Zaddat Roleplay Guide

This article or section is from the Polaris wiki.

This article or section is directly taken from the Polaris wiki, and should not be fully relied on for CHOMPstation. You can help by updating it.

This lore is from the VOREstation wiki.

This lore is taken from the VOREstation wiki, and should not be fully relied on for CHOMPstation. You can contact Nadyr if you want to work on it].

Or, SO YOU WANT TO PLAY A ZADDAT

Notice

By playing a zaddat, you've basically waived your right to complain about dying. This is a species that is a bundle of fabric and a sheet of plastic away from messy decompressive death at all times; and that's part of the charm.

Overview

Zaddat are vain, haughty, smarmy, composed, and bleakly pragmatic.

Competition

The most important thing about a zaddat's culture is how fiercely, excessively, competitive it is. Children are born in nurseries, raised as "future investments", and sent off to Guild life all with hardly any parental oversight. Constantly struggling to maintain one's position and climb higher up the pecking order of society is the zaddat way. The average zaddat finds this right and harmonious, the way the world should be, and finds mutualistic cooperation deluded at best.

Organization

Contrasting this tendency; zaddat tend to view people not just as themselves but as extensions of whatever organization they're a member of. An undereducated zaddat might literally expect to have their voices heard by the entire USDF by speaking to a single member, and most fail to shake the impression that they can get the CEO of NanoTrasen on the line by asking the station's administrator. Because Zaddat hierarchies are so much flatter, and because they spend so much time on climbing social structures, human ideas of individualism are also viewed as strange and foreign.

Zaddat almost uniformly believe that working within existing power structures is the proper path to advancement. There is little ground for the concept of revolution in their mindset. They tend to be viewed as kiss-asses for good reason.

Unathi

Zaddat are very afraid of unathi, almost to a member. Unity unathi are viewed as superiors in the societal pecking order (see above), to be kowtowed to and worked over for favors. It is understood that Heretic unathi enjoy the protection of their Unity kin, though most zaddat would wonder why they would turn their back on the social advancement of belonging to the Unity.

Unbound unathi live in the vents and eat polyps, shell and innards both. They are the boogeymen the Unity indoctrinates their subjects with. That they live in human space gives zaddat reason to wish for the guns of their escort vessel.

Humanity

Zaddat are torn on the question of humanity. Holistically they find Unathi culture more similar to their own, but humanity is viewed as significantly more welcoming to zaddat migrants. Zaddat are mostly concerned about the ability to get money from humans, which they will do through any legal means available. They are seen as gullible dupes at worst and as impossibly generous philanthropists at best. Most zaddat assume humans are lazy, given all the people they've invented and all the migrant labor they need.

Skrell

Zaddat have a cultural hatred of skrell for their terraforming practices. Skrell find this amusing, which just fans the flames of hatred.

Sociality

How To Talk Like A Zaddat

Zaddat are proud of how well they can speak the foreign languages required to live abroad. They are crisp, precise, exacting. Some have described their speech as old-fashioned, as the books used to establish the zaddat GalCom linguistic community were considerably aged. Some have corrected these errors, and some have overcorrected these errors and now speak in cutting-edge neologisms. Regardless, zaddat speech is affected. They are a race that wears masks in their daily life, both literally and figuratively, and everything they say is calculated to get them what they want.

Zaddat Body Language

Zaddat are extremely conservative with movement. They seem stiff and uncomfortable in any situation they might find themselves in. Among the few gestures common to the zaddat are a touching of the hand to the face as an expression of genuine respect and a very deliberate pointing-forward as a dire insult.

Zaddat tend to chirp like crickets under high stress, which, zaddat being zaddat, is a fairly frequent occurrence.

Building Your Zaddat

Disclaimer

Unfortunately, you can't preview different Shroud designs in character setup. Some in-game trial-and-error might be required to get a look you like.

Aesthetics

All zaddat look basically like all other zaddat. This is worsened by living within a shroud. Zaddat tend towards extremely gaudy fashion choices as the powerful Fashion Houses constantly strive to out-do each other. Stealing aesthetics from other nations is considered the height of good taste, such as the Bishop-themed Shroud available to all characters. Currently, capes are "in" and bumper stickers considered extremely crass, but such norms have reversed a dozen times in the last decade and will probably reverse another dozen in the next. Mechanically, the meat of your customization is going to be in the accessories section.

Records

Employment

Your zaddat's employment record almost certainly just reads "[Apprentice/Journeyman/Master] in XYZ [Profession] Guild" where XYZ is a short zaddat-appropriate name. Some NanoTrasen intake data might be attached.

Security

Zaddat are, by nature, poorly vetted and poorly trusted.

Medical

As contractors, many zaddat are not approved for NanoTrasen resleeving. Many specify cyborgification owing to the extreme difficulty of actually resleeving a zaddat.

Closing Notes

Zaddat are from a tightly structured incredibly competitive society with an inferiority complex a mile wide, desperately trying to sustain themselves long enough to break ground on a world they can call their own before the skrell show up to ruin it. Their overall themes are of wounded pride, assimilationism, and bad anime capes.