The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space
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Bossman. Rachel. Tin Man.
Should I be worried about the fact that Saren just took out our talking plant on Feros? Because, not to be a dick or anything, but that seems like a pretty serious fucking setback. Your girl Shepard ain't impressing me much, Rachel - story on the news is she got her ass beat hard by Saren.
Anyway, figure out what the fuck you want me to do after we clear out of turian space - and make it fast, the spikes are getting antsy. Saren blowing up most of a Citadel Fleet has them panicking. Trellani messing around out here is going to eventually raise some eyebrows. Plates. Whatever. And I ain't exactly a nobody in turian space either.
News of a dead man showing up in turian space will get the attention of my old teammates if nothing else. Rachel knows there's bad old history between Kai Leng, Anderson, Sanders and I. Let's not let it bubble up, Bossman.
Now, I just spent six fucking hours on this document. I have no fucking idea who decided I should write this up, but I am sort of glad I got to do it, since understanding spike government is like understanding jazz. Any cocksucker can read a book and tell you some fancy ass words to describe it, but that don't tell you what it means.
Trelly suggested just combining this with the military stuff, but that wouldn't make the military part anything easy to reference. Trust me, the government is confusing enough. So, I've done my best to take a stab at puling my knowledge of the turian government together. Which is hard, because the shit is not anything like what we think of as government.
I'd say something here about how the spikes are not what you think they are, but I figure letting you read through the way they manage themselves should drive that much home.
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Turian Military-Government Mess
The turian government and the military are the same goddamned thing. One just manages the other. Do not think of 'government' as 'ruling the people'.
In fact, put any bullshit ideas of government at you know it right out of your head. Forget voting, or at least voting as you know it. Forget nobles, forget parliaments, and for sure forget fucking shit like the Corporate Court. Spikes don't have any of that shit and don't want it. Best way you can look at it is old style tribal government split with a bunch of overlapping but separate military chains of command. Yeah, there's voting, but you have to prove you are worth shit to have a vote, and the average turian never votes directly on the leaders of the race, or even the people who do vote on that.
The spikes government is formally called the Hierarchical Service of the People. On paper and in practice, every single turian from the age of twenty on up is a member of both the government and the military until death. Keep that shit in mind, bossman. All of them. The turian economy has businesses, but almost all of them have links to the military, or are supported by the military, or support the military, and the government is just a framework to make the military more efficient and to make sure the turians do a good job.
The biggest pieces of the government are pretty easy to lay out, the three claws – the army and navy command, the military support command, and the civilian oversight command. The last is basically the meritocracy, if you couldn't scan that on your own. These pieces are what make up not just the government, but … well, shit, pretty much fucking everything about the Hierarchy. It's the economy, the fucking schools, the meritocracy, the guys doing police works, the fuckers who operate the spaceport, the people who deal with the sewage, everything.
Keep it in mind, bossman. The government and the military are wrapped around each other and it's involved in literally everything. The only kind of war spikes get is total war. Their government is built around making sure they can do it.
Government : Wards, Districts, and Colonies, Colonial Clusters, Family Holdings and Clan Holdings and other Bullshit
These are the basic chunks of turian real estate. There were once, I guess, spike nations, but they all got blown the fuck up in the Burning. Also, tell Trelly that asking openly about the Burning is a really stupid idea. They don't like talking about it.
The basic structure of the Hierarchy is fifteen colonial clusters that surround Palaven (and the handful of small chunks of Family and Clan shit that surround Palaven, more on that later). A cluster is formed of anywhere from fifteen to eighty something colony worlds and start-ups. This can also include habitats, mining stations, and the like, but those aren't considered 'colonies'. They are basically treated like districts attached to the nearest colony.
Every colony is broken down into districts (literally, 'divided by claws of bitterness') and wards (literally, 'nests of home and hearth).
A ward is basically a town or city, or small group of settlements. Anywhere from two to six of them make up a District. Most colony worlds have five districts, just like Palaven does. Wards are where most turians focus their attention. They have a feeling for their colonies, for their districts, but the ward is home to them.
Think district as 'state' like in the old US or 'province' in Europe and you get the idea. Bigger focus, bigger shit happening. All of this leads to the colony level. Colonies are grouped into clusters. In theory, the fifteen clusters plus Palaven equal the Hierarchy.
Ta fucking da. No, I'm not listing the fucking clusters. It's a goddamned report, not an atlas.
Of course, the spikes can't be that simple. Big Families and Clans usually own a lot of property, and they come in on the District level in most cases. Smaller families dominate wards, and some of them group together in these things called Congrexes that basically act like a bigger Clan or Family owning a district. More on that shit later.
The way the whole thing is supposed to work is simple. Wards select Autarchs by direct voting, with a simple majority. All the Ward Autarchs in a District select a District Autarch in the same way, simple majority. These guys in turn all gather together with the Families and Clans on that colony to select a Colony Primarch. Again, it's just simple majorities at this stage of the game, nothing super serious. Yet.
Colony Primarchs meet and argue over which one of them is the most valorous, baddest, whatever, and select one of their number to be the Cluster Primarch. Meanwhile, all the Families and Clans in the cluster select a Cluster Autarch, who advises the Cluster Primarch. This is where shit turns nasty and colonies blow the fuck up, because a lot of times colonies won't agree on who should be running the rest of them, and the meetings turn into goddamned brawls. Sometimes the delegates fight it out with axes and singing, other times they have contests, and sometimes, well, it just turns into a fucking brawl.
They usually get drunk as fuck during this mess too, which makes it a great time to not be anywhere near but also great entertainment to watch as totally shitfaced turians try to make a speech. Why can't our government do shit like this?
Every decade or so, the Cluster Primarchs all meet at Palaven. The people of Palaven vote different – given that Palaven is so fucked up ecologically, everyone who could get the fuck away did, and the ones left on the planet are the ones who have the money and influence to buy up housing and shielding to survive. Shockingly, that means most of the population of Palaven is Families and Clans.
So Palaven basically has a huge goddamned mess of Chieftains from each Clan and Autarchs Family leaders meeting in this big ass circle-jerk of a voting process. They go through all the Cluster Primarchs assembled and pick the top three, based on the populations of the Clusters and the relative badassery of the guys in question. Finally, they pick one of their own Primarchs to represent Palaven.
The Primarchs brag about who has the biggest dick, how badass they are, how many krogan they've killed with a single shot, how many chicks they've banged, all that shit. Their Autarchs go around the Palaven Chieftains and Autarchs, trying to sway opinions to their guy and away from the others. Given that no one from Palaven really wants to bow down to some other cocksucker from Palaven, ninety percent of the time the Primarch chosen is from off-world.
Then everyone votes again on who would be the bestest Primarch – all the Cluster Primarchs get a vote, so do the Autarchs, so do the Praetors (more on them later) and then the Palaven Chieftains and Autarchs.
If at least half of the group agrees on one Primarch, he becomes the High Primarch and leads the entire race. If, on the other hand, the vote is split with no one in the lead, the four wannabes square off in ritual combat and literally duke it the fuck out, unarmed and going for submission. The Primarchs are supposed to be careful not to kill each other in this fight, but it has happened a few times in the past.
Whoever is the last one standing gets the office – if no one makes it, they start the entire bullshit over again. The rest are then sorted out by their relative rank in the meritocracy, military rank, and general badassery.
The current guy, Primarch Fedorian, has lost the past three voting rounds, but he's eight and a half fucking feet tall and is a bodybuilder and martial artist. The last time it went to the claws, seven years back, he literally clawed one guy's arm right off and beat the other two down with a single punch to each, hitting one guy so hard his plates splintered and put out the guy's eye.
