Rinni Tribefleets

Curious and unpredictable stellar nomads with unmatched medical skills and the will to put them to use.

Native species

The Rinni

• Overview:
• A rodent-like human-derived species, typically 110 to 130 cm in height. A fully ratlike head structure with a roughly wedge-shaped whiskered snout and round mobile ears, a lithe, loose-skinned body entirely covered in fine water-resistant fur but for the slim and dextrous clawed fore and hind paws, and a long, prehensile hairless tail. Fur colours tend towards the monochrome, but cream, tan and brown coats are also common, with patterns or markings formed in the contrast of only two fur colours. Rinni tend to keep their coats clean and their patterns smoothly defined especially on the arms, legs and head, and typically consider it hygeinic to keep their tails free of any hair.


• Rinni clothing tends towards robes or sari held tight to the figure by broad fabric belts around the torso and hardwearing polymer-weave belts around the appendages, and may include short hoods or snout-covering garments. The fabric used is never plain in colour or appearance, and the fine whirls, scripts, or other patterns spread through the robe, overalls and belts is is significant of itself. The clothing is encoded with their family's history, personal station and achievements, and references to events or people they have witnessed while travelling. More or more complex belts indicate seniority or achievement. Belts worn on the forearms or thighs can also indicate deeper specialisations. Its not uncommon for a Rinni travelling abroad or visiting another tribe to build their most flattering robes into the exterior of their environment suits. Piercings are relatively common in Rinni culture and are seen as a symbol of resilience, both against infection by rupturing their skin and by implication against the trials of the universe.


• Subtypes:
• While varying in their appearance between individuals, each tribefleet has gradually experienced some genetic drift since setting off seperately from its fellows. Arguably, either there are no recognisable Rinni subspecies or every seperate spacefaring community is a subspecies unto itself.


• Naming conventions:
• Rinni names use two patrynomics, linking their history to that of their immediate ancestors or mentors and placing them in the context of their tribe's ongoing history. The prefix Lis-, meaning 'child of', is used. The choice of an individual's lis is a spiritual as much as a familial or professional one, because it is a commitment to turn one's life into a fitting continuation of their lis's life story. It is a rare but not unheard-of honour for a lis to be appointed outside the tribe.
• The final part of the name is the professional caste the Rinni belongs to, including multiple classes if they have significantly changed professions in their lives.


• Rinni names can very rarely gain honorifics after their profession and at the very end of their name, awarded for skills or attributes that can change the course of their tribefleet's history. Not all honorifics are positive.
• For example:
Vaskret Lisvarhis Listrahis Flesh-Welder Skr-Vrin
means: Vaskret, child of Varhis, child of Trahis, Flesh-Welder (doctor) and Skr-Vrin (pilgrim)



Territory

The Tribefleet

In place of any territory or recognisable factional identity, nomadic Rinni communities belong to tribefleets.

A tribefleet is a single Rinni community spread across multiple (nominally independent) vessels. Often keeping to close formation, ships of sizes ranging from 100 to 1200+ metres on longest axis maintain themselves indefinitely with imported resources, often sharing duties, crew and resources between vessels according to changing conditions. Each fleet is much closer to a self-propelled hab station than a commercial convoy or naval squadron, no matter how it's viewed. They are sluggish and inflexible in their mobility, limited in total size yet tied together by necessity, and always halfway to disrepair.

Approximate specialisations tend to form between otherwise self-sufficient vessels - one director-ship with sufficient navigation and astrogation gear to direct the fleet and so form the de facto centre of governance; a handful of multirole but well-populated nest-ships which carry the bulk of familial populations, a few sub-specialised scavenger-ships for general resource collection in space or seeking advantageous trade, and one or more healer-ships for whatever compassionate missions or for-profit medical aid the tribefleet may decide to deliver. It's rare for a fleet to consist of more than 12 large ships, due to the exponentially growing difficulty of monitoring and cross-quarantining multiple very lived-in biospheres.

