An Outline of the Quarian Pilgrimage Tradition
by Erisien C'Dira
Published 8.12.1978
[ed. This is the most recent outside analysis of the quarian pilgrimage, and while it remains accurate in many respects, most of the statistics are no longer accurate. See the post script for updates.
For the purpose of this article, 'year' refers to one Earth revolution of 1.56 Rannochai years, while 'day' refers to one Rannochai rotation of 32.3 Earth hours.
The Exile took place in the year 1895 CE.]
When a young quarian approaches adulthood, the traditions of the Migrant Fleet dictate that they be left on an inhabited world with a few days supply of food, a pressure suit to protect them from infection, and no other possessions. Their goal is to find work, to learn, and to gain passage back to their home with a gift that proves their value to their people. This pilgrimage is difficult and often dangerous, producing little material benefit for the quarian people. In his essay, I will attempt to discover the reasons behind the Pilgrimage tradition, as well as its origins, both historical and modern.
The Modern Pilgrimage
Young quarians are taught that the pilgrimage is a harsh necessity, important to maintaining the closed environment of the flotilla. They also learn that is a rite of passage undergone by every adult quarian in the fleet, from the High Admiral to the lowest waste treatment worker. That it is a test of their ability to adapt to adversity, and contribute to the survival of their people.
The statistics kept by the Admiralty Board, which oversees pilgrimage training and protocols, contradict this belief. Despite heavy focus on patriotism and loyalty, ten percent of Pilgrims choose not to return, and seven percent choose to leave after successfully returning. An estimated thirty-two percent of quarians die or are killed while away from the fleet, and eleven percent become trapped by poverty. The total population loss attributed to the pilgrimage thus approaches sixty percent, a staggering number that is not reported within the flotilla.
Equally, the per-pilgrim economic benefit to the Migrant Fleet is minimal. Preparation for a young quarian's departure education on alien cultures and traditions, technical and military training, and goods necessary for survival. The flotilla also sacrifices an average of five years of labor per individual. Counting only successful pilgrims, the average return on investment is estimated at seventy percent, approaching one hundred and twenty percent when gained experience is considered.
In most cases, a quarian begins their journey between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. The decision is left partly up to the discretion of the individual and their family, though a younger age is preferred. Some youths may decide to depart the flotilla at ages as young as sixteen, though that decision might also be made for them. Disruptive children, those with poor discipline, or criminal behavior can be cause for a forced departure.
Pilgrims are always left at a developed colony or transfer station, generally within two days' travel from the Migrant Fleet. In addition to their environmental suit, they are typically given an omnitool, and enough credits for about a month's accommodations. Their first goal, according to their training, is to find a source of income. Among established families, it has become common, though officially forbidden, practice to prearrange an 'apprenticeship' with a friend or connection made by an older relative. Others must simply leverage what skills they have in the local market.
The second step is to locate a suitable pilgrimage gift. Functional ships are highly prized, though reparable derelicts are acceptable. Spare parts, adaptable machinery, and even valuable raw materials are also legitimate gifts. Pilgrims have returned with favorable business contracts, or scientific and engineering advances. On one occasion, a pilgrim contracted a mercenary group to eliminate a pirate who'd been plaguing the Migrant Fleet. Most quarians take between three and eight years to collect a suitable gift.
Beyond that period, pilgrims become more likely to permanently settle in an alien community, or to join one of the quarian settlements that had been founded since the exile. This can have little to do with their success or not in finding a gift; life outside the fleet offers a more open environment, with greater access to fresh foods.
However, settlements offer an agrarian lifestyle, rather than a technological one, while choosing to live in an alien community can mean effective isolation from other quarians. The chance to reproduce, a connection to the land, and the desire for a greater purpose all contribute to a difficult decision.
This choice is not limited to pilgrims, either. Quarians born outside the Migrant Fleet may request a berth, if they present a valid gift.
Historical Antecedents
Though the Migrant Fleet's pilgrimage 'tradition' is a relatively new aspect of quarian culture, it draws upon many older sources in order to build legitimacy and meaning. The Kuula inhabitants of the Senai highlands on Rannoch frequently brought offerings to the mountain tombs of their ancestors, where they would pray for help from the spirits of the dead. The journey was a difficult four day walk over rough terrain, beginning at the trade city of Marazakar on Lake Kochu, with most dangers being associated with bad weather or the rare wild animal.
