Chitans

Chitan skin (credit below)

Chitans are an insectoid race usually born with wings, antennae, and compound eyes. Unable to speak human languages, they usually speak with the aid of a Vox.

Hundreds of years ago, Chitans were ruled by a puppet aristocracy controlled by AEKI, but violently revolted. Espousing a radical form of anti-corporate Abundantism, the Chitan Common Interest Government and AEKI were both presumably destroyed when The Visitors arrived.

Most of Pulse's current Chitan population are migrants from the Long Reach, a colony ship which arrived in 64AV, but has been forbidden from landing by the planet's powers, who are anxious about the possibility of a large Abundantist force on the surface.

In 73AV, a compromise was reached, allowing Chitans to immigrate to Intercorporate Development Zones like Pulse City (relieving the population pressures on Long Reach itself.)

While a few immigrant Chitans have found success far beyond what the colony could have provided them, the majority live in poverty, unable to afford the hefty fee to return home.

Routinely mistreated by C3PD and most other authorities, most Chitans have no one to rely on but their own. After the Clipper Riots, the Shortwing Community has become an influential force, especially among radicalized Chitan youth. Many of these youths speak "Chitter," a buzzing, slang-filled streetspeak which is difficult to understand even for those who are fluent in 'standard' Chitan.

## Physiology

### Vocal Structures and Vox Usage

Chitans have a radically different vocal structure to humans and require a Vox to speak most other languages. Many of them will attach the Vox speaker to one of their mandibles, or pin it to their chest.

To speak, they may type out/write specific sounds and phrases, or rely on automated translation of their speech. While any Chitan not "fresh off the ship" can understand the dominant human language of Pulse, most other species aren't educated in how to speak Chitan. Even those who can speak standard Chitan may be stumped by Chitter, the buzzing, slang-filled streetspeak used by poor Chitan youths.

The word Chitan is an exonym coming from their "chitinous" exoskeletons. The actual word Chitans call themselves is almost impossible for humans to pronounce.

### Eyes and Antennae

Chitans have compound eyes, which scientists believe may give them a natural advantage in tracking moving objects. Their antennae are roughly as sensitive as a human's sensory organs, and may twitch or droop based on a Chitan's mood.

### Wings

Chitan wings are similar to those of a dragonfly. While Chitans could fly on their homeworld, they can only glide in Pulse's atmosphere. Decorating one's wings was seen as a great status symbol, and the nobility were often referred to as "Glitterwings" for their lavish wing decorations.

During the aristocracy, criminals and prisoners would sometimes have their wings removed, both to humiliate the convict and to lower their chances of escape. Due to the medical malpractice which eventually led to the Clipper Riots, a sizable minority of Chitan youth had their wings amputated at a young age. Some Chitans bind their wings to fit into human-centric fashion, or for reasons of practicality.

**Sex and Gender**

While Chitans have physical sex, their perception of gender identity is almost totally alien to humans. Their use of human pronouns is mostly a matter of personal preference, though broodmothers are almost always gendered femininely.

A small number of "broodmothers" bear large numbers of children, which are then assigned to members of the community to act as parents. While "deference to the broodmother" still remains in Chitan society, broodmothers no longer serve as true nobles or chiefs. Instead, it's seen as a vocation worthy of immense respect, but not total obedience.

The descendants of Chitan defectors to AEKI still place a great deal of importance on their "brood" as an equivalent to a family or clan.

Long Reachers, however, tend to discount broodship and identify most strongly with parental figures and close friends, regardless of their biological relationship. Due to the relatively small population of Chitans aboard the Long Reach, broodmother insemination was managed by the computer system to prevent inbreeding.

Chitan relationships of deep personal intimacy exist, but in radically different ways to traditional Human or Jotun relationships.

## Naming Conventions

Since the Chitan language isn't possible for humans to pronounce, almost all Chitans adopt a more approachable "public name."

Public name choices can vary wildly, and some Chitans like to change them over time to better reflect themselves. Common styles include:

* Names which translate particular concepts the Chitan finds important about themselves ("Flower," "Peace," "Shimmering Orb, taught by Golden Skies," and "Brick.")
* Names which are directly stolen from other people ["Heavyweight Champion Arzad Alma," "Jessica Vanderbilt," "Amogus."]
* Names chosen purely because they make a pleasing sound. ["Celador," "Milos," "Murmuring."]

The descendants of Chitan defectors to AEKI almost universally have a "brood name" following their public name, and tend to have more normally "human" names. ("Joseph, Anansi's Child," "Charon, Laureen's Son.")

