Kri'tak Clans
A highly-dispersed collection of territorial and tribalistic Kri'tak, the Clans are diverse yet consistently place a high-value on honor and strength. Some Hunter Clans are close affiliates or even founding members of the Federation, while others work with the Sagittari Union or remain wholly independent.
Structure
Highly decentralized and dispersed. There is no central government, not even one like that of the Federation. Instead, there are a number of tribes, which often have different goals and cultural elements that can come into conflict. When a major threat or opportunity presents itself, a Clan may call a general meeting and present a course of action to the rest of the attendees, who will be expected to provide their own input. Outside of this basic framework for inter-Clan cooperation, most Hunters simply operate as part of their own tribe. Most Clans have a nominally-elected leader assisted by various representatives, who are often chosen due to relations with powerful families or interests. The building-block of all Clans is the family, a unit built upon bonds of both blood and deed.
Culture
The cultural practices of one Hunter Clan can differ wildly from that of its neighbor or even an ally.
A core tenet of almost all Hunter Clans is emphasis on fighting prowess and adherence to their concept of honorable warfare. Another common thread is that multiple clones of a single individual should be avoided, and that synthetic personalities deserve the same respect as a natural-born Hunter.
Robots are relatively uncommon, as most Clans consider it unseemly to force others to do what oneself is unwilling to do, even menial or dangerous tasks. But sapient robots are present, and well-treated and protected like any other member of their Clan.
Public Agenda
While there is no unified Hunter government, a common goal of all Clans is the preservation of the Hunter way of life and its peoples. This commonly involves the exercise of military power, which in recent years has primarily been ceremonial or ritual in nature.
History
Long ago, when even the Archivist Initiative was in its infancy, the Hunters first looked to the stars from their lone planet. Eventually, they succeeded in becoming a spacefaring species, and from there it was only a matter of discovering FTL travel.
Several empires attempted to form, with varying degrees of success. An interstellar Hunter empire was never able to last more than a few millennia given their fractious nature, and eventually these divisions combined with constant expansion spread the Hunters far and wide in the form of Clans.
Many Clans have risen and fallen over the passage of millennia, though some (or their successors) have persisted to the modern day.
Demography and Population
As a disorganized group of various geopolitical entities on the interstellar stage, the numbers present within a single Clan can vary wildly, and in some cases are not well-recorded. A high estimation of the total population falls short of forty quadrillion (with a substantial margin of error) sapients, with the vast majority of these being, unsurprisingly, Hunters. Still, there are a minority of everything from humans to even Archivists who were deemed worthy and able to keep up with their warlike brethren.
Territories
The Clans are widely dispersed across the known universe, although many of their strongholds are located in the Virgo Supercluster. While there are several hundred planets under the control of one Clan or another, most of the population is not actually land-bound. Most Hunters live on a vast number of large habitats and stations, and there are even some ringworlds and a Matrioshka brain inhabited by these semi-nomadic people.
Military
Under a warrior culture, military service is unsurprisingly a key aspect of Clan societies. Every Clan is able to muster up a large number of warriors to serve in either planetary or naval specializations. Although clones as part of a mobilization strategy are outright taboo in a few Clans, some more adventurous tribes do practice the technique. Most tribes do explicitly permit the creation and deployment of clones to revive combat losses and avoid the demographic devastation that might result from a society losing enormous portions of its population to war, and there is little stigma attached to the fabrication of entirely synthesized personalities as reinforcements/force multipliers.
Alternative Names
Hunter Clans
Demonym
Hunter, Kri'tak
Government System
Tribalism
Economic System
Market economy
Currency
Despite post-scarcity technologies, a market economy and currency (whose name roughly translates to "the claw") persists.
Neighboring Nations
Related Species
