The Death of the Squats....

[Hellebore]

What is it about the Squats that killed them?

I'm speaking from a game perspective of course, not the fluff reason (tyranids ate them).

The archetype was cited as a major reason by Jervis Johnson ie that it just didn't fit into the 40k universe.

The major contributors I see are these:

• Dwarf culture with almost no change from Fantasy - at least the Eldar have an original and unique design.
  
• Denigrating name. JJ's apt "What WERE we thinking?" certainly shows that they were never really taken seriously.
  
• Bad theme. Biker dwarfs in quilted jackets et al made for a funny, rather than feasable race.

So why is it that the Squats in EPIC survived so well? Well, here we see less culture, and more technology. EPIC was a showcase where they could display the technological differences between the Imperium and the Squats, which resulted in a distinctive style of play and an interesting army.

Why do I ask? I am thinking of attempting a 'reboot' of the abhumans, an attempt to retain the core cultural identifiers whilst losing the trashy unnessary and lets be honest, rather inane background they acrued.

I know the Demiurg have been given as a replacement for the Squats, but I see them more as a new race with dwarfish archetypes rather than a true replacement.

So what do YOU think the background of the squats needed, in order to make it viable in the present 4th generation of the 41st millenium?

Hellebore

[archonbrujah]

I think what really killed the Squats from a rules perspective was the MV 3. With the switch to a uniform movement rate, the main in game defining charateristic of squats was gone.

Also, they did not seem to fit in well with the dark atmosphere of 40K. Even in epic, why would a race capable of building anti grav make giant dirigibles?

I actually like the Squats, still have my army and may someday try to use them as a "counts as" army. But I never expect to see GW support them, or even the Demiurg as a viable full race.

But it wouldn't have killed them to make a WD article on using Squats as auxiliaries for the Tau or IG.

What could have been added to give them some staying power? Rules wise, not much would have been needed. Fluff wise, having them refer to themselves with pride as something other then squats, more gritty darkeness to the race after many of the homeworlds get eaten by the bugs, and remove that racial hatred of Orks, to replace it with hatred for bugs. That would have brought them away from the Dwarf archetype some. Perhaps as allies to the Admech?

Archonbrujah

[librerian_samae]

I would have concentrated upon the mining/technological aspects of the squats,
as well as add in a extreme 'clanish-ness'.
Change it so they are a few surviving mining famillys from the DAOT that have only just managed to cling onto their survival by scraping a misreble living from the varios asteriods and planetoids they live around.

Drop the silly bikers in space motif.

add in a helthy dose of dark cyberpunk and make them in to a culture of itternarent minners trading along the outskirts of the imperium.

Add in large lumbering vehicles and sturdy pondering walkers.

This helps keep some of the traditional Dwarf feel-
strong familly bonds
love of tech
and travelling artisans


Basicly GW seem to be doing this with the demiurg, I do hawever think they should have just reimagined the squats like this.

As for the name I have no idea, as I was always rather fond of the name 'sqauts'

[Goq Gar]

The squats? o_O space dwarves!?

Could someone link me to some of this stuff? Ive never heard of this!

[Fal]

http://www.student.tue.nl/t/j.c.a.v....m#The%20Squats

See your PM`s

[Colonial Rifle]

In many ways, I never saw what was so terribly wrong with the original RT era squats; they had some strong fluff (clans, merc-style military organization & a different view of technology) and the army list was well thought out with adaptable Combat squads. It was certainly much better than the RT era Tyranid list. Ok, so some of the minis were bad, but you could say that of other RT era armies (looking at nids again!).

They would need a creative 'hook', probably something to do with mining. I'd like to see them somewhere between IG and Marines in terms of toughness and have access to heavy Imperial robots, just like the good old days! My wish list:

Warlord/heathguard: think Nobz mob in terms of upgrades

Living Ancestor: come on, we have got to have this guy! Maybe hooked up to some sort of life support system?

Combat squads: traditional dwarf stats armed with flak + lasgun. However, they can be upgraded to bolters + carapace. Count Heavy bolters as special and heavy weapon choice, so you can have 2. This should cost you a fortune though.

Exo-armour: yes please

Mole Mortar: like a current mortar, but good. Bigger template.

Imperial Robots: yeah! Maybe mining bots, so stick drills on them.

Some sort of crawler vehicle with big wheels. Lots of small arms on it.