History

Timeline of events

• Prehistory - It is theorised that a Terran colony ship left its course unexpectedly and started drifting towards the galactic south, traversing interstellar space but coming to a halt in an unknown system at the very galactic rim entirely by chance. The colony ship, its identity entirely unknown even if any record of its launch survived, was damaged enough to flash gene-edit its colonists on a predesigned template and awaken them while drifting in deep space, welcoming them to their 'new world'.
• Prehistory - Without a system to enter and with only a worn-down colony ship designed for a one-way trip, the ship's occupants took to resource harvesting in their system to ensure survival. If this theory is correct, and extrapolated from earliest Rinni folklore, the colonists must have repaired and reconfigured their colony ship's FTL as well as critical systems and began travelling back towards the galaxy proper.
• 0 of the Endless Voyage (by current reckoning) - the command cruiser FNS Firefly, deserting from a Terran Federation battlefleet and striking out in search of a new home, encounters a ruined, ancient civilian vessel with inoperative core systems and investigates. Terran crew encounter a sprawling community of small humanoid rodents in what remains of the habitable parts of their vessel. Peaceful relations are established in joint hope of finding somewhere safe to stop by. This is the first concrete fact in the history of the Rinni people, but forms only the latter part of their founding myth.
• 1-65 EV - The Firefly, along with the nonhuman colonists and as much of their colony ship as could be salvaged, continues in search of a habitable planet to settle down on. Additional vessels are encountered, reported in their histories to be completely abandoned, and are either brought online to join the search or scrapped for useable parts entirely.
• 65 EV - The approximate date of the First Culling. A strictly human-compatible disease, believed to be a bioweapon turned on a distant civilian population and remaining dormant in their evacuation ships turned tombs, rips through the Firefly and attendant vessels. While the Rinni population survived and managed to quarantine the few cases of zoonotic transfer, the human death toll was unthinkable and their populations never recovered. With a large part of their institutional expertise eliminated, the remaining crew were forced to improvise and adapt. A sharp drop in the quality and proficiency with technology occurs here and takes centuries to properly recover.
• Additional instances of lethal epidemics begin to occur with increasing frequency, the more significant of them remembered as Cullings. Study of diseases begins to preoccupy the Rinni imagination.
• 122 EV - Trade for hulls and gradual expansion leads the Rinni to expand their operation to the point that medical staff struggle to communicate quarantine and cross-contamination data between the various ramshackle vessels. Rather than risk losing control of the situaion in the face of the next Culling, the Rinni community mades the decision to part ways and split their fleet. The two fleet structures promise to stay in communication as best they can, and to meet together in celebration once one civil fleet or the other finally find a homeworld they can call their own. This promise remains one of the most sacred and highly regarded communications in their culture, and is repeated word for word when a new tribefleet is created.
• 160s EV - The final and catastrophic collapse of the Terran Federation, creating countless opportunities for the Rinni as majority-human subsectors turn on one another but also endangering them as the subsectors look upon migrant nonhumans with suspicion or open hostility. As a self defence measure, the Rinni fleets decide to fragment further in order to ensure their survival if one is hunted down by local security.
• 180s EV - While Earth gradually regains its authority over human space through a mixture of conquest, diplomatic assurances and the prestige of the newly forming Terran Empire, Rinni fleets begin to differentiate culturally and biotically. Different fleets begin to treat one another as tribes, fundamentally cousins in their shared journey but effectively a subtly different people. Conflict is unheard of, but the Tribefleet system is quickly formalised.
• 250s-280s EV - Rinni tribes begin to drift trailwards as well as corewards, and start to broadly disperse. Despite finding the uncolonised and habitable worlds their ancestors had pledged their lives to reach, by now the nomadic way of life is ingrained into every rodent in each tribefleet.
• 400s EV - Tribefleets begin to enter the Trailward Stars and spread out, initially keeping to fringe Terran space where they are generally tolerated but later shifting their attention to minor or more primitive human colonies beyond the borders.
• 945 EV - First recorded contact between an independent Trailward Stars civilisation and Rinni, as the Scri-Atr Tribefleet encounters Sestian communities near the Rupeean border. Welcomed and allowed to traverse their space despite some restrictions, the fleets flourish and soon the Sym-Atr Tribefleet is founded, named in honour of the Kitsune House that welcomed them in.
• Additional Tribefleets gradually encounter additional communities on their way to becoming starfaring powers, and contact is duly made. While not a diplomatic service, the immediate Rinni grapevine forms one of the first international contact links trailwards of the Terrans.
• 1100s EV - As the situation in the Terran Empire begins to deteriorate and the imperial state starts to lean on the fear of abhuman barbarians to maintain their legitimacy, the Rinni gradually begin to adopt their Skr-Vrin Pilgrimage, a dangerous practice of slipping physician-infiltrators into human urban centres as examples of compassion between species, a compassion that Earth was insisting does not exist. The unofficial link between Skr-Vrin agents and acts of surgical terror or assassination against infamous persecutors soon follows, a rare streak of almost predatory pride among the usually pacifistic Rinni.
• 1224 EV - present day

