OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Expand on the Shadow Knights.
Image Credit: Here.
Canon: N/A.
Permissions: N/A.
Links: Kaida, Shadow Knights (lore submission), Eldorai, Qadiri, Vashyada, Eldorai Exodus, Twin Exiles, Xioquo, Firemane, Kaeshana, Kar'zun, Stylena, Casus Belli, Tygara.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Organization Name: Custodians of the Commonwealth.
Classification: Labour Corps.
Affiliation: Shadow Knights, Court of Providence, Citizens' Council, Naesala Faethyra, Court of the Shadows.
Organization Symbol: A hydrospanner crossed with a shovel.
Description: The Shadow Knights have a simple credo: everyone has a duty and there is a duty for everyone. If people have trouble finding a way to serve the community, they will assign a task to them. The Custodians are a labour corps for non-citizens and prisoners who are considered to be unproductive. It is a place for the unemployed to go, but also convicts. The latter get the fun jobs like clearing mines and rubble, clearing up accidents, putting out fires etc. The group has its roots in the labour corps the Shadow Knights organised following the desolation of Kaeshana. With the Eldorai's cities in ruins due to an asteroid collision and much of the planet devastated, an organisation was needed to organise clean-up, build shelters, carry out emergency repairs and so on. Another role of the Custodians is as scrap collectors and salvagers. The Shadow Knights promote the idea of zero waste. Resources are scarce and anything that can be recycled must be recycled, so a lot of waste is redesignated as secondary material that can be reutilised as a resource. This is in keeping with their ideological pursuit of self-reliance. Custodians have been deployed to collect, sort and alter so-called secondary materials so that they can be returned to the production process.
Being a stratocratic society, the Shadow Knights take a low view of unemployment money and the like, since they view it as a 'handout' for 'shirking one's duty'. In their society, citizenship and the political responsibility that comes with is limited to those who have served a tour of duty in the military. Their ideology is summed up with the phrase 'service guarantees citizenship'. Individuals who cannot find work, but are considered physically capable are liable to be conscripted into the labour corps unless the military does so. Residents of the nomad fleet deemed unfit for military service but not regular work may be conscripted into the Custodians so that they can do their part.
The Court of the Justicars, the Shadow Knight organisation that oversees all law enforcement and judicial personnel, cooperates with the Custodians. When the Justicars carry out raids to arrest criminals or 'idle and disorderly' vagrants, the Custodians may receive new workers. The Citizens' Council has passed a law that can force any person who appears to be homeless or unemployed into employment for a period of up to six months. Conscientious objection to military service is controversial in the Shadow Knight movement. Pacifism is something the Shadows neither like nor understand, but press ganged conscripts are unreliable. A conscientious objector will be given a panel hearing. The investigator will question them to ascertain the sincerity of their beliefs. Answers such as 'the army is bad' or 'all wars are wrong' are regarded as illegitimate. The Custodians are one form of alternate service. Another would be, for instance, working in the medical service. By contrast, someone who evades military service using illegitimate or fraudulent means is lumped in with the penal labourers and treated as a common criminal.
These measures provides the Custodians with a recruitment pool. The intention is also to reduce the burden on social welfare agencies. Space is limited in the nomad fleet, and resources must be carefully rationed. Their conception of society is maternalistic. Those entitled to aid include children, the disabled, the sick, the aged infirm, the insane and wounded veterans. At the same time Shadows are unwilling to spend plenty of resources on those they regard as unwilling to 'pull their weight' despite being judged to be physically and mentally capable of doing so. Apart from that, security concerns play a role. From the point of view of the Shadows, being engaged in a productive enterprise is important for an individual's morale and mental health.
The Shadow Knights are themselves former revolutionary leaders and are thus mindful of political unrest caused by inequality. Liberal thinkers among the Shadow Knights have criticised the law for being cruel and draconian, not to mention ineffective at addressing the root cause of vagrancy. However, it continues to be upheld by the Council. The Shadows define vagrants as those not partaking in an 'honest occupation'. Welfare authorities on ships such as the Defiance are required to cooperate with the Custodians. For example, a social welfare agency must keep a register of those it supports and give the Custodians access on request. The use of convicted felons as penal labourers resembles the indentured servitude practiced by the Vashyada as punishment for criminals who cannot pay weregild to make amends for their crimes.
