Thoughts on Part 4, Chapter 20: Lashunta Entitlement and Social Hierarchy

So Chapter 20, posted yesterday, deals with a secret conclave of the Order of Outriders in the city of Lea, which our narrator Lady Vaeol and her peer Istae are invited to attend. Needless to say, this is a highly privileged group of the city’s warriors and officers. In terms of Earth’s history, this is equivalent to a chapterhouse of the medieval Knights Templar or Knights Hospitaller holding internal council. In terms of their overall influence within the city, one member, Lady-Captain Oraeath, is the ranking military officer within the city and has rights to speak before the Hall of Matrons. The Order’s body more than likely is made up of other senior and mid-level officers, diplomats, with the majority of outriders serving as junior officers are being groomed to do so. Long story short: there is a lot of entitlement in the hall while they hold their secret conclave.
I realized fairly early on when I created Lady Vaeol as my narrator that I had made a highly privileged character within Lashunta society. Not only is her mother the High Matron of Son, but her family has been politically influential for at least four generations. Although she has not pursued matronhood (unlike her sisters), she has earned a mid-level military rank as a ~riyae~ - flagwife, roughly equivalent to an army captain, in the process of which she has developed relationships with local leaders, senior officers and ministers, both within her home-city of Son and with other cities across Asana. Furthermore, having studied and trained as both an outrider and a psychic, she has arguably one of the finest educations available, possibly equivalent to a graduate degree, under which she has received other unique favors, including an astronomical sabbatical at the Hall of Stars and a diplomatic internship in the Elven city of El. Also, let’s not forget one of her most basic privileges: she is a Damaya female, wielding power to ban almost any man from her presence merely for displeasing her (not that she would), and is furthermore pregnant. More than at any other time in her life within the Lashunta Matriarchy, she could almost get away with murder.
I had my reasons for creating Vaeol as so highly privileged. Outside of story, given the original rarity of detail on the Lashunta in PF1E (and pre-Starfinder), since I began this creative worldbuilding exercise as basically a first-person exploration of the world, it was easier to start from the top down and and add lower-level details as I worked them out. As such Lady Vaeol, whom I characterize as having a fairly liberal albeit blithe outlook on her own society, based on her privilege and upbringing, has needed to come to terms with some of the injustices her subordinates have undergone. She has learned how her maidenmate Kaure has dealt with being a female Korasha, a minority often traumatically excluded from Lashunta matriarchal privilege, and sought the means to uphold her. Even more viscerally, she took a stand after learning the wrong her own mother committed by exiling her flagmate and manlove Oshis for something that wasn’t his fault. She chose to act against this gross exercise of ~difikezhi~, the female right to banish a man, and to her credit, was willing to sacrifice her own entitlement to do so (although arguably one could claim she was wagering on her privilege to bail herself out of the mess).
Thus in today’s chapter, Vaeol makes a bold, even provocative statement before this highly entitled assembly of lady outriders: Korasha should be allowed to become Shotalashu-riders. Very soon she realizes she has overstridden into sensitive territory when the two ladies she is talking with go silent and change the subject. This exchange could have easily created a scene. In Vaeol’s typical fashion, she is embarrassed for making such a faux pas even as she regrets not sticking up more vocally for her flatmates, which is a quandary that a lot of highly entitled people in my own culture may appreciate.
With all these developments, I believe the details have now reached sufficient critical mass that we can start contemplating a view of Lashunta society from its lowest levels. So what does that vision look like?
To begin development of that underprivileged view, mainly based on the experience of characters like Oshis, Kaure, Erymi, Tae, and Remaue, who began life as part of a lower social class than Lady Vaeol. For those Lashunta who don’t have influential, wealthy families, who aren’t pursuing advanced degrees, or participating in diplomatic goodwill missions whose ulterior intent is to hide the fact that they’re feuding with their matron (like Lady Vaeol) and who are not practing a specialized trade or vocation (which most everybody):