[Xisor]

I'm far more of a revisionist with my Demiurg thoughts. But since I almost always favour the Squats and Demiurg as being distinct/discrete/coexistant entities, I'll detail as best I can here:

Squats's Defining Features
- Abhuman, but still largely human
- Dwarf 'looking', lots of beards, axes and hammers
- Grudges
- Ancestors
- Mining
- STC Tech, and a good grasp to innovate where the rest of the STC fails
- A bit less gothic, but still very mercantile.
- Like humanity, they have girls and boys, and clans, and families and love and hate.
- Squats still do the fighting themselves. There's a distinctively active war/hatred aspect of them.
- Very dwarfen.

[Xisor-Style]Demiurg Defining Features
- Alien
- They have alien thoughts and alien feelings.
- High-tech(vastly superior to STC-grade works, not as good as 'High-Eldar' technology, but far superior to Humanity's)
- Alien 'personality', there's no "Yaargh I'm a drunken Demiurg!" nor is there "you stood on my great grandpappy's toe and now I'm here to destroy your planet"
- Intuitive of own accord, 'super-human' intellect
- Old. Impossibly old. [ , see final note for explanation]
- Gothically mercantile. You *could* hire some of them to exterminate a planet, if you had the money. Then again, you may just ask the Brotherhood that has *other* plans for that planet, so they exterminate you...as you're competition.
- Not neccessarilly a 'good' race, but generally one of 'order'.
- They have Brotherhoods, but they're not brothers. They're a single-sex race, or at least their reference is. You wouldn't reference a Demiurg as 'he' or 'she', it's an 'it'. It'd refer to itself as 'One', or 'We'.
- Solitary. They're not really big fans of going and getting drunk.
- They rely/utilise extensively on automisation. Drones, robots, AIs, etc. Lots of it. Their armies, for example, would be massive stompy/rolling/floaty things larger than baneblades, yet anything smaller or doing 'the dirty work' would more often than not be a smaller drone or robot, not a Demiurg.
- Like squats, they can be extremely aggressive, but it's not a 'human' aggressiveness. It's an alien desire to obliterate, to exterminate something. It's typically reserved for Orks and Tyranids...



Human After All

An interesting thought I had the other day was this:
- Squats die out
- Demiurg exist
- Demiurg weren't really seen when Squats were about, but Demiurg pre-date Squats in the history books. Squats are abhuman, but for all intents and purposes Demiurg are very much alien(physiologically, psychologically, biologically etc).

Proposal:
When the Squats were being exterminated in the Deep Core when the Tyranids came, a few of them developed a sort of super-temporal-stasis device designed to hold them until after the Tyranids pass. The test of it was largely unsuccessful, disappearing and taking half a dozen Squats with it. The Tyranids procede to wie out the Homeworlds, the majority of the Squats across the galaxy having returned to the Deep Core were eliminated as they tried to defend the homeworlds.
Unbenownst to the final dying Squats, those half dozen Squats who died in the super-temporal-thing, were actually transported millions of years. Into the past*. The Demiurg are their descendents, but it's been a long time.

* After the War in Heaven? During? Before?

I think it's almost the perfect opportunity to introduce time travel in a very interesting and meaninful way. It realistically allows an almost clean slate for the Demiurg, but also deals squarely with the end of the squats. It also doesn't detract at all from my above proposed defining features.

[Hellebore]

That's a very interesting concept for the existence of the Demiurg there Xisor.

I am also of the opinion that they are distinct from one another, that the Demiurg, despite their superficial 'squat' similarities, are very different.

However, I think in some ways it sort of denigrates the demiurg by explaining their existence via timetravelling squats.

I would prefer two distinct, seperate factions rather than one that is sort of the other.

But your list certainly provides a good account of both groups.

The one thing I think the Squats suffered, was a sort of blending that didn't work. They were supposed to be humans, yet weren't.

The squats were merely abhumans that developed away from the madness of the Age of Strife.

At the moment, I have ideas to incorporate the whole insular 'dwarfish' aspect, with the high tech et al via isolationism.

My concept is basically that the 'Squats' (or what ever I decide to call them) are the oldest human colonists in the galaxy, and think of themselves as the only 'true' humans left. The clannish insular nature is due to this racial belief.

In addition, they maintain at least parts of the STC, as they were the first to leave terra with it, and they understand technology better due to this.

Trying to make humans dwarfs, but humans, but dwarfs I think distorted their image.