As a labour corps, the Custodians often perform skilled and unskilled manual labour in fields such as construction, maintenance and logistics. They may provide auxiliary duties for the military in the nomad fleet, such as by working as deckhands who maintain attack craft and transport ships or by building facilities such as barracks or fortifications or repair damaged infrastructure. It goes without saying that penal labourers are given the most difficult, unglamorous work. The basis of Shadow Knight society is a rag-tag nomad fleet, and so there is always work that needs to be done.
The Custodians are a civilian organisation and have a civilian-sounding table of ranks. However, the discipline imposed on the members of the group is quite militaristic. The Shadows are a republic, but it is an oligarchic one with strong military trappings. While the primary duty of the Custodians is to act as a labour service, they may be armed in a crisis situation if absolutely needed. On occasion, armed Custodians have been used to guard prisoners of war when no soldiers were available. The work the Custodians do can thus become quite dangerous, though they sadly do not receive the same recognition as 'real' soldiers even when deployed in a vital support role. The Shadow Knights espouse a more egalitarian philosophy than the Eldorai Matriarchy, but they are also a group dominated by middle class officers and revolutionary conspirators.
GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Headquarters: Defiance - an Asur Class Worldship.
Domain: The Custodians of the Commonwealth are a labour corps, not a government, and thus do not lay claim to any specific territory. They operate within the Shadow Knight nomad fleet, such as aboard the worldship and in other areas. Custodians are recruited from within the community and meant to serve it. The primary recruitment pool consists of the unemployed, non-citizens or prisoners considered 'non-productive'. These are all people who face a degree of stigma in Shadow Knight society. Furthermore, the labour corps puts young people who have failed to complete their education to work and helps them acquire skills.
The Shadows are big on service, so it is a way for these people to be put to work and make a living. For prisoners it is a way to learn new skills and get a reduced sentence in return for good behaviour. The Custodians fulfil a variety of tasks such as construction, maintenance, clearing away rubble and so on. This is vital work, but not glamorous. As a state-run organisation, the Custodians are funded by the Shadow Knights.
Notable Assets: The Custodians are a labour corps and thus do not own significant assets themselves. They are sent wherever they are needed and complete tasks there. But while they work in industrial facilities, they do not own them themselves. The group owns barracks, a couple recruitment stations and some basic transports and shuttles. These vessels are unarmed and have droid or remote piloting.
SOCIAL INFORMATION
Hierarchy: The Custodians have work groups of 5-20 people assigned to specific jobs with a supervisor. There are two for 15-20. They assist with technical stuff as well as ensure everything is operating properly. One of the two cell supervisors is the more senior leader, while the other acts as an assistant and is usually a technical specialist of some sort. Both are accountable for the Custodians of their cell both at work and in the barracks. Above that the group has a big pool per worldship/planet/ship and the cells can be moved around freely. The Custodians' hierarchy is rather shallow. The regulars at the bottom of the hierarchy are simply called 'Custodians'. Cell leaders are 'Supervisors'. There is a 'Director' for a group assigned to a planet or ship. Clerical or administrative staff are called 'Co-Ordinators'.
The Custodians are organised locally, but answer to a central bureau on the Defiance. While the Shadows have a strong central authority, they give the individual groups in the nomad fleet a lot of autonomy. The local organisation of the Custodians means that conditions can vary quite a bit between individual ships or colonies though the organisation strives to impose universal standards. While officially Custodians are supposed to go wherever they are needed, in practice canny captains and ship assemblies often employ various bureaucratic schemes to retain 'their' preferred work crews.
Membership: Typically members of the Shadow Knights, a group of Eldorai renegades and their cousins. Typical recruits are the unemployed, prisoners and residents of the nomad fleet who have been rejected for military service on the grounds of being judged physically unfit, but still capable of labour. Most of the Custodians would be Eldorai or Tygaran elves, but the Shadow Knights also throw in foreigners who have been arrested for committing crimes against them. For example, a foreigner trying to smuggle drugs into the nomad fleet or a merchant who tries to scam the Shadow Knights might end up here.
