: One thing, since this is a critical forum, there is one small plot
: inconsistency. Why diid the queen find it necessary to purge the old
: un'Pfhor in favor of her clones and yet she assimilated other species into
: the new order as she encountered them. Why didn't she either assimilate
: the un'Pfhor, or purge the new species in favor of genetically altered
: clones? This is a minor point, but I'm curious.
The Queen, obsessed with the nature of chaos and how it may be avoided, saw the Un'Pfhor living in the anarchy of the fallen world and decided to put them out of their misery. The Un'Phfor and all they represented had to be purged in order to ensure the new race/proto-empire would not be tainted with the memes or genes of the old order. Up to this point, She had no experience with assimilation and could not risk botching it and failing, such would have been disasterous to the fledging empire. She succeeds so well in this repsect that eventually all known history of the Un'Pfhor is hers alone, and as her mind goes it becomes lost forever.
As for new species, part of the process of assimilation/slavery was to steal the young/non-combative, and through generations of genetic and social engineering cinfigure them to the positions they could best fill within the Empire. Those that resisted were destroyed as an example, and I think this is illustrated in the section that discusses the assimiliation of the Enforcers. The Queen regarded new species as potential servants/slaves and could incorporate them into the ranks as a sort of trophy, but also because as more species were encountered, the more effective it was shown to have a stratified fighting force comprised of fighters, hulks, wasps, lookers, hunters, etc. One must also take into account the Queen was more or less a scientist and enojoyed studying the physiology and culture of new species, as well as probe them for any data/mythos/relics they'd have of the Jjaro. I also couldn't let the Pfhor purge all the new species because that would be a pretty blatant violation of Marathon canon.
At least that's my take on it. Hope that answers your questions.