Government policies and doctrines

• Overview:
  • Tribefleets vary in their practical approach to politics, however the typical approach is casual in appearance but in essence highly involved. Decision-makers and natural leaders emerge within each guild and caste, and find their niches or else clash with rivals for petty distinctions in their pecking order. Rinni who lose sight of their common goals tend to be starving and stranded Rinni, and so collaboration or compromise is often the order of the day. Rinni politics is highly social and as fluid as the rest of their daily lives, with new voices or contenders for authority rising and falling with the goodwill and respect their skills and reputation can earn on any particular day.
    
    Many minor spacefaring communities, local governments and sometimes even Terran provincial rulers have tried to buy the loyalty of a strategic few Rinni leaders, expecting the apparently primitive tribe to rally around its chieftains, only to discover that by the time gifts or threats were delivered the mantle of power had already shifted twice...


• Notable leaders:
  • Zirori Lisrakily Lisasila Skr-Vrin Engine-Tender Harpyfriend (NB) - of the Kuisraki Tribefleet, a legendary Skr-Vrin fighter and a close ally of the Presidil warband.
  • Gin Lissartoria Skr-Vrin Godless (F) - of the Kuisraki Tribefleet, a troubled warrior with a particular hatred for certain Terran practices.


• National views:
  • Of outsiders:
    • Foreign factions, and the civilisations they comprise, are seen as the terrain through which a tribefleet travels. The larger factions serve as sources of scrap or trade, suffering to be treated, maybe even wrongs to be righted if an individual tribefleet has the will and the opportunity. More established factions are often used as shelter from pirates or other threats. The Terran Empire is a double-edged sword for tribefleets - their systems contain plentiful resources and they are always in search of Rinni talent, but the now common Terran bigotry mkes every interaction a risk of their casual destruction.
    
    
    • Community matters to the Rinni and close ties between guildsrats and foreigners are always established, but such friendships are often transient and finite. The tribe always moves on in search of new stars and new horizons, and friendships will become fond memories.
  
  
  • Of themselves:
    • Most Rinni consider themselves free, together with their people, and making the best life they can. They are cautious among relative outsiders (both other species and other tribefleets), if only due to their cultural obsession with the risk of infection, which is why in many factions Rinni are known by their environmental suits more than by their faces. Planetary revanchists, those few Rinni who forsake their nomadic life and settle on a planet, are not considered outsiders or traitors so much as they are mourned as if dead - their story ends with them, and no descendants will ever carry on their journey.


