Quote:Original post by Taolung
I think I'd like some more background on the change of power from the males to the females. I'm not quite following how they took control when they were outnumbered 5 to 1, and how they managed to subdue the males long enough to inflict so many changes on them.
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It's long, but ultimately, the story is a very personal one of family intrigue, insanity, contraceptive poisoning and asteroid bombardment. (What more could you want? [smile])
Here it is if you're interested:
Chief among the founders of the new order was a Kovaunn who called herself Daughter of Knives. She was in fact a daughter of the mightiest Emir of the old patriarchy, and named herself in honor of her mother. Her mother, a concubine of the Emir, was savagely murdered by the Emir when she was a child, and she quietly vowed revenge. Appearing loyal to her father in every way as she grew up, the young Kovaunn had a gift for charm and made many friends in the court. Among them was the Emir's resentful youngest son, also quiet about his hatred of his abusive father. The two became fast friends, and he secretly taught her the forbidden knowledge of males: the arts of science and war.
The two young Kovaunn plotted against their father. Unfortunately, their ill-conceived plot unraveled, and the daughter's part was discovered (though not the son's). Finding her too well-liked and useful to kill, the Emir favored exile (under the guise of tutelege) to the asteroid mining camps, where she could be watched by one of his trusted administrators. There he would leave her until he could deal with her properly.
The Sieger onslaught, however, never gave him time. As the fighting engulfed the solar system and the Siegers fell on the home planet (whose large population acted like a psionic magnet), the Emir called up every able bodied Kovaunn. His most disasterous decision may have been to move most of the garrisons in the asteroid colonies, untouched by attack, to protect the capital. Technicians, administrators, and a handful of green troops were left to guard contingents of hardened criminals and would-be female revolutionaries, with the ratio almost 200 to 1 (many female).
The Emir's daughter seized on the situation. She had already made covert alliances amongst the female revolutionaries in the prisoner population, teaching them some of her martial and technical skills. She also had wooed the second in command, gaining valuable intelligence on the homeworld and colonies. At the right time, she persuaded the second in command to arrange an "accident" for the Emir's trusted minion, with the plan being that he would be promoted with her at his side.
But this was a ploy. When she had enough knowledge about the colony control systems, she found a way to inspire a bloody insurrection. The male prisoners overwhelmed the few guards and quickly siezed the main colony. Before he could act, Daughter of Knives dispatched the second in command and gained possession of the colony control codes. The toughest of the surviving male prisoners, weakened from the revolt, met the unfortunate fate of asphyxiation when they refused to yeild to her power. It would be the females, the Brood Sisters who revered Daughter of Knives, who would found the new order.
And they would do so mostly free of meddling by the Emir. In the wake of the Sieger attack the old regime found itself so mired in opportunistic insurrections and messianic movements that it's colonies were secondary. Daughter of Knives leveraged the intervening years to consolidate power, forging traditional marriage / brood alliances among defecting administrators and former slaves as well as supplying the Emir's enemies with war materials.
Yet the aging Emir was fast living up to his legendary reputation of cunning and cruelty. Operating from a hidden underground complex, he restored order with a mix of tactical nuclear strikes and poisons infiltrated into his enemy's food supply (for which he held the only antidote); the most widely deployed among these was an airborne contraceptive which promised to bring a swift end to any rebellious clan's bloodline. Thus the Emir would ensure loyalty among both subdued enemy and professed ally alike.
As the last holdouts fell, Daughter of Knives knew that the asteroid colonies would be next. She also knew that she was fast losing her one chance at revenge. If she were to act, she would have to act soon.
Her opening came when she learned that her old confidante, the Emir's once youngest and now only son, was alive. He had not succumbed to the Sieger attack as had been widely reported. Not only did he know where his father was, he wanted to help. With the Emir out of the way, he would be in a position to create a more diplomatic solution involving the colonies and the now subdued clans.
Daughter of Knives' bold plan was to be smuggled into the Emir's underground stronghold, right into the Emir's chambers. She carried with her the very ceremonial knives that the Emir had used to butcher her mother. With the help of the Emir's son, she would bring to a close the events that had shaped her and driven her to her quest so many years ago.
