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Overview

Honor's Respite, known by its inhabitants as Pelshad Mar'rez (literally translated as "The Place of Honor" in the local pidgin), is an independent frontier colony located near the midpoint of the route between Uueoa-Esa and Tau Ceti, in an otherwise empty sector. Prior to the arrival of their substantial Unathi population, it was mostly a near-derelict space elevator complex with a dwindling population consisting of entirely humans, often simply passed by on the way to either system. It occasionally acted as a rest stop for travelers, with the remaining colonists still holding high hopes for their colony despite facing significant adversity due to both a lack of numbers, skill, and morale. Though some who passed through took a liking to the quaint colony, few stayed for longer than a week.

Th'akh missionaries who left Moghes after the contact war introduced the concepts of honour and duty to the colonists of Honor's Respite, where they became popular due to helping them keep a level head in the face of severe hardships, all too common on a colony only beginning to redevelop into something resembling its former self.

Ancestor worship even plays a role in the colony, but in the opposite way of traditional Unathi religion: colonists wish to achieve honour and veneration in life so that their descendants will remember and worship them. This already existed in part due to the heavy reliance on tradition in the Human Frontier, with word-of-mouth stories and folk songs being integral to their culture, but the missionaries took it to a spiritual level, where colonists seek future veneration through service to the colony.

Individuals from Pelshad Mar'rez (often abbreviated to simply Mar'rez) are known as Mar'redi, while Mar'rezi refers to the culture as a whole.

History

Origins

The colony has a rich folk history, though most of its purely historical origins are lost. It originated as a meat farming colony on a relatively unimportant planet in the Frontier, and exported large amounts of meat to nearby systems. While the biodome below was self-sustaining and required little intervention, the space elevator leading to it was not. Due to the dwindling population and scarce resources, it was nearly impossible to maintain, and gradually fell into disuse: the colony was reduced to a shadow of its former self, at most a rest stop on the way to and from more interesting places.

Development

Following the contact war, a large ship of Th'akh missionaries and their families, numbering in total a few dozen, were headed to Tau Ceti for asylum as they faced heavy repression from the heavily-Sk'akh post-war Hegemony. They stopped along the way because their ship had broken down, and found that it was essentially unable to be easily repaired, leaving them stranded until they could find a way off.

They mingled with the local colony, at this point mostly subsisting off the food they brought. The missionaries and their families, numbering in total a few dozen individuals (almost the size of the colony's human population) didn't expect to be here for an extended period, however, and they quickly had to begin rationing supplies. The colony only had starchy plants and protein-less generated meat, which was filling but not nutritious for the Sinta, and at most helped them ignore their hunger. None of the ships that stopped by were large enough to take them, nor did they have the parts required to make their ship flight-capable again.

Eventually, after spending some time with the human colonists, they learned about the elevator: the ship engineer the Th'akh missionaries brought, a young, inexperienced Sinta woman displaced from her home after it became part of the Wasteland, discovered that at the expense of rendering their ship permanently useless they could salvage enough parts to repair the space elevator and access the bountiful biodome full of plants and cows.

It was at this time the Sinta group split. Several left on strangers' ships, paying or working their way to Tau Ceti or other colonies, some even heading back to Moghes. However, the vast majority stayed, enamored by the colony and its strange customs. The colonists shared stories of the initial settlers, as well as songs of their long-past history, while the Th'akh told them of their practices of ancestor worship that fit so perfectly with the colonists' own history and culture. They were enraptured by the idea of becoming so notable in life, contributing so much to the colony, that their descendants would remember them for time immemorial in folk songs, stories, and worship rituals.

The repair of the elevator, and the beginning of the permanent residence of the Th'akh missionaries (and their family members), was marked by a large feast. The colonists brought up the largest cow, slaughtered it according to Th'akh practices for consecrating food to be used in religious feasts, and every part of it was used: not even the smallest bit of offal was wasted, as the new Sinta members taught the colonists how to utilise every part of the animal.

Bones were eaten for marrow and used for stock (some even ate the bones themselves, after some preparation), while organs and offal were used to make a variety of traditional Sinta dishes. Muscle was made into jerky or, with fat and other parts, used to make sausage. The dish that had the widest appeal was their blood sausage, however, which used various staple crops as filler but contained enough protein and fat for even the hardiest Sinta to survive on. This made it an essential dish and even a core component of their culture, which from this point on placed a heavy importance on communal eating and resourcefulness.

The unusual gender composition of the colony combined with both Th'akh and Frontier ideas of the self, soul, and gender to form the unique concept of gender held by the Mer'rezi. These led to their odd associations between gender and job, based primarily off of the colonists who initially held those roles.

Modern Day

In the modern day, the colonists of Pelshad Mar'rez have developed a rich culture that is neither Sinta nor human: it is something in-between, possessing its own unique identity. Many Sinta joined the colony, seeking to escape repression on Moghes while not being under the control of the colonial government of Ouerea or joining a privateer company. Likewise, the spread of their folk songs and stories across the extranet led many descendants of the original colonists (whose parents, grandparents, or even great-grandparents had left the colony long ago) to immigrate to the colony in hopes of 'rediscovering their roots'. These individuals, Sinta and human alike, often only briefly stayed at Mar'rez before moving on to other places, but as some took up permanent residence at the colony its population grew. Presently, the colony is experiencing a cultural renaissance bolstered by their unique, syncretic religion and ideas.

