question about the fall of yeerk empire...

[Acalio-Laron-Jaham]

So what happened to the Yeerk empire at the end of the series?? throughout the series, the yeerks have said they've already conquered quite a few races already (not gona list them, someone has already done that in another post). So at the end, is the war just only over for earth? thats the impression i got anyway, But then we get Ax's narrative like 2 years (a mere 2 years!) after the final battle and defeat of yeerk mothership on earth and he's a prince now and says the war is over and its peacetime but finds peacetime boring, finding excitment in hunting remnant yeerk ships blah blah blah, and i quote "<The destruction of the Yeerk Empire had spawned a lot of illegal arms trading>"

What the heck.  

ooooook. So What happened?? how can just two years after losing a pool ship, one visser and the yeerk forces on earth result in the crumble of the entire yeerk empire??? did I miss somethin here? was there like a book 54.5 (before Ax's '2 years later' chapter 14) or something that tells what happened to the rest of the yeerks in the galaxy? (sory about this rant paragraph haha but had to vent it out)

What happened to the super yeerk stronghold that is the taxxon planet which we see in TAC? Abron is obviously not there leading any sort of rebellion anymore since he popped up on earth in like book 53. We were never told of what became of the taxxon homeworld i think after the events of TAC, but its clear in TAC that the taxxon homeworld was totally property of yeerk. There was the living hive rebellion which recruited Abron, but as we see in the book, his rebellion attempts were futile. So, I think its safe to assume that the taxxon rebellion on the taxxon planet was eventually unsuccessful, so Abron laid low and joined yeerk forces to earth to meet jake, and the taxxon planet is still under yeerk power. What happened to the yeerks there? Did the andalites show up there and liberate it?  

What happened to the hork-bajir home planet? the first planet that the yeerks successfully took over it seemed - from what I've read in the Hork Bajir Chronicles. That planet is like a second yeerk home planet. I know the arn wanted to make a rebellion there from #34, was that even succesfull? what happened to the yeerks there? did the andalites show up there and liberate it?

What about all the other species mentioned throughout the series and in the visser chronicles (the mak and whatever) that the yeerks successfully conquered? surely the successful conquest of an entire species would constitute a resultant army force of a number in the billions provided that there was not an event like biological warfare as with the hork-bajir...
So what happened to the yeerks who controlled those bodies? and won't their planets be a massive yeerk stronghold - like a 3rd, 4th and 5th etc. yeerk homeworld like how the taxxon and hork-bajir planets became? what happened to the yeerks there? did the andalites show up there and liberate it?

What about all the Vissers and sub-vissers? didn't the 9 vissers all have like a huge army of their own?

And then the council of thirteen and the yeerk emperor - what happened to them? they seemed pretty damned powerful through the main series whenever mentioned, and particularly in the visser chronicles.

Unless the andalites developed some kinda super weapon that wasn't mentioned, its very hard to believe that just because the yeerks lost earth, it would cause their empire and war effort that has grown, advanced and expanded and even rivaled the andalites for the past 60 years or so (based on HBC, earth year 1966 when the Andalites on yeerk homeworld under prince seerow learnt of the yeerk uprising) would just suddenly get their butts whooped (after seemingly whooping the andalites for all that time - thats the impression i got throughout the series, yeerks spreading like some unstoppable plague throughout the galaxy, andalite forces always already stretched thin and desperate) just two years after losing earth. Especially if you read the visser chronicles and TAC, the yeerk empire seemed huuuuge.
All these yeerk controlled small planets and moon outposts throughout the galaxy, all these sub-vissers and vissers mentioned in different places etc.

All those things mentioned above of the yeerk empire, destroyed out in 2 years? was the andalites majorly winning the war in years leading up to the events of book 54 for them to be able to have the yeerk empires destruction come about just 2 years the events of animorphs victory in book 54? I certainly didn't get that impression. From the books which mentions the andalites and the war in the rest of the galaxy, it didn't seem like the andalites were doing so well at all. i got the impression that they weren't doing soo badly as to lose the entire war and their homeworld yet, but they certainly weren't capable of winning any time soon.

I thought the yeerk earth invasion force was only a fraction (even if that much) of the yeerk empire. Visser 3's personal force. It shouldn't have really affected the rest of the empire in the war against the andalites should it? I mean after all, they were already managing quite well against the andalites throughout the galaxy without visser 3's forces, because obviously his forces were already occupied on earth anyway, thus preventing them from being out there in the rest of the galaxy battling the andalites with other yeerk empire forces anyway.  