That means, yeah, he's been beating his way up the leader of his people for the past three fucking decades. Even though most of the Clusters hate the guy, everyone grudgingly admits he's not going anywhere unless you hit him with an orbital bombardment. It doesn't hurt that he is the first Praetor to become a Primarch in the past thousand fucking years.
Primarchs, Autarchs, Chieftains, and Praetors and Assorted Badasses
So, the basic figure in turian government is the Primarch. A Primarch is basically a boss, dominant fuckers who don't take shit off anyone. You have to get pretty damned far up the military (and thus the meritocracy) to become a Primarch – basically the equivalent of a rear admiral or major of marines.
Given the retardedly huge size of the turian military, they have a LOT of fucking guys at that rank, but it's still a position worth respect. As I said before, big Primarchs are selected based on voting from groups of little Primarchs, who are in turn selected by Autarchs.
A Primarch is...fuck. A lot of things. It's hard to explain until you've gotten up in one of their goddamned rallies to make it all fit. It's like the quarterback, mixed with a rock star, mixed with a movie star. And yet it's different. The Primarch is the very definition of the alpha male, the biggest dog in the fight. None of them are like human politicians, stuffy fuckers in a suit with some slick talk. They have to be impressive and inspiring, lead by example and by sheer balls, in order for turians to follow them.
A Colony Primarch is a hard-core baller, no doubt. Turian bitches throw themselves at them, turian businesses love giving them jobs, and turian military units fight harder when their Primarch is around. They aren't much like politicians at that level, more like a mix of local celebrity, loud-mouth activist and street preacher – they don't govern the colony so much as inspire it. A lot of the details are instead handled by the ward and district Autarchs.
A Cluster Primarch, on the other hand, is the very definition of a no-good bastard. Most of them don't wear face-paint so they don't piss off other colonies in their cluster, but that means they don't really represent the colony the way a Colonial does. Cluster Primarchs try to be everything to everyone by doing lots of brave (and fucking stupid) shit, by making lots of boring ass speeches and by listening to the Colonial Primarchs.
They have a hard job, given that they can't connect as well to their subjects, and so they have to do a lot of work in actually trying to make sure they do the best they can to address the issues in their cluster. In recent years, a lot of these guys are just compromise candidates, and these days half of them are reluctant to go to Palaven for the primary selection because Fedorian will beat their asses into paste and they know it.
Autarchs are like mini-Primarchs, but with some differences. For one, the meritocracy requirements to be one is a little lower, as are the military rank requirements, more like a colonel or commander. Second, Autarchs have a different vibe than Primarchs, more administrative and I guess , uh, like Senators and shit. They aren't pencil-neck losers – just less in-your-face badass than a Primarch.
Again, spikes are screwy, and I'm doing my best to pick words that get across the closest humans come to this – human senators don't hold open-air arenas to beat the shit out of political opponents to demonstrate how badass they are. I'd pay good money to see that, come to think of it. It'd be great fun to see one of those corn-fed Eden Prime types choke the shit out of some of those lisping autistic assholes from Mars.
Anyway, Autarchs are also involved in writing laws, coming up with regulations and procedures, and shit like that. They do most of the hard admin work, especially in terms of local governance and peacekeeping at the ward or district level, whereas Primarchs just make decisions and puff up their chest a lot. Most Primarchs who aren't stupid will have at least one Autarch to advise them.
Autarchs can be elected, but the areas under control of some of the big Families have Autarchs picked by the Family in internal selections. Lots of arguments and fights over this shit, as an Autarch from the Families doesn't necessarily meet the meritocracy or military rank chops of a real Autarch, and gets less respect.
Chieftains are the leaders of the Clans, and basically act more like judges than anything else. The turians don't have a judicial system – the local clans Chieftains meet with the cops every week and decide the punishments for anyone breaking the laws. More complex stuff, like business law and anything to do with aliens, is done by a big meeting of all the Chieftains that happens every time a new Primarch is elected. Chieftains work with the local Autarchs in writing laws, as the Clans are big on remembering cultural bullshit and the laws of the past.
For the really complicated legal shit, they hire volus lawyers. Fuck.
Being a Chieftain is pretty heavy – the Chieftain has meritocracy chops right up there with a Primarch, but only requires military rank equal to an Autarch. Chieftains are selected by the Clans by – guess what – more ritualized combat, but also by a special set of Trials called the Trial of Memory, where they have to prove to their peers they are an 'exemplar of the Clan's Founder and his principles' or some shit. Chieftains are usually the most surly, grumpy and hard to deal with spikes you'll run across, some of them have forgotten it's not the goddamned Unification Wars anymore.
The last figure you hear tossed about is that of a Praetor. When it comes down to total badasses among the turians –
No no no, fuck that.
When it comes to total raging badasses in the goddamned galaxy, nothing tops a Praetor.
They get their rank by going completely the fuck through ALL the military ranks to the very highest possible, something like Admiral of the Red or Lord General. Keep in mind that most people clawing up the meritocracy will get promotions that skip a few military ranks here and there – not these guys, they want to earn every rank. Same thing with the meritocracy – they won't take more than one tier at a time.
They get tested into their final meritocracy tier by passing a special Trial called the Trial Supreme that's a double-dose mix of the ALL of the other trials, plus taking down a goddamned vakar unarmed and with no fucking armor.
First, go read about the trials. Imagine doing all of that shit in one day. Then, you fight a vakar.
Since Trelly skimped on the description, I'll give it justice. It's a mutated cross between a giant bear and a severely pissed off lion somebody tried to drown in eezo. More than ten feet long and almost seven feet tall, with plates six inches thick, claws two feet long and harder than iron, and a mouth that can bite a krogan in half. Spits poison up to thirty feet away. Oh, and it's fucking biotic, too. Uses them to increase it's speed. It has a ground running leap that can hit speeds of 110 MPH and over ninety feet.
There's footage of a pack of them tearing apart an armored column, batting a APC around like a cat playing with a oversized ball of yarn before peeling the thing open and eating everyone inside. More footage of three of them going after a turian reinforced patrol and killing half the spikes before they were brought down with lance cannon fire.
When the turians found a thresher maw on a planned colony, their answer was to dump twenty of these things at it, which literally tore it to bits. It's like the mascot of the turian people – it's on their money, lots of curse words, hell, even some families (Halvakar, Vakarian, Vakarenthus) named themselves after it.
Anyone who wants to be a Praetor fights one of these things.
In single combat.
On foot.
With his fucking claws and wearing not a piece of goddamned armor.
The only way to kill one without weapons or armor is … well, nuts. Somehow evade it's spring and leap, and then do one of your own. Dodge it's bites and claws, clamber up behind the thing, slash away at it's tendons through the plating to hamstring it, then cut at it's arteries and hope it bleeds out before it flings you away and tramples you into paste. A single hit will kill any turian trying it. Seen footage of that, instant blue chunky salsa.
Bossman, remember the fucked up failed hit on Admiral Tharaxis that I bitched so much about when I found out? The one where a single turian in plain clothes killed an entire strike team of six Shadow Cell assassins by himself with a kitchen knife while lecturing to his kids on the best way to kill humans, then went right back to cooking breakfast? The one who sent us the fucking skulls of said assassins, painted with his Clan colors, carved into drinking cups with a crate of turian brandy, and a note saying 'send more next time'?
Yeah, that was a Praetor.
No one, not Primarchs, not the Council, not asari matriarchs, not even fucking krogan give Praetors shit. There have been less than a hundred in the past ten thousand years, and everyone of the them ended up being the Founder of a Clan. They are the pinnacle of what it means to be a turian, an iron hard bastard who just refuses to fucking die. Praetors are all 'retired' and don't have to do a fucking thing in turian society, since they've proven they're the best, but they can walk into any level of government and just start barking orders and are instantly obeyed.