Culture

Food

Due to having to meet the dietary needs of both Humans and Unathi, a unified food culture was the first thing to form. After the arrival of the Th'akh missionaries, blood sausages or goetta-like foods were frequently used in order to stretch out food supplies to feed everyone, while even parts of slaughtered animals that were typically discarded are used in a variety of dishes. Their blood sausage is perhaps their most notable cultural export, as it was spread by those travelling to or from Ouerea and Moghes who stopped by to eat.

Due to long work hours maintaining the colony, as well as the extremely rich nature of the food, members of the colony typically eat a meal at dawn and dusk (or the equivalent times in their Circadian rhythm) instead of three a day.

Language

The language used in the colony is a pidgin between Sinta'Azaziba and Freespeak; while the missionaries possessed some level of competence in Freespeak, they faced difficulty communicating complex cultural concepts. Freespeak vocabulary was adapted by missionaries to be easier to speak, and is mostly used for common words, such as those involving labour and daily life. Likewise, the human colonists adapted Sinta'Azaziba words to fit closer to Freespeak, using them to refer to cultural concepts with no clear Freespeak equivalent, as well as for art and culture. This adaptation led to changes like "Maraz", meaning 'Honor' in Sinta'Azaziba (as in the word Maraziite, often translated as "warrior of honour"), becoming "Mar'rez".

Gender Roles

Like traditional Unathi, they have strict gender roles, but which ones someone falls into is determined by their job rather than their identity, and that association doesn't necessarily conform to normal human or unathi ideas of gendered jobs. Medicine, botany, science, and engineering are considered feminine because they involve creation, life, and other 'feminine' things, while guards, service, cooks/bartenders, chemistry, mining, etc. are focused more heavily around societal obligations/duty to others; guards protect the colony, service roles are literally in service of others, cooks and bartenders are service roles but also directly opposed to botany in that they're specifically about changing or destroying things rather than creating them.

This cultural idea of gender applies to the humans in the colony as well, as it was influenced by their stereotypes of certain jobs based on the colonists who tended to hold them. Gender is descriptive rather than prescriptive, focused on the job someone does the most. This means that gender is usually static or at least stable, but transitioning between them is hardly uncommon, if difficult given the large amount of knowledge required across different fields. It also means that one can safely 'dabble' in fields associated with the opposite gender without being perceived as that gender. Due to socialisation being heavily based along gendered lines, most marriages are between different departments and serve to improve relations between them, or facilitate cross-department skill sharing.

The idea of cultural/societal gender in the colony doesn't correspond to sex or personal gender; if someone does a masculine job they are perceived as masculine, and the opposite for feminine jobs, regardless of if they're male, female, a Skrell, and so on. This specific conception of gender is thought to be derived from the 'mismatched spirit' concept in other Unathi religions, taken to an extreme that removes any correlation with body as opposed to aspirations.

A Mar'redi is assigned a gender in the same way children in other Frontier colonies are assigned a job or apprenticeship early on. In fact, it's almost the exact same, as one's gender is directly associated with their apprenticeship. Typically it either follows the parents' careers or simply fills whatever niche is needed most urgently: for example, if an engineer is close to retirement, a child will be more likely to be placed in an engineering apprenticeship. Occasionally, as a child matures, they find themselves more closely drawn to another role; in times of relative ease, many will go out of their way to help them transition to their desired job. Even during hardship, these individuals are met with compassion, although they may be unable to learn another job until the crisis resolves if their current one is in high demand.

This gendered division of labour discourages dilettantism but encourages branching out into related fields. It also provides a shared culture for those in a field outside of their job. Masculine jobs, for example, wear a large variety of clothes, as well as having meticulous grooming standards, and these things are commonly perceived as masculine.

This is thought to be because masculine jobs, like mining or being a colony guard, often require venturing out of the biodome. Needing to decontaminate clothes worn outside, as well as lengthy decontamination procedures, led to these occurring as a matter of necessity; eventually, they formed a cultural identity around these necessities. These even extended to service jobs due to professional dress standards, and to both chefs and chemists because of cleanliness standards and personal protective equipment.

Feminine jobs, however, by and large stay in the biodome. Even when they do get dirty it's either a part of their job (as with Botany) or they have equipment to deal with it (disposable scrubs/masks/gloves for doctors). A lack of lengthy decontamination procedures meant that they could get away with having fewer clothes, leading to less variety in their outfits.

There is a degree of androgyny to certain jobs, however. While engineers may venture out of the biodome, they work indoors just as much, and the cultural ideas around creation decisively shift it towards femininity. Despite this, engineers are still the most masculine of the feminine jobs. Likewise, service roles are considered the most feminine of the masculine jobs due to lacking EVA activity; their masculine association is primarily due to the cultural association with cleanliness/dress standards.