Practicum: Tshutsi
Greetings and stern! ...STOP LOOKING AT MY BUTT! Hi and welcome to my beloved blog! I am your most loved and wonderful alien Limax, Vivian! Today we will do another species practicum about a species that is very small but packs quite the punch: the Tshutsi!
As usual though, they do not conjugate the way English nouns do. They have a prefix preference.
Sg: Tshutsi
Pl: Ketshutsi
Adj: Natshutsi
Worldbuilding intent
Well, I wanted Swiss cheese in my universe, and to get Swiss cheese, you need two things. Switzerland and Cheese. So logically, I made my own Switzerland! Jokes aside, I wanted one of those nations that are aggressively neutral and capable of maintaining that, as it would be a fun challenge for me in my universe.
It is important that one understands that in order to be neutral in any world, you have to be able to be such a massive thorn in the side when attacking that virtually everyone decides it is not worth it. If you are incapable of being this much of a nuisance, you will be conquered by a bigger nation. So we will start with that.
Solar system and their home
In my post on faster than light I went briefly into both this species and my drive, and I promised a practicum on the drive, and I will do it! Just not today. But I will give a longer rundown this time.
Discrete Drive
The discrete drive, as my FTL engine is called, works by using alternate space and is hence a continuous form of FTL. One key thing to know here is that discrete space is called discrete because natural numbers, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.… are discrete! (for Anne’s sake, discrete means, simply put, nothing between! There is no number between 0 and 1 in integers–or whole numbers–so integers are discrete). I use those numbers because discrete space is layered with 0 being ordinary space, and then it goes up or down. They use a diving metaphor for it, and the deeper into the layers one goes, the more contracted space is, and the faster one can go relative to normal space, or nullspace. Anyway, in order to access it, you need a special material–see this blogpost on materials and struos–called isochium.
What is unique about isochium is that ,unlike ordinary matter, which can only exist in one layer at a time depending on quantum shenanigans–it is like electron spin and stuff, not magic! I know what quantum means and know the basics of quantum mechanics enough to say I know fuck all, but it ain’t magic!–Anyway, the point is, while normal matter is at one layer and only one at a time, isochium is at every layer all at once! Probabilistically. Isochium prefers the lower numbered layers (or higher layers as they call it; I know, confusing) but exists in all at once regardless. So, using special scifi space opera tech magic that is assembled into the discrete drive, they force the isochium to be only at one layer, which is the one you want to go to, and it’s done by the machine, and then it pulls the ship and everything with it into the layer where distances are shorter. Go fastly there, and you go faster than light! Side note: because isochium is now in an unnatural state, it starts to decay radioactively which turns it into a fuel that is consumed while you travel!
The solar system
Alright, so the discrete drive can do that, but what does it all mean? Well, it means that to attack a solar system, you can literally come from any direction, which means defence other than sheer absolute military might is incredibly difficult since building stations to serve as giant platforms of defence is less strategically valid than it is in our world as you can easily circumvent them.
So here is where another thing I came up enters! Namely the “nulltron” and “nulltrino”–I won’t go into details about the distinction. Okay, I can a little bit. A nulltron is a subatomic particle that causes the isochium to collapse to the null layer, 0th, or the ordinary space layer. So it’s a great way to prevent FTL! One thing is that, like ordinary matter, it can only exist in one layer of discrete space and cannot naturally leave it. That is where Nulltrino comes in! It decays into nulltrons in all layers, so if you have lots of nulltrinos, it will spread through all of the discrete layers and pull any ship into normal space, or nullspace. Great way to keep people from leaving the battle! It also fucks with ansible tech/FTL communication.
Now, FINALLY! I have given enough for you to understand the situation! The Lotshutsi, which is the Tshutsi system, is unique in that its oort cloud (huge amount of rocks that are extremely far from the star like a sphere around the system) is smack full of substances (yet undecided) that radiate out nulltrinos except for a small and finite amount of holes in their oort cloud. Which means the Ketshutsi (plural of Tshutsi, remember!) only have to heavily defend a few places, and they can make it completely infeasible for anyone to gain entrance without their permission. If anyone tries to go any other route, they will spend months and even years at sublight speeds trying to get through, which most space ships are not designed for.
