Flavor Green Star Union

Green Star Union
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The Green Stars are a small collection of suns known for supporting an abnormally large amount of planets that boast lush, verdant forests and jungles all across their surfaces. However, this region of space is also the home of an abnormally large and advanced community of Florans. They have do not have any formal name for their people, as their culture does not care about such things, but trader and diplomatic envoys have tentatively dubbed this entity the "Green Star Union", so for the sake of clarity we will be using this term to refer to them from here onwards.

The Union, as you may have guessed, is one of those rare Floran communities that has managed to evolve into something more advanced than the typical techno-barbaric tribal societies that make up the majority of the Floran population. The Union has a complex hierarchy, advanced laws, and culture beyond simple primitivism. That said, this is still a Floran nation, and violence remains a pillar of its society. The most cunning and battle-scarred warlords and chiefs make up the ruling elite of the Union. There are roughly thirty separate cultural entities in the Green Star Union, but they seem to have have formed a mutually beneficial agreement with one another, consolidating into the confederation we see today. Beneath the ruling chiefs, soldiers of all kinds form a sort of rudimentary middle class, living off of the goods produced by artisans, engineers, farmers, butchers, and other such civilian professions. These non-combatant laborers make up the worker caste. The worker caste is generally considered to be objectively inferior to the soldier caste, both by the soldiers and the workers themselves. Many worker caste spar with on another in their free time, hoping to hone their skills enough to be uplifted into the military caste. While some workers do manage to be accepted, most Green Star Florans will have their place in life decided in their early youth, in the spawning gardens.

The spawning gardens are designated, walled off areas in the Union where Floran pods are dumped en masse and given roughly six months worth of food. The garden is then sealed. A year later, the garden is opened again. The saplings are then retrieved, restrained, and examined. Saplings that are unable to be broken in are disposed of. Saplings that show mental defects preventing them from emerging from their feral state are disposed of as well. The most promising are quickly drafted into the soldier caste, while the rest are put to work as laborers.

Worker caste are psychologically little different from the other Florans, but physically will have a wiry frame and will be weaker than the soldier caste, due to a poorer diet and a lack of a formal exercise regimen. They are generally treated more as accessories or tools than actual citizens, and a chief will think nothing of working a few hundred to death if it means whatever project he is planning will be completed sooner. The Union is very populous, so they have numbers to spare in this regard. Most worker caste learn to keep their heads down and try to learn a profession that ensures they can't just be replaced on a whim. Those who continuously start trouble are simply forced to do hard labor until they drop dead from exhaustion, if not outright executed.

Soldier caste are what the average alien thinks of when they have nightmares about Florans, and then some. Selected from the meanest, toughest saplings that survived the ordeal of the spawning gardens, every soldier is trained in the art of war before they even finish learning the Union's language. Soldier caste differ from the typical Floran warrior in that instead of the typical confrontational boisterousness that is so common with such types, they display a sort of cold, pragmatic cunning that has been honed to an edge by years of intense training. They do not fight for the thrill of the hunt, or for the sake of honor, or even to feed themselves. They fight simply because it is all they know and all that they are. They do not understand other ways of existing, and in some near-instinctual way resent those who are not like them, leading to many instances of soldier castes brutalizing workers in such an absentminded and casual manner that one may wonder if they are even aware of what they are doing. This mentality does begin to show cracks as the Floran matures, allowing them to develop a rudimentary individuality, but it never truly goes away.

The ruling warlords and lesser chiefs represent those Florans who possessed the virtues of both strength and intelligence. While they often seem direct and unversed in political nuances, more than a few are capable of evenly matching the political savvy of foreign envoys. This uncommon skill in realpolitik is the result of the constant, quiet power struggle played out by the roughly thirty tribes that make up the Union. While publicly fronting itself as a unified entity, there is still a fair amount of friction behind the scenes of the burgeoning nation. Personal rivalries and ambition often lead to the threat of protracted conflict, a looming threat which constantly threatens the Union with disintegration. However, this threat has recently been mitigated somewhat with the relatively new integration of blood sports into the political atmosphere.

Once a simple means to keep the worker caste entertained with great displays of bloodshed between teams of laborers with aspirations of rising above their station, these games have been looked to as a means to limit, but still allow, conflict between tribes that nurse a grudge with one another. Gladiatorial bouts featuring hundreds of soldiers have been displayed on primitive public imaging devices across the Union, with the winner gaining a significant boost to negotiating clout and the loser being expected to drop whatever issue prompted the match.

This sums up what is mostly common knowledge held by foreigners about the Green Star Union. The final important fact is that the Union is willing to and is indeed actively engaging in commerce with its neighbors, selling vast quantities of foodstuffs in exchange for advanced manufactured goods and technology. While many would be averse to trafficking with Florans, they also have few other options to feed a growing population, and are willing to take the chance that it will be simply somebody else's problem down the line, if the Union ever becomes a threat at all. Only time will tell in what direction this strange phenomena will head.

Facts & Trivia!
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Hunters are considered to be worker caste rather than soldiers. There is a clear cultural distinction between hunting animals and hunting sapients.

Many soldier caste use personal shields to charge into melee combat. These shields are generally less effective than the typical model since they can only protect from the front, and withstand less firepower before fizzling out. However as stated previously, they are are ubiquitous among the Green Star tribal militaries, making melee combat a common occurrence.

The "quiet, pragmatic cunning" described as the mentality of the soldier caste is to a lesser extent the mindset of the worker caste as well, although for them it is more focused toward the pursuit of simply surviving rather than the infliction of violence.

Green Star Florans typically have noun-adjective names that display what kind of job they hold. This can be changed should they take up a different line of work.

Their local dialect typically has them hissing a little after every sentence, almost like the vocal equivalent of a "." mark.

As a rule, abstract concepts and such like the name of their country are typically given little thought. The Union doesn't really have any sort of poetry, art, or other celebration of abstract thinking, so they sometimes find it difficult to grasp such concepts. It is for this reason that the official name of their nation is one conceived by foreigners. It never occurred to the Union to name itself because it simply was.

Due to their isolation from other Floran communities, their development of Bioforging techniques has been slower and less innovative than most of the Floran community. They can produce anything typically found in the average Floran society and can use it in tandem with inorganic technology, but as a general rule Green Star bioforgers are outclassed by bioforgers from other notable Floran macro-tribes.

While they are a spacefaring society, the majority of the population (IE the worker caste) generally has access to a level of civilian technology comparable with America in the 1960s. Soldier Caste and beyond generally have access to more advanced level of technology, although it retains the Floran techno-organic look and generally is a step below similar technology of other nations.