Beware of Geeks Bearing Backstory

[Veeck]

Well, I've got my laptop back from Dell, and they seem to have fixed whatever loose connection on the motherboard was causing it to freeze up and reboot at odd moments. While I was laptop-less, I wasn't able to do much actual writing down of ideas I had for the game, but I did do a lot of thinking. One of the things I thought up was a cool bit of backstory for an alien race...that I don't actually intend to use. Anyone thinking of creating an original species, or fleshing out an obscure canon species about which little is known, is free to borrow this concept.

The concept is based on combining odd bits of symbolism from various Communist ideologies and symbologies, plus a few other sources, to create a caste/class system for a society. North Korea, for example, explicitly divides its population into three castes: Workers, Peasants, and Intellectuals. The original hammer-and-sickle emblem of the USSR was actually a hammer-sickle-and-sword emblem symbolizing the three power bases of the communist party: workers, peasants, and soldiers. Combining these concepts with some symbolism from the East German coat of arms, and you get the inspiration for the following:

The Five Castes

The Manipulators of Nature:
The Copper Sickle

The Farmers, Foresters, Miners, and Fishermen. They manipulate nature and gather the resources found therein. They feed and supply us all.

The Manipulators of Machinery:
The Steel Hammer

The Factory Workers, Mechanics Builders, and Craftsmen. They manipulate raw materials and machinery, and create finished products. They clothe and house us all.

The Manipulators of Blood:
The Bronze Sword

The Soldiers, Police, Judges, and Jailers. They manipulate violence and blood to fight our wars, patrol our streets, and punish our criminals. They protect and defend us all.

The Manipulators of Words:
The Silver Quill

The Secretaries, Bureaucrats, Artists, and Intelligentsia. They manipulate words and the social sciences. They organize and inspire us all.

The Manipulators of Numbers:
The Golden Compass

The Scientists, Engineers, Architects, and Mathematicians. They manipulate numbers and the physical sciences. They create the future for us all.




Together the five castes constitute society. Society cannot survive without them all. No one caste is disposable, no one caste is more valuable than the others. No one caste must be allowed to dominate, or be dominated by, any of the others. All are important, all are indispensable. All must live in harmony.

[Albigensia]

It's time to set you on the true arc, Veeck...

Okay, I like the five caste thing - has a certain appeal. The idea of balance between different job classifications is quite interesting. Of course, once you start on that course, an infinite amount of questions explode to fill the theoretical space. Here are a few:

Now, the original definition of "caste" is that these classifications are something that you are born into. Would this be a static caste system or a meritocracy? Or if you're going really socialist, then no one is raised by their parents, and only have some strange testing system does the ward of the state get designated their true purpose. So that would have to be worked out.

Next, hierarchy; are all castes equal, save for their actual role in society, or are some castes more equal than others? Is there friction between the castes - does the warrior caste resent parity with the intellectual caste? Which then leads into the next question...

...government. How does a government exist that keeps the caste system going? Is it a "grey council"-like structure in which they all get a vote? Maybe it's weighted in favor of one caste or another, depending on the situation, or has a aristocratic/meritocratic system that makes the Grand Duchy of Poland look like a model of efficiency?

Don't get me wrong, I like the thought, but there's a lot of gaps to fill when developing a racial profile. Not that we're in favor of racial profiling...

[Veeck]

I intentionally left a lot of this vague. Once I decided not to use this idea for the Exedra Star Empire, the only original race I plan to introduce (albeit as background characters only, since I don't feel like coming up with detailed physical biology and description of their appearance), I decided to not follow up on such ideas too heavily. Whoever decides to use this is free to decide such questions themselves as the needs of the plot dictate.

Do they want the system to work well? Then they should probably have children be uncasted, and only assigned to a caste once they decide upon a career. They could have each caste elect representatives to a Caste Council that functions something like a provincial government, as well as representatives to an all-castes council that runs the race as a whole. Perhaps a five-member Grand Council, or a ten-member or other multiple-of-five-member council with multiple representatives from each caste. Sort of like how the Minbari Grey Council had three from each of three castes for a total of nine.

Or, if you want the system to not work well, and thus be a source of side-plot internal conflict, you could have children assigned to the caste of their parents and only trained for caste-appropriate jobs, which may have worked fairly well back on the homeworld, but doesn't work all that well in the different socioeconomic environment on the Arkship. Perhaps they want to preserve this caste system anyways, both to preserve the culture that goes along with it (which is the main point of this Arkship project in the first place) and to have the castes intact once they start a new colony and need all five castes still operational. There may be little need for farmers and miners on a ship where most supplies are holo-replicated, but they will be heavily needed once reaching Andromeda and founding a new colony. Rigid caste-based societies will have problems with this fact, wheras non-caste-based societies can simply train new farmers and miners from the general population once they are needed, while in the meantime only having a few people study those disciplines the way modern real-world acedemics and hobbyists study blacksmithing or the arts of the Samurai, in order to have educators capable of teaching the masses once that is needed.

Which path is taken will depend on what we want this race to do plot-wise in the story.