Even biologically female 'defector' Chitans never use the feminine pronoun, as that's reserved for broodmothers (who, before the Chitan revolution, were reserved their own special pronoun out of reverence.)

Due to the immense confusion of these naming systems, the easiest way to identify a particular Chitan for bureaucratic purposes is by including their identification number, which is kept in C3's population database.

In the actual Chitan language, Long Reach Chitans are usually given a name by their parents, but many choose their own names as they get older. Combined with their culture's muddy relationship to gender and pronoun choice, physical characteristics and social roles are a common way to identify individual Chitans (roughly translated, "John from Bay 17," "Patricia with the droopy antennae," and "Mike the Medical Doctor.")

## History

### Pre-Visit

For much of ancient Chitan history, they were ruled by a hereditary aristocracy, whose various factions controlled nearly business, commerce, and development on the planet and its handful of colonies. When representatives from AEKI arrived in 222 BV, they offered the nobility a chance to sign a trade agreement. The nobility, feeling the deal was lopsided in favor of AEKI, refused. Escalating tensions quickly led AEKI towards gunboat diplomacy, and their fleet was sent to invade Chitan space just a few years later. The Chitans were quickly outmatched and crushed, and a puppet Queen was installed, allowing AEKI to politically and economically dominate the planet.

Chitan space became a de-facto colony of AEKI. Megacorporate branch compounds were built -- hiring a few Chitan workers to extract the planet's natural resources. Employees of AEKI or its subsidiaries were subject to corporate law, not Chitan law, and were able to routinely mistreat their Chitan underlings. A number of aristocrats gained significant wealth and prestige by becoming collaborators for AEKI, but the majority were humiliated by the occupation, and found their businesses increasingly outclassed by a flood of cheap, high-quality goods from AEKI.

Uprisings, strikes, riots, and conspiracies sprouted up over the years, only to be put down by AEKI's "private security forces," until fortune turned to the Chitan side in 146 BV. AEKI became embroiled in a massive, interstellar war, and was forced to shift most of its security forces to the frontlines. A group of nationalist nobles led an insurrection to oust AEKI, and the angry masses of Chitan laborers and peasants quickly joined them.

Securing funding from AEKI's enemies, armed militias, backed by large swathes of unarmed Chitan workers, marched through the countryside and filled the cities.

In the Chitan capital, large mobs of workers surrounded government buildings as the aristocratic leaders of the rebellion tried to negotiate the surrender of AEKI-aligned forces.

AEKI, reluctant to pull resources away from the war, provided a series of cushy set of concessions to the aristocracy in particular, but refused to budge on the more populist proposals. After significant pushback from the more radical nobles, the deal was signed, and the results announced to the crowd outside.

Several labor leaders stood up and began decrying the terms of the treaty as insufficient. The crowd agreed, demanding concessions. In the confusion, someone shot and killed the noble who read out the results. Most Chitan historians believe that it was a member of a labor militia who had been freed from prison just months before.

Regardless, the mob flooded into the building. The guards fired on the crowd, killing several, but were beaten to death by the remainder. The collaborators were also viciously beaten, and only saved from death by a spontaneous demand from local leaders to avoid killing them without a vote.

The mob, facilitated by the leaders of local labor unions and militias, discussed what to do next. The crowd eventually agreed to imprison, rather than execute the prisoners, then tore off towards the Queen's palace. When they arrived, a large portion of the Chitan military defected, killing the Queen on their own initiative and swearing loyalty to the crowd. In the following days, hundreds of thousands of collaborators either fled the planet aboard AEKI ships or were imprisoned. Chitan workers spontaneously took over their former bosses' workplaces, while community leaders came together to form the Common Interest Government as the planet's new governing body.

Over the next several years, Chitan society was radically reorganized. Using whatever technology AEKI had failed to take with them, they mandated a universal standard of living and began turning their resources towards it. Drawing on the traditions of their trade union movement (itself based on the ancient communal traditions of their southwestern continent), democratic workplaces and town councils formed the bulk of the the government, with a central government using computers to calculate the redistribution of basic necessities between different areas.

Pro-CIG historians argue that it was a true democracy, where consensus decision-making ruled and most forms of poverty and oppression were eliminated. Pro-AEKI history argues that the CIG was a backwards, spartan government, whose anarchic style of administration was only able to survive thanks to the support of much larger galactic powers.