There is a higher proportion of males then females. The Eldorai and their cousin races are traditionally matriarchal, and while the Shadow Knights are more egalitarian than the Matriarchy they seceded from, many conservative values still persist when it comes to gender roles. Men and women serve in the military, but the latter still occupy many of the top jobs or more glamorous roles. Applicants undergo a physical examination to ascertain that they are fit for work. After receiving some basic training, they are assigned to a labour unit. The Custodians recruit personnel from the Court of Providence to staff the upper ranks. In a number cases, wounded NCOs and junior officers who have been discharged from the military due to injury are hired to oversee work crews. The corps also recruits among refugees who have found their way to the nomad fleet.
Prisoners obviously operate under a more strict regime since they are penal labourers repaying their debt to society in return for a more lenient sentence. This means that convicts the Shadow Knights' justice system regards as irredeemable would not be accepted. Severe crimes such as murder receive the death penalty, but someone found guilty of say vandalism, drug trafficking, smuggling, tax evasion, petty theft, vagrancy or a so-called victimless crime considered harmful to society, such as public drunkenness, possession of contraband or illegal drug use, might end up here. Guards are assigned to penal labourers to make sure they do not escape or incite unrest.
While the typical penal labourer is a petty criminal, sometimes an official who has committed an offence and brought their office into disrepute through say tax evasion or corruption is drafted. The Shadows like to think of themselves as an egalitarian, lawful society run by a hierarchy of merit. This is, of course, the propaganda apparatus talking. But they do like to make a show of 'punishing the fat cats'. The Shadows make a point of treating them more harshly than a petty criminal because someone in an official position is expected to have a better understanding of the consequences of their actions.
The Shadow Knights are legalists, and so detainees who have not been convicted yet cannot be ordered to participate in the programme. Their service is not particularly pleasant, but the Shadows prefer it to long-term incarceration. Thus they have implemented a three strikes system. Space is at a premium in the nomad fleet and large prisons are considered wasteful. They also do not have private prisons. Prisoners lose their citizenship if they possessed it prior to being convicted, which means they no longer have the right to vote or run for office.
The Shadows regard voting as a civic duty, but convicted felons have broken the social contract and cannot be entrusted with it. Reenfranchisement after an ex-felon has served their sentence is possible, but not an automatic process. In the eyes of the Shadows people have to prove they are responsible citizens and will abide by the social contract. Good behaviour in the labour corps can speed up the process, especially if the posting was difficult or dangerous. Restoration of political rights aside, only citizens are eligible for state benefits, so there is a good reason to acquire it even if one is disinterested in politics.
Climate: It can be described as a pretty Spartan, unhappy and often sullen environment. People generally do not volunteer to go here patriotically, despite what the propaganda says. Rather they are drafted in. Punishments and incentives keeps a carrot and stick balance which is ultimately more stick than carrot. Chain gangs are outlawed, though the Shadows view caning as a legitimate judicial punishment for undisciplined or riotous convicts. Such forms of punishment are, however, outlawed for workers who are not members due to being convicted. That said, the Shadow Knights are legalists, and so there are laws against abuse of workers. Moreover, there is an appeals' process so that the workers can bring unfair or abusive working conditions to light. The Shadows' legalistic streak means that the process is actually helpful, though it can take long, and they do not take kindly to people trying to 'subvert' it through strikes or riots.
Regardless of their backgrounds, Custodians can expect to work long hours. There is always something that needs to be unloaded, built or fixed in the nomad fleet. A Custodian must appear at their workplace on time and the idea of an eight-hour work day would be regarded as utopian. Duty is a word that is often on the lips of Shadow Knight officers. The Custodians must be willing to be deployed on short notice. The workers wear uniforms, live in barracks and participate in exercises and marches. This is officially supposed to foster a spirit of community, but is obviously not popular with everyone and has made life in the Custodians very regimented. This applies in particular to people who are only in the corps because they were forced to join by the state.
