The Clones

Although cloning itself is, of course, widely practiced, genetic engineering has been controversial since at least the early days of the Empire. The clan of the Clones are distinct not by virtue of being clones, but because they are the remnants of genetic engineering projects made at various times throughout history, which often teetered on the edge of legality. Shunned for these experiments, the Clones take a perverse pride in their origins, reproducing asexually or only within their bloodlines, and prominently wearing clan tattoos. Outside their bloodline, members are less unified than most clans, being a collection of refugees united in response to discrimination, pogroms, and outright enslavement.

Many cultures throughout the empire despise the Clones. This attitude is due not only to their origins, but also to rumours of strange and diverse powers carried by some of the bloodlines. Clones are also popularly believed to consider themselves one evolutionary step above most humans, and to have taken genetic manipulation to the point where some of their number are no longer cross-fertile with the rest of humanity. These rumours have been proven untrue many times — the Clones submit to the same genetic inspections as all clans — yet persist in the populace regardless. To avoid this hostility, Clones usually live on their own planets, where they can peacefully pursue the communal lives they prefer, but some planets do have small enclaves of Clones. Occasionally, members of a bloodline may take a contract off-planet, but they do so only after long and careful negotiations. More usually, Clones travel off-planet in one of two ways: heavily armed and in large numbers, or in small family groups in which their nature may be disguised.

History

No one today knows when the first human was cloned. However, stories of clones date back to the earliest days of the Terran Sphere. The stories tell of hybrids of humans and animals, and of modified humans capable of living on gas giants and in deep space. However, most scholars believe that the first efforts at cloning were probably no more than attempts to copy gifted individuals.

Whether cloning techniques have been passed clandestinely over the millennia or rediscovered independently many times is also unknown. Each bloodline among the Clones has its own separate detailed history, and they all differ on such details.

What matters is that, about halfway through the first millennium of the empire, the bloodlines began to emerge as a unified cultural and political force. This social movement was started by a man known as Lin Chong the Younger Leopard, a name he took when he became politically active. His name, derived from the Chinese classic, The Outlaws of the Marsh, is believed to reflect not his ethnic origin but his self-image as a Robin Hood figure fighting the authorities on behalf of the repressed. He claims to be a half-clone of the Myrmidon strain.

Lin Chong's journal claims that his activism dates to 468 Imperial Calendar, when his teenage son and wife became the victim of anti-clone violence in Safe Harbour, the then-Imperial capitol. Since Lin Chong never revealed his legal name after he began his activism, this claim is unsupported. Some scholars, noting that no such crime is on record for that year, have speculated that Lin Chong had no relations to a Clone bloodline at all, but was simply an ordinary human determined to fight against discrimination against clones.

Whatever actually happened, in that year Lin Chong began advocating for a legislated end to discrimination against Clones and for Clone unity in the face of opposition. After several years as an activist, he began the Home System Movement, whose goal was a planet within settled space that Clones could colonize and govern for themselves. Because his followers frequently promised that having their own planet would be a rebirth for the Clone bloodlines, they became known as the Natalists.

For the next twenty years, Lin Chong became the main representative of rights for clones, speaking on dozens of planets, and surviving countless riots and at least five assassination attempts. In some liberal circles of the aristocracy, his cause was fashionable for a few years, and there were even some attempts to collect enough money to buy a suitable planet for colonization among the wealthy of the empire. However, this popularity soon faded when a breakaway group of Natalists called Xenogenesis, led by Lin Chong's former disciple Vilchjo Lai, began a terrorist campaign in the central worlds of the empire, at one point coming close to assassinating the emperor and his family with a nuclear bomb.

Lin Chong died with his dream unrealized, but a feedback system had been created: The more Xenogenesis increased its activities, the more anti-Clone prejudice grew; the more prejudice grew, the more Clones came to believe in the necessity of the Home System Movement, including, inevitably, a few who were attracted to Xenogenesis.

Small and loosely organized, the movement resisted all efforts to suppress it, although at times it did shift operations to other planets. At least one emperor toyed with the idea of giving the movement what it wanted, but was dissuaded by councillors who feared that to do so would open the empire to endless blackmail by every activist group with access to explosives.

