Thrintun hadn't needed intelligence since they'd found their first slave race.
His men came from a slave race, and they dreamed of a day when they would be free.
One day the slave races decided they'd had enough, and there was a war.
"Do you doubt that a slave race in revolt would settle for nothing less than our total extinction?"
They created the shoggoths to be their all-purpose slave race.
A slave race that knew that all things must change.
It is also revealed that any species within their empire are slave races.
This is to keep a slave race of aliens called Sequids from rising up.
Now they're attacking throughout known space with half a dozen slave races.
This was major news, given that the Remans had, up until now, been a slave race within the empire.