That said, the Custodians guarantee their members a free, warm meal, and a home. Moreover, Custodians are paid for their work, though not a lot. This also applies to convicts, though things work a bit differently for them. There is a payment scheme to compensate convicts for their labour, allowing them to earn money for a life after their release. Convicts are not allowed to actually own money. Instead anything they earn is held in trust. They can use this 'trust fund' to purchase everyday goods from a commissary in order to supplement what they receive from their supervisors. There is a limit on how much they can spend to ensure they still have money after release. The group offers vocational training to its members.
The Custodians have found ways to make the working environment less sullen for them, such as by singing songs and playing music. Indeed, the group has formed its own music band similar to the way military organisations do. Its performances are supposed to help maintain morale. It is worth noting that the programme has support among some convict labourers. Prisoners who are serving a long sentence gain a sense of routine and structure. Good job performance can also boost their self-esteem. The work gives them tasks to focus on, which helps keep prisoners from arguing and fighting, making prisons safer. These benefits should not detract from the fact that the labour corps is very regimented and authoritarian, which has led to riots and strikes.
Reputation: Within the ranks of the Shadow Knights, it is regarded as a necessary but unfortunate requirement. Someone has to do these jobs, and often it is seen as a productive way to put un- or under employed people to use. It does not help that the common - and unfair - stereotype of the Custodian is as a 'idle and disorderly' individual who refused to do their civic duty and contribute to the community, and thus needed to be forced to become productive. The Shadows view them as a useful resource for public works projects and the like. Custodians who are serving a sentence of penal labour get less respect, since they are here not just because they harmed society on top of shirking their duty to it. Naturally it is always popular with the common folk when a bigwig is punished by being given unpleasant work to do. Proponents of the use of convict labour argue that it reduces rates of recidivism. The labourers give back to the communities, gain work experience and provide marketable skills. This allows them to make a fresh start after their release.
Curios: The Custodians have a simple tin stamped badge they all wear. The badge displays the logo of the Custodians. The indentured ones - in other words, the convicts - get a tattoo to identify them which is removed or altered when their service is done. Furthermore, each Custodian is issued a uniform. These are nothing fancy so that they can be produced in large batches, but resistant to wear and tear. Typically, a Custodian will carry a variety of tools, depending on their task. These can range from simple construction or maintenance to more complex repair tools. They may don space suits and other protective equipment for hazardous tasks.
Rules: Custodians must obey the laws of the Shadow Knights. They are expected to comport themselves in a disciplined fashion. The guiding values of a Custodian are supposed to be thrift, discipline, and duty order. They must obey their superiors and fulfil any tasks given to them. It is repeatedly stressed that a Custodian's work is important and a chance for them to contribute to the upkeep and survival of the nomad fleet. Consorting with enemies of the Shadows, committing sabotage or similar crimes are punished severely.
At the same time their superiors are expected to carefully monitor those Custodians who are here due to being convicted, for they are viewed as being lazy, shifty and devious. While there is room for offbeat things in the corps, laziness is not one of them. Convict leasing and he use of chain gangs are banned, and there is an appeals process that allows the workers to bring poor treatment to the attention of the authorities. Each Custodian is entitled to accommodations in the barracks, a free meal, a uniform as well as a wage. They must also be given the opportunity to undergo vocational training so that they can learn new skills.
Goals: Support the Shadow Knight community by providing productive work for unemployed or underemployed individuals. Allow convicts to learn new skills and partly redeem themselves in the eyes of society through penal labour. Carry out public work projects and other essential labour. Help young people without an education acquire skills through vocational training in order to find work.
MEMBERS
Galaya Rindulla (NPC) - a somewhat idealistic sort who is in charge of the Custodians as a whole. She is an Eldorai in middle age nearing retirement. Back in the old days she was a reformer and an avid critic of the ancien régime's methods, trying to reform the legal process to be less cruel and arbitrary. Instead she found herself locked away for a decade whilst the realm crumbled. What if the system was less corrupt and put prisoners and unemployed to work for the common good? She sees the Custodians as a way to remedy the waste, inefficiency and arbitrary cruelty that plagued the realm. Galaya affects a maternal air, and is referred to as Auntie...not always affectionately though.