Over time, this journey became a rite of passage. A young quarian would undertake their first pilgrimage to the tombs on their own, during their sixteenth year, with an offering made by their own hand. If their ancestors were pleased, they were said to grant good fortune in all aspects of the youth's life. It is estimated that one in ten did not survive the journey, during the early years of the tradition, though that number declined as population and technology improved.
Similarly, the Inisazu, who dwelt in the coastal deserts of the Assuz region, and built their cities into sandstone cliffs carved by ancient rivers, sent young couples up the course of the life-giving waters. Yearly floods, fed by spring rains in the mountains, carried rich soil down from the Mansu steppes, and provided them a bountiful crop. They believed that the headwaters were a mystical source of fertility and that sex there—particularly virgin sex—was both pleasing to the spirits that inhabited them, and increased the chances of a successful pregnancy.
This Inisazu version of a pilgrimage never became a rite of passage, however. Instead, it was a way of blessing favored couples, particularly matches between aristocratic families. They would journey by boat, until further passage became impossible, and then continue afoot. They might be accompanied by guards, and were always attended by priests, whose job was to protect their virginity. At the end of the journey, the couple would enter the water at dawn, and have ritual sex, which they would repeat at dusk. They would continue having sex twice daily for at least three days, sometimes remaining until pregnancy was confirmed, or declared impossible by the priest.
In a second variation of the ritual, an older couple that had experienced infertility would make the same journey. Though typically of a lower class, and thus unaccompanied, they pilgrims were expected to abstain from sex during the journey, creating in them a 'symbolic virginity' that would appease the river spirits.
While the Inisazu civilization died out some thousand years before the Geth Uprising, the tradition remained. At the time of the Exile, the mountain lakes were a popular vacation spot for young couples from across Rannoch, with resort facilities including sex training and fertility clinics.
Perhaps the closest historical parallel is the Virazi tribes of the far northern Sanza tundras. Records of their oral and written history contain only mythological explanations of the tradition they called 'Walk of Ages[1]'. Arians of twenty years would be sent out from the tribe for one Rannochai year, starting in mid-spring, when a specific edible plant appeared. Carrying little more than a knife and some clothes, they were expected to survive on their own until the following spring.
While taught such basics as hunting, gathering, food preservation, and constructing shelter, survival required putting these skills into practice. Though accurate statistics are not available, visitors from other cultures recorded that between one half and one third of arians died, most typically during the short, turbulent winter. Those that returned with a gift—an innovation, supplies of food or skins—were considered desirable mates, likely fathering children with multiple elarians.
Females of the tribes did not often go on the Walk of Ages, not because they were considered inferior to males, but because they were more reproductively valuable. They might choose to go, if they felt it necessary to prove themselves to the tribe, but otherwise participated in all aspects of tribal life.
Origins and Evolution aboard the Migrant Fleet
When the last quarians fled through the Perseus Veil relay, the remains of their military high command knew that resources would soon become a problem. Food and medical supplies were already at critical levels. Damaged ships were being cannibalized rather then repaired, due to a lack of spare parts, further exacerbating the already overcrowded conditions aboard the fleet.
With no raw materials for trade, and no industrial base, the only thing of value available to the exiles was their skills and labor. Mechanics, pilots, and even marines were hired out to anyone who could pay, bringing in enough resources to begin retooling the Refugee Fleet[2] with the foundations of self-sufficiency. While costly and difficult, the effort made future generations aboard the Flotilla possible.
The modern pilgrimage can be traced back to those years. Among the refugees to who escaped the geth were children of all ages. Officially, the Admiralty Board argued that the pilgrimage was a harsh necessity. At the age of adulthood, which they considered to be twenty years, young quarians would leave the fleet for a period of one year. In theory, they would return with something to prove their worth; a ship, technology, even raw materials, or some specialized knowledge.
In reality, the benefits gathered by the first generation of 'pilgrims' did not outweigh the costs. The eldest and first to leave was murdered for the role his people played in 'unleashing the geth on the galaxy'. Others found lives outside the fleet, and never returned. Those that did rarely brought anything of enough value to make up for the loss of their labor, and the break in their education.
