The Pirasan Civilization as seen in Pa'atratira

Hailing from the world of Sansekta’ar, the Pirasan are a colonial, semi-eusocial sentient species of arthropod-like creatures.  The Pirasan present at the Pa’atrata System are colonists from the expansionistic Pirasan Empire, the sole government of the species based on their home world.

The recent colony in Pa’atratira is just one of many colonies set up by Sansekta’ar.  Though the colony at Pa’atratira is benign, open to new ideas, and have enjoyed peaceful diplomatic contact with surrounding species as well as their mother hive, not all Pirasan colonies are this accommodating.  A number of similar colonies have taken to raiding and antagonizing many other species that they encounter, commandeering their cargo and cannibalizing their craft for technology that they modify to their own purposes.

“Pirate Space Bugs”

Although the Pirasan have made contact with Humans for decades, their relations have been shaky at most due to their reputation as pirates.  The term “pirate space bug” has been a slur given to them by human spacefarers due to a quirk of initial contact between the two. 

It appeared that the first members of the species contacted by humans and a few other spacefaring species were botched colonies that have been driven by destitution and desperation. It was only relatively recently that nonviolent, prosperous, and relatively organized colonies, still having bureaucratic ties with the Pirasan Imperial Government, have been discovered. Dispelling the myth that the Pirasan are ruthless animalistic marauders has been the main drive of the Pirasan governments and the colonies in contact with other political entities like the Trigalactic Federation and its allies. 

It should be noted that despite their attributed ferocity, even aggressive Pirasan colonies are hesitant to attack humans directly. Due to their uncanny resemblance to a monstrously huge animal from their home world that the Pirasan typically fear and respect, humans are generally left alone.

A largely Human delegation, therefore was sent to establish a diplomatic mission at Pa’atratira, on the outskirts of Pirasan space. This has allowed both the Trigalactic and Pirasan governments a brief glimpse of each other’s cultures to pass through. What little Humans and other species know about the Pirasan are taken from the Pa’atratiri and their culture; the Pa’atratiri, meanwhile, have taken great interest in trading with the species of the Trigalactic, humans most notably, and collecting cultural artifacts from them.

The intellectual and reproductive elite of the Pa’atratiri Pirasan are fascinated with Human culture in particular. Upon learning Human languages, they have equated human concepts with aspects of their own culture. Despite not being exact parallels, these terms have helped with deciphering the Pa’atratiri dialect and language. 

Physiology

The Pirasan are insect-like humanoid creatures, with a hard external skeleton made of chitin, jointed limbs, and slit-like tracheal holes that serve as their primary form of respiration.  Descended from what would fittingly be described as a chimeric mix of chordates and arthropods, the Pirasan possess a stiff but soft internal skeleton made of cartilage and two reinforced internal nerve cords, making them extremely strong and capable of enduring immense pressures and can recover from minor dismemberment. Their dependence on a high oxygen environment means that space exploration and interplanetary diplomacy are physically painful affairs involving numerous pipes and machinery inserted manually into their tracheae. They frequently terraform uninhabited planets as opposed to coexisting with the native biota in life-bearing ones due to this.

The Pirasan have six eyes: their two large compound eyes can see a wide array of colors and can pick up cues in the ultraviolet while their smaller ocelli pick up movement. Sight together with hearing and vibration detection is the most important sense to the Pirasan, and the Pirasan have developed an intricate language of color indicating the tones of urgency and humor attached to them. They also have a thick fleshy proboscis, used both for eating and verbal communication.

The Pirasan have 12 legs, though in most castes, only two or four are ever used in manipulation, used in concert with the mandibles. Other legs appear as small jointed outgrowths and either vestigial or have taken minor uses; the minor appendages of workers, for instance, are used to fasten and secure loads on their backs. Some castes have wings, though apart from sentries, they are usually useless as flying implements and are mainly used for communication purposes, being able to change color in the presence and absence of blood and other chemicals.

Pirasan are divided into several castes, each with an appearance that varies from the vaguely humanlike intellectuals and sentries to the insect-like workers, soldiers, and engineers. Their bodily configurations and number of functional appendages vary; workers are horizontally (prone) oriented and have only the forelimbs and mandibles to use as manipulators whereas engineers have multiple functional appendages that can work intricate machinery and appear somewhat bent in a supine position.

Pirasan life expectancy vary with the castes. Intellectuals and reproductive elites live on average between 50 to 80 years, while engineers live up to 50 and workers 10 to 20 years.