I guess one could say that maybe the yeerk empire crumbled on itself? that after losing earth, civil war ensued between each council members and vissers, resulting in a free for all, which ended their empire?? I doubt that though. It is a good possible reason, but since K.A did not say that, it wasn't the case then, I guess.

K.A, if you are reading this, you should have tied up this major loose end of how the Yeerk empire came to end properly.  

[anijen21]

god I love you for putting all of these posts together.

I think fanon (which really doesn't work for me on a multitude of levels) is that the Escafil Device that Cassie surrendered basically gave the entire Yeerk Empire the opportunity to have free, sensual life without having to enslave a host. So, theoretically, some Yeerk freedom force went to the Hork-Bajir homeworld, and the Taxxon homeworld, and every other Yeerk-occupied world that you mentioned and said "hey, guys! We can have bodies without our hosts screaming at us all day! Check this out!"

This causes a number of problems, in my mind:

1) First of all, the Yeerk population always seemed to be...rather large. Not Earth-large, because it seemed implied that they would continually need to send Yeerk replenishments, and even if open war ended up killing 9/10 of the population of Earth, there would still be more than enough hosts to go around. We know that in THBC, the Yeerks escaped their homeworld with 250,000 slugs.

There is some indication in THBC that the length of a Yeerk generation is a little more than two years:

Yeerk date: Generation 685, mid-cycle
Earth date: 1966

Yeerk date: Generation 686, early-cycle
Earth date: 1968

So, even if we're being generous, it takes 5 years to grow a batch of new Yeerks from their three parents. What we don't get is how many Yeerks come in a batch. We know twins are possible, and the way it was described was like "disintegrating into a bunch of little slugs," so just for argument's sake, on average, let's say that 10 Yeerks are born for every three that die in reproduction (I'm being really generous here, I always thought it was more like hundreds), and just to make the numbers easy, let's say 2 Yeerks out of each batch die before they can breed.

For every ten Yeerks that are born, five die. Every generation, the population would be doubled. That means, by the end of the war in 1999, there are roughly 16,000,000 Yeerks.

AND THAT DOESN'T INCLUDE THE HOWEVER MANY YEERKS STUCK ON THEIR HOME PLANET.

Best case scenario, if all of those Yeerks suddenly had physical, resource-consuming bodies, that seems like a rather large dent on ecosystems. The Anacondas in the Amazon was enough for me to go "...seriously? won't they eat all of the endangered prey and stuff?" But SIXTEEN MILLION NEW BODIES....

2) Am I really expected to believe that every single individual out of sixteen million Yeerks would be okay with this plan?

They're not--we get that in canon. Tom's Yeerk incites a revolt and steals Visser Three's Blade Ship to start a new Yeerk empire.

What we are expected to believe is that they were the only Yeerks who ever did so. Out of SIXTEEN MILLION YEERKS, who spent 30 years fighting a war for a very specific end goal, EVERY SINGLE PERSON is okay just creating a new body and essentially letting the Yeerk species die out.

Not happening, sorry, play again next time.

I have something more to add, that doesn't really have anything to do with your theory, but it's also an inconsistency that's bothered me: Does the war itself actually make any sense?

Basically I argue that with the resources the Yeerks made off with at the beginning of the war, there's no way they're a galactic superpower in thirty years, let alone five.

[RYTX]

wow.
You both appear to have well thought out and reasons arguments, my only in put is this
As sentient live forms go, at least in the Ani-universe, it seems humans are freaks
Physiology that makes them usable as host, physically capable, and most importantly, the ability to breed in good numbers almost anywhere which is what results in a lot of them
From what it sounds like, most suitable host didn't even number in the millions, and their own biological draw backs made them limiting: no matter how many slugs there are, only a fraction had a host
I've never considered a yeerk reproductive rate, but at the very least it sounds like they live a while, and obviously not all breed, so even if it doesn't sound like it, 6 billion is a lot to gain for them
This is  where they put there resource, and everything else they have isn't in great condition so add in massive loses here, uprising on the HB world and other places, and the notion that the homeworld was always under quarinteen, domino effect. Empire loses the big peace and the everything starts to come to since they put to much into it. Maybe
P.S. : detest the every yeerk starts morphing idea: really, like no one suggested that until Cassie in 40 years of war? No

[Phoenix004]

I imagine that most Yeerks would be happy to be trapped as a nothlit because that way they have a permanent host body (without an innocent person screaming in your head 24/7) and never have to return to a blind, helpless state again.