If however, you apply the psychological ideosyncracies of dwarfs to genetically modified high gravity human colonists, you simply get a dwarfish human culture.

As an interesting aside, the Ancestor Lords I see as a genetic anomally that occurred due to the tampering their ancestors did to make the race more suited to the Core. The result was that psychic ability only shows itself after a certain age, and the extended lifespan and peculiarities of the physiology of squats results in stable, if less potent human psykers.

Basically, this would be a non Imperial human culture without the superstition, an understanding of and access to, humanities golden age technology (or at least sections), who happen to be around the height of a tau (maybe a bit shorter), who are extremely dense muscularly, to aid in locamotion of high G worlds, and whose only body hair grows on their face for the male, and the back of the head for the female (so bald men, and barefaced women).

Hellebore

[Psiweapon]

Wow guys those are some really neat ideas for squats and Demiurg, congrats on you

The idea of demiurg being time traveller Squats is good too, but... it should be HINTED, not given right away. To make space for conspiracy theorists claiming they're time traveller squats, and more down-to-earth players saying that's nonsense.

[Khaine's Messenger]

So what do YOU think the background of the squats needed, in order to make it viable in the present 4th generation of the 41st millenium?

The Squats were perhaps the epitome of the Imperium's double standards and the notion of an empire of empires (now all you have is Ultramar and its Space Marines--booooring!). Beyond their reduced stature, Squats were in the unique position of being a "race" of beings who were strongly tied to the Imperium of man while simultaneously looking down upon it in bemusement and a vague feeling of superiority (especially those rambling AdMech priests), and with good reason. It is perhaps the loss of the Squats that has led to a certain upswing in general Imperial tech level, primarily because there's not much human tech to compare any more.

Which is why, imho, if the Tyranids hadn't annihilated them, the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Inquisition would have found a way to screw them over, allies or no, especially since the Squats had no real place on any of the Imperium's ruling councils. The Squats' mercantile interests may have been the only thing preventing such a plan from rolling into place...and then came the Tyranids. How fortuitous. The grudges coming from that could fill a library, and one could radically alter the Squat list to almost anything after that background-shattering event.

But now that the Homeworlds are well and truly reduced to lifeless shells, I'm sure there are Inquisitors and AdMech personnel scrambling to comb over them for anything salvageable, Squats off in the distance being pumped for information, etc. etc. That's the biggest tragedy of the Squats--the absolute abruptness with which the thread was cut with no real explanation or elaboration. Just as Macharius dictated--erasing his opponents from the pages of history.

[Xisor]

Wow guys those are some really neat ideas for squats and Demiurg, congrats on you

The idea of demiurg being time traveller Squats is good too, but... it should be HINTED, not given right away. To make space for conspiracy theorists claiming they're time traveller squats, and more down-to-earth players saying that's nonsense.

Exactly. So, all we need to do is set up two accounts and *nothing* else:

- Inquisitor, Archaeoxenan, Explorator or 'someone else' coming across the records of a dead-world Squat facility in the Deep Core, with a recording/transcript/whatever, of the final squat experiment.
- Otherwise have the Demiurg show up as 'fully closed helm', generally with an 'odd' physiology[squat semi-humanoid] and assorted 'unpindownable' things. By having the Demiurg rely *very* heavily on automation, it makes it *exceptionally* plausible that you're unlikely to be able to just 'study' a Demiurg after killing it. Maintain as little as possible except references to the ancientness of the Demiurg, but few details of their origins.

Sounds about right. It reconciles my (or many other varied) views of the Demiurg with the possibility of a nice looping back plotloop that was intentional!

I'm also keen on seeing the Demiurg as having access to a 'bit' of Temporal Technology, but not very refined...alot like the Eldar, and like a very 'crude' version of the C'tan and Necrons. Once you all see Version 4 of my Demiurg Compendium, you'll understand how I mean to illustrate this.

Not only that, but it also ensures the Demiurg and Squats are distinct and viable *at the same time*, other versions, including a popular one circulating Epic that simply jumbles[if skillfully, but not to my tase] the Demiurg and Squats all together under the title of Demiurg, but the rough History of the Squats simply do not. By making the Demiurg a distinct 'after', or complete replacement for the title Squat. I don't like that. It's *too* revisionist.