• Belief system:
  • While not actually subscribing to a common religion, Rinni do have a semi-casual system of shipboard deities they venerate. Not quite a household god and not quite a ritualised retelling of their vessel's history, the specifics of worship are diverse and for many Rinni cultures mutually baffling. The only real constant is that modest shrines are maintained throughout their ships, with all the professional castes helping equally to keep them clean, functional and beautiful.
  
  
  • Rinni society also values and respects their place in time. The ship they live and work on is an ever-present reminder of the gift of life and locomotion they received from their ancestors, and in turn reminds them of the duties each rat owes to their descendants. Caught between past and future, it is up to every Rinni to find their peace with the moment and demonstrate their worth to both their ancestors and descendants, making their mark on the universe in some small, positive way.
  
  
  • For this, or perhaps as proof to themselves, Rinni are sentimental kleptomaniacs and often carry tokens or souvenirs of their travels and their missions. Whether scraps of cloth from a planetside mission incorporated into their outfit in strategic ways, shards of metal from an intact salvaged ship made into a necklace, mementos from hard-forged foreign friendships, gifts from patients whose lives they saved, or commemorative jewellery for something much more private, these tokens are not always worn but are highly treasured. When a Rinni dies, their tokens are offered at a ship shrine and later respectfully broken down for salvage, letting the life lived fall into the memory of tribemates and family as they carry on some small part of the deceased's story.
  
  
  • Tribefleets also traditionally carry a fragment of their very original birth ship, or at least what they claim is an authentic fragment, as a tangible link to their earliest origins and the wandering generations that came before.

Class layout:

• While family connections rule all in Rinni society, there are traditional groups of roles that form rival classes or castes that influence local politics, vie for resource collection priorities, and work together to ensure their tribefleet's survival from day to day.
  
  
  • The Tribe-Seeker is a traditional term for the rank and file Rinni civilian, shipboard worker, craftsrat and any other role not coalesced into its own class. A mistranslation of the formal 'Seeker of the Tribe'. Rinni Tribe-Seekers are the broadest and loosest class in any tribefleet and forms the backbone of the local society. The numerous guilds of the Tribe-Seekers can range from priests and tailors to accountants and diplomats.
  
  
  • The oldest and most politically powerful seperate class, the Engine-Tenders are the specialist engineers, mechanics, physicists, and operators of specialist subsystems such as the FTL systems each ship needs to give the tribefleet its ability to wander freely. Due to being the ones best placed to tell what the tribefleet can do safely, the Engine-Tenders together have an unusually strong influence over the tribe's strategic direction and, as a consequence, what resource needs are met.
  
  
  • At the sharp end of the resource collection and sustainent role are the Metal-Hunters. Keeping the ramshackle ships of the tribefleet in approximately working order is a permanent concern, and the traders, salvage collectors, miners and foundry crews of the Metal-Hunters both prepare and install an ongoing supply of metals, sealants, fuels and more. Most of the ranging harvest-ships fulfilling such duties also form the common route of foreign contact for the tribefleet, making Metal-Hunters the ad-hoc diplomats of their tribe.
  
  
  • Cure-Seekers are among the highest standing Rinni in the tribe, and some of the most demanding careers to pursue. Primarily responsible for keeping the spectre of pandemic disease and infirmity from destroying the tribe, figuratively or literally. Cure-Seekers are biologists, immunologists, academic scholars of a medical nature and together are responsible for monitoring the biosphere of each ship, the transit of microbial colonies between communities, and the potential danger each new alien biosphere poses to the tribe.
  
  
  • While the Cure-Seekers are responsible for the high-level medical planning and prevention, their cousins among the Flesh-Welders are frontline medics, surgeons, pharmacists and other doctors. While a little less highly thought of in the tribe, physicians trained by the Rinni are in high demand among other cultures and form the lion's share of both foreign relations and contract work as for-hire medical professionals or even wholesale crisis teams.
  
