Bunrodea - TheGiraffe3/Endless-Sky-Creators-Handbook GitHub Wiki
Original text, by Amazinite, AKA Derpy Horse
NAVIGATION
ORIGINS
The Bunrodea as a species predate the Korath. At some point in the past (some time between the Hai civil wars and the Korath discovery of the hyperdrive) the Bunrodea sent a generation ship to a nearby system to colonize it, not much unlike how humanity sent a generation ship from Sol to Alpha Centauri. The expectation was that every decade a new generation ship would be sent to bolster this colony. After the expected amount of time elapsed for a new ship to arrive though, none was seen coming from the homeworld. A few years passed and still no new ship. The colony attempted to make contact with the homeworld, but no communications were ever received. It would take millennia, but the colony would eventually learn that something had caused the extinction of the Bunrodea on their homeworld.
Given that the expectation was that a new generation ship would arrive after a set period of time, the first ship that was sent was only capable of supporting so many people and wasn't designed to single handedly colonize a planet. The ship and its tools were able to be repaired and used to create more high tech equipment, but over time they started to degrade, if not from age then from a lack of experience; generations were born and grew up around the ship, and knowledge was passed on from the older generations, but the knowledge transfer wasn't always perfect, or maybe the one guy who knew how to work a tool or fix something died before the knowledge could be passed on. Whatever the case, as the years went on, more and more parts of the ship and its equipment became unusable, and the knowledge of how to fix any of it or make more was lost. Eventually it reached the point where the ship was good for little more than shelter.
With the ship now unusable and the future not looking very bright, the colony was essentially kicked back to the stone age and fractured from the stress. Some stayed with the ship and attempted to make use of what amounted to a tiny city that had formed around it, but others formed groups that went off into the wilderness around the ship, bringing with them what little they could.
The Bunrodea would grow on this new world, over time forming new civilizations and nations, climbing back up the tech tree, and always bringing with them the stories of how their ancestors had came to this planet from the stars and their real home was up there somewhere, just out of reach. Eventually, the Bunrodea would once again reach the stars, sending another generation ship to what was believed to be their original homeworld. To their surprise when this new generation ship reached the homeworld they met more Bunrodea there, for in the time it took them to reach the planet the Bunrodea had discovered the hyperspace lanes and how to use them.
PHYSIOLOGY
Your typical Bunrodean is a roughly human-sized praying-mantis like creature. They have four insectoid legs with a (slightly) more humanoid looking upper body. They have arms with appendages at the end that you would guess are fingers, but they also have retractable claws that can snap over their "hands" like a shell. I also wrote down that they have a bluish tone to them, but I'll leave the rest up to your imagination. The description of an individual Bunrodea may be very different though given the next section...
SOCIETY
Bunrodean society makes heavy use of genetic and cybernetic enhancements.
The worlds north of Paru Paru are the Megasa worlds. The Megasa are essentially the grunt workers of the Bunrodea, each individual being genetically engineered to fit a certain role, be that farmer or factory workers miner or sewer worker or what have you. Farmers may be capable of excreting fertilizer-like substances to help grow crops. Factory workers may have extra arms for working on an assembly line. Miners may be particularly resilient to blunt force trauma in case of a cave in and be capable of functioning for extended periods of time in low oxygen, high heat environments. Use your imagination to think of how the sewer workers are engineered. These genetic enhancements don't come without their downsides, though; the Megasa population is ridden with diseases, particularly in older age, on top of the fact that they don't live as long.
The worlds south of Paru Paru are the Erabu worlds. The Megasa are not allowed to enter these systems without permission, and the royal guard will shoot at any Megasa ships that enter them, for only those with the blessings of the royal family are allowed to enter, and the royal family sees the Megasa as impure for how heavily genetically editted they are. Given that the player has not received such blessings, the royal guard also start out hostile with the player. The Erabu make more use of cybernetic enhancements than genetic ones, although they do make use of genetic enhancements for more aesthetic reasons than practical ones. The Erabu are generally taller, live for significantly longer periods of time, and are the ruling class of the Bunrodea. The ruling class is split into a number of guilds, where guilds band together into alliances that rule over individual planets, and all answering to the royal family. The head of the royal family is known as the Erabumeta, and whoever that is has final say over anything that occurs within the Bunrodean borders.
Note that not all Bunrodeans fall into these two categories; many, perhaps even most, don't make use of either cybernetic or (heavy) genetic enhancements, and are akin to commoners in Bunrodean society, although light usage of either type of enhancement is widespread no matter the social class.
DESIGN
The original concept for the Bunrodea is actually from over four years ago now (now being Dec 26, 2021). In that time there's been a decent amount of things that have changed, but for the most part the major underlying themes behind them have remained the same. For example, all the Bunrodean ships are named after Japanese weaponry. Why that is? Well I was playing Red Alert 3 and I liked the sound of the name of the Naginata Cruiser, which after looking into it I found out was named after a Japanese weapon. Originally some of the ship names were Japanese weapons while others had other names of Japanese origin, but I eventually solidified on the Japanese weapons naming theme.
A couple years ago now I drafted up the location and number of systems that the Bunrodea would inhabit. This draft included all of the system names, planet names, and planet descriptions, but that draft has since been lost to time. In that original draft I had taken the Japanese naming scheme further and named the systems and planets using Japanese words, but that was all done through Google translate and frankly I don't trust Google translate enough to not make me look like a dumbass, so all system and planet names are now just made up words.
The only other remaining use of Japanese is in the names of the engine sizes, those being Chiisana/Chīsana (小さな), Nami (並), Ōkī/Ookii (大きい), and Subarashī/Subarashii (素晴らしい), which from what I could tell when I chose them translate into small, average/middling, large, and great/wonderful. I used more than just Google translate for those so I'm hoping they aren't wrong, but as you can tell I basically just took our existing "tiny, small, medium, large, huge" naming scheme in English for the sizes of engines and tried to find Japanese adjectives that fit the same naming scheme, that being that the next word up the size ladder describe something bigger/better than the last while always moving in one direction up or down the English alphabet.
If there's anyone who actually knows Japanese and can tell me if the words used check out then we should be good, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's some nuance with the exact words chosen that's lost in a direct translation to English, for example the fact that what I'm looking for is a descriptor of size but I'm sure the second and fourth names don't fit that bill, therefore making the use of the words I chose look odd. And honestly I'm not married to the naming scheme I chose for the engines and if anyone can think of anything else then that'd be good too.
Beyond names, there really isn't one single inspiration for the Bunrodea, and given the fact that I've been jotting down ideas on and off for these guys for so many years now some of the exact sources of inspiration have even been lost to myself because I either didn't write everything down or I did write something down that was lost at some point. For example, I'm pretty sure the name "Bunrodea" was suppose to mean something, but I have no idea what that is anymore.