While the deaths and expatriations were common knowledge, the Admiralty Board never released an analysis of cost versus benefit of the new institution as a whole, or even by individual. Instead, they chose to extend the pilgrimage. A young quarian that could have returned after a year would not remain abroad until they recovered a gift of value. On the advice of their science advisors, they also required that returning pilgrims present their gifts to the captain of a vessel other than their birth ship, or their parents' birth ships. This would not only help maintain the genetic diversity of their people, but help prevent favoritism from overriding a captain's judgement.
This policy originally faced much resistance. It violated the primary religious beliefs of the majority of quarians, and tore apart their close-knit family and community units that were an important part of their society. The resulting struggled, known as the 'civic uprising', pushed back against the ongoing military regime, establishing the ship's captain as an elected position, and the Conclave as the dominant civil authority. However, it also established the pilgrimage as a civil tradition, rather than a military one. All further decisions relating to it were made by the Conclave, including occasional age adjustments, acceptable 'values' of gifts, and punishments for quarians who violated the established rules.
At the present time, pilgrims suspected of violating the rules are referred to the Admiralty Board, which can either establish a tribunal, or hear the case itself. Most cases involve a complaint by an outside government, but the Miren'Xen incident reached the Board's attention through outside media reports.
Another Conclave addition to the tradition is the Right of Return. Quarians born and raised outside the Migrant Fleet are considered to be on Pilgrimage, a decision made when the daughter of exiled traitor Shala'Vas arrived in a salarian frigate, and requested a berth. The Conclave established the Right of Return, and granted Mira'Vas' request, but left future decisions to the Admiralty Board.
Statistics
Income Sources
1. 5% of incoming resources come from pilgrimage gifts
a. 25% as salvageable wreckage
b. 2% functional electrical or mechanical components
c. 45% functional components(surplussed stocks)
d. 8% raw resources(extracted)
e. 20% raw resources(extraction needed)
2. 20% donated by non-quarian individuals or organizations
3. 20% sales of goods or services
4. 50% extraction and refinement of raw materials from unclaimed star systems
Pilgrims
1. 50% of quarians never return from their pilgrimage
a. 15% die, or are killed
b. 20% are trapped by poverty
c. 10% find their way to a quarian ex-pat community(mostly self-imposed exiles)
d. 5% find a place in a non-quarian community, and chose to stay
2. 10% return, but find life on the Flotilla too restrictive, and chose voluntary exile
3. 1% are convicted of treason, and exiled
4. 3% have their gifts rejected, and may try again, or accept exile
On gifts
1. 35.7% of all pilgrims return gifts that have a value(combined material and knowledge/skills) that exceeds the cost of the pilgrim's absence from the fleet(upkeep costs subtracted from estimated labor value, times their pilgrimage duration)
a. Pilgrimage-specific training, and post pilgrimage re-indoctrination, including cultural and technological retraining, reduce this amount to 17.2%
b. In 78% of pilgrimages, the estimated value of knowledge and skills learned exceeds that of any physical gift by more than half
About the Author: Erisien C'Dira studied sociology at the University of Vadenya, Thessia, and quarian history and culture at the University of Calest, Rannoch. She is best known for her collection of translated quarian poetry, published under the title 'Wind and Sand'. Currently, she is the only non-quarian living aboard a ship of the Migrant Fleet, where she is studying the effect of the Exile upon their culture.
[1] 'yzuda kulde il'daneer' Lit. 'child walking to adulthood'.
[2] The term 'Migrant Fleet' did not come into use until nearly fifty years after the exile, as new generations of quarians grew up aboard the fleet, with a new conception of themselves.
Note: I know, it's not the next chapter, but I have been messing about with it for some time. In my opinion, Bioware is far too quick to deal in absolutes, without putting much thought into how or why; there are no quarian communities outside the Migrant Fleet... why not? Did none of them ever consider leaving? Couldn't they find a small corner of some planet to live on? Even with the Council objecting to the resettlement of the entire species, this makes no sense.
Anyway, the next chapter is well under way. And no, I won't tell you what happens. See you when I figure it out. Leave a review; they're much appreciated.
PS. I understand the Admins here discourage lists, which is probably why there's no real formatting for them. I know it's a bit illegible. Forgive me.