Praetors have the right to act like a Cluster Primarch if they like, or an Autarch if they want. They have a vote on who gets to be the High Primarch and the right to challenge the High Primarch at any time they feel like doing so if they think he's a fuckup. Except of course, for now, the High Primarch is also a Praetor.
The three living Praetors at the time (Fedorian, Tharaxis, and Invectus) didn't take part in the First Contact War because it was beneath them. In fact, Fedorian became Primarch because he got pissed at how stupid the Primarch at the time handled it, challenged him, broke all his arms and legs, and then tore his mandibles off.
Bossman, I like to consider myself pretty good. I tagged along on some pretty crazy bullshit, fought in some pretty badass places. Went up against some mean fuckers. Hell, took out an entire STG cell. I don't usually back away from any thing or any one.
But if you ever fucking order me to take on a Praetor, me and the Dog are going our separate ways. That's goddamned suicide.
Government : Ward, District, Colonial and Cluster day to day shit
On the Ward level, most governing is done via a mix of the Ward Autarch and the Ward military commander. They work together to make sure things get done – the Autarch walking around and checking things out, and then referring them to the commander to liaison with the appropriate military forces. Autarchs usually have a group of old retired turians they use as a sounding board, who will go out, get drunk, chase younger turian girls, and then figure out what new roads or schools or waterworks are needed. There's no real 'structure' here, most of the time it's run out of the Autarch's house or the main Ward military facility.
At the district level, it's more of the same, but local businesses usually get involved. Also, sometimes the local military commanders will use whatever the district needs as training evolutions or punishment details – lots of hard physical labor and dirty jobs get handled that way. Districts spent most of their time actually coordinating with other districts, to avoid replicating effort and shit like drawing too many resources from the military at the same time. There might or might not be at least one planning office used, but nine times out of ten the various Ward Autarchs and the District guys just meet at one of the vasthur (the free-for-all hangouts) and thrash out some plans before going to the military and laying it out.
The colonial level planning and governance actually has real offices and staff, mostly military turians involved in engineering and logistics. The colonial Primarch will usually let the Autarchs handle the details while he drums up support or rallies people to help out with planet-wide projects. Also at the colonial level, the colony chieftains will gather up and handle criminal cases, with an appeal to the Colony Primarch the only out from whatever punishment they hand out.
Planning at the Cluster level is a coordinated effort between professional planners in the Hierarchy, suggestions from the Primacy's Circle (actually, the Circle of Coordination within the Primacy Circle) and Cadre Circles, and weekly meetings via holocall between colony Primarchs and Autarchs.
If it seems like I'm skimming over details … I'm not, Bossman. Turians are really laid back in terms of governing. Most of it can be handled by the chain of command, and all the civilians really have to do is point out issues and shit gets done. There is almost no bureaucratic runarounds, and certainly no political bullshit except at the Cluster level. Remember, they tend to look at this as 'we're all in it together' and will work long stupid hours to make sure everything goes smoothly.
It sounds disorganized the way I describe it, but it isn't. The spikes are organized as shit by nature, and they know what needs to get done – the government at lower levels just puts all the lists and decisions together and sends them off at once for efficiency's sake.
Government : The Primacy Circle
Although they never really use them in their buildings or anything, turians sure do like circles. Better translation would be 'nesting-gather-rounds', but that's just stupid sounding.
The Primacy Circle is composed of the High Primarch, the highest rank of active duty generals and admirals, and the fifteen Primarchs of the Clusters. They act as the high military command, and everything in the fucking Hierarchy drips down from there. It isn't so much a Joint Chiefs of Staff type thing as a disaster and coordination type thing.
It is NOTHING like any kind of military command chain you expect to see. It's what Minsta would sniff at and call 'organic', what Trelly would smile at and call 'elegant', and what I spit at and call 'goddamned scary'.
Ever kick an ant hill? You get the idea.
The Primacy Circle has a lot of levels. The lowest are the Circles of Awareness, which is basically a pack of tactical officers and comms specialists, monitoring tons of turian scout ships all the fucking time. These are broken down by cluster and are overseen by military officers answering to the Cluster Primarch. This is how turians prepare for problems. They monitor the fucking colonies, the borders, the trade routes, everything. This also includes monitoring pretty much all communications in and out of the Hierarchy as well as the take from hordes of drones hovering over every Hierarchy world and every remote colony they have. Certain things tend to trigger VI's monitoring the drones and other intelligence to alert an operator, who brings the stuff to a commander, and to the Primarch. In some clusters, there are even little mini-circles that work up towards the bigger Circle of Awareness for that Cluster.
Above this are the Circles of Reaction. Admirals and their planning staffs make these circle up, each one commanding one of the many turian reaction fleets that are just waiting to smash the fuck out of something. When a Circle of Awareness kicks them an alert, they send out a turian force to isolate the issue and then direct all known information upwards. Again, this is on a Cluster Level. Usually there are ground forces, engineering staff, even transports assigned to each one of the Circles for a given cluster.
The Circle of Coordination is the next one up, which is lots of intelligence assets, ties to the Cadre Circle, and packs of turian officers trying to make sense of the piles of data and information coming in. When the Circle of Reaction sends out a force, the Hierarchy coordinates across clusters at this level. They begin moving troops, preparing supplies, getting fuel and ammo ready, sending out engineers to bring vehicles online. Reserve units are kicked off. The clusters all go into a state of readiness and district forces are briefed. This circle operates over the entire Hierarchy, given that it's job is basically to unify all the data and present it to the big boys.
The highest Circle is the Unbroken Circle. The High Primarch and the fifteen big boy cluster Primarchs sit on this Circle, along with the highest ranking generals and admirals. They coordinate large scale fleet and troop movements, and are also the main source of diplomatic … stuff … that happens with other races. Most of the Unbroken Circle's job is coordinating the turian fleet and the portion that serves the Council, and parceling out resources and ships to the colonies. The Circle never all assembles on Palaven, as it's most important task is to ensure there is always a High Primarch. If the current one is killed, they are all ranked in order of ascent, and the next one automatically steps up to take the place of the High Primarch until the next selection. Even if somehow the entire group gets wiped out at once, each has a designated backup to step into place if they all die. The backups are given one part of a code-phrase that the central command VI's use to authenticate them. There is no way to decapitate the Hierarchy.
That's why it's called the Unbroken Circle.
The High Primarch and his staff operates out of the Spire, a gigantic armed fortress thing on Palaven that makes the Citadel Tower look like a fucking treehouse. They basically planted a dreadnaught into the ground and built up a fortress around it – this thing has more guns and GTS batteries than it does fancy offices. It's surrounded by a damned city worth of administration buildings, tax offices, military planning facilities, and the biggest military base and garrison in the galaxy- six million turian soldiers protect this place.
The Primacy Circle isn't really about 'governing' so much as coordinating. There isn't a legislature – the High Primarch's staff reviews various laws from the Clusters and decides if they should apply to everyone or not. There's an entire section set aside for interactions with aliens, but it's more about (again) coordinating shit so that they present an even, calm front to anyone who isn't turian.
The High Primarch also picks out a handful of Chieftains from the biggest Clans and usually a couple of Palavanus types to form the Court of High Law. These guys are the closest to a real judiciary the turians have, reviewing cases from all over the Hierarchy. More importantly, when a turian is formally exiled and stripped of his ranks and standing in the meritocracy, these guys are the ones who look over all the evidence and decide what to do.
Other than that, there's not much to the Primacy Circle. Obviously, you have to be pretty far up the meritocracy to even work for the lowest parts of the Circle, and every turian considers working for the Primacy Circle a big honor.
