Thank you guys so much for your help in looking around the lore here. As I said, I’m going to be doing the Minmatar one first as there seems to be a lot of material for it, and beyond that they’re generally considered a “good” faction, so getting to dig in a little deeper is idea.
For now, here’s the second revision of my script, in case people would like to note things I’ve missed/misunderstood. Hopefully I’ll be able to start recording this weekend and put something out next week.
"Why the Minmatar Republic Sucks
- Tattoo culture is a massive part of the Minmatar social and cultural hierarchy, however it is something entirely alien to what we’d know, and not something that one has direct control over. The first tattoo one is given is near-compulsory upon reaching adulthood. It realies on a mix of genetics, luck and mysticism on the part of the “Shamans” who peform the Marking Ritual or Voluval, permanently affixing one’s name and tribal afilliation (another part of Minmatar society we’ll get to soon enough), but also determining one’s status in society and the worth of one’s very soul.
The highest social rank is afforded by the “Ray of the Matar”, which is a ‘sign that one is destined for great things’, and typically brings with it a level of guaranteed success. In fact, a great many of the higher ranking politicians happen to have extremely rare and auspicious variations of markings, irrespective of how effective they are at their jobs. Far worse than this seeming random privellege however, is the most negative marking, which goes by many names between different tribes, “The Pale Eye”, “The Broken Shield”, “Face of Helina” being the most common terms.
Those who are - through no fault of their own - given this mark during their marking ceremony are immediately shunned and made outcasts from society, and social traditions in fact force a vow of silence upon these poor souls, with the punishment for breaking this being the complete physical removal of ones tongue.
I’d like you to a moment put yourself in the place of a Minmatar teenager on the cusp of adulthood, 16 to 18, and imagine how utterly terrifying it must be to know that you are going to a ceremony where there’s a chance (no matter how small) you may be exiled from your familly and have the threat of having your tongue removed hanging over you for the rest of your life, based completely on random chance. Even the more ‘minor’ negative marks, such as the “Slaver’s Fang” are likely to lead you to a live of poverty and desperation in a society and culture that is almost entirely dominated by tattoos as their one remaining post-enslavement touchstone.
- Given this, it’s no wonder a great many with negative marks don’t take their exile, they run to a place where laws simply aren’t used. And this isn’t for any lack of police force, the Minmatar simply decided to have a place where laws as we would understand them don’t exist in the heartland of their empire, Vo’shun.
Part socio-cultural gulag, part warzone and all shithole, Vo’shun only has one overiding principle, “No-one is turned away.” Within it, the only laws are those of ancient legend, attempting to create a fascimilie of what the Minmatar lived in before they reached for the stars, before the Amarr darkened their skies.
Murder is an everyday occurence, suicide is just as rampant, but as the Minmatar Republic slowly repopulates, enough exiles run screaming from their adulthood and their extended famillies into the arms of it, so that they might know freedom from all else. That stream of the dissaffected and desperated and discarded is the only thing keeping it populated. It is so dangerous that despite being within spitting distance of the Amarr empire, they have a law against millitary action and especially enslavement raids on the planet, due to fears of the myriad of untreated or untreatable communicable diseases rife in the colony would damage their existing stocks.
And this is all before we get into the location on the planet itself this supposed shelter is placed. It is the closest thing EVE has to a literal hellscape, being inside a miles deep scar on the landscape of the homeplanet of the now extinct Starkmanir tribe, a grand orbital strike having shattered the tectonic plate. Floating in this gap, between the sulphur volcanoes a tiny fraction of the continent remains. It is hot, barren, and the air is nearly deadly, with supplies only provided by piracy efforts or the Sisters of EVE, life is beyond hard, it is nigh impossible.
Oh, and in the greatest irony, the name translates as “Hidden Hope”, just to lure in more new blood from all over the Repbulic to dry on this burning rock, spilled by equally desperate souls as they fight to live. And all of this is considered to be the Minmatar ideal of freedom, a grand social experiment as utterly abhorrent and unethical as the Amarr Human Endurance Program, just in the name of recreating Minmatar folklore instead of bastardised science.
I can’t help but speculate that perhaps this is an idea that the Amarr implanted within the Minmatar culture during their generations of slavery, to paint a picture of the Minmatar culture as barbaric and backwards so that more would embrace the ‘love’ of God. If so, it’s a terrible irony that the Minmatar, after gaining their freedom decided that they should simply embrace their barbarism as the epitome of their culture, proving that all the Amarr had said was true.