• The most prevalent defining factor in your life is work. Remember: I’m developing a pre-Starfinder, pre-modern version of Lashunta, roughly equivalent to Ming Dynasty China, Mogul India, or Renaissance Europe. With the exception of psychic magic and some millwork, there is no heavy machinery to build buildings, levees, canals, and city walls, but they still need to be built - by hand.
• All Lashunta serve in the militia between 30 and 40 years old (the equivalent of a human teenager), which the city matrons use as an indoctrination opportunity for the values of community service, hard work, and loyalty so beloved by society. Along with assorted combat, logistics, and craft skills, Lashunta have a chance at achieving a basic education, defined as rudimentary reading and writing, numbers, and basic math and accounting. Lucky Lashunta, based on aptitude, may come out of the militia with opportunities to pursue advanced vocations as clerks, psychics, or other skilled trades. Yet at the end of militia service, most adult Lashunta come out with a lot of skills that most will likely never use again, unless their city goes to active war.
• Many Lashunta seek a military career as escape from a lifetime of manual labor. In fact, that is how most of Lady Vaeol’s flagmates ended up serving with her. If a warrior doesn’t get a position within a flag, they most likely end up serving as part of their city’s contingent in the Formian War or take a position in the citadel as a training officer, essentially training their own competition.
• If you’re part of the 60% of Lashunta dwelling outside of the city walls, then you’re most likely involved in some facet of food production, most likely fishing/frogging, thurse-raising, agriculture, or hunting. Not only is hunting a popular (and productive) sport, but outlying farmholds will plan and organize mass hunts for specific times of the year, for game like swiftreavers, fade-deer, tree-pythons, river-eels, and baletoads.
• Also for rural Lashunta, commerce will rarely require monetary currency. While silver or bronze cash is highly valued, life mainly takes place within a service-based economy. Most often you may trade goods for services, or some other form of barter.
• If you’re female (and Damaya), after your universal military service, you may expect to be assigned a plot of land by your community, ideally one with a mature milk-tree on it. The purpose is twofold: to provide subsistence for your family and to allow you to contribute to the overall social welfare (taxes). Land plots vary in size by produce. Prime riceberry, grassberry, or catcorn fields may be smaller. Plots for wilder hunting and gathering may be larger. Swamp or river plots for frogging and fishing may take odd shapes and involve complex conditions, depending on season and flood-level. Competition for desirable land, especially closely situated to family or a major settlement, can be fierce. This is the arena in which most local politics plays out.
• Unlike life in the cities, a female on her land can most likely keep a psi-bound Shotalashu as steed/watch-lizard, letting it hunt to supplement the slops and feed she gives it. The presence of a faithful, grizzly-size predator who may also form a pack-relationship with other farmwives’ Shotalashu can make an important deterrent against predators and field-grazers lurking in the rainforest. Some females may even teach their Shotalashu to draw a plow.
• If a female doesn’t want to work the land by herself, then she is perfectly free to attract a man, or more than one. Such romantic relationships typically obligate a man to work on her farmhold through the next planting or harvest season - or longer if she gets pregnant.
• Pregnancy is an easy means of augmenting a female’s status within the community. Along with ~rauzhiafi~ - pregnancy-enhanced psychic ability increasing your social prestige - and obligating the father to a longer term of service on your farmhold, most communities allocate a portion of resources specifically to support new mothers (both pregnant and those with children under five years). Of course, pregnancy eventually wears off, so to speak, though children are themselves a growing resource to augment your farmhold’s work-force.
• If you’re a man living in a rural community, your ongoing presence is dependent on the goodwill of your female superiors. Here’s your watchword: antennae up, ears open, mouth shut, and head down. If you’re perceived as lazy or a trouble-maker, any female may simple go ~Si kezhaf~, and you’ll go under trial for a full-scale banishment. Even if you’re allowed to stay, a limited, personal banishment can still be problematic in a small community. If a male isn’t in a romantic relationship, then his mother or sisters will happily put him to work. And if you’re Korasha, that +2 Strength bonus will get put to good use!
• While Lashunta cultivate a highly sophisticated concept of love, since they don’t really practice marriage as Humans perceive, nothing really prohibits a male from spreading his favors around. Of course, the more favors you spread, the more service obligations you create for yourself. Females personally, and communities in general, take a dim view on males who don’t honor these obligations, and spreading too many favors among too many females may be perceived as diluting the value of your service. If enough females in question determine they have had enough of your shenanigans, then ~Si kezhaf!~ - you’re out.
• If a situation in one community gets too hot, difficult, or complicat for a male, then it may be tempting to leave and seek prospects elsewhere. That may work, but if your original community catches word of your relocation, they may lodge a formal complaint with your new home. Communities typically take such allegations seriously. It may come down to how much goodwill you’ve garnered among your new holdmates. The two communities may negotiate an agreement for the male’s shared service or assessed value thereof.
• Lastly, a male may still be expected to confront problems with his fists, especially involving other males. While cross-sex violence is aggressively discouraged, all those combat skills from the militia yearn to be used, and the Lashunta matriarchs often prefer not to get involved in male disputes, and may even encourage male combat as entertainment, so long as the violence doesn’t get out of hand and lead to maiming injury or death. If the law does need to step in, punishment is generally limited to a night in jail (to sleep off the wine) or a season of service thralldom.
• Under all this pressure to serve and obey, it may be tempting for a male to simply go outlaw. It is fairly easy to head into the rainforest and not come back, if you’re willing to take your chances with Mobats, Megafauna, carnivorous plants, and about a score of other things willing to make a meal out of you. Of course, this means giving up on certain prospects for romance or family. Granted: males of a certain orientation may not find this a detriment. In fact there are whole outlaw communities beyond the cities’ territory inhabited by nobody but males, dwelling free of obligations to any females. These outlaw male freeholds lead a fragile existence free of the larger, female-dominated cities and communities they neighbor.
• If you’re one of minority of Lashunta dwelling within a city’s walls, and you’re not practicing a specialized trade, then you’re likely a servant, whether to a private household, a guild, a tradehouse, or the government itself. While there is some inequality based on sex, status may be slightly more fluid.

For more contextual background on this article, check out A Castrovel Adventure: Part 4, Chapter 20. Check out the link at this page's bottom.