Beyond that, it is a fairly standard system: several rocky planets, one obviously inhabited, and several gas and ice giants. Nothing too special there.
Biology
Oh phew! That was one hell of a complicated start, but now we can go to their planet! It is a classical Tau class planet… Anne, add Planetary classification practicum to the idea list! Tau class means Earth-like with various biomes and habitations–no one-biome worlds in Stellima! Those are absolutely insane if you ask me, and not how a planet can work. Even Earth when it was a giant wet place had different biomes.
Anyway, on Tetshutsi, their homeworld, the Ketshutsi evolved. On their world, an unusual development happened. Instead of the more common option of either exoskeleton or endoskeleton, a branch of early arthropod-like creatures developed an endoskeleton as well as an exoskeleton. This meant that this branch could grow much larger and have their exoskeleton part serving primarily as a more rigid form of skin.
General Body
Unfortunately, I have yet to acquire an image of an actual Tshutsi; I am slowly working through various species with my artist, and those in my book get priority! Divinum knows AI’s are completely sodding useless here! Anyway, let us start with the body plan. They were somewhat inspired by praying mantises, so they have a taur body. A taur is a term borrowed from the furry community and refers to any being similar to a centaur. That is, having four base legs with a large fraction of the body between them, which may or may not contain all central organs. Then the front extends upward to a more humanoid body similar to humans. Furries call it taur to be more generic and not just refer to horse body and human torso mix.
In their distant past, they did experience an evolutionary phenomenon known as centaurism: it is a fairly new term and refers to when a species lifts a pair of legs, usually the front one, that previously was used for locomotion to now be used for grabbing. Primates underwent this, and birds too! Another example is, of course, the famously infamous praying mantis, my loose inspiration. Unlike praying mantises, Ketshutsi have the exotendo-(exo+et+end, outside and inside)-skeleton I described earlier, and also unlike praying mantises, Ketshutsi have actual hands and fingers. Each hand has 5 fingers and 1 thumb on it. Their feet, however, do not have toes.
Unlike praying mantises and the likes on earth, they do not have compound eyes. Let’s be real, those look freaky as shit. Imagine looking into a large version of that and saying “I love you.” BLERGH! Nah, they got a pair of non-compound eyes similar to you humans! But with two pupils in each eye. One of the pupils is circular similar to you humans but the other is 6 sided star shaped. Is it evolutionary possible? Yes. Is it likely? No. Why did I do it? Because it’s alien and cool, shut up! (Anne: Good thing Vivian never made a worldbuilding rule specifically saying not to do things just because they’re cool… Though if you read carefully, you’ll see this still works because it plays no significant role!) 😛
Finally, their mouth is not like insects either and is more human-like, at least externally, so they are just as capable of speaking as a human.
Reproduction
Like all praying mantises, the females eat their partners! Nah, they don’t! It is an interesting thing about praying mantises, even if not universal. Anyway, this time around, I don’t have anything fancy about this. They have internal fertilisation and lay eggs and… PSYCH! You honestly think I would be that boring? HAH!
I of course have some weird stuff! Anyway, they do have standard two sexes and have intercourse and internal fertilisation of the eggs and lay them. That stuff I didn’t lie about. No cloaca though! Anyway, their sex determination is what makes them stand out. They use what is called a haplodiploidy system. What in tarnation does this mean? It means, for this and for the case of eusocial insects on your planet Earth, that female Ketshutsi have diploid chromosomes, which means they have two of every chromosome. It is like you humans who have 23 chromosomes but 2 of each one. So it gives you a total of 46 chromosomes! But males, in the case of this haplodiploidy system, have only 1 of each chromosome. If it was you humans, women would have 46 chromosomes, but men would have only 23!