Obviously not all Yeerks are going to feel the same way, but given the choice between becoming a nothlit and becoming DEAD I doubt many of them would refuse. The Yeerks knew full well what the Andalites would do to them if they refused the deal. They knew they were beaten and, as proven by Jake's narrative in #6, Yeerks tend to give up easier than we do when they know a situation is hopeless.

We don't know the true extent of the Yeerk empire, but we do know that a significant amount of it was stationed on (or in orbit above) Earth, particularly by the end of the war. The Yeerks put most of their eggs in one basket because they knew that even a fraction of Earth's population would be enough to completely overwhelm the Andalites. They never thought that losing Earth was an option, even with the Andalite Bandits causing so much trouble.

I admit it seems unlikely that the rest of the Yeerk empire (including their key strongholds such as the Taxxon homeworld) would have fallen to the Andalites so soon after the war. However, you're forgetting one important detail: the morphing technology. Obviously the Andalites and remaining Yeerks are going to spread the word about the morphing power being offered as an alternative to enslaving other races, and like I said earlier near enough all of them are probably going to accept it. Then the Andalites would only have to take care of a much smaller, crippled empire.

Cassie could easily have been the first person to think of giving the morphing technology to the Yeerks, because any Andalite who may have thought of it would probably have been charged with treason for suggesting it. Remember the law of Seerow's Kindness? Sharing technology with the Yeerks is what started this whole mess! The Andalites aren't going to make that same mistake twice. Morphing was practically brand new when the Yeerks first stole Andalite technology, so it was one of their only advantages over the Yeerks. Even if someone had thought it was a good idea, the Andalite military would NEVER have trusted the Yeerks to keep their word about becoming nothlits or not abusing the technology.

[Acalio-Laron-Jaham]

Yeah i don't enjoy fanon either, and i don't bother with reading any of the fanfics out there lol. it jsut seems, i dunno, fake. Which of course, it is lol.

yeah, i agree with you that the yeerks, that all 16,000,000 of them would just accept what the peace movement offers - to morph a permanent body is a bit far fetched. there are good reasons for both sides on why some yeerks would and why some yeerks won't. for most of the series, we are made to view the yeerks as evil...so maybe some yeerks gain pleasure out of infestation, out of the fact that they are able to control a another being in their very literal way. I would see it as akin to greed or power trip or something - like how some bullies don't need to physically or verbally harm their victims in anyway, but they do it anyway cuz they enjoy the feeling of power it gives them. kings and emperors and empires in the past conquer not cuz they actually need more land or living space for their people, but cuz they enjoy doing so, the power, the rush, the pride etc. oh there's so many examples for this point that im lazy to list anymore further. but yeah, so this is a main reason i see for some yeerks to not want to accept the morphing tech to become a nothlit (or they may, but would still want war and to conquer anyway cuz they addicted to feeling of having power). I reckon this theme would have been a good one for K.A to elaborate on in the those few final books where the whole point of the war of yeerks needing host bodies and allowing them to morph was discussed alot amongst the characters.

anijen21
"I have something more to add, that doesn't really have anything to do with your theory, but it's also an inconsistency that's bothered me: Does the war itself actually make any sense?

Basically I argue that with the resources the Yeerks made off with at the beginning of the war, there's no way they're a galactic superpower in thirty years, let alone five."[/color]

haha sory but just had to quote u there cuz so happy about that point u made. Absolutely. I agree with you %100. Ever since i read THBC, esplins narrative from the beginning basically describes the rise of the yeerk empire. Ever since I've read THBC, I've found it difficult to believe how the yeerk empire had become what it was in the main series. I mean they escaped with a couple of andalite ships and some thousand yeerks. how was it that they know how to build ships and weapons and all? We were never told of how long a time it was that the andalites, mainly seerow, had spend with the yeerks and how much he actually taught them. I would imagine it would take a almost a lifetime, based on human standards, for yeerks to learn everything from scratch - basic sciences, chemistry, maths, physics, biology progress to more advanced engineering etc.  

that is, unless the andalites had some sort of special instantaneous knowledge transfer techniques like we see in the matrix where knowledge can be instantly uploaded/downloaded into a persons brain - after all, the andalites there all thought based and stuff. but since this was never mentioned, its only speculation, making the Yeerks sudden advancement in knowledge and technology on the hork-bajir planet a few years after escaping from the andalites on the yeerk world all the more ....absurd.  