Mobeen Jal Houseini (NPC) - a Qadiri and the second in command of Galaya. Unlike his boss, he is more ambitious and less idealistic. He is less concerned with lofty ideals, and more with getting results that will impress his superiors. He was promoted to his present position to kick him into a dead end job by a rival in the Court of Providence. The head of the Court, Magister Stylena, is mildly xenophobic, but sold his promotion as a way to 'increase the Tygaran presence in the upper ranks'. In truth, she recognised his ambition and wanted to get rid of a possible rival. Mobeen is resentful of being 'Prince of the Janitors', as some of his former colleagues call. However, he has decided to turn it into a useful tool to advance his career. He has displayed a talent for supervising larger-scale projects, though he pushes his work crews hard.
Nyvos'Xiarn (NPC) - A Xioquo male and one of the Directors of the Custodians. Xiarn is a former slave who grew up and suffered under the Xioquo's slavocratic ancien régime before the dark side magocracy was overthrown by Firemane's assault on the Underealm. As a low class male, he was treated as chattel. As was typical for slaves, he was denied a surname of his own. Upon being freed, he chose the generic Nyvos, which means new, since he had broken the chains of his old life.
Xiarn is in charge of some of the more dangerous criminal workers but uses humane lessons from the past. He seeks to forge a bond with the workers instead of just treating them as a means of production or as convicts who need punishment. In an early stage of his career, a work crew under him was hired out to a foreign corporation, back when the Shadows were more willing to make such deals out of desperation. The terms had been clearly set out in the contract. However, the contractors treated the workers cruelly. Xiarn was offered a bribe to get him to keep quiet, but rejected it and called off the deal. He even personally appeared on the work site armed to make sure the workers managed to get back to the fleet.
Yrathea Kriswenys (NPC): An Eldorai female who supervises a work crew. She is a pacifist who was deemed non-productive due to her refusal to serve in the defence forces. So the Custodians conscripted her. However, she serves without complaint and is competent. Yrathea was already a conscientious objector under the Matriarchy. She was punished by being sent to a work camp. Fortunately, she was not a major dissident, otherwise she would have been deported to the Matriarchy's ghost site. However, it was a black mark against her and so she was deemed non-essential during the Exodus.
As a result, she became one of the Forsaken, falling in with the Shadow Knights when they absorbed the refugee community she had joined. The Shadows do not like pacifists, but she is not a naive peacenik who says they should abolish the military and hope the galaxy magically turns peaceful, simply someone who cannot reconcile taking a life with her conscience. So she has been given a job that will allow her to be productive, though she won't be able to become a citizen.
Valerie Drazen (NPC): A snobby, bratty princess stuck with working in very un-princess-like conditions. She is one of the non-elf members of the Custodians who has been conscripted to serve. Valeria is royalty in exile...without all the glamour that is normally associated with the role. Her family schemed and backstabbed their way to power, then lost it. Her grandfather was a king, her father a small-time smuggler. Valerie fell in with criminals and entered a relationship with a notorious smuggler. Unfortunately, they were eventually arrested by the Shadow Knights for smuggling drugs into the fleet. Her captors are not fond of royals, in exile or otherwise. They also don't like smugglers, except those who work for them. The princess turned adventurer has been assigned to a work crew and been given menial jobs. She isn't happy about this. The hours are long, and the pay is poor, and one of her supervisors hates royals and is quite xenophobic towards the 'alien outsider'.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Historically, all elf races have used conscripted labour in one form or another. The Xioquo and Qadiri using slaves and the Vash and Eldorai used prisoners. The use of coerced labour by the Vashyada may strike outsiders as unusual, since they are committed to the Light. However, they indentured minor criminals who could not pay restitution to their victims and sometimes enslaved captured Qadiri or Xioquo. Unlike either they never launched slave raids and never embraced plantation slavery since it clashed with their morals and was not efficient in the deep forests of Yarkul. On the other hand, slavery was the bedrock of Qadiri and Xioquo societies.