What does this all mean in the end? Well, it means quite a few things actually, many that have significant effects on society! The most obvious one is this… The father of the family is not in any way related to the sons! That is because the one chromosome that males have comes from the female as they can give the greatest genetic diversity; in a similar manner, human meiosis happens. So males only father females. You might think, then, what is the point of males? Same as always: genetic diversity! Just a bit more convoluted. But even when it comes to making male children, the male is required. They cannot do like the New Mexico Whiptail, which is an all-female lizard species that uses lesbian sex to facilitate the production of eggs (but is not required to). The Ketshutsi can reproduce on their own to make only males, but they need sexual stimulation to start the production of eggs, so slightly like the lizards! Except the stimulation is obligatory here.
This of course has large influences on their society which I will get into a bit later. I have provided a chart below that will show relationships between the person and their relatives in Tshutsi, which also applies to eusocial insects on earth, relative to how it is for humans.
Ideology
As a people, the Ketshutsi’s ideology is based around what is called “highly aggressive neutrality.” It is a philosophy based on what I mentioned way earlier. Namely that in order to be small and be left alone, they have to be such a massive thorn in the side that every big player thinks it is better to leave them alone.
The Ketshutsi are capable of doing this thanks to their nulltrino rich oort cloud as it means they have been capable of building enormous space stations armed to the teeth with the best that known space is capable of producing. Their space fleet is also very disproportionately huge. In humans, males have often gone to war, partially because of their physical strengths and condition but also because when it comes to replenishing the population, men are the more disposable sex. Everyone is valuable, but let’s be biologically real for the discussion. For the Ketshutsi, this is compounded by the fact that in the production of males, the male is technically not necessary other than as a sexual stimulator that gets egg production going. But you know… toys do exist.
Anyway, they are famous for their neutrality, stay neutral in interstellar affairs, and do not side with anyone. I have not gone terribly much into it–Anne, add this to the list–but in my universe's version of the “United Nations” (I am using this comparison very loosely) called the “Concert of Stars,” the core members consist of the most powerful members in known space that can steamroll anyone not part of the core, but the Tshutsi are, for sensitive votes, invited as a temporary honorary 13th member to vote in case of a 6-6 tie between the big players.
History
Their history is fairly unremarkable for a long time. Empires rose and fell, colonies were established, people were generic bastards to each other similar to humans. One thing that deviates from human society is that due to their quirk of sex determination, they had much more of a mix of patriarchal and matriarchal societies which depended on the focus of the cultures in question.
Their unification is, however, interesting. They had had a world war before nuclear technology, then it was at peace for many decades. Only that over time, two blocks started forming, one with democratic nations and one with autocratic ones, and they spread all over their world. Of course, this was unstable, and another world war started! Fortunately, despite having nukes, their technology was advanced enough at that point that the main purpose of nuclear weapons was already gone, and they used more sophisticated weapons. The war lasted for 10 years, and at the end, the democratic block won and tried to figure out a way to avoid this issue again. After years of negotiation, they finally unified under one democratic government.
In addition to this interesting unification, the big difference between them and most people came when they got FTL. They had, like most, started doing intrasystem infrastructure and mined around to spare their world once they figured that stuff out. They got the isochium in their system, and after development and research, it was time to take off to the stars! …WHAM! Every direction they tried to fly away, they slammed into the nulltrino-infested oort cloud that defines their system!
For decades, they tried in every direction, and it seemed hopeless. A technology so powerful, yet so useless! They also thought that this must be how every other system must be. Surely they weren’t unique, right? Well, eventually someone on a wild hunch set course toward a star system and took off into discrete space. Just as they thought they would be pulled out once more and be forced to turn around… Nothing happened, and eventually they were out! They had found one of the holes in their oort cloud! It was in the middle of the Era of Strife, as it is called when loads of people got discrete drives and wars started everywhere.
The Ketshutsi started exploring more, and slowly but surely found more of these openings while using the cloud as a shield. Several others tried to invade them, but thanks to the nulltrino cloud, decided it was not worth digging through nullspace to reach some insignificant world. The Ketshutsi’s first taste at this power! But time moved on, and with this, they realised that they had a favourable position in staying out of interstellar politics and not having to take sides. This reputation grew and became a point of pride, and it was something other factions took advantage of in settling disputes. As an old saying goes, “Worst case scenario is the Ketshutsi taking a side.”
