A lush Gaia planet of perpetual daylight, the Imperial home world was located near the galaxy’s center. The planet was largely unimpacted by the Fall but the planet’s abundance proved to be its curse. Cut off from the rest of the galaxy, innovation stagnated and inequality grew. And with it, the contempt of the privileged toward the underclass. Social mobility became stifled as public programs were cut and laws were enacted to essentially freeze the class system in place.
In a society with no technology or calamity to disrupt the existing system, it became locked in place; class became caste and caste became genes. In a span of a million years, the original Yinnari had become diverged into five distinct species.
Elites
The Elites were considered the most ‘beautiful’ and ‘upstanding’ of the Yinnari, at least according to their own opinion. In truth, they were hideous, decadent deviants who lived opulent lives in their mighty abodes, attended to by the other Yinnari species.
Servitude of the rest first became culturally engrained and then genetically imprinted. And so, even though the other species outnumbered elites and could easily overthrow them if they wanted, they still faithfully served their exploiters.
To further safeguard their dominance, the elites manipulated the other species against one another, dividing them into camps that opposed and despised one another.
Warriors
Tall, robust yet intellectually stunted, the warriors formed the military caste of the Yinnari civilization. Even in this socially stagnant world, the occasional conflict still emerged – be it disgruntled subservient species or an elite clamoring about a revolution ‘to liberate the masses.’
When not deployed for war, the warriors were tasked with “peacekeeping” at the home front – that is brutalizing non-elites.
In the elite-led culture, the warriors were glorified yet, as soon as one became crippled or too old to serve, they would be discarded from the ranks – forgotten, and left at other’s mercy.
Aspirants
Equally as deviant as the elites but far lower on the social order, the Aspirants served the cultural and bureaucratic needs of the elite and aped their mannerism and taste. They reveled in this illusion of sophistication, believing themselves to be on par with the upper echelons of their society, only that they were ‘materially embarrassed.’ As such, they arrogantly looked down on the craftsmen and the warriors, seeing them as uncultured and too inward. The elites were all too content to further heighten this divide between the castes and breed conflict, as “it made things interesting.”
Craftsmen
The craftsmen, or workers, of the Yinnari civilization were once a proud and revered caste, responsible for creating the technological wonders that had once made their society great. However, as the society became more rigidly stratified and stagnant, they were relegated to a lower social status, and their innovations were increasingly suppressed by the ruling elites. Nevertheless, they continued to fill a valuable niche as builders and manufacturers. Of all the successor species on this planet, the craftsmen have the least degenerated in their cognitive function.
Livestock
What is the worse sin? To hate someone or be indifferent to their suffering? With hate, at least, you acknowledge the other’s being. Such luxury, of course, was not afforded to the ‘livestock’ – once kindred, they were purposely bred and genetically modified to perform manual labor and become food. A mere commodity in the eyes of the elites, they were subject to inhuman treatment from birth to slaughter – utilized or consumed as one desired.
The true tragedy is that they were still people, possessing sapience. This trait was purposely left intact by the elites and prevented from disappearing. A simple animal was not ‘worthy’ enough for their consumption; It had to know and understand what would happen to it. For the elites, it made dining on them all the more inviting.
Present Day
A Bea’viskar mission arrived on the planet, having discovered potential signs of advanced life inhabiting it. As they landed, however, they found themselves on a barren wasteland littered with vast palace complexes, their inhabitants long since disappeared.
Digging into the planet’s history, the research team found that in the last years of the Imperials, even as their planet neared irreversible ecological collapse, the elites engaged in a competition of prestige, building ever larger and more grandiose palaces than their peers. Some of these buildings were left unfinished, indicating a sudden collapse of social order into anarchy. As their civilization disintegrated, each caste found itself too specialized to survive on its own and thus, quickly died off.
In a bitter twist of irony, the last of the survivors would be the livestock; in their final years, finally free of oppression. Yet their remnants, too scattered and too few in an increasingly inhospitable land, would not be able to save the species. And with their demise, too, would end the final chapter of the Yinnari.
This entry was created by community founder, Artnoob100.