In the old days, the Eldorai Matriarchy had a scheme of rounding up vagrants and prisoners for labour projects. But the process was arbitrary, cruel and inefficient. After the end of the Great War, Kar'zun captives were used as a cheap labour force to 'make amends for their crimes against the Eldorai people'. Forced into reservations far away from their ancestral homelands, many Kar'zun were forced to toil for their oppressive Eldorai mistresses due to lack of economic opportunities. Some great works of note were completed by coerced Qadiri and Eldorai labour. The walls of Santaissa were once repaired after an earthquake in less than two weeks, in time to stop a rampaging Kar'zun army. And on Tygara, one of the wonders there, the canals watering fields on the banks of the Axun River were dug by Qadiri convicts and slaves.
When the Shadow Knights came into being, they faced various problems. Kaeshana had been devastated by a huge asteroid, creating a massive crisis. Its largest cities lay in ruins, the planet had been thrown into an impact winter and the survivors had to eke out an existence under post-apocalyptic conditions. However, the so-called 'best and brightest' - and the richest - had been evacuated by the Eldorai Matriarchy. Those who remained had been forsaken by the Eldorai royals, and their Firemane allies. The Shadows had no treasury, save for what they could acquire through raids and charitable donations from sympathetic Eldorai exodites. What foreign aid was forthcoming was a drop of water on a hot stone. Moreover, the surviving Eldorai were fractured into various gangs, and warlord groups, and foreign slavers sensed opportunity to pounce on them like a wounded animal.
The Shadow Knights sought to remedy this by wresting order from the chaos through militarisation. The nobility, the church and the liberal reformers had failed or proved actively harmful. Only the soldier could be trusted with power. Citizenship would be obtained through service. Order must be enforced. Raids would be launched to acquire resources in order to feed and protect their people. Civilians not engaged in productive labour would be conscripted into labour companies to rebuild the shattered infrastructure, build homes and fortifications. It was a harsh time where survival took precedence over everything. The Forsaken call it the Long Night. Difficult decisions were made to ensure survival. It worked, but at a price. This is how the Custodians were founded. They became a compulsory labour service for prisoners, the under and unemployed. Santaissa, the Eldorai's former capital, lay in ruins, but areas in western Kaeshana had been hit less hard. The Custodians formed work crews to build shelters for refugees. They dug trenches, built bunkers and supply depots.
Where needed, they sometimes even freed up military personnel by guarding prisoners. It was a difficult, harsh process. Conscription and authoritarian management led to mutinies, especially after quotas were imposed. Workers often endured difficult conditions. These included long hours and hard physical labour. Some fell ill from poor diet, the damp and cold. This led protests. Reforms were introduced to make conditions more acceptable. Still, it provided work for many low class Eldorai who had been left without means. Galaya organised vocational training programmes. Some of the Custodians were forced into combat during Archangel raids or the Battle of Kaeshana, when the Shadows sided with their estranged brethren against the First Order invasion. Their casualties were high. When the Shadows formed a nomad fleet following their escape from the lost homeworld, the Custodians became part of it.
Lacking the funds of an interstellar government or megacorp, the Shadows had to use whatever ships they could steal, salvage or acquire on the black market. There was always something that needed to be built or repaired in the rag-tag fleet. And there were outposts to construct and remote moons and asteroids to strip-mine. All this was work the Custodians could do. One of the more hazardous incidents consisted of an asteroid impacting on one of the fleet's minor ships. The collision pierced the shields and dealt severe damage. The Custodians were entrusted with finding survivors, sealing the damage and dealing with cleanup.
They were able to complete this task despite the dangerous conditions. However, Custodian work crews were also among the victims of Archangel raids to acquire processing material, as the machine cult targeted more vulnerable civilian ships and mining outposts. Such raids forced the Shadow Knights into an uneasy alliance with Enyo Typhos, herself a creation of Archangel, in order to free their abducted kin and end the threat posed by the thinking machines.
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