Shan culture, some bullet points
I wrote this post a while ago to jot down some ideas when I couldnt sleep. Cleaning it up a little and posting it.
-Men of the worker caste are not allowed to get educated. Women workers spend most their days raising children of their own and their superiors. This is seen as very valuable, a lot of them even gets educated in math, philosophy, biology, and psychology so they can act as teachers for their noble charges. Many worker caste mothers also pass along this knowledge to their own children.
-The warior caste are all sterile females, only the ones who show prowess get to pass on her genes, they grow very fast and are able to start learning to fight after just a few years. Soldiers are raised by workers untill old enough to join a battle sorority where their big sisters learn them how to care for and use their equipment, battle tactics, strategy, survival, and many other skills that they will need in the field. They are encouraged to show social agression but bloodthirst and undue savagery is punished with violence or starvation. Therefore the warrior caste engages in a lot of high-contact sports, competitions, and camraderly combat drills.
-The artisan caste is the ones allowed most freedom in what they wish to pursue in their life but most still end up serving the nobles in some fashion. Some work to entertain other proles however, and become akin to wandering bards and historians. On worlds where the ruling caste frowns on the lower castes getting education these individuals become an important part of the resistance, ferrying secrets between cells of rebels. Some work as assistants in the labs of the godcaste but are rarely allowed more respect than asistants.
-The engineer caste can interface with biotech easier than others and while most of them are spaceborn today many of them still live on planets and keep the machines and utilities working. Those that remain planetside for extended periods sometimes have their lower pair of arms reconfigured into legs to get around more easily, even if they tend to keep some fine manipulation in their ‘feet’ to not limit their dexterity.
-Working castes have a lot of festivals of their own wich their uppers tend to respect as long as work quotas keep even. They tend to party nude wich is casual and non sexual, but the other castes see it as savage. Despite this, a lot of noble parties are far more debaucherous. The nobles even demand to get worker caste boys to perform dances, plays, and games at their banquets as entertainment.
-Its not unheard of to see human dancers visiting the more esoteric noble courts as dancers either.
-The god castes all have their own agendas and infight and conspire constantly. While the noble castes have reign to do as they please with the prole castes, they are just pawns to the god castes themselves.
-The frontal lobe of nobles and god caste is very highly developed and contain advanced structures that make them especially adapt at channeling psionic energy with high precision. Psychic powers is seen as a domain of the gods, and a signum of the noble castes authority over the proles. It is not impossible for the prole castes to develop psychic powers however, but the nobles take strict measures to cull these individuals before they can become threats.
-Shan births are usually straining but not harmful to the mothers and its usually something to bond over. Men are arent allowed near births because they can faint and suffer horrid traumas from it. Pregnant shan coo about how their strong children are eating their weaker siblings in there, seeing as they are oviviparous and all. Pregnancy is seen as a labor and it is not uncommon for the worker caste to handle surrogacies and raising children for the other castes.
-Shan babies have very underdeveloped limbs and loose their teeth in a couple of days. They are amphibious and needs to swim to develop their motor functions before they are ready to walk, but still needs air to breathe. It is common to raise babies in communally ponds before they are able to get around on land, and are taken home to the parents. A propper baby-pond usually has plenty of both shallow resting areas, deep ends for exploration and play, and floating toys such as balls or ‘logs’ which are good for both training to climb out of water and just pushing around.