- This barbarism doesn’t just extend to their own people however, their hatred of the Amarr runs so terrifyingly deep that they are effectively not considered human by the Minmatar in general. To start with, the Republic has concentration camps for Amarr prisoners of war - or people who associated with them, or expressed beliefs they felt were a bit too Amarr to accept. These camps are designed to not simply kill the occupants however, but to completely destroy them spiratualy and mentally, to break down the rules of cause and effect that allow people to stay sane. Pointless tasks, incompletable orders, random punishments, complete forced subservience to the guards will - including everything from forced corophagia to forced rapes, with one guard noted to gather a section of inmates, and force them to have sex with each other as he watched. And the worst part? There is no end to it. The Guards keep people alive for as long as possible, to extend their torment, only executing prisoners if absolutely necessary. You could be captured as a young Amarrian adult, or perhaps a Minmatar citizen who wished to convert to the Amarr religion, and be kept there until your death of neglect at 70 or so, after living 50 years in this hell.
Camps like this were invented and refined during the great Minmatar rebellion, with mentions of the “Daughters of the Revolution” being abound, whom are the Amarr women who were sold into sexual slavery within the Minmatar Republic as spoils of war. The men were primarily worked to death in horrifying forced labour camps, and shot when they outlived their usefulness.
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And that’s before we get into the state sponsored terrorism that the Minmatar seem to greatly enjoy participating in. You can look at a great many chronicles here, but my personal favourite has to be “Innocent Faces”, which details the horror faced by a children’s show host in the Amarr empire, who’s young daughter is kidnapped by a Minmatar group, with the instructions to denounce his religion on TV if he wanted to see his child again. Fearing both the aparatus of the Amarr state coming down on him, and also the eternal damnation of apostasy, he does not, and it is heavily implied that his daughter is murdered.
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Still, those are just the people who aren’t quite “real minmatar” enough, being Amarr and all that. Let’s imagine you manage to get out of the marking ceremony with a normal mark, and don’t have any dangerous ideas like trying some of that religion stuff. You’re still far from what our perspective would see as ‘free’.
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For a start, you are almost completely beholden to your extended family, with that being a core identifier added during the Voluval along with your name and ethnic tribe. You will be culturally expected to help every cousin, no matter how distant as a part of one’s honour. Not a particularly awful system, except in how that cultural system is regularly enforced with exile or violence should one’s duty to help their extended family be shirked. This structure then builds up with other extended famillies, creating the vast ethnic based collectives that form the tribalistic foundation of the fractuous state of the Republic.
This, in and of itself is less inherently terrifying, until one considers that this means that the police force for ones tribe are likely to be - in some way - related to you. And any percieved crime you commit is either against another state (and therefore likely to have your police cover it up when they can), or an unforgivable sin against one’s familly. As such, police brutality in the Minmatar is not just common, it is the default response. One famous tale from the Frigates of EVE is that during the repurposing of the Shamrock into the RFF, the plans were sold to the Amarr by engineers, who were then welded to the wings of the ship and flown into the void. The survivor of this adventure was then beaten to death after landing.
Even if you avoid being simply beaten to death, I wouldn’t exactly expect a thorough investigation. For example, the accused killer of Karin Midular (previous PM of the Minmatar Republic), was taken from the Gallente Federation in a bout of gunboat diplomacy, and despite the intense scrutiny placed on the Republic as a result of this, gave him what could be barely even be called a sham trial, with the judge sentencing him rather quickly to execution despite a complete lack of defense counsel, simply being paraded in front of those he supposedly hurt and brutally executed.
No wonder a huge amount of the Matari immigrate to the Gallente, although that’s a subject we’ll cover in the Gallente episode.
- Still, let’s imagine you get a nice shiny tattoo that marks you out for great things though, and you end up getting a nice cushy political position. Things are looking up right, plenty of guards to let you avoid the whole getting beaten to death over an accusation thing, enough clout to probably get an actual trial. Even this isn’t enough to protect you, as was seen in the incredibly public political purges the Republic underwent prior to the kicking off of what we now know as Faction Warfare, which would have made Stalin proud - Every Minmatar politician with ties to the Amarr was, without trial, summarily executed within their equivelant to a senate meeting by the Tribal Elders and those loyal to them.
And then, a few years later, they just gave up on democracy as a whole, making the Sanmatar (Tribal Chief) a lifetime position, and abolishing the Prime Minister altogether, regressing to a Chieftan based sytem of government. To be more Minmatar.
- And, even after all this in the name of the ‘Greater Good’ of a Tribal Republic, the Minmatar still desperately struggle to support those slaves willingly freed by the Amarr Empire, with Empress Jamyl’s (may she rest in peace) proclamation of freedom in particular leading to a huge strain being put on the social safety net of the fledgling empire. Many of these freed slaves ended up in shanty towns, their quality of life barely better than that whilst under the chains of the Amarr, without taking into account the religious violence that took place between pro & anti Amarr factions in these empancipated slaves, which the Republic was almost powerless to intervene in.
[Outro]
Fly Smart, and remember, We Come For Our People."