Best of all, they don't need to be as I described under 'Human After All', but I think it's, as said, an interesting conspiracy idea. Interestingly enough, the idea came to me when listening to Daft Punk's "Human After All", and suddenly having the vision of a 'potential' out there, stuck lost in time and space...

Xisor

PS It also harks back to the old Portent Conversations about the Demiurg utilising Chronoweapons and things, which I think'd be an exceptionally interesting approach. Even more than that, it allows the Demiurg a way of tying themselves to the history, but still being a minor enough player(ie non-Eldar, non-Necron, non-Old One, non-C'tan) to get through history relatively unscathed...like the Orks and Hrud.

PPS: I feel KM touched upon a great point. It feels that, to me, the time is coming where GW can say "Yeah, we mishandled the Squats. But they're not coming back. We will, however, give them a memorial, and elaborate on their demise". An Inquisitor campaign based around that would be, IMO, awesome.

[Sai-Lauren]

IMO, if you kept the squats, you've got the issue of there being this high-tech part of a tech-worshipping imperium, and no matter how insular, proud, or even useful they may be, the imperium would send them a present of several marine chapters and half the titan legions to procure anything they were withholding.

So, I would say to bring them back, have them as the lone surviving clan worlds of the original squat worlds, who're angered by the imperium leaving their brethren to their fate (for whatever reason), and have split themselves off. Let them take that name for their racial name, kind of saying "who we were is dead, this is who we are now".

Add the hatred of Eldar and Orks from the original rules, Chaos for forsaking their own oaths of alliegance, and more than likely causing the Tyrannids to attack them, and you're probably about there.

Xisor, time travel? Different for a 40k race, I suppose.

[Malphax]

I remember seeing a post from one of the GW design team about the death of the Squats on another forum somewhere, but his was months ago and I can't cite the source.

It began when they started to make the codices for each of the races to give them more of a space for special rules and such, rather than having hundreds upon hundreds of pages of army lists and background in the main rulebook. When the time came to make the Squats codex, none of the designers could really get into the idea of the Squats, so it stagnated. At that point they'd just imported several of the Fantasy races directly into RT, but they didn't feel the fluff fit into the universe very well, but most importantly they couldn't put the attention into the Squats that they felt they deserved. But they let the Squats limp on, and instead of getting rid of them entirely when 2nd Edition came out, they just left them alone. However, they eventually decided to abandon them completely because not a single member of the design team felt the "new army excitement" that always goes with the design of a new codex. They couldn't very well support a race that they couldn't bring themselves to write a codex for, so they wrote them out of the universe, which according to this guy should have been done before 2nd Edition so there wouldn't be so many angry Squats players, and they viewed the continued existence of the Squats to be a very big mistake.

It didn't have anything to do with poor sales, as the Squats miniatures sold just fine. It was a design decision to correct the many mistakes with the Squat army, the first of which was pulling an army straight out of Fantasy without considering whether it would fit into the new setting they'd created.

[Hellebore]

IMO, if you kept the squats, you've got the issue of there being this high-tech part of a tech-worshipping imperium, and no matter how insular, proud, or even useful they may be, the imperium would send them a present of several marine chapters and half the titan legions to procure anything they were withholding.

So, I would say to bring them back, have them as the lone surviving clan worlds of the original squat worlds, who're angered by the imperium leaving their brethren to their fate (for whatever reason), and have split themselves off. Let them take that name for their racial name, kind of saying "who we were is dead, this is who we are now".

Add the hatred of Eldar and Orks from the original rules, Chaos for forsaking their own oaths of alliegance, and more than likely causing the Tyrannids to attack them, and you're probably about there.

Xisor, time travel? Different for a 40k race, I suppose.

This was what I was thinking too.

One of the problems with having the nids wipe them out is EVERY SINGLE homeworld is lifeless ball of rock, with little to no atmosphere.

What could the nids have found so enticing they didn't stop consuming the entire core?

Thus we enter with the fact that, yes they DID stop, and yes SOME of the squats DID survive, and YES they are REALLY, REALLY, PISSED at the Imperium, for a multitude of reasons, (many of which were presented by Khaine's Messenger).

As for time travel, I'd like to think that only the warp can cause people to shift in time. I 'm not sure I like the idea of time travel in 40k, because if it is conciously possible, you get a wargame where everyone has the potential to go back in time and erase their enemies.

