Faction:Andolian
 Factions
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Andolians
| Andolians | |
|---|---|
| Species | Human, primarily of the Pluralis variant. |
| Homeworld (Origin) | Earth (Sol system) |
| Capital | Kubernan |
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Andolians are a human faction primarily consisting of the Pluralis variant well developed in both information and physical resources. All Andolians are members of the Andolian Protectorate but maintain a subordinate government concerned with Andolian affairs.
Many of the major Human governments could be considered "ideocracies" wherein a supermajority, often a near totality, of the population governed by an entity are adherents of a given ideological perspective. The Andolians were such a group, with a clear correspondance between the Andolians (the adherents) and the Andolians (the political entity controlled by the adherents) until the Andolians came to have a more diverse political landscape when they became Protectors of the Klk'k population, and later, the Purth. Many Klk'k have since become integrated with the Andolian mainstream, but the Protectorate remains more ideologically diverse than the Andolians proper.
The Andolians are by far the most heavily industrialized of the human factions, living dense, highly coordinated existences across over a hundred star systems, linked together by access to shared memories and information. The Andolians are well known for both their technological prowess, their passion for abstract and collective, rather than personal, progress, and a willingness to take extreme measures in order to achieve complete solutions to issues deemed problematic.
Culture
Andolian society has a high degree of internal transparency, but is remarkably opaque to outsiders, with much of the social discourse occurring solely on the network. Privacy is neither a right nor an expectation in Andolian society, but it is a universally applied principle, with significant attention and painstaking scrutiny paid to the oversight committees in charge of managing those pieces of information deemed too vital to security to allow into the public sphere. While Andolians do not suffer secrecy gladly, they are fully aware of its occasional necessity. Those charged with keeping secrets are pitied for their trouble in a society in which complete openness is the norm. This pity is further extended because those bearing secrets of note, or even knowledge of the existence of these secrets of note are augmented with mental and physical blocks to prevent them from speaking to those without appropriate clearance and restricted from interacting with non-Andolians.
Andolian colonies larger than outposts develop into two distinct entities - those areas where outsiders are interacted with, and those areas which are open solely to Andolians. Within the former, Andolians constantly wear their iconic environment suits, allowing for complete sterilization of their exterior surfaces prior to return to Andolian-only regions. While this may seem somewhat paranoid, in an era of cheap designer viruses, and a history of persistent Luddite threats against transhumanists, especially the Andolians, the economic impact of wearing isolation suits was found to be less than the potential work lost due to intentional or accidental pathogen introduction. While the economic numbers may be in favor of such behavior for other groups as well, the Andolians are one of the few entities with sufficient self-control to implement such protocols in a viable fashion. Moreover, if the environment of the initial Andolian settlement on Kubernan is taken into account, the environment suits are even less an affectation than they may at first seem.
All Andolians spend their lives immersed in a sea of shared data, and memories, at least, such shallow imprints as can be rendered of them. The Andolians are meticulous in preserving data, even information seen as of little relevance at the time, in case it becomes of use later. The collective Andolian memory goes back, albeit in increasingly limited clarity, for nearly 900 years. Andolian children are born (with a negligible number of exceptions) in artificial birthing chambers that allow them to continue their physical development well beyond that of a normal-term human. Preliminary neural implants are inserted long before "birth" and the pre-natal development includes datastream acclimation. Accelerated growth produces a more physically developed birth scenario, and a standard implant replaces the preliminary as soon as the skull is sufficiently formed to support it, usually occurring prior to the actual birthing. There have been significant periods of Andolian history where desired birth rates were very high, and extensive use of batch cloning and professional parenting remains common.
When speaking informally, Andolians have long tended to refer to each other with sibling references, to human members of other meme-groups as "cousins", and, more recently, non-Andolian human members of the Protectorate as "steps" (as in stepsiblings). Upon the introduction of the Klk'k into the newly formed Protectorate, the Klk'k specifically requested to be referred to as siblings of a diminutive nature. Informed that this may be perceived as insulting, the Klk'k delegation replied that they fully understood this, and that was why it would be funny. The appending of "-chan" onto the traditional sibling references has since become the common informal form for the the Klk'k.