What she could never know, however, was that her brother had not survived the Sieger assault intact. Quite simply, he was insane. Instead of helping his sister, he betrayed his entire family and merrily arranged for his own death, courtesy of a two kilometer wide asteroid he convinced the Brood Sisters to drop on his father's base.
The base was obliterated. The Emir, however, escaped (though crippled) with a handful of staff and his son. When the Brood Sisters learned that they had been tricked into killing their beloved leader, they went into a rage. They decimated the remaining forces regrouping under the banner of the Emir, lapsing into the primitive and wasteful male way of war in their grief. The Emir was captured, some say hiding in a women's tent in the mountains, and left to starve to death in a cage as he was exhibited among the clans. His son received a more humane end, left to gibber away at shadows in a prison deep underground.
The Emir's brutality, his son's insanity, and his daughter's unintended sacrifice bequeathed the Brood Sisters a strange and unexpected legacy. Lost in the Emir's stronghold were the antidotes to the poisons he had used to keep order. Most vital among them was the liberally distributed airborne contraceptive.
Despite their momentary lapse of control, Daughter of Knives had taught her adopted Brood Sisters to be logical and rigorous. Observation and practicality conferred a tactical advantage. It was clear that the colonial population base was too small to survive on its own, and the planetside clans could not survive without female colonial DNA. Without cooperation, the Kovaunn race would become extinct.
Knowing this, the Brood Sisters, weilding their orbital superiority and technical edge over the planet below, transformed what had long been a curse of their existence--their gender--into a powerbase. Fertile females continued planetside clan bloodlines in exchange for the right to educate the children and free the female population. Over generations, the clan model of patriarchy was unwound. Resistant clans were simply left to degenerate and die out. Thus Kovaunn society was remade.
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On a more general note, it's my opinion that a race that relies on physical domination for control will have a difficult time developing the intricacies of technology and space travel. I think about the Klingons and how everything is decided by bloody battles. I can't figure out how they could have gotten much past the middle ages. |
As much as I hate this quote, it seems appropriate (Simone Weil, I think): "In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!"
As snide as this quote is, it does point to the idea that conflict generates invention. Many of the greatest technical advancements in society have come during periods of great war when one side is attempting to gain an advantage.
Having said that, any age where weapons can destroy entire populations and large swaths of land DOES provide some serious problems. I've tried to account for that somewhat by the adaptive nature of cities, the hearty Kovaunn constitution, and their underground networks.
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Or maybe everyone follows whoevers in charge out of fear and intimidation - a science lab will be run by a ruthless dictator, and work is done mostly out of a desire to not be eaten. The problem I see with this is that it isn't conductive to science. I imagine that a lab of scientists would be afraid to tell their superior the results of a failed experiment for fear of being beaten down or cast out.
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Yes, I think they'd have the same problem that the Russians had with their moon lander program, where you get deaths, accidents and fires because people aren't willing to step up to the plate.
However I think ruthless capitalism would balance this out. Fear would be balanced with greed.
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Or maybe there are the few, rare Kovaunn's that aren't violent and enjoy research and study instead. They are shunned by the rest, but as soon as they've come up with something that's useful, it sort of gets robbed out from under them.
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I don't think that a violent people would not have the patience for study. Rather, a reckless people (no matter their temperament) would I think have no stomach for the scientific process.
If you have a methodical approach that is very rigorous and exact, and if you have an appreciation for Truth with a capital T, I think you can still be martial and beh highly scientific.
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I guess I can see an odd combination of their physical domination model and science, where labs are in cut-throat and deadly competition with each other. Ownership of technology isn't decided by patents, but by whoever's left alive.
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Yes this could work. If they have a "you're responsible for whatever happens to you" attitutude, then I see a very libertarian society (for the females) with lots of opportunity for free enterprise, even illegal activity. I wanted this to be reflected partially by the fact that the laws change constantly.
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But maybe I'm reading your race wrong. Maybe it's organized a bit more like a hive, and the only violence involved is with the Wounded Queen? Everyone else is basically subserviant and obeys without question? |
Nah, I've already got a hive species where you are the ship. A playable hive as a drone would be pretty boring.