A crucial event that rocketed the power and reputation of the Ketshutsi was when the manufacturing of cognichips had to change hands. Cognichips are their version of microchips but on steroids compared to your puny silicon chips! Who controlled cognichip manufacturing initially? The Divine Dominion, where Limaces rule and Humans live! Anyway, the Concert decided that the Dominion had accrued way too much power and that some of that power had to go. The Dominion agreed to relinquish their ability to produce cognichips if it was given to a people that could be trusted. Who better than the neutrality people themselves?
So it came to become a huge industry for the Ketshutsi as cognichip manufacturing was handed to them over the course of a few decades, and Tshutsi CogniChip Manufacturing Company (TCCMC) was established over 180 years before the current setting. A member of an hitherto unknown family was voted in to become the president of the new megacorporation, the some greats grandparent of the person who is today, in Stellima, a very famous person, Tthakira Tshakomara, the woman known as the creator of the best advertisements known to space. Check out this amazing post we did about the advertising strategy of TCCMC developed by Tthakira!
Modern Culture
The Natshutsi culture is, like all my cultures, complicated with all kinds of subcultures in modern day, so I can only give very broad strokes of their culture. Given their neutrality and tendencies to avoid interstellar affairs, they have little interest in anything beyond their system that isn’t a xenotarian crisis. Sure, they do like travelling outside their system for vacation and such, but to a lot of Ketshutsi, there is nothing like their home, because inside, they are protected from the insanity that is known as farspace.
A cultural thing that is appreciated outside of their solar system is their belusakirakani, which many travel to fight in. Think of it like ethical bullfighting but with highly intelligent giant beetle-like creatures that go RAWR! Read about it here! But as said, they are very intelligent, and the sport is designed around them.
Now, to quote the Tshutsi, what about the big Sakirakani in the room? …Sakirakani being the giant beetles mentioned above. So what about it? What about the Ketshutsi’s strange sex determination? Of course that has a profound effect on their society and family structure! When it comes to heterosexual families, or lesbian, the father, or non-egg-laying female in lesbian ones, is in no way genetically related to the male offspring. Culturally, however, they are still considered the parent. I am sorry to say for homosexual males, tough luck, no biological way to have children naturally! So lesbianism has been more accepted historically!
One effect on this is that a traditional practice, which still exists, though deviations from it are not frowned upon, is following the rules of inheritance. Sons can only inherit from their mother, but daughters can inherit from both parents. You can imagine yourself being the son and calling a male a dad, but you get nothing from them! Creates complicated relationships and outcomes. Another effect is that sisters often form tighter connections than brothers or brother-sister combos do. Other than their own children, sisters tend to care for each other’s children more than other sibling combinations with nieces and nephews.
The Maternal Grandma vs Paternal Grandpa phenomenon, where maternal grandmas are more often the kinder, more invested grandparent while paternal grandpas are the least, is even more complicated. Sure, the paternal grandfather is still the nastiest one, but the maternal grandmother is no longer the kindest. Instead, the maternal grandfather, who shares 50% with all grandchildren, takes on that role. The chart above shows this relationship clearly.
Government
Their government is, like many, a form of democracy, but not similar to anything known on Earth. It is a semi-direct/representative democracy. They have a president, a parliament–unicameral at that, too–but how the representatives sit and are voted in differs from human practices.
I am personally not a fan of voting for individuals (as opposed to parties) as that too easily becomes a catastrophe and impossible to adequately represent the people at large, but for here, I decided to go for it with the combination of what I am about to tell. So, like classical democracies, they vote for a local person within a district which is redrawn through algorithms, no stinking gerrymandering! However, they don’t have an election every X number of years.
Instead, imagine this: the person sits in the parliament working and voting as they think the constituents want. Every once in a while, an algorithm will decide to use a bill as a check (in modern days at least). It’s always a bill scheduled to come up at a later date, far enough in advance that people can read up on it before the parliament votes for it. This bill is selected for said representative, as I said, to be a “check.” This means that every person within that representative district has to vote on the bill personally. This is where the direct democracy part comes in. The result of this vote is kept secret, and it uses the cognisphere (their internet) and the voting system contained within, until the parliament has their own vote to see. If the representative’s vote matches the constituents of the district, they are allowed to continue sitting without needing to be re-elected. They are working as the people want! You can imagine in the old days there was a locked box with paper votes in it that was only unlocked after.
