Glassing of Uchalda

The Glassing of Uchalda is the colloquial name for the annihilation of the third and final colony that the turians lost to the krogan at the height of the Krogan Rebellions. Like its fallen sister worlds, Uchalda was rendered devoid of all life after the krogan slammed a guided asteroid into its surface, which instantaneously vaporised over one billion people. Those who had managed to escape their planet's armageddon aboard evacuation shuttles - men, women and children alike - were then promptly shot down by the encircling krogan forces. Those precious few Uchaldans who did survive the Glassing were nearly all imperial soldiers who were on active duty in other parts of the empire at the time of their homeworld's destruction, sparing them from suffering the same fate as their people.
Homeless and with nowhere else to go, the majority of Uchaldan refugees fled to Palaven following the war, throwing themselves upon the mercy of its citizens. Even after the passage of 1,500 years, the impact of the intergenerational trauma stemming from the Glassing, which the Uchaldans continue to endure, cannot be understated. Culturally distinct from their Palavenian hosts, with their own language and customs, they remain a displaced people and are forever haunted by the memories of their murdered kin. On the anniversary of its destruction, those Uchaldans who can afford to make the journey will travel to their lost homeworld - now little more than a fiery ball of molten rock and toxic gas - where they traditionally read aloud the names of their dead in a ritualised outpouring of their collective grief. Due to its violent volcanism and sulphuric atmosphere, those who travel to Uchalda must wear environmental suits to be able to survive on its surface.
Uchalda's destruction galvanised the turian people in a way that had not been seen since the days of the Unification War, revitalising the turian war effort. While they fought valiantly and never retreated, sacrificing their lives in the tens of thousands, their lines eventually broke under the tremendous weight of the krogan war machine. Having pushed the turians back to their home system of Trebia, where they made a bloody final stand on the moon of Menae, the krogan began to prepare a fourth asteroidal bombardment with the designated target of Cipritine - the capital of the turian homeworld, Palaven. Faced with the very real existential threat of their species' extinction, the turians were driven into a realm of such psychological desperation that they chose to illegally deploy a salarian-developed bioweapon (known as the Genophage), virtually sterilising the krogan and sending them into a decline. Even in the wake of the Genophage being cured and the formation of a critical alliance between themselves and the krogan during the Reaper War in 2186 CE, the turians have never forgiven the krogan for the lives lost on Uchalda that fatal day.
Category:Lore
Category:Historical event
Category:Krogan Rebellions