Hell, the Eldar could go back in time and prevent the Fall. All of which would form a time paradox, and I think GW has enough problems keeping their fluff straight without introducing THAT too


So basically, my concept runs like this:

Golden Age/Dark Age of Technology - humans colonise the Core.

Age of Strife - the warp storms of Slannesh's birth cut them off, and splinter factions of humans raid along their borders.

Age of Strife - After a while, no human ships appear, and suddenly, a huge Waaagh! smashs through the Core. Many are killed, and by the end few are standing.

The Great Crusade - Emissaries are sent to rediscover human worlds, and find the 'squats' - only to be told to bugger off because they no longer trust the degenerate humans roaming the galaxy.

The Great Crusade - Emissary returns with Marines, and the 'Squats' 'accept' imperial rule.

The Horus Heresy - The 'Squats' take this opportunity to seccede from the Imperium, again proven the degenerate nature of what they see as Abhumans when the Emperor's own fight against him.

The Age of the Imperium - After the Heresy, the Imperium has not the strength to reconquor the Core (whilst the 'Squats' have built up their military substantially) so an informal non agression pact is signed, where both groups would fight 'in common cause' against interlopers.

The Reign of Blood - The 'Squats' unobtrusively expand their borders into the Segmentum Ultima.

The Reign of Blood - Several Ork Waaaghs! are redirected into the Core as armies on both sides of the Schism fight across sectors. The 'Squats' far well, despite suffering a huge shortage in manpower.

The Devourer cometh - The Inquisition, long intolerant of the 'Empire' of abhumans rotting at the heart of the Imperium, utilise a modified form of Kryptman's Tactica Ultima, producing a corridor of scorched planets through which a Tyranid splinter fleet passed. The destruction they wrought brought the 'Squat' League to its knees. With grim fatalism the 'squats' fought to the last. Unfortunately for the Inquisition, the homeworlds were low in life and organic matter in general, so as the fleet moved further in, it continued to weaken. Sensing its demise, what was left of the Hive Mind attempted to cut across the Core and into the Ork held worlds to the galactic north.

The 'Squats' bowed, humbled, but not broken emerge from the shattered hulks of their Sanctuaries. Their race almost extinct, their infrastructure smashed, and their belief in the duplicity of the humanoids of the Imperium yet again proven, they gird themselves for war, and attempt to rebuild what was lost.

Meanwhile, the Inquisition and the Adeptus Mechanicus set in motion plans to move into the Core and reclaim all technologies not destroyed by the Tyranid invasion. The 'squats' were destroyed, and now the Emperor can reclaim what was rightfully His.



I like the idea that the Squats have literally been on a war footing for close to 15,000 years, from raiders to orks, to more raiders and finally the nids, they have not had a moments peace. This then explains their fatalistic resolve, the hatred of many races, their distrust of the mutant impure forms of humanoid that control the Imperium, and how it was they were finally laid low.

All this, and not a single mention of beer, bikes, leather, or even Grugni!

Hellebore

[Colonial Rifle]

Lots of good work here. Malphax - good summary of Jervis' piece. I agree it was a design decision to kill Squats, NOT poor sales. I had squats when I was playing RT and so did my gaming friends - the only squats that filled up the bargain bins were the ill-conceived chaos squats. The design team ran out of ideas in 2nd edition and basically turned them into full-on 'Dwarves in space' with 'Cyber-slayers' and Thunderers, which was a great shame as their RT list/fluff was more distinctly 40k. It would be like picking up the new eldar codex today and seeing entries for 'hover chariots' and 'space dragon'.

Time traveling squats: interesting idea, my only thought is haven't we already got a race that kind of does this - the Hrud. It's been hinted that they are 'out of phase/time' with the current 40K universe. Otherwise, I think it would work.

[Sai-Lauren]

I remember seeing a post from one of the GW design team about the death of the Squats on another forum somewhere, but his was months ago and I can't cite the source.

Jervis Johnson himself, on the specialist games forums IIRC.

