Protectorate Deep Space Colonist

A deep space colonist in the Cobalt Protectorate is a person who choses to join the Evermorn Strategic Colony Initiative and travels to a distant world or other inhabitation to establish a colony, often with the understanding that there will be no going back within his or her lifetime.

Career

Qualifications

The ESCI imposes some strict regulations on prospective colonists to maximize the chances of their collective survival and prosperity for generations to come. The list of qualifications is long and has some points of flexibility to account for variances in useful skills, traits, and professions among the colonial population. Some qualifications include:

A prospective colonist should be a citizen of the Cobalt Protectorate, ideally a member of one of the twelve major clans, and should ostensibly agree to be bound by the rights and responsibilities set forth in the Code of Evermorn. While colonies enjoy great autonomy due to the extreme distances between inhabited worlds - though not quite on par with the Periphery states - the Code is a legal framework designed by Evermornans who lived through the recolonization of their own homeworld firsthand and, thus, is considered a useful rubric for good colonial governance. A declaration of affiliation with the Protectorate ahead of time also binds the Protectorate to ensure certain duties of the state are maintained for the colonies (i.e. protection against external military threats.

A prospective colonist is tested beforehand for any disorders incompatible with life or the safe operation of starship systems. While the first few generations of colonists are travelling and establishing themselves on the target world, specialist medical care or devices like cybernetic prosthesis may be in extremely limited supply.

A prospective colonist is tested for heritable genetic disorders incompatible with life or the safe operation of starship systems. While genetic disorders carry no stigma in the modern age, they are much easier to cure with the hyper-advanced medical technology found on Evermorn than they would be in the 'bush' of a world still undergoing development. At the same time, colonists may be sorted into different missions (though always with already established immediate family) to ensure maximum genetic diversity, as the limited size of a colony ship functions as an artificially-imposed genetic bottleneck. A popular tactic to ensure minimal inbreeding is to mix Evermornan colonists with populations of non-Evermornan Periphery state peoples on colony missions, as is the case with the Lepidosian population aboard the ESCI Revelation.

A prospective colonists should demonstrate skill in a useful field of expertise, strong mental fortitude, a degree of positive sociability, and problem solving skills. The Sealed Kingdoms Region holds dangers beyond those merely pertaining to the hostile environment of space, and colonists must be prepared to operate even without the aid of the technologies that have made Evermornan society safe and comfortable for centuries.

Career Progression

Each colonist has an important role to fill at the colony site and, if not frozen for the duration of the journey, aboard the spacecraft taking them there. Those who broaden their knowledge to include other fields of work -such as when a fusion engineer learns how to help in the botany lab - are highly valued among colonists even beyond the respect that comes with a high social status within the Protectorate.

Payment & Reimbursement

Deep space colonists from the Protectorate are nominally employees of the Evermorn Strategic Colony Initiative in addition to any other job titles they may carry. Though the colonist as an employee is effectively unpaid save for the resources freely provided at the start of the mission and certain services (i.e. communications) provided thereafter, the legal fiction of colonist employment also serves to enforce upon the ESCI a legal duty of care for all colony missions it launches. Causing or allowing a colony to fail is effectively mass murder by negligence, but without legal standing, corporations that do work with the ESCI might otherwise think that shoddy workmanship or materials would never be discovered - after all, a colony mission is generally considered a one-way trip.
The ESCI does use certain products of colonies, such as media and research produced on-location, to fund continued operations as though these were performed by its own employees. For example, music produced by Midori Milan earns royalties that are then used to support communications and technical assistance from the ESCI to the ESCI Revelation where she is a resident.

Type

Public Services