  
  • In place of a military, the Rinni have bands of Lock-Guardians, organised into small communities of approximately platoon size. Originally formed from civil volunteers who guarded the airlocks out of habitable sections of their first colony ship, the role of Lock-Guardian expanded to cover everything from emergency services to individual warriors to shipboard weapon crews. While trusted and relatively few, many Rinni fear the potential for violence the Lock-Guardians represent.
  
  
  • The pilgrimage to settled civilisations is a rare but important act for a Rinni physician, and those who choose to undertake it are known as Pilgrims. However the Rinni word Skr-Vrin has overtaken any translation in common use. Revered for their skill and sacrifice, the unique experiences and sometimes violent nature of the Skr-Vrin who return to their fleet makes them almost outcasts among their own families, but they remain valuable for their broad base of experience and numerous contacts. It is not unusual for a Skr-Vrin to find another caste after returning and apply hard-won skills and fresh ideas wherever they would do the most good.

Defining doctrines:

• 'Scrap-Hunters in their Nests'
  • The most important feature of Rinni equipment and technology is that it somehow still runs. With very little native manufactring capability besides onboard workshops replicatng foreign patterns and whatever the dauntless Metal-Hunters can find, Rinni get by with an eclectic mix of technologies the Engine-Tenders are rarely sufficiently trained in the use of.


• 'First, Do No Harm'
  • Barely a military force at the very best of times, Rinni are exceptionally unwilling to seek violent ends and will always look for alternatives to fighting. If pushed, however, a tribefleet always have a few heavy coilguns and some creative boarding strategies to fall back on, and their sheer tenacity can make any aggressor regret ever touching the apparently defenceless tribe.

Military structure

Core branches

• Lock-Guardians
  • Lock-Guardians are trained from youth in various emergency services tasks, specialising as their talents develop and are tested. Due to this organic training style and a lack of any standardised equipment, no two communities are alike. Typical self-defence weapons include handheld gauss arms, a few coilguns, jury-rigged plasma emitters and occasionally archaic chemical-propellant firearms. The only home-developed weapon is a long dagger equipped with an integral power field, developing in parallel with the hard-wearing scalpels the Flesh-Welders require.
  
  
  • When fighting on foot, itself a rarity, Lock-Guardians transform from friendly shipboard militia to ruthless and inventive killers. Using pathways and access routes no sentry or rearguard would think to watch, often popping out of false walls and through machinery, Rinni fighters do not make direct opposition. Instead they will snipe at and cripple their foes, lay traps and ambushes, disappear scouts or stragglers without trace, and finally swarm the survivors with oversized weapons and sharp blades.


• Skr-Vrin
  • The special training of Skr-Vrin volunteers is by necessity multidisciplinary, touching on most of the specialist castes in Rinni society, but their self defence style is much more aggressive and tactical than most of their kind. Operating alone and in initially unfamiliar territory a Rinni pilgrim is effectively a special forces saboteur with no specific objective. Only after making contact with locals and establishing an underground clinic or bolthole can a Skr-Vrin carry on with their original mission of alleviating the suffering of the disadvantaged. More than a few, however, never quite let go of their capacity for precise destruction.
  
  
  • Skr-Vrin may not have brute strength, familiarity with the environment, or many friends to back them up. However they are small and agile, often very athletic, and bring the resourcefulness of a born scavenger to a fight. With a little experience a pilgrim can appear or disappear from humanoid-accessible areas at will, and has thankful allies among the locals as well as many power daggers and scalpels to fall back on. In the offence, one Skr-Vrin is an unpredictable and precise assassin, stealthy and restrained, who acts with quite literally surgical precision.

Table of contents (click to reveal)

Faction names:
Rinni (colloquial)
Common Tribefleets and Seekers of the Rinni (full)
Rats (colloquial, often derogatory)

Year of founding:
Frankly unknown

Emblem: (N/A)

Notable Members

• Tily Lisliqas Lisgaalasel Lock-Guardian Skr-Vrin

Notable characters: