Where Are You Going, Old Soul?

My summary of the Cenemi way, from the late pre-industrial era to the modern day.

After the Oahk Empire dissolved, Cene developed in much less unusual ways. Now culturally dominant but a distinct minority, we had to reevaluate what parts of the Cenemi way could no longer be held to. Having settled down under Oahk, we found that modern life had progressed to the point where traveling was expensive and no longer useful. We were left with large ownership stakes in some of the first mass transit companies to build continent-spanning networks, and a large surplus of yellows relative to the caste balance of other nations, but otherwise lived as any farmer country. That we now shared land and government with farmers, even if they were farmers who understood, respected, and in some ways emulated proper Cenemi tradition, made this transition easier.

There was concern that we would have to reduce yellow permissions sharply not long into our history. Fortunately, this was done slowly. We compensated by having an informal rite of passage of going abroad for a year or two to work somewhere less oversupplied for yellow work and hence better-paid; a practically-motivated wanderjahr. 

Before we cut our yellow fraction too deeply came the computing revolution. Some have claimed that programming is a yellow job because of an international yellow conspiracy to lay claim to the new territory. I was not alive for it, but I can certainly tell you from historical experience that Cene proves that yellow coordination can be quite powerful; translators, by their nature, speak with their counterparts across the globe, and feel tighter bonds to people who share a caste but not a country than less cosmopolitan castes or even blues. In any case, it could not have come at a better time for Cene; as other countries ramped up yellow credits fiercely, we switched from a modest reduction to a modest increase. Our credits were more expensive than any other country’s yellow credits, and other than to Voa and a few other places using their permissions system it was nearly impossible for a yellow to swap out until recently, but as a nation we prospered. The wanderjahr continued, just to meet the enormous demand across the globe.

Which brings us to the modern day. Today, though we have our traditions and they have spread to most of the country by osmosis, we are much like other nations. A foreigner in Cene will not notice much different. There are a few ways we still display our heritage, however.

The mercantile and itinerant history of our culture leaves its mark in what we consider worth of emulation. Our blues are more finance-oriented than most, and it would be considered shameful for one to not speak at least three languages by their first spring, or five if they intend to work in politics or foreign affairs. Even our rural purple schools will have at least two foreign languages available to learn. The wanderjahr spread across the more intellectual castes, and has stuck. We do not travel constantly as we once did, but anyone who can reasonably do it spends at least a couple seasons studying or working abroad. It’s rare for farming purples, of course, and for grays most professions find it impractical. Even there it’s common for dancers and of course the naval shipping industry, and I believe our military does significantly more long-term joint training than others. Oranges, greens, and blues manage it more easily, and yellows have of course kept it up. Personally, I spent three seasons in Voa and two in Ochero, writing legal translations.

I’ve heard it suggested that the way to thrive under a permissions system is to operate as a clan. This seems plausible to me, because the Cenemi people did something much like it, and we got through the Oahk Empire comparatively unscathed. Not to brag too much; it was terrible for us as well. Just less.

The terrible disruptions and lack of progress inherent in the permissions system are well known and I won’t get into them too much. Our blues rode it out diminished, but mainly by having fewer children rather than executions. After the Great Wedding they presented a united front, and had enough credibility for providing alibis and vouching to mainly protect the unjustly accused rather than make them go down with their cousins. I’d like to claim that they also made the distribution of credits more equitable and just in the places where they had them to give out, but it’s clear from documentation of the time that they did that only within the Cenemi-by-blood community; for our neighbors it was as unfair as any.

Luckily our culture is a way of life, not blood, and that same fairness within the community was when Cenemi assimilation began. People who married into the community brought many of their extended family into our traditions and ways of (sedentary) life, and as long as they lived Cenemi we were happy to call them as Cenemi as us and share the benefits of our fellow-feeling.

One virtue that Cenemi have always cultivated, being a mobile people, is seeing when the writing is on the wall. As outsiders, we were sometimes scapegoats, and knowing when to leave was an important survival skill.

So we saw Oahk’s rise to Empire coming fairly early in it’s expansion. Initially, enclaves in its territory hollowed out - not deserted, but minimal - before the war could reach them and didn’t return. But after a few waves of distant cousins sharing their stories, we realized that this was not going to end, and we should prepare for the continent to all be like this. So the caravans returned and the hollowed enclaves filled back up; instead of fleeing from the front, we sent our blues to vouch for them to come in, instead.

(Admittedly, if we’d known Tapa would hold out we might have moved in there instead. But that was not obvious at the time.)

As the flaws of the permissions system started to show in earnest, we were in many ways the hardest hit. Most blues with influence were not ours, and while we were not persecuted or scapegoated, merely not being anyone local’s favorite was, under the permissions system, quite terrible enough. While gathered for the wedding and then baby shower of one blue family with large regional influence - the titles don’t translate well literally, “Duke” will do well enough - nearly the entirety of adult Cenemi bluedom had a pair of strategy conferences. (Remember that this is smaller than it sounds; we did not have many blues.) I am not privy to what they discussed, but the decision from the first was that we had to centralize, in order to be able to protect and support each other.

By the end of that spring, there was a trickle of Cenemis flowing into the region that is now Cene. By that winter, it was a river. In spring it slowed down, but initial results must have been promising, because when summer came it was a flood.

I mentioned previously that being Cenemi is not being one of a people, but being someone who lives the Cenemi way. There is an important reason for that: prior to the Oakh Empire, Cene was a people in diaspora.

Primarily, Cenemi were merchant caravans. We held some land, but not large parcels; trading towns at important crossroads and ports, and enclaves where we could resupply, repair boats or wagons, and rest among others like us. The words for foreigner and farmer are still similar in modern Cenemi, because in Old Cenemi they were the same.

This had a few significant effects on us. For one, learning several languages was very common, and remains so. When you expect to travel among many nations every year, learning the local languages and a few from more distant countries is just good sense. Even today, as a smaller nation, it behooves us to learn to do business with foreigners in their own language.

For another, we had an unusual caste balance. Until the computer era, pre-imperial Cene had the undisputed record for highest percentage of yellows. Both logistics and translation were in high demand in every group. We also had even fewer blues than most; trading towns and resupply enclaves would generally have a blue family, but enough of our population lived away from the permanent settlements that this numbered fewer than settled peoples. In general, we had a more flexible approach to caste by necessity; where blue tasks were needed on the road but only a purple caravan leader was present, they would pick up the slack as best they could. If the road became dangerous, smiths would wear gray and guard the wagons. Most caravans would have green entertainers, but not scholars; if something novel came up, anyone who knew something related would be handed a hat and told to help figure it out. We did not have the luxury of specializing as purely as we now can. In the present day, though we have similar rules about casted professions, there is still some sentiment that the true Cenemi can be a generalist when circumstances demand. It is still reflected in our language, where a yellow is more accurately “one who does yellow work”, and it is sensible though rare to say that, for example, “I shall be blue tomorrow”, perhaps as you plan the ways your business needs to grow for the next season and year.

The most important thing to know about Cene is that our people are not primarily from a location or racial background. Cenemi is our language and our demonym, but it is primarily about a verb; it is “the Cene way of living”. Cene is defined by a style of thought, action, and culture, first and foremost keeping to the way that has defined us for centuries. The fact that adherents of the Cenemi way have been concentrated in the state of Cene since the Oahk Empire dissolved is secondary at best.