And with how easily it was for the yeerks to take the hork-bajir - yeah, the horks were not bright. But, there were still sentient, still intelllgent enough to know about danger, to sense and feel danger and fear, like they know how to avoid going into the valleys of father deep. From this, i would assume that they know that in order to be safe from the danger, they would have to move to get away from the danger/threat. there was a esplin narrator chapter in THBC where he describes how easy ti was for them to capture hork-bajir hosts - thier Gedd controllers simply walked up to the hork-bajr and dragged them away, hork-bajir doing nothing at all back, complying like a rag doll. From what I've seen of Jara and Ket, they were no way that dumb, and they ain't no seers. even a grasshopper knows to resist and escape from danger. I think how easily it was for the yeerks to advance and how easily the Horks were taken was more of a KAGL (Katherine Applegate Got Lazy) then a KASU.  
  

[anijen21]

god, you're totally right and I never even put pressure on that line that was like "We took a Hork-Bajir, I infested him, I went back to his friends and said 'I am back' and they said 'Yes, you are" because I just thought it was hilarious, but you're totally right. Self-preservation has nothing to do with intelligence. It's an instinct. And if Hork-Bajir have writing, society, and language, then they're WAY beyond self-preservation. And you're right, you could argue "oh but the Arn made them maybe they messed up" NO THE ARN DESIGNED THEM TO BE AFRAID OF THE DEEP, and I very much doubt they can program fear that laser-sighted.

ooh boy now I'm just getting mad, the whole backstory was my favorite part of the whole series but IT'S FULL OF HOLES!

[Acalio-Laron-Jaham]

haha yeah that line was funny. But meh, people get lazy overtime i guess. Its a shame that K.A got lazy and didn't bother to put more effort, attention and detail into those bits of the stories. After all, she wrote the HBC herself, it wasn't done by ghostwriters. even though we see now that its full of plot holes, i still like em though nonetheless.

And its one thing to teach someone how to operate a machine, pilot a ship and shoot a weapon. its a whole different thing to actually be able to create these those machines and weapons from scratch. whats described in THBC the yeerks simply learnt how to pilot the andalite ships, squeeze the trigger of a shredder, and flew away with it. then all of a sudden they knew how to create thier own ships and a blade ship a dracon beam weapons.

Teach a person or a group how to drive a car and fire a gun. I don't think within two years time, they would know how to create one from scratch. But then again, that person isn't a yeerk, and he wasn't taught by andalites. xD

[Chad32]

The Yeerks managed to capture some Onganchics and maybe some other people and access their memories. That's how they learned so fast. Though it's true that the Horks should have been smart enough not to be pulled around by Gedds. Although I always pictures gedds as being small, and when you're a seven foot tall reptile with blades you don't feel threatened by some small mammals.

There are definitely plotholes in HBC, but I don't think their ability to create ships is one of them.

[anijen21]

They may have known how to build all of that stuff, but they had none of the resources. Imagine if planet Earth got wiped clean--all cities, factories, farms, etc, EVERYTHING just wiped clean. We still have our knowledge base, but none of the tools to do anything practical with it.

That's how a lot of post-apocalyptic dystopias start, and tbh I think that's where the Yeerks started. Yeah, they had a few Andalite ships and got a couple of Skrit Na and other ships, but I doubt that gave them the resources to become a superpower well-equipped enough to take on the Andalites.

[Chad32]

You're right. That is confusing. They would need a lot of resources besides just host bodies, and the Hork society couldn't provide it. They might have taken some stuff from the Arn, but it doesn't really fit well.

[Phoenix004]

The Yeerks learned fast by infesting other species, but also from the information taught to them by Seerow and provided by the Andalite computer database on the ships they stole.