[Xisor]

@Hellebore mainly,

Don't worry, the proposal isn't that the Squats/Demiurg become the effective 'proto-Time Lords' of 40k, butjust that in very much a Deus Ex Machina, a handful escaped, through time. We already *have* time technology: Stasis Technology plus the C'tan are lords/above of Natural Law, and it is alluded to them making use of phasing in and out of time(much like Hrud), but *not* in the sense that you can just 'drop back in time and stop the fall'. In this context it's not that the Squats went back in time, but fell back to a point where all they're future knowledge and knowledge of history was simply of no use whatsoever. They had to build it up for themselves. They already *were* a part of their own history, in this suggestion, as the Demiurg are noted as having traded with dozens of worlds on the eastern fringe for millenia(I'm sure it says that somewhere, I'm confident it wasn't me that made that bit up), but it's interesting to think the Demiurg/Squats simply didn't make the connection at that point. Now, when it comes to the point of the 41st Millenia, the Imperium is just discovering "Hey, the squats aren't where we left them. They're all gone..."

So, as you see, there needn't be worry about paradoxes...much...(proper time travel *should not* be introduced to 40k...it's too complex, for a protaganist or antagonist to be using, but to say *it has been used* is different)

The vast majority of them went to fight in the Core (interestingly enough, though the Homeworlds may not have been 'brilliant' consumables, there could have been rife in-fighting with Genestealer Cults, in both the Squats and the Orks who'd been fighting them for some millenia, which could explain why the Tyranids went after them, and why they were weak enough to more or less be wiped from history...), only a handful survived across the galaxy. Most likely *not* the warriors(who'd have went to fight), but those who were left behind or just unable to go to the core.

Xisor

[Helicon_One]

The Devourer cometh - The Inquisition, long intolerant of the 'Empire' of abhumans rotting at the heart of the Imperium, utilise a modified form of Kryptman's Tactica Ultima, producing a corridor of scorched planets through which a Tyranid splinter fleet passed. The destruction they wrought brought the 'Squat' League to its knees. With grim fatalism the 'squats' fought to the last. Unfortunately for the Inquisition, the homeworlds were low in life and organic matter in general, so as the fleet moved further in, it continued to weaken. Sensing its demise, what was left of the Hive Mind attempted to cut across the Core and into the Ork held worlds to the galactic north.

The 'Squats' bowed, humbled, but not broken emerge from the shattered hulks of their Sanctuaries. Their race almost extinct, their infrastructure smashed, and their belief in the duplicity of the humanoids of the Imperium yet again proven, they gird themselves for war, and attempt to rebuild what was lost.

Meanwhile, the Inquisition and the Adeptus Mechanicus set in motion plans to move into the Core and reclaim all technologies not destroyed by the Tyranid invasion. The 'squats' were destroyed, and now the Emperor can reclaim what was rightfully His.

Nice thought there, I'd had similar ideas but you've taken them up in more detail than I did, and its logical that the AdMech would sweep in and claim the Squats advanced technology for themselves. I like the idea that most of the surviving Squats are being used as slave labour in forgeworlds (important slaves, as they're the ones who know how the stuff works, but slaves nontheless) or have been inducted into Imperial Guard penal batallions (I keep meaning to write a fluff piece from the perspective of a Squat penal batallion).

In game terms, Jervis said that one problem was doing the Squats justice in 40K, whereas in Epic they were supported until quite late on because the scale allowed them to represent their huge and finely crafted warmachines, giving them a distinct feel that couldn't really be duplicated in 28mm. Its a shame Forgeworld didn't come about a few year earlier, because things like the Land Train and the Iron Eagle would have been doable, and could have been the spark to fire up some enthusiasm for the race that was lacking at the time.

Tim

[Easy E]

They are still perfectly viable in game terms. From a background perspective they can also easuily be resurrected.

Xisor (and others) is quite right to view the "squats" and Demiurg as completely distinct entities. He has all ready covered this topic well.

For some additional ideas about background and game play take a look in my sig under Reimagining an OOP race.

Limited use of Chrono-weapons could be a cool nitch for Demiurg. For example, stasis grenades, stasis field mines, temporal distortion beams, all things that do not kill the target but simply trap them.

I think I will stop rambling and stumbling around now.

[Hellebore]

One of the biggest problems comes from the name. Squats is so..... dumb. Obviously it's a derogatory term used by the Imperium, much like ratling.

But the 'squats' themselves know,and are, human. How does one differentiate them without coming up with some weird alien-esque sounding name for what is essentially a human culture?

Well, one way HUMANS differentiate each other is through nationalality/religion (eg Christian, or German etc).

So, I thought, what do they all have in common? They live in Strongholds (strongholdian sounds a bit daft) in the Core.

So at the moment, I'm thinking they would refer to themselves as Corians (opposing the Imperial Terran).

Thus they belong to the 'Corian League'.

Hellebore