Heartsworn Lore...
Working on oc successor chapter Heartsworn again. I am trying to figure out where I want the intimacy lines drawn.
Their culture is all very oriented towards group living and multiple partners, starting that way during the Age of strife when the human population of the Erosi Cluster of moons was cut off from any other human culture and believed themselves to be the last survivors of humanity.
They arrived to the northern reach of the Ultima Segmentum with a large fleet of millions, pushing to the far flung edges of Humanity's grasp, fleeing to an area oddly bereft of hostile xenos populations...and they settled the moons, chaining them together with archaeotechnology to form a linked human superpopulation.
The gas giant the moons orbit creates a subsonic frequency that drives anyone exposed to it into a violent psychosis, leading to eventual self-destruction or total loss of awareness. But!! It was quickly discovered that if two or more people are in close contact, sharing a space, then the subtle biofrequencies of their hearts and brains cancels out the pulses from the gas giant. Over thousands of years, closeness and intimacy transformed from a necessary survival method to a unanimously accepted cultural practice.
All this to say...the Heartsworn are even more close to each other than even their culture is. But...being space marines...I want there to still be this alien-ness to them, like they perhaps walk this line of being very close and loving and intimate without necessarily needing to be intimate sexually. Maybe strongly platonic/romantic? Some kind of undefined bond that pushes past all former experiences of love? It's got to be slightly freaky and all encompassing.