Society

The Pirasan are eusocial, with much of their politics centered on a system of hives that are analogous to the cities built by other sophonts whose societies came by way of tribalism.  Smaller hives often defer their authority to larger ones, usually their progenitors, and large hives often send members of their reproductive elite (termed as the “aristocracy”) to be paired with elites in other hives in diplomatic marriages. This ensured both genetic diversity and political stability within the civilization.

Only a small segment of the Pirasan count as sophonts, usually belonging to castes whose primary duties include a need of critical thinking and comprehension; the two highest classes, the reproductive elite and the intellectuals, are also the most intelligent.

The overall collection of hives and satellite hives are called a colony, usually ruled over inside a Great Hive by the reproductive progenitors of every individual Pirasan in the colony. The reproductive castes act as a ruling elite responsible for the administration and development of the hive and, by extension, the colony. The nonreproductive sentient castes include administrative intellectuals, engineers, machinists, and soldiers. 

Female Pirasan are held in higher regard than their male counterpart. Lower, non-reproductive castes have a higher gender proportion of males to females, and as such males are looked down upon. The ruling elite comprises of reproductive females and their male consorts. 

Most workers are non-sapient and are incapable of comprehending all but the most basic instructions and are controlled mainly by instinct, conditioning, or by pheromones released by their overseers. Evidence suggests that the worker castes have been altered to a certain degree, perhaps through selective breeding or genetic engineering.  The Pirasan choose to call them in terms of technology.

Unlike social insects from earth, the Pirasan are often thought to possess a collective intelligence. They attribute an almost spiritual connection between the hive and the central queen from their home world, although whether this is true remains ambiguous.  They appear to have a religion built around the queen.

From what is interpreted from the Pa’atratiri, Pirasan generally address members of their respective classes as brothers and sisters, and address members of the ruling elite as “mother” or “father.”  Kinship is based on the collective.  The Pirasan have no sense of empathy on the individual level, instead showing sympathies as a group.  They are in particular very protective of eggs and larvae, which they collectively address as children.

Politics

The Pirasan Empire is the primary polity of the species and is the entity to which many the colonies and hives swear their allegiance. Centered on the Queen—a long-lived reproductive female who reigns in the grand hive at Sansekta’ar, the Empire is closer to a decentralized confederation rather than a singular political entity like the phrase suggests.  It is mainly conceptual rather than practical, with only a few vestiges of an actual centralized bureaucracy present in the larger hives of stable colonies like those in Pa’atratira. 

Within the colony, a sometimes-uneasy balance of power exists between the reproductive aristocracy and the intellectual caste. In most cases, the reproductive aristocracy, particularly the males, are concerned mainly with politics and currying the favors of their more powerful female counterparts, hoping to improve their chances of reproduction, whereas the intellectuals are mainly focused the upkeep and survival of the colony and its culture; while the two drives are not inherently contradictory, their motives often clash, which have, according to the Pa’atratiri intellectuals, led to vastly divergent governmental developments among colonies and hives. Tales describe colonies where megalomaniacal members of the aristocracy ruled fielding large numbers of swarming troops against the smaller mechanized armies of colonies ruled by councils of intellectuals.  The current empire, a product of these conflicts, appears to be structured similar to a constitutional monarchy ruled primarily by a central council comprising of members of the aristocracy and intellectuals, with the reproductive monarch and her kin retaining an immense degree of decison-making power.  

Though the hives and colonies swear a quasi-religious, almost fanatical, devotion to the Queen and by extension, the Empire, many of them function independently and autonomously; it is difficult to discern the actual intention of the central government toward the Trigalactic or any polity, given how loosely it controls its individual colony worlds.

Pirate colonies

The infamous pirate colonies follow a more aggressive version of the centralized worship of the head reproductive authority, swearing fanatical allegiance to their local leader instead of the Queen herself. Usually motivated by desperation or xenophobia, pirate colonies are known for the almost animalistic ferocity of their workers and the shrewdness and cunning of their ruling elite. Despite their often bestial reputation, pirate colonies are not averse to trade relations with individuals and entities, often selling black market goods and working as hired hands in exchange for valuable resources (usually tied to life support) and a cut of the raided goods.

Most pirate colonies emerge from botched attempts at colonization or terraforming and raid mainly to gain items necessary for survival or trade, though some have come about due to ideologically grounded antipathy toward the Pirasan Empire and direct more aggressive attacks toward Imperial Pirasan vessels, raiding the craft of other species sporadically for weapons. 

Piracy among the Pirasan emerged from the privateering activities sanctioned by the Pirasan Empire in its halcyon days as an attempt to commandeer new technology and economically disrupt neighboring rivals, usually renegade colonies, though the Pirasan Empire itself has since renounced privateering long before diplomatic contact was made between them and the species of the Trigalactic.