have a roof over my head, I don’t mean this literally. But, the whole reason I started this blog, was to cope with the feelings of homelessness. I’m not welcome to stay in America. But I’m not Canadian anymore, and even if I was, my family is scattered to the corners of my country and my hometown is unrecognizeable. I am an alien in my own home⁷.

I’ve never fit in. I’ve never had a (real, physical, in-person) community to belong to. Most people suck, and most of the people I’ve gotten to know in my life didn’t last long. I look around and see everyone else with their happy families, their cute little church communities, their beautiful wives and loving children, and I’ve thought, they have found their home. I have never found mine.

Footnote Anchor⁸

And so the story of Homeworld has resonated with me. The Kushani people of Kharak, finding out they’re from another world. Sacrificing everything to find their home. For thirty years, this story has spoken to me.

Deep inside the ruin was a single stone that would change the course of our history forever
On the stone was etched a galactic map
And a single word, more ancient than the clans⁹ themselves
Hiigara
Our home

My whole life, I have been an alien. My whole life, I’ve been looking for my home. I don’t know where it is. But I know that the Guidestone will guide the way.

This image is the second most meaningful image in my life. You’ve already seen the most meaningful one. Life Is Made Of Small Moments Like This.

And when I find it, some day, I know that when I find it, just like when they found it in the 1997 Game of the Year-winning, real time space strategy game Homeworld, I will know it. Because I will hear Samuel Berber’s beautiful music¹⁰, just like I did 30 years ago, playing a stupid space game with my stepdad.

Scaffold Control standing by
All stations green
You’re cleared to approach
You got it
Bays eight, nine and¹¹ ten sealed
Scaffold decks A, B, C secure
decks D and E secure. Scaffold secure
All systems green
Release crews standing by
What a beautiful sight!
This is Fleet Command. Reporting Mothership pre-launch status
Command online
Resourcing online
Construction online
Cryogenic subsections A through J online
K through S online
Scaffold Control, stand by for alignment
Alignment confirmed. Stand by, Release Control
All caliper banks released
The Mothership has cleared the scaffold
We are away
Stand by for command line testing
Command Line green. Initial Fleet in position

Most people are born in their home, live in their home, and die in their home. I have yet to find my home. But, just like the Kushani people, travelling through the galaxy, following a map scratched into a rock, risking it all, I will find my Homeworld. No power in the ‘verse can stop me now. The stars above illuminate my way.

Someday.

1. What the fuck operating system interrupts have to do with a video game, I have never found out. But eventually I just built my own PC when I was like 15 to play with him.

2. We all know it was Final Fantasy 6, but I’ll get into that in the Final Fantasy post.

3. Earthbound is one of the GOATs. There will be a post for that one, too

4. Yeah, that’s the band that did Jojo. (I’m sorry Jon Anderson, it was just a joke, I know you’re more than an anime soundtrack)

5. When I first moved to the US, I thought it was hilarious to say “they look like us now” about Canadians. It wasn’t, but, I thought it was.

6. I am probably going to put this clip in every blog post going forward. I didn’t know it existed until I found it the other day. There’s Chrono Trigger anime!

7. Right now my status is “tourist” but once I’m employed again, my legal status will be “resident alien”. I am, literally, as a matter of law, an alien in my own home.

8. 🎵 How far I've come from my childhood home...
There will come a time when my troubles are gone.
And when I shall not be all alone.
Till then, I dream of my home, sweet home.

9. “Kiith” means “clan”

10. Very funny true childhood story. Back before Youtube was invented, we had to watch syndicated television, and so I would watch 3 or 4 episodes of Seinfeld every night. One day, I excitedly exclaim: OH MY GOD, THE VIDEO GAME SONG IS IN SEINFELD. My dad didn’t believe me. In hindsight, he should have mocked me instead. It was indeed in a Seinfeld episode.

11. [sic]. The lack of an Oxford comma is usually unforgiveable, but Homeworld gets an exception