If I recall correctly, over a quarter of a million escape the homeworld and it wasn't long before they started to make a significant stronghold on the Hork-Bajir planet. Based on what we are told, they had almost a year before the Andalites showed up. I'd say that's enough time to infest a large number of naive Hork-Bajir, interrogate the technologically superior Arn for information (as well as using them for slave labour) and start building ships and other defences.

Even when the Andalites FINALLY turned up to help, they only had a small force and hardly any ships. If they'd been smart and actually listened to Aldrea, they could have sent half their fleet and completely destroyed the Yeerks before they established a powerful base of operations.

[Darth Revan]

Yeah, I'd say two Years are fast enough. The Yeerks worked non-stop on advancing their race and building ships. They had tons of hosts, and not all of them went on raiding parties. Many of them studied the Andalite computers, reverse engineered the Andalite ships, merged them with the other alien tech they obtained through infestation, along with that race's knowledge of technology. Remember, they probably worked 24/7. They didn't have to worry about making dinner, or dropping the kids off at school, or soccer practice, or ballet recitals, or watching Letterman, or Survivor. They did nothing but work on expanding their race for two years straight.

I'd say that's plenty of time.

RE: Hork-Bajir infestation

The HB never used their blades as weapons. They had no knowledge of violence before the Yeerks and Andalites came. When they went into Father Deep, they were killed by the monsters. They had no concept of self-defense. The only reason Ket Helpak and Jara Hamee were no push-overs is because they were trained and grew up as fighters. The pre-infested HB had no idea about aggression or violence. How could they defend themselves if they didn't know how to? If the Arn's monsters could kill the HB for all the time before Aldrea taught them violence, then what would make you think that a single HB could defend himself against a bunch of Gedd?

[anijen21]

I'll give you that *the race that never knew violence* is a sci-fi trope.

I'm still not quite sure I buy the Yeerks dragging off Hork-Bajir in front of everybody and no one saying anything about it, but if that's the one thing I have to buy for the infestation to work, I guess I will.

But I still do NOT buy that the Yeerks had the resources to overwhelm the Andalites in five years.

All my support is up there so I won't repeat myself, but it don't make no sense. The Borg were in the Delta quadrant for years before they even came across the Federation, and then, they still lost. The Yeerks should not have been portrayed as the superpower they were.

[Terenia]

I think the only reason the Yeerks became a superpower was because the Andalites underestimated them. The Yeerks are resourceful and can gather important information from their hosts. Perhaps Hork-Bajir aren't the most enlightening species around, but we know nothing about some of the other races they infested.

The Andalites only sent a small force to the Hork-Bajir world because they didn't believe that the Yeerks were there in force. True, this was largely because it was Seerow's daughter reporting, but it was a HUGE mistake...because that gave over a year for the central Yeerk force to grow large enough to win. There may have been other Yeerks throughout the galaxy, but if so they weren't plentiful at that point. The future Visser's and future Council members were there, on the Hork-Bajir planet. By the time the Andalites arrived, and lost, the Yeerks were able to harvest hundreds more hosts. Maybe not enough to become super powers, but a great start.

Then you have the Taxxon world, which frankly I have to imagine was a cake-walk. A whole planet of voluntary hosts? And we don't know the intelligence level of Taxxons, not really. They were hive creatures, but they are also very dexterous. They provided an entire planet of hosts with virtually no struggle. The Andalites obviously did not put up much of a fight either because, let's face it, Taxxon's aren't exactly the most threatening species around.

I think that the Andalites ego and inability to accept a bunch of slugs as a threat led to the Yeerks becoming a superpower. In fact, I think the only one that grasped the magnitude of the situation was Alloran. He may have handled it the wrong way, but he understood the threat, at least.


As for the collapse of the Yeerk Empire, I agree that there is no way that it can collapse from the loss of one planet, not after their run. The only possible explanation is that they suffered too many losses at once. They lost Earth, Leera and that place Visser One went to redeem herself (I forget the name, sorry...). Still, it's a stretch. And I refuse to accept that the Yeerks would allow themselves to die out through nothlitism.

[Chad32]

I think it would have made more sense to say that the tide had turned, and the Andalites were definitely winning after they lost Earth. Instead of them somehow being defeated a mere two years afterwards. I mean they still had their two main worlds, and possibly some other places. It's said that the main forces were on Earth, but surely they did leave a good number on the other planets. What about the other 25+ Vissers, and who knows how many Sub-Vissers?