Anyway, the “issue” arises if their vote does not coincide with the vote of the constituents of their district. At that point, their vote in the parliament is overwritten by the vote of the constituents, and it triggers an election for that district, which is then redrawn according to the rules and how nearby ones have been redrawn. The representative can be re-elected at this point and maintain their political position, but now they have to do an election if they wish to stay.
One thing, though, is that candidates who can show they have sufficient support, in terms of either people already voting for them in previous elections, or signatures, or through various methods that can be confirmed, who have a potential to win a district, are given money by the government to run their campaigns. So no fundraising is needed at that point and is even outright banned. You get that money, and that is all you get to use.
They also have a president which follows a similar system, except the president usually does not vote in the chamber's bills, but in those times when they are in one of those check votes, they join as a singular vote for that bill. The big difference is that the call for this goes to all citizens instead of just a small district.
A thing to note here is that TCCMC, as mentioned before, is a huge megacorp with a budget that can and would easily be able to influence a lot, since their budget rivals the state itself. However, they have what is known as the Three Thirds rule: ⅓ of TCCMC is directly owned by the government, another ⅓ is private citizens of Lotshutsi, the last ⅓ is allowed to be owned by people outside of their system. The thing is that anyone but the lowest of the lowest workers in TCCMC is barred for life from participating in Tshutsi politics. This is because the scope and power of TCCMC means you can have far too powerful friends, so if you are beyond entry level workers, then you, your friends, and your family cannot go into politics out of fear that it would risk polluting the government.
Flag
This is their flag! Simple yet different. I will explain the history of its creation as a worldbuilder. Buckle up, we are going for a ride! Nah, it is not that complicated. Me and my dear sister Anne sat discussing and no idea we could come up with even remotely good enough. So I did a thing Anne hates, partially. I went with ChatGPT to see if it could give anything!
And let’s be honest, those were EVEN WORSE! Divinum awful I can tell you. They broke literally every rule of vexillology! Do we have vexillology on the list, Anne? Anyway, it was awful, but one stood out with the words “Bridge the sides,” and the text afterward was way too detailed. Terrible, just terrible. But those words did inspire me for this very simple design. Anne first wanted it to be black and white, I didn’t because it not only looked ugly as shit, it looked way too much like they were dealing with human morality and bridging it in a symbolic manner like you humans do, and it just felt wrong.
But at that point it clicked for me that the trope orange-blue morality exists, and I thought “Let’s try that!” with a stripe across to be like a “bridge” to bridge people in their neutral capacity. The stripe is obviously green because mantises are often green. And square because, well, Switzerland, and it feels neutral in that all sides are equal.
Summa Summarum
So we are at the end! But the journey of my Ketshutsi is not over! Neutral countries or people are always fun to make because they can, through neutrality, have a disproportionate power in many ways, but one has to remember that neutrality is fundamentally an unstable position. Unless, that is, the people are willing to die by this principle and make certain that they are such a huge hassle to deal with that all bigger neighbours reconsider every thought on conquest.
Geography–or spatiography here?–can help in making you that much of a nuisance to deal with. Switzerland is mountainous and hard to cross without infrastructure, infrastructure they are more than happy to destroy to deny you access! The Ketshutsi have committed to this principle of neutrality, and their people are ready to die for their system. However, thanks to their master play on the interstellar stage as a neutral party, they are unlikely to be attacked.
They started out as such a shallow species once, but thanks to TCCMC and my beloved sister Anne, they have grown, and I love them so much. You can have such fun with different sex determination systems, as I started showing here but will more in a later post. I hope you have gotten plenty of ideas to explore on your own. As Tthakira would say, Trust inspires.
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Copyright ©️ 2024 Vivian Sayan. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as the taur body shape and haplodiploidy are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, specific ideas such as the discrete drive, the system, names, ideology, histories, modern culture, the TCCMC, cognichips, the cognisphere, flags, basically everything about the Ketshutsi, plus all language or exact phrasing is individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
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