World Building Challenge - Day 18 - Subculture

This is part of Faranesque's World Building Challenge from r/WorldBuilding. Check out my hub post for details.  

Preface: Most of my posts from this point on will likely focus on the crew of the Rōnni and the refugees with them, now I've done some of the cosmic establishment from Day 1. 

In today's installment, a discussion of the significance of leaving one's World behind...

XVIII SUBCULTURE

One never forgets their World in the Firmament.

The Stars saw to this, for they were the ones who shaped the Worlds and all the Peoples upon them. They wanted their chosen People to know where their home was, where their loyalties lay. Even now, ages and ages and untold ages since the Firmament was created, some spark of this lingers in every soul which wanders it.

This is not to say that it was impossible to ignore. The Stars knew that the Peoples needed to have a will of their own, or they might as well not have shaped them. How else would they find resonance with, or amusement in, the actions of mortals, if they could not make choices for themselves?

One of the most difficult decisions one could make, then, was to abandon one's World.

Oh, to be sure, there were people who travel between suns and planets, but this was not the same thing. That was just commerce, the lifeblood of civilization. But to sever one's tie to one's World, to sail amid the black and not call a planet one's World, to make one's home upon a Ship forevermore? This was something entirely different. It was to go against something ingrained in the very core of one's being, something instinctual and almost inviolate.

It was not something undertaken lightly. Not merely because to do so was to be akin to defying the Stars, but for more practical reasons. Those who gave up their Worlds were also frequently placing themselves outside the laws of the nations and kingdoms that spread throughout the Firmament. With no allegiance to them, they would receive no formal protection from them. With no loyalty to any except themselves, they were often seen as untrustworthy rogues.

To be fair, this was often true. Many World-less vagabonds had ended up becoming itinerant criminals and pirates. For when one has abandoned something so significant, what are morals or laws to them? These remain a plague on the Firmament, lingering on in lawless and perilous regions such as the Numinous Veil or the Haskin Reef.

There were some, however, who still adhered to morals, who still had loyalty, albeit only to those they chose to sail alongside. They might still be vagabonds, taking employment where they could, but flew no flag and swore no allegiance to any authority but their own.

All such wanderers tend to echo a rallying cry, indicative of their choice to remain free of obligation or submission to a greater authority. Derived from Anteceptosi, it combines the words "go den," meaning "all time" or "forever," with the word "bo," meaning "flag" or "banner," and the suffix "-raa," meaning "without."

Godenboraa. Bannerless forever.