Korad: Koradi Values 101

For the first time, last week's poll allowed participants to vote for as many choices as they liked. You used this freedom to select the central facts of Koradi culture. Of the 27 choices, those ranked in the top half, give or take, make the cut to become true. Rankings will also suggest relative importance. So, from most to least significant, here's what we know about the culture that gave rise to our empire.

Koradis believe that :
1.) wisdom acknowledges the best idea no matter its origin. (34 votes)
2.) A woman who dies knowing unspoken truths has betrayed her daughters (33)
3.) Winter solstice is when the gods are taught new things. (32)
4.) A key distinction is made between public and private knowledge. (28)
5.) To outlive one's children is to fail. (28)
6.) Family lines are matrilineal, and socially very important. (24)
7.) Knowledge is good. Using it to attain power is better. (24)
8.) Marriage ceremonies end with the capture of the sacred goat. (23)
9.) Unused meat must be placed outside at night. (23)
10.) Education is more important than wealth or beauty. (23)
11.) Environmental obstacles are opportunities in disguise. (21)
12.) Military service is compulsory for all citizens. (21)
13.) Failure is the only route to success. (20)

We have a society deeply bound up in questions of knowledge, truth, learning and wisdom. Items 1-4, and 7, 10 and probably 13 all refer to it. Koradis value information so deeply that they gift their gods with it. Item 1) suggests a meritocracy, or at least a culture that pays lip service to it. Certainly we have a scholarly and exploratory culture, as well as an expansionist one.

It is a polytheistic society, and a militaristic one. Its most important kernels of wisdom revolve around the question of failure—surely an overriding consideration for the Koradi. We have a nation of strivers on our hands—unsurprising given their imperial status.

It smacks very much of a culture a cadre of 21st century knowledge workers would collectively dream up. I hope you aren't going to be too bummed out when its ideology crumbles as Korad hits a historical inflection point.

But that's getting ahead of ourselves.

Next week we'll conduct a free-for-all discussion to work out exactly how these values, beliefs and customs translate into a social and political structure, and the binding ideology that justifies it. But for the moment, let's clear up the simplest questions with a couple of quick polls.

Both will tell us about the gender expectations of the Koradi.

We know that Korad traces its family lines on a matrilineal basis. That often, but not always, tracks with matriarchal rule.

View Poll: #1706098

If the answer is no, Korad is a partiarchy with matrilineal family lines, and this next poll is ignored.

If the answer is yes:

View Poll: #1706099