Cultural Spotlight TheVendari
Let me begin by explaining the lack of a post for the month of June 2023. Initially, I was going to apologize but soon realized how silly it is to express regret about something out of my control.
The week I planned to put butt in chair and write June’s post is when I began fighting one of the worst cases of sickness in my entire life. First my husband contracted it, then passed it to me and we typically do not get sick; however, when we do, it knocks us down hard. This did more than just knock us down hard, it hit every area possible beginning with the throat, then upper respiratory, and sinuses. We both had numerous nights sleeping elevated on the couch to mitigate the coughing fits. My voice also took a bit of time to recuperate.
I would say from the point when I began showing symptoms up to the moment of writing this post, it has taken roughly 5 to 6 weeks for some sense of normalcy to return. My bronchial passages are still a tad sensitive but getting better. My husband speculated we probably had bronchitis because all the symptoms were present. I’ll add it to my bucket list of never had before illnesses.
As I begin to rebuild both my physical and writing stamina, I felt it would be appropriate to introduce the Vendari, a new race I developed in response to fleshing out more detail related to background development for one of the main characters.
The creation of the Vendari is a prime example of what I have spoken to in numerous posts about the organic nature of writing and how one must be malleable to stop in the middle of what you are doing to create necessary and much needed world building elements.
Prior to moving it to the book three slot in the series, I was early in writing The Fury of Ages when I realized one of the character’s backgrounds was missing a significant piece of information. The object lesson is no matter how prepared you are with properly organized notes or rough outlines, a time will come where you will need to fine-tune or create from scratch, the details needed to make your world even more believable. This may sound like a duh statement, but I am amazed as to how many content creators fight their instincts as to when it is appropriate to alter course and make much needed adjustments to their content.
Positioned deep within the Gamma Quadrant on the planet of Tetanus 5, the Vendari have a tumultuous history marred by numerous civil wars and styles of governance ranging from an Autocracy and Oligarchy to a Meritocracy, which has been its longest running system of government for over a thousand years.
Located roughly in the middle of the Gamma Quadrant amongst an unusual clustering of three main sequence stars commonly referred to as the Trifecta, Tetanus 5 shares the Ryconus star system with the shape shifting Deresians. Due to the varying gravitational forces throughout the star system, both the Deresians and Vendari have attempted to capitalize on how to use these gravity fluxes to their advantage.
On one hand, the Deresians have used the presence of gravity fluxes to design metals and alloys for starships whose hulls can withstand above normal gravitational forces with high resistances to sheering. The Vendari have taken a similar approach by developing their sling-shot technology, which can be built into almost every type of starship propulsion system to experiment with the concept of time travel.
A primarily technologically driven society, Vendari have five main groups whose dominance waxes and wanes based on the strongest whim driving their society in each moment. These groups comprise the highest minds in the fields of technology, sociology, philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy. Out of these five groups, usually three tend to dominate decision-making and politicking, while the lessor two act as neutralizers should the dominant groups begin to border on the extreme. This methodology of governance has kept the Vendari from repeating previously bad decisions in how they govern for well over several millennia.
As one would expect, the five main groups created fellowships whose internal structure form the foundational framework of their education system with key members serving as representatives on the Amorphous Society who act as guides in forming the direction of their society. These fellowships are known to the Vendari by the following titles:
Technologists - Just as the name implies, everything encompasses technology.
Demographers - focused on societal composition and elements inherent to Vendari culture.
Conceptualist - delving into the realm of nominalism and realism.
Metas - everything to do with mathematics.
Celestials - particulars associated with space and the physical universe.
At an average height of 177.8 centimeters in males, females and mixed genders, the Vendari exhibit skin tones in the orange-yellow spectrums with some rare cases of red orange. It is has been theorized, the effects of the Trifecta have influenced and altered the pigments of the Vendari over the course of several millennia. Their naturally robust, muscular bodies serve them well in traversing the predominately mountainous and thick forested areas of their home world. They have pronounced ridges around their eyes, with a wide nose and flared nostrils centered between sharp cheek bones. Their rounded lips often appear to be non-existent because they take on the individual skin tone of each Vendari. Unlike many other species of humanoids, the Vendari do not have toenails or fingernails attached to their medium to large-sized extremities. All gender types are predominately bald with two raised, bony ridges on the left and right sides of their cranium. Some females gain the ability to grow hair when they are older but only enough to form a top knot.
Vendari age very slowly with a typical lifespan ranging from 150 to 200 years. They are extremely resilient against most diseases, viruses and bacteria alike. Due to being raised in an area of the Ryconus star system with high gravitational forces, they do require an acclamation period when visiting other planets whose gravity is not as pronounced. The Technologist fellowship created a device easily attached to the arm, designed to reduce the acclamation period and mitigate its side effects.
Although they age slowly, their maturity and intellectual abilities develop more rapidly than most other humanoids. A five-year old Vendari would have the maturity and intellect of a 20-year-old human.
The Vendari do not believe in overt military posturing and maintain modest, yet highly advanced military and commercial fleets. Rather, they have one of the most sophisticated planetary defense systems of most known races. The level of built-in redundancies makes it virtually impossible to destroy certain segments of its grid and have it experience a power failure.
As always, I wish for you to be safe, be well, and continuously strive to build your mind on a foundation of compassion and unconditional love. By doing so, you will influence others to do the same and help make the universe a much better place to live by helping change one mind at a time for the better.
Thank you for reading or conversely, thank you for listening.
