Saturday night (2/27/10) Imperial Lord, Jedion357, and I were chatting about vrusk history before they achieved FTL space travel. We identified vrusk society going through a major change from hive dominance to corporate dominance via their equivalent of the industrial revolution. This thread aims to explore vrusk society during the dominance of the hives. So here goes a little history with some ideas I had after the chat.<br /><br />The hive structure developed in vrusk pre-history. No records exist from this time. Some archeological evidence has provided clues the to the development of the ancient hives. The oldest hive records date to about five thousand cycles (vrusk home world years) before vrusk / dralasite contact. Nine hives start their recorded history during this period of about four hundred cycle. Of these only two hives existing at the time the hives gave way to the corporations could trace their history back to these hives.<br /><br />At the height of the hive structure power was maintained by the royals. The royals were vrusk who had elevated themselves to power by their own efforts and blood lines. These royals dominated the vrusk of their hives. Royals were educated and enjoyed many benefits that the remainder of the hive were not exposed to. The common vrusk of the hive was trained in a specific task from birth and worked tirelessly at that task all of his days.<br /><br />Hive vrusk belonged to their hive. All larva were birthed in the nurseries and the privilege to mate was controlled by the royals. Most common vrusk males never received the privilege to mate. Females surrendered their young to the hive and returned to their life's task. Common males and females of the hive lived segregated lives as part of the controlling structure used by the royals. Females received tasks protecting them within the hive due to their value in providing young to grow the hive. Males were tasked with external duties and dangerous work.<br /><br />The most important aspect of the hive system was the acquisition of resources to support the growing numbers of the hive and expansion of the hive to secure these resources. Anciently it was easy for hives to stake claims to new land. However as time progressed the available land diminished and conflicts between hives occurred. These hive wars became increasingly bloody as land diminished and the most powerful hives became bigger. Eventually competition for resources pressed the development of technology to better utilize the resources controlled by each hive. This however did not diminish the conflicts between the hives. Wars escalated even further during this time due to improvements in military technology.<br /><br />Two major developments then combined to cause the shift from the hive system to corporations. As the hives industrialized the common vrusk became educated for the first time in history. Many of these educated vrusk established trade and cooperative ventures with their counterparts in other hives. This benefited their hives and themselves with power and wealth. Secondly new military technology developed at this time increased the strength of many smaller hives upsetting the balance of power. The larger hives quickly adopted and improved upon the new military technology and the resulting wars caused a break of loyalty of the educated vrusk to their hives. There were revolts and fracturing of hives. Within a hundred cycles the power of the hives had given way to corporations.<br /><br />I am still puzzling about the details of the power shift. Maybe as we fill in more of the hive history we can develop a strong foundation for the transition to the vrusk corporate structure.<br /><br />-iggy
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