There's one other piece of the Circle – the Roster of the Chosen. This is a list of the turians selected to serve as Citadel Councilor and Citadel Ambassador. The ambassador is always, without fail, a Palavanus Never changes.
The Roster is mostly made of retired, older Primarchs and the occasional general who can talk real good along with kicking ass. The Councilor is usually the hardest-ass bastard they can find who isn't already a Cluster Primarch or a Praetor. The one they got now, Sparatus? FCW vet, General who was one rank below Praetor, and had twenty years in the fucking Deathwatch.
Voting is done by simple majority on a slate of twenty candidates – one put forward by each Cluster Primarch, two by the Palavanus, and three by the High Primarch. The Primacy Circle votes on who is the best choice, then ranks the rest by a combination of meritocracy rank, military rank, and ability to communicate and interact with aliens. Usually, whoever the Palavanus pick is rejected.
The Councilor is in a funny position. On paper,he is nearly the equal of the High Primarch. In practice, he usually attempts to act much like a cluster Primarch does – pleasing as many as he can while trying to stop the grays and blues from fucking over the spikes any harder than they already are. He tends to 'take suggestions' from the High Primarch and 'follow the instructions' of the entire Circle.
Government : The Cadre Circle
The Cadre Circle is composed of the oversight for the various military functions that are split between military use and public civilian use. These are called Nests, and include Engineering, Transportation, Education, Civil Defense, Civil Security, and Land Management. These work hand in hand with turian businesses to provide essential services to the people while also allowing civilians to help out the military.
I can't find a good example of this thing in human culture, except maybe some shit like Disaster and
Emergency Command. It's more than just joint military-commercial bullshit, it's an entire command structure that organizes civilian efforts to support the military, military efforts to support the civilians, and often is a big part of ward and district governance.
The Cadre Circle is mostly run by non-combat senior officers and retired civilian versions of the same. They are broken down into ward-level, district level, colony level and cluster level sub-circles, each on focusing on the needs of that Nest for that area. Rather than relying on some kind of big fat logistics command center, the Cadre acts as a ... whatchamacallit, clearinghouse.
Heh, that's a good word. Trelly can probably explain it better, it works a lot what Minsta described the Asari Republic as doing, but with less sitting around and more doing shit.
Spikes in big biz can just requisition what they need directly if they're high up enough the meritocracy. A lot of turian business aren't even real companies, but rather distribution chains for smaller actual businesses – they just handle working with the Cadre Circles. Likewise, local military officers are tied into the Cadre when they need local labor or civilian support, which gets pushed out as a contractual request that many different businesses or individuals can chip in and help out with.
It's totally different than the way we do things. Compare.
For us, lets say a town needs a new dam because of flooding from a river. First some bastard had to get flooded out, then complain to his mayor. Then the mayor had to get surveys done by the city, wait for that to clear, do some kind of estimate of costs, run a campaign to raise bonds or however the fuck they pay for it, then bid the shit out to the lowest contractor, who will subcontract it out. Then work starts, maybe, and finally the dam is built months the fuck later.
Turians? They need a dam, they put in a request. An Autarch checks it isn't full of bullshit, they send out the request, bam. Work starts the next fucking day. On top of that, engineers go and build up the riverbanks so the shit doesn't just become a problem for the wards downstream. Costs are just absorbed by the military, mostly. This great for the local economy … but the taxes are a bitch.
Anyway, the Nests are as follows.
Engineering is the turian combat engineering group, which also handles heavy construction. Businesses often provide logistical and supply support – the military may build a new dam, but turian businesses will supply vehicles, cement, extra workers, that kind of thing. On a ward level they help people build their homes, run the hardware and repair stores, offer classes in home fortification. On a colony level they supervise businesses that build larger public works, and usually run the power grid. On a Cluster level, they are also in charge of water supplies, demolitions, and building new cities from scratch. The Engineering nest is also in charge of creating weapons and armor, and setting the standards for such.
Transportation maintains ground-car and mag-lift train lines, builds and operates airbases and spaceports, and regulates shipping. Businesses take up the more mundane aspects, like customs, vehicle production and the like, but there is all kind of back and forth between the civilian and military half, since all vehicles are military ones. The civilian ground-car most turian civilians use is a combat-capable scout car minus the heavy armor and weapons. This allows civilian militia to rapidly up-armor and have large amounts of light combat vehicles. On a ward and district level, they do most of the road building and also operate training pilots and drivers. On a Cluster Level, they coordinate and regulate shipbuilding codes. Transportation works closely with the navy on shipbuilding, and with the infantry in making gunships and armored vehicles.
Education runs the schools, which are really preparation for turian boot-camp and the military. Private civilian schools in some non-military technical applications work closely with them, as do the universities, to ensure unity of teachings and thought. The education department also runs what passes for turian psychiatric help, with some civilian assistance. Mind you, the turian idea of a shrink is a member of the opposite sex who will fight you, fuck you, then go out drinking with you and make you talk until you cry it all out. Education also works with the Cadre Circles on teaching turians the proper methods of determining if someone is ready for promotion, signs of stress that indicate a spike is in over his head, and shit like that.
The Civil Defense branch is mostly turian damage control engineers, firefighters, and some transportation elements. The turians keep mothballed mega-freighters on every colony world with enough capacity to evacuate at least half the population,without exception. The CD group guards and keeps these updated, as well as building local fire units and emergency shelters. They operate the meteorological services to predict weather and work with civilian units to create evac programs and haptic programming on educating the public on what to do in case of emergency. They are also in charge of coordinating the defense militias, which are more for evacuating civilians and stopping pirates than heavy fighting.
Civil Security is basically a thin veneer of military command over the turian Private Military Corporations. The only mercenaries that have contracts with CS is the Turian Division of the Blue Suns, the Turian Division of the merc units Valor Unyielding and Outcasts For the Cause, and oddly enough, Eclipse.
Bossman, I do not even want to think WHY the turians would hire crazy blue skanks under that lunatic bitch Sederis to do anything like police work. More than likely, they hire Eclipse to hunt down and smash rebellious colonial movements.
CS basically runs a two-tiered police system. The first tier, the varastim, are pretty much like human cops – they write speeding tickets, stop druggies, fight gangs, crack down on drug use, etc. C-SEC was modeled off of them, so their tactics are pretty cut and dry. These guys mostly work on the ward and district level, but occasionally do coordinated work inside a Cluster.
The other tier of the police, the creepy 'justice brigades', is what you get when Turians take a look at our Commissars and the asari Justicars and say to themselves 'I gotta get me some of that'. The thasvar are fucking terrifying in a way that actually makes the Black Hats and Red Skirts look fucking humane.
Thasvar are employed when turians commit acts of terrorism against the state, or when more skilled turian criminals – such as outcasts – that are beyond the power or reach of the military police to combat become a threat. They are not standing forces, they are recruited when a target is declared. Each one erases their name, severs contacts with their family, and paints themselves in hard whites and blacks. They use ritualized sets of older armor and special weapons that combine radioactive waste with chemically unstable compounds as ammo.
The thasvar use trained vakar and will hire the worst mercenary scum they can find to hound and track their targets. And then they send a message, by massacring the target and as many close relatives as they can find. They pull his ravaged corpse to pieces and skin him, draping the plating and hide over a rack and feeding everything else to the tame vakars.
They take this … broken skin thing and hang the it by the heels in front of the Spire, the center of government on Palaven, as a warning to others. If the target was a member of a Family, every direct (one separation, so brother, sister, wife, son, father, etc) is executed in the same fashion. If in a Clan, a number of randomly chosen sacrifices is made to suffer the same fate. If an outcast, the turians who threw the offender out of the meritocracy in the first place are congratulated for their good foresight – otherwise, if the criminal was still in the meritocracy, the last person to promote them is also executed and skinned.
Whoever the fuck showed the spikes a copy of the movie Predator should be slapped. Even batarians aren't that fucking hard, Bossman. I'll go ahead and say the Thasvar rarely have to act – as far as I know the last time they got involved in anything was over a century ago. A lot of them are gunning for Saren now, but that isn't much of a shock, now is it?
Finally, Land Management is how the turians handle real estate and property. When a colony is founded, the entire planet is owned by the military. It splits it up into districts first, usually auctioning them off to the highest bidder from Families and Clans. Once no one is interested in buying the rest, it sections the districts into wards and repeats this for smaller clans and families.
Once that is done, it splits the wards into urban areas and wilderness, and grants plots of land to any turian interested. The amount of land you get is dependent on your rank in the meritocracy, not by how rich you are. Turians who volunteer for colony duty get first crack at the land, then it slowly gets parceled out until the colony meets some kind of criteria. After that Land Management will sell land to new settlers or to Families (and rarely Clans) that come along later. This is a major source of colonial revenue.
Land Management also handles (along with engineering) building housing, apartments, and public parks. They manage wildlife and hunting areas, provide nature preserves and all that kind of shit, and are responsible for maintaining the Sha Titans.
Government : The Service Circle
The Service Circle is made up of groups of retired Primarchs and Autarchs, older Clan members, and big-shots of the community. There are Ward, District, and Cluster levels of the Circle, and these are the guys who run and evaluate the trials and promote or demote turians in the meritocracy. Their decisions are mostly final, although some can be reviewed later by the Court of High Law in the cases where they determine someone should be exiled.
The highest of the Service Circles, the Ascendant's Honor Circle, is made up entirely of older retired members of the Praetorian Reach (the highest rank of the meritocracy). Every five years, they pick out the turians that will form the Cluster level Circles. These those Cluster level circles pick out turians for the Colony level, who pick the District Circles, who pick the ward circles. Since each and every one of these circles has a different goddamned name, I'm not listing them all.
Kind of the reverse of Primarchs. Turians are backwards coming and going.
The Service circle isn't military exactly – it's only job is to administer the Trials and decide on whether or not turians are ready for more responsibility. But, on the other hand, given that the meritocracy is what makes or breaks an officer's career, a lot of times they work closely with the military command and even the Ward Primarchs to make sure they are looking at all the variables and shit.
Being chosen to sit on a Service Circle, even at the Ward Level , is pretty big shit. It means your superiors in the meritocracy think you exemplify what it means to be a spike. The flip side of this is that a spike's judgment had better be good – agreeing to promote turians who later fuck up make the Circle look pretty bad, and also ends up making many wonder if other turians promoted by that Circle are worth it.
Government : The Trials and other assorted mindfuckery
To ascend the meritocracy, one has to participate in various trials. There's four parts to this process, and all of them are in their own special way, very fucked up. The basic goal of all of this crap is to make sure turians who go up the meritocracy are doing three things. The other goal of the trials is to keep the turians so tied up in improving or proving themselves that they don't just get lazy and stop working.
Anyway, the goals are simple. First, they check the turians who apply for judgment. They have to have the judgment to know when they are ready to move up, and to be able to realistically asses their own abilities. Several of the most challenging trials are based on this concept.
Second, they are a check that applicants can actually not only do what they say they can, but have proof and other turians who can point to evidence of this. Even the most badass turian won't ascend if he does all his deeds in the darkness, or fails to be enough of the bigger community that he can't get enough people to vouch for him.
Finally, maybe most important to the spikes, that the turian going up for promotion is actually ready for more responsibility, especially over others, and not just good at raw skills. This is more determined during the decision than in the challenge, but some of the trials emphasize this as well.
The parts are the Calling, the Testimony, the Challenge, and the Decision. Three of these parts are the same for every Trial, but the Challenge has different things that are looked at based on the tier one is in or attempting to move to. Lower tiers and less important jobs get easier Trials, the higher you go and the more important you are, the more stern the tests get. At the highest ranks, they pretty much try to mindfuck you into the ground.
The Calling is when a superior turian, usually one higher in the meritocracy, a civilian boss, the local Autarch, or a superior military officer contacts the local Service Circle to recommend a promotion up the meritocracy. For spikes, this is nerve-racking shit. You can't ascend up the meritocracy if you don't regularly suggest other turians for promotion, but if you fuck up in your recommendations, that hurts your chances. The Service Circle will pull the service records and military records of the turian in question and check them for things that would disallow them to ascend.
Assuming they find nothing (and you'd have to be really fucking stupid to recommend a turian who had enough black marks on his file to fail even at the Calling), the turian is summoned to the local Service Circle for the formal ceremonial Testing. This phase, called the Testimony, allows the person trying to get promoted a chance to bring along his parents, his bondmate, and four of his friends, fellow soldiers, or co-workers. The turian candidate lists off his achievements and acts since the last promotion he got, and his witnesses list off the reasons why he is ready for promotion. (Or in some cases, not ready.)
This is open to the public, and anyone who thinks the turian is really ready or really not ready should speak up at this time. Being denied in the Testimony is not uncommon, and spikes don't see it as a bad thing. They can even decline to be promoted if they truly don't think they are ready, which is seen as very mature. Turians who have been promoted before also have to show they are doing their part to evaluate and suggest others for promotion, or they come off as anti-social dicks and are probably shot down.
Assuming the Service Circle likes what they hear, a turian engages in one of eight tests of his values, known as a Trial of Challenge. Each challenge tests a turian's aspects in one of the virtues or elements of either turian culture or turian lifestyle. As Trelly said earlier, a weaker turian gets a weaker Trial, and the more strict the Trial, the more likely they are to get promoted at the end of it – sometimes more than one tier, and sometimes an entire Reach. The Trial selected is up to the Circle, and some Circles are harder to get promoted in than others.
Normally, I wouldn't list these things out. But they're so important to understanding how the turian mind works, I think you should look them over. Plus, a turian who has gone through certain Trials is probably in a lot of confusion, and this can give insight into who our operatives go after.
Plus, you can see for yourself how messed up turian culture is. Trelly downplayed the crazy and the retarded parts, as usual. You gotta remind her that you can't hang in the Dog if you aren't gonna be a hater.
In order from the easiest to the hardest, the trials are:
Merit: the trial of merit is basically just a damned paperwork review, where the service circle looks at what the turian in question has accomplished compared to his co-workers and peers. A turian who makes good solid choices, acts in the proper turian fashion, and works to ensure he is in step with his fellows will easily pass this trial. Rebels and those who repeatedly fuck up must answer questions as to how their actions demonstrate actual merit. A Trial of Merit is pretty common in lower tiers of the meritocracy, and is big with supervisory types in the civilian sector. It's rare the higher one goes except for turians who act in roles that don't let them shine elsewhere.
Service: the trial of service is similar to the trial of Merit, but a turian must actually show his shit off – letting the Circle see skills he has learned. A turian cook must make a meal, a soldier must show how badass marksmanship, a turian medic must show he can heal.. During the Trial, the Service Circle may change up the details, or make the turian do the job with any kind of fucked up limits – wrong tools, no materials, or things like that. Service trials are common for practical types who can show their jobs and how good they are pretty easily, and are easily the most used type of trial.
Emotion: the trial of Emotion is a test of how a spike reacts to ...well, bad shit happening. It is almost the same as a Trial of Service, except that while they're trying to do their thing, one of the Witnesses they brought along gets the shit beaten out of them – or worse. A turian who can ignore this kind of crap, especially to their mate, is seen as a bad motherfucker, while those who can't are punks and thrown the fuck out. This mind-screwy Trial isn't used very often, and sometimes it ends in a turian going apeshit and getting killed. As a result, it's only used nowadays on those spikes who are overseeing dangerous materials or holding positions that would make blackmail a serious threat against them. A witness who is chosen can say "I ain't doing that shit", but this is the same as saying they have fuck-all confidence in whoever they're a witness for and making them fail.
Sacrifice : The most fucked up of the tests, in my opinion. Basically, the criteria here is the turian has to sacrifice something important. Sometimes (for soldiers) they have to get a limb cut off and replaced with cyberware. Businessmen have to give up property or business assets. An Autarch might be required to surrender his position to a rival. A general might be asked to step down from command and retire. If they really want to fuck with a spike, they'll order him to do something really messed up – stab his mate, or give up his kids.
The test is goddamned sick, and not just because of what they make the spikes do. A turian has to decide if the sacrifice asked for is proper, or improper, based on why they are being told to sacrifice. If they agree to it, they have to lose or give up whatever they agreed to, and only then are told if they chose correctly or not. And if they chose incorrectly, well, they fail. If they refuse, they have to explain why, and if they don't explain correctly, they fail. Very few positions require this kind of goddamned testing but it also can punt a spike up an entire raft of tiers, rather than just one, and is used mostly the Deathwatch and the like. It never comes up in lower tiers at all.
Honor : This is a harder if less crazy test, a test of a bunch of old turian chieftains and the like interrogating the applicant on for a given action, what would be the most honorable course of action. It's tricky because the chieftains rarely give the proper answer, and the turian has to pick the most honorable of the choices, which is almost never very clear. Most honor trials last for hours, and are unique in that there is a lot of back and forth arguing, and that the Witnesses can offer advice to the applicant. Honor trials are very common for soldiers and anyone who has to deal with aliens a lot.
Valor: A pretty brutal physical test of how badass a turian is, this one is just straight out combat against a superior chosen by the Circle. It's mostly used to eliminate turians they feel are pretty much unworthy to ascend, as the spikes that get picked to fight the contestant are usually pretty nasty customers. If they really hate the guy, they put him up against a Praetor. However, the test is of valor, not victory – if the spike being tested puts up a hell of a fight and never backs down, they may promote him anyway.
Mind: A hard and rare test, this is usually given to Primarch and Autarchs trying to go further up the Meritocracy. A bunch of decisions and choices they've made are picked apart by the Circle, and the turian has to come up with a rationale of why he made those choices that is consistent among all of them. A tough-and-tumble Primarch who usually resorts to violence and military action rather than tradition and appeals to duty, for example, will have to explain why he does so and what that says about his ability to truly represent the values of the turian people. This is a psychological mindfuck for most turians, since they tend to own all their decisions impulsively and don't waste much time on self reflection or any shit like that.
Duty: The most trying of the tests, and it hasn't been done in quite a while – Fedorian was the last to do so. The trial of duty basically has several high tier turian elders, Praetors and Primarchs all dissect an entire turian's life from the time he entered the military to the present. Every choice and decision is challenged, every sacrifice questioned, and the turian's ideals of honor, valor and service are turned upside down. Witnesses are forced to withdraw and the applicant has to be able to answer every query clearly and with a good understanding. Any hesitation or an answer that all present don't agree with is cause for failure. More than one turian can't take the bombardment of judgment questions and suggestions that he is a disgrace to the race and ends up failing.
Only a few dozen have ever taken it, and only two turians have ever passed, Primarch Fedorian and the outcast Darenthis The consequences of failure of this Test are greater than any of the rest – if the spike is declared to have failed, he is immediately executed. This sort of Trial is only used in a few situations – when a turian has been heavily demoted within the Hierarchy and is attempting to ascend again, when a long-time outcast is trying to rejoin turian society, or when a refusal of a lower Circle's decision has been made.
After the Challenge is completed, the Decision is made. The members of the Circle talk it over and then explain to the turian in question if he passed or failed, and why. Assuming he succeeds, the name-chops of his witnesses get added to his rank sash and the Circle enters his new tier into the Hierarchy's computers.
Failures, on the other hand, are often seen as fucking stupid, arrogant, or just flat out not ready. It tends to shame the witnesses, and more than that, the guy who suggested he was ready will often be challenged by inferiors or face a really hard Trial to make sure that the turian is not also a fuckup.
In case of a failure caused by lack of Witnesses or inability to perform a Trial, it's over. If the turian had witnesses backing him and managed to pass his Trial but the Circle still doesn't think he's ready, though, there are two options. The first and most common is to accept the judgment of the Circle. After all, for most turians, the guys on the Circle are the chosen judges of what it means to be a good or bad turian. Most will attempt to improve themselves and take whatever criticism or failure they made to heart and work to fix those.
On occasion, though, especially after trials of Valor where the contestant loses, they have the chance to question the decision of the Circle. This is basically akin to pissing in a turian's face, and doing so moves the Trials up to the next level of Circles (so from a Ward to a District Circle) and invokes a Trial of Duty.
If a turian actually succeeds at this challenge, his status in the meritocracy shoots way up. He may only advance a single tier, but from then on he will get much easier Trials – he's already done the hardest shit there is to do.
Fedorian himself pulled this shit and won, which is one reason he's such a feared Primarch. The Circle that made the original judgment is all fired and replaced, and most of them demoted in the meritocracy for such an egregious mistake. On the other hand, if the applicant fails, they get executed for their arrogant temerity.
Government : Hierarchy Military Ranks
The rank system is composed of the most bewildering kinds of bullshit you have ever seen. Some ranks are restricted to Families, one line requires you to get demoted before you get promoted again, and a few ranks are only available to turians in disgrace. There's no fucking point in listing out all the ranks. They have seven different kinds of what would call a corporal, based if he's a combatant or non-combatant, in or out of a Family, from the Colonies or Palaven, and other kinds of shit. Half the ranks don't have any clean English translations, either.
First High Claw Leader sounds pretty badass, but it's just a fucking sergeant. A Lesser Black Fang sounds kinda weak, but it's what they call a rear admiral.
There's no difference in the actual rank values between the navy and army in terms of actual authority, except at the very top, even if the names are very different and confusing. The only functional differences is that turians are evaluated in the Common Trainings (their version of boot-camp) what branch of the military would suit them best, and are trained in those things constantly as they rise. Once they hit the top of the chain of military ranks, then and only then do the ranks shift.
Likewise, there are no officer academies really. Every turian is expected to rise from the bottom of the ranks to the very top. The more important clans and families are just expected to do it a lot fucking faster. There are lots of opportunities for skilled soldiers to have special training, go into special programs and even learn whole new skill sets, but these are more based on potential skill than rank.
The reason this is in the government and not the military section is that lots of the ranks require civil service or duties along with military service. Plus, some are tied into the meritocracy.
The ranks can be broken down very roughly into three groups: the Ranks of Duty, the Ranks of Honor, and the Ranks of Valor. Military rank doesn't guarantee promotion up the meritocracy, but without certain levels of military rank you can't go further up the meritocracy at certain points.
Basically, the ranks can be looked at by what their tier is called. The ranks of Duty are just that, the ranks all turians go through in their basic twenty year commitment to the Hierarchy. The Ranks of Honor are what most Clans and Families ascend to, since they feel they owe more service to the Hierarchy. And the Ranks of Valor are only reached by those who have proven themselves both in terms of military skill and bravery, and in the meritocracy.
Think of the ranks of duty as fodder. Talons and Claws are roughly like privates and corporals, while Strike Leaders are like sergeants and chiefs. Keep in mind that anyone beyond a goddamned talon can rain hell down on your head with a single call back to military command for combat backup. Most do the scut work – cleaning, basic patrols,low level operation. Turians graduate from boot-camp at Talon Second, and are expected to move up to Senior Talon within two years. Those who don't meet the requirements will never be able to ascend further up the meritocracy no matter how good they are at their later jobs.
Like everything else about the spikes, their use of numbers is backassward from ours. In our navy, a petty officer third class is below a petty officer first class. Theirs is reversed.
The lower ranks of Honor, dominated by Legates and Tribunes are more professional soldiers, although again, not really proper officers. They are more like warrant officers mixed with certain civic and public responsibilities, which is why the human translations come out with fancy ass Roman titles. The Ranks of Honor are where the bulk of climbing the meritocracy is done by the soldiers, and each one is expected to build and honor the Hierarchy both off and on the battlefield. Promotion through these ranks is a lot slower, and it's where large numbers of lives are entrusted to the turian in question. It's also the first time a turian can get out of the turian military before their twenty year commitment if they can get here fast enough.
The higher ranks of Honor, including Vigilants and Centurions, are similar to a junior officer cadre, with the added ugly bonus that, unlike most human officers, these bastards have a good grasp on combat and will fuck your ass up in a fight. Most of these guys have twenty plus years in the military, and all of them have extensive civil service as well. A lot of turians in recent years have started the trend of identifying Vigilants as 'lieutenant' and Centurion as 'captain', but these can be very misleading – some Centurions command barely more than a few squads, others are literally in charge of millions of turian infantry. The upper ranks are what is generally required for top government services, such as being an Autarch or Chieftain.
The Ranks of Valor are definitely command ranks, at least what we'd think of more like a major, but then again, given the sheer size of the spikes army, maybe not. Each rank earned here can take years to get, and are increasingly harder to earn, as you have to also ascend the meritocracy to get promoted , rather than getting promoted to ascend the meritocracy. You have to get this far in order to be a Primarch.
Most of the ranks are those of the Triarch and Duarch, but the highest ranks, of general and admiral, are known as the Praetorium. Being good enough to enter the ranks of the Praetorium is seen as a signal honor, since they lead the Hierarchy in war.
The ultimate rank, that of Praetor Superior, is for someone who has devoted their entire life in direct service to the Hierarchy military. I told Trelly this was like a warrant officer, but that's because I'm thinking of the weird deference warrants get from the military, like a warrant cussing out an admiral or Senator. I already described what these guys do and are like, so just keep in mind they are higher ranking than our Lord Generals or Admirals of the Red in turian terms.
Government : Hierarchy Meritocracy Reaches
There are twenty seven ranks in the meritocracy. The first two don't really mean shit, because you get one for being goddamned born as a turian and the other for being able to say a fucking oath.
Again, I'm not listing them all out. There's lists on the extranet for that shit, and knowing that the fourteenth tier is of a secondary supplicant tells you jackshit about what it really means. The tiers can be broken down into what they call the Reaches, and that is what I will cover.
Keep in mind, these are translations from the turian to English – I don't give a shit about the names in lowspeak and neither do you, so I'm not listing that shit out. Also keep in mind that most turian civilian operations, civilian support businesses, and the like will require certain positions in the meritocracy. For example, no turian CEO would ever be less than a Supplicant, because you aren't seen as responsible enough to manage large numbers of turians until that point. Rising through the meritocracy proves your skills and rights to manage or participate in various civilian tasks under the military's oversight.
Most of this is just cut and paste shit from the turian constitution. Don't get all excited just because I stop cussin'.
Citizen Reach : the ranks of citizens are mostly formalities. They have no real requirements besides passing the very first Trial and getting past boot-camp Very few turians (or the Broken, as Trelly calls them) fail to move on past the citizen rank. There's five ranks in the Citizen rank, and it gives you the basic rights – travel, legal representation, military service, owning property, voting. There is no series of Trials for the Citizen rank except the Trial of Rectitude, where a turian takes an oath to the service to the Hierarchy and turian people. Advancement is just achieved by hitting certain things – reaching a certain rank in the military, being twenty years old, etc.
Militant Reach: the militants are those who have proudly served at least one twenty year term in the military and have moved on. This allows turians to get involved with and start businesses, work for the civilian government sector, take a last name, challenge superiors, take a mate in formal handfasting, and to supervise Trials for Citizens. It's the first ranks where Trials start, and it is mostly used to make sure turians mature before being handed more responsibility and learn to own their decisions.
Supplicant Reach: the supplicants are those turians who have demonstrated both competence in matters of assisting the Hierarchy and a willingness to grow turian power through service and sacrifice. They allow you to sponsor other turians for promotion, owning land other than that which you live on, employing large numbers of turians, trade licenses, travel outside of the Hierarchy without military visas, and to become an Autarch.
Determinor Reach: This rank is where the serious shit starts. It's one of the ranks where you start needing military rank to go up the meritocracy again. It allows one to join a Clan or marry into an existing Family, to join special forces like the Deathwatch, or to become a Chieftain. It also allows you to be considered for foreign service (ambassadors and such shit) and to operate out of the Hierarchy for long periods of time.
Servitor Reach: the highest most turians get in the meritocracy, the rank of Servitor is someone who has consistently and repeatedly put the Hierarchy and the turian people before their own needs, while at the same time managing to demonstrate repeated good judgment in selecting other turians for promotion and demonstrating no bad judgments. It is the rank at which you can be named a Primarch, or to serve in any of the command circles as an adviser. It's also the rank where turians can call upon military resources for use in their own business operations without getting approval. The trials of this rank are usually pretty fucking brutal.
Ascendant Reach: The highest tiers of the meritocracy. Very few turians have the skill, guts, sheer stupid endurance, and brains to get this far. You have to get to this rank to be a high-ranking admiral or general, as well as to use large-scale military resources like docks and employing the police. It also covers the right to move to Palaven, or to found a Family of your own. The trials of the Ascendant are almost always nasty, with the Trial of Sublimation (aka fighting a goddamned vakar) required to ascend to the rank of Praetor.
Government : Colonial Outliers, Family Holdings , Clan Holdings, and other minor bullshit
Outside of the Clusters, there's a couple of special holding types that don't really participate in governance. The first is the Settlement Areas, where new turian colonies are being setup. Right now there aren't any, but in the past a new Cluster was formed kind of piecemeal, similar to how it's handled on a smaller level by Land Management.
These proto-clusters were managed by a small group of Autarchs and a Primarch elected by the colonists. They don't vote and aren't full citizens, with no circles or any chance at the meritocracy – they are supposed to focus on survival and getting things going. When the cluster is ready for settlement, the bigshot Ascendant's Honor Circle, comes in and does a mass Trial of Service on everyone who helped out and ranks them from Primarch down to First Militant based on how much work they did and how hard they busted their asses during the setup.
There has been a lot of talk about cutting a chunk out of the Attican and making it a new Settlement Area, but the turians aren't quite ready to pull the trigger on that shit, since it would put them right next door to both the majority of Eclipse territory and the main pirate and raiding routes from Omega. That's just asking to be raped at both ends.
The very biggest Clans and Families have a single colony world they call 'home' besides Palaven. These worlds are fairly small colonies in terms of population, and are more like vacation homes than anything else. They don't participate in governance or elections at all, and the Families and Clans pretty much run their own little Service Circles. The downside to that is a Clan-borne or Family-borne, someone who never steps off these planets, is not really treated with the respect someone who's done the real meritocracy would get. Additionally, this fake-ass shit doesn't go higher than the Supplicant Reach, so it's not like the fucks can be anything but local Autarchs anyway.
Before the Unification Wars, almost two thirds of the turian space was controlled by the Clans and a good fifth of the rest by the Families, and the decisions of the meritocracy under Clan control was the equal to that of the Service Circle. The Hierarchy stood back and let them beat the shit out of each other, until today barely a percent of turian worlds are run this way, and only the very biggest Clans and Families can claim a world of their own. It didn't really 'unify' the Clusters or colonies, but it did tear the power out of the hands of the Clans.