While AEKI's allies and the CIG's allies fought dozens of times over the next 150 years, both have presumably been destroyed in the catastrophic aftermath of the visit. In a twist of fate, one of the last surviving pieces of galactic media shows footage of AEKI trooped and CIG milita members fighting together to defend a space station overrun by Visitor forces.

### The Long Reach

During the Visitation, a Chitan colony ship called the Long Reach was traveling through space, only to be ambushed by a Visitor fleet. Sustaining serious damage, it nevertheless managed to escape. Realizing that their homeworlds were quickly falling to Visitor forces, the Long Reach's population decided to hide, limping through space for the next several decades.

In 64 AV, they stumbled onto Pulse by accident, only to be met by a wary collection of corporate and Star Legion warships. There is reason to believe that Brea Tarryl, AEKI's new CEO, advocated an outright attack on the Long Reach, but the rest of the planet's powers outvoted her. Instead, they agreed to form a hard-line in negotiations. Fearing the potential for an emboldened Abundantist uprising if the Long Reach formed a colony, they refused to let the ship land unless they agreed to adopt the corporate model or join an existing corporate state.

The Long Reach and C3 entered a stalemate for the next nine years. The Long Reach, still damaged from its encounter with the Visitors, now well beyond the population and mission lifespan expected by its designers, was forced to take increasingly drastic measures to stay afloat. Rations were halved, and transcripts of community meetings show the Chitan population becoming significantly more frustrated and hostile at their situation. Some have pointed to the actions of the Long Reach's administration as increasingly undemocratic due to these pressures.

After an Chitan mining droid was destroyed for being found inside AEKI's claimed asteroid field, war seemed inevitable. But a voting bloc led by the IEC was able to defuse tensions and broker a compromise: while the Long Reach would not be able to form a colony, trade relations would normalize and Long Reach citizens would be free to immigrate to the Intercorporate Development Zones.

AEKI tolerated the agreement to avoid a worldwide PR backlash, while the IEC optimistically argued it would "educate the Chitans on the superiority of the corporate system." The Long Reach, desperate to lessen the strain on their resources, readily agreed.

### The Clipper Riots

Some Chitans who arrived on Pulse - usually those with specialist jobs - were able to find good corporate work, living in far better conditions than they could have ever expected aboard the ship. The majority, however, found themselves stuck in an unenviable position - too inhuman to be picked for customer service work, and outclassed for manual labor by androids and cyborgs, they quickly became working poor or homeless, not even able to properly unify with the human lower classes. Those who wanted to return home to the Long Reach were usually unable to pay the fee to return (a deliberately high price, in order to prevent another population swell on board the ship.)

Corporate philanthropists set up charities to help the Chitan poor, including free clinics in Chitan neighborhoods. Unfortunately, the mostly human doctors didn't tailor their services well to Chitan physiology, and cultural/language barriers stymied treatment.

A scandal rocked the planet when, in 88 AV, journalists exposed endemic medical malpractice among several doctors at these clinics. Twisting the long-forgotten Chitan practice of removing a prisoner's wings to prevent escape, a number of human doctors removed the wings of young Chitan patients, reportedly to "help them assimilate into society." These procedures were overwhelmingly done without the knowledge or consent of the youths or their parents, who faced significant language barriers and lacked knowledge of the human-centric medical system. A few sadistic doctors even removed antennae or engaged in unethical experiments.

The outrage was swift and immediate. A race riot (later called "The Clipper Riots") erupted out of the Chitan neighborhoods. Chitans filled the streets, demanding action against the perpetrators and inserting a number of other Chitan issues into their platforms.

Sensing an opportunity, the "free androids" of the Synthetic Liberation Front joined the protests, with many droids going on strike to demand reform. While there were many sympathetic corporate leaders, a hardline eventually won out by those concerned that the revolt was merely a prelude to Abundantist agitation in the city. Police and corporate security forces surrounded the neighborhood and laid siege to it. Three days in, Band 25 of the Horn of Helgema dropped a bomb onto the top of a Chitan apartment complex, killing nearly a dozen.

The neighborhood was secured within the week, but smaller attacks and riots occurred for at least a month afterwards.

C3 specifically banned the practice of wing-clipping and arrested many of the worst of the implicated doctors, but most of the other reforms (especially those of the androids) were ignored.

In the aftermath, disaffected Chitan youth formed the Shortwing Community to provide resources without interacting with corporate charities. Operating as something between a street-gang, a mutual aid organization, and an activist group, rumors abound about the Community's activities and their relationships to other factions.