Congrexes, or wards and districts dominated by the Clans or Families, aren't quite the same. They follow all the rules and meritocracy of the main colony.
Government : the Palavanus Family/Clan Thing
The Palavanus used to be the biggest cheese of all. The goddamned homeworld is named for them, for fucks sake. The entire concept of the Hierarchy, of all turians being one pack, is something they came up with first. They designed the meritocracy. They BUILT the entire shit you just read. They ruled for … shit, what, ten thousand years? Got deposed and then came back to rule for another ten thousand before they literally got bored?
Turians have never forgotten that the first time the Palavanus were removed from power, the Valluvian Priests fell and the Facinus nearly got everyone killed. Or that the second time they let the rulership of the turian's go, the idiots that came after them ended up bringing about the Burning. A lot of turians are somewhat upset that the Palavanus still aren't running things, and worry that the reason the Hierarchy has been fucked over by the asari and the salarians so hard is because they are busy fiddling with science and shit instead of leading.
Kind of a sullen, grumpy disappointment. The general attitude of turians toward the Palavanus is … uhuh. Omni-tool says I should say 'multi-layered'. More like multi-fucked, I think. I'm sure Trelly has lots of reasons why, but you ask the spike on the street and it's simple – no one understands the fuckers. Most turians know the Palavanus aren't quite right in the head (at least in turian terms, which probably means they're fairly fucking sane. Fucking spikes.) Yet at the same time, they have ultimate faith in them. A Palavanus gives you advice, you do it without question.
The Primarchs and Clans are always nervous about the Palavanus. On the one hand, the fact that they haven't bothered to try to run shit since they created the Hierarchy means that they most likely don't intend to rule again, and their advice and guidance has saved the Hierarchy more than once. So the Primarchs like having them around.
The flip side of that is the Primarchs know the Palavanus only really have to stretch their hand out and display the crown of old Ulvu and the turians will follow. The old stories were full of how bat-shit crazy and hardcore the Palavanus were – they literally did not fear anything at all. While never really chest-beating warriors, when it came down to a throw-down they would dish out way more hurt than their enemies could put back on them. No Primarch could match the level of fucking psycho that the Palavanus could back in the day.
For now, the Palavanus are like an entire different … caste, or culture, or some shit. In a way, they are like old Earth royalty used to be before the fucking Manswells resurrected the shit. Irrelevant in the day-to-day. They don't ever do much besides science shit, medical stuff, chat with aliens, run the spirit houses, and hang out offering advice.
A drunk turian once told me everyone (by everyone, guess he meant the spikes) figured the Palavanus were waiting for something, but no one knew what. That scares the spikes, and whatever scares turians should be something the Dog has a very close look-see at, Bossman.
The turians see the Palavanus as semi-holy (sort of, it's fucking complicated). A lot of Palavanus end up acting as spirit hunters, and they operate more than half of the larger spirit houses in the entire Hierarchy. The Palavanus are also seen as good advisers. Most Clusters have a tiny little tower thing on the capital world called the Reference. One or two older Palavanus types will live in these towers and advise the Primarchs, Autarchs, pretty much anyone.
The bulk of the Family doesn't interact much with the rest of the Hierarchy. In fact, the entire Family doesn't participate in the meritocracy at all, and they all occupy a special rank in the military of 'Adviser to the People'. Most of them are scientists, researchers, doctors, and work with aliens anyway, so this is no big loss to most turians. A lot of them never even enter the military, technically, although they have some kind of rank just so they can interact with some public services when off their world. One or two more adventuresome types have lead various military units on scientific expeditions, but this is very rare.
Most of them live on their little world of Trentus, which is a moon of one of the gas giants in the same star system as Palaven. The ones who don't – like the ones who work in spirit houses, References, and the universities and hospitals (half of the staff there are Palavanus) – all live in heavily defended walled villas set into mountain ranges. They don't associate with or interact with other turians outside of the public venues they serve in.
The long and short of it is that the Palavanus don't fit most of the rules. Palavanus do not vote. They don't own property off of their own world, nor do they run businesses within the Hierarchy (although they run a fuckton outside of it, and pay a tax rate higher than any other turians). They do not educate their own kids in the public military schools, and they don't mingle with other turians. They don't make much money from their jobs, so the Hierarchy pays the entire Family a lump sum every year. For what, who the fuck knows.
Even Trentus doesn't follow the damned rules. Trentus is managed by Palavanus overseer types called Pretarchs, which are like Autarchs but outside the meritocracy. A turian fleet and six entire fucking companies of the Blackwatch guard this place pretty tightly.
The only real power the Palavanus show is rarely used. Every once in a looong fucking while, the Primacy Circle has some real hard shit to deal with, and they issue what's called an Imperatorial Summons. That's a pretty loaded word, since the Imperatorium fell thousands of years ago.
Are the fucking birds on goddamned vacation or something? Are the Primarch's just kinda watching shit for the Palavanus while they fuck around with chemistry and astronomy?
Anyway, when this summons goes out, pretty much the entire Family meets on Trentus for some kind of hush-hush discussion. They can commandeer any ship to get there, and they all put on white robes and take a vow of silence for the trip. When they arrive, they have a big party, and then huddle up inside their main estates on Trentus for ten days. When the time is up, five of them come out and go to Palaven to advise the Primarchs. These five are called the Council of Woe.
I really, really hate turian melodrama.
The Council of Woe ends up looking exactly what the fuck you'd expect with a name like that, like a pack of Saturday morning cartoon villains. They paint their faces, first with turian blood (yuck), then with a layer of dark brown (a color meaning vengeance) and then hard jagged script in the Valluvian Clawspeak, done in purple lined in red (which is, if you read up on face paint, Not A Good Combination). Dressed in scary-ass black robes, and escorted by the Deathwatch from Trentus to Palaven. Turians are supposed to fall silent and look away when they pass. There's all kinds of other creepy bullshit in the legends about these guys – they erase their names, they vanish after the meeting. Whatever. Not important.
What is important is what they bring about. It's usually death.
The council meets with the current roster of Primarchs and the High Primarchs and advises them. Usually after the meeting, at least one Primarch (sometimes more) will be dragged out of the meeting hall, dead from ritual suicide, and the rest never look happy according to the legends.
The very first judgment of the Council of Woe was what lead to the Burning, when they advised the Primarchs to create the Hierarchy and kill any dissenters. Fucking cold, but the spikes couldn't have been shit if they didn't go that far. Without it, fuck...turian history would have been some kind of stupid shit where they had rebellions and revolts every day. It was a smear on the honor of the race, but it kept the spikes alive.
The second time was at the outset of the Unification Wars, when they advised the Hierarchy not to stop the clan violence, which resulted in the power of the Clans being crushed as I talked about earlier. That was some pretty slick thinking, too, if sneaky and dishonorable.
The third time was to decide if the turians should abandon the Citadel forces when the salarians and asari didn't want to use the genophage. That lead to the turians basically stealing it and using it themselves. Given what it did to the krogan, and the lack of honor involved, you can see the trend of shit here.
The Council is clearly made up of evil, hard-ass and sneaky Palavanus fuckers. When the Hierarchy can't figure out what to do, they call these guys. Inevitably after they call the Council, billions die, every fucking time. We need to make sure we are ready for anything the next time they get called up.
Not much else is really known about the bastards. They're funny guys, to aliens – friendly and making jokes, really laid back and interested in all kinds of shit. Smart as fuck, but not all stuck up and shit about it.
I don't trust them as far as I could throw Arcturus Station.