Matters came to a head in IY717, after the Myrmidon bloodline served as auxiliaries to Spartan Hold in a long planetside conflict, and the Duke of the Spartans granted a small, marginally inhabitable world to the bloodline as a reward. Renamed Drinking Gourd, the world instantly became the destination of millions of Clones, who began an ambitious terraforming project armed with little more than basic agricultural tools and a determination to establish an independent life. At first the emperor tried to restrict immigration, and Clones today remember the story of the New Zion, a colony ship that was refused refueling at a space station for months on end, until its passengers were decimated ten times over by disease and cannibalism.

Sensing a solution to the longstanding problem of Clone agitation, the empire eventually permitted unrestricted Clone immigration to Drinking Gourd -- stipulating, however, that all colonists gave up their property elsewhere in the empire. Clones and their sympathizers believe that many colonists simply had their property seized, and that most received only token compensation for their property.

Slowly, the colonists began to thrive on Drinking Gourd. By 4547, the Clones had prospered enough to colonize a planet that they named NuHaiti, several spacefolds away from any other inhabitable planet. It was followed in 5298 by another, similarly remote planet named LeopardHead in honour of Lin Chong. The Clones continue to seek out pockets where their fellows continue to face discrimination, aiding them financially to resist or immigrate, although these efforts have become harder since the disappearance. In some regions, Clones and their sympathizers are believed to run an underground railway. The truth of this rumour is debatable, but some bloodlines, especially the Vojevodo, pay large amounts and go to huge efforts to free enslaved bloodlines and to advocate for the rights of clones on other planets. It is also a fact that any proven Clone who makes it to one of the the three planets is entitled to claim citizenship.

Clones Today

Drinking Gourd, unlike most planets in the empire, lacks a strong central government. Instead, the leading bloodlines rule their own regions, although a loose federation exists, and all bloodlines will unite immediately against an outside threat under a warlord, usually from the Myrmidons. The situation is much the same on NuHaiti, but LeopardHead is ruled by a parliamentary democracy in which each bloodline is allotted seats according to its numbers. This practice has led some bloodlines on LeopardHead to promote breeding to increase their political influence.

The Clones consist of dozens of bloodlines, but the main ones are:

• Myrmidons: A line bred for Space Marines, whose founder is said to have been half-Spacer, half-Spartan. Consisting of both men and women, they wear a tattoo of a black ant on their forehead. They are a tall, heavy-set bloodline with dark hair and olive skin.
• Amoristes: The descendants of pleasure slaves, members of this bloodline are skilled at diplomacy and persuasion, especially in groups. They are known for their grace and believed to be skilled assassins. The mark of their bloodline is a heart in chains on the small of their backs; usually, their clothing is cut to reveal this tattoo. They consist mostly of women with a small group of men for control purposes, since their cloning technique sometimes go awry. Since they indulge heavily in cosmetic surgery, what they look like naturally is unknown.
• Witchbreed: A small bloodline consisting entirely of women who reproduce entirely by cloning. Originally bred for greater intuitive abilities, they are known to have an unusually high fraction of psi-capable individuals. Both clones and non-clones fear this bloodline, whose mark is a a crescent moon on their left breast, which they always expose. The Witchbreed are red-haired, with heavy hips and breasts.
• Agricolae: The largest bloodline, the Agricolae have been slaves and general workers for centuries, Upon immigrating to Drinking Gourd, this all-male bloodline formed communes and organized the terraforming effort. Each member of the bloodline has the tattoo of a bullock's head on the back of his right hand. They are large men of immense strength of endurance, distinguished by short legs and long torsos.
• Mer: Consisting entirely of women, this bloodline is believed to have originated in a travelling circus. Its members have modified respiratory systems, allowing them to remain submerged for long periods of time, and are the empire's experts in aquaculture. Each member of the Mer has a blue Triton on her stomach. The Mers practice parthenogenesis and believe that each member of the bloodline lives on in her descendants. Members of the Mer tend to be tall and thin, with hair that reaches down to their waists.
• The Children of the Balance: Members of this bloodline excel in trading and bargaining. Unique among the Clones, the Children of the Balance are partial exogamists, carefully conducting their own breeding programs with other bloodlines in the hopes of producing new ones. The group is especially prominent on NuHaiti. Its members wear the brand of a balance scale on their right shoulders. Members of the group have a tendency to fat from an early age.
• Vojevodo: A bloodline that produces female executives, leaders, and politicians, the Vojevodo wear a yin-yang symbol on their right thigh, which they rarely expose. They have dark black skin and are known for their height and the classic beauty of their faces, which gives them an air of power.

These are only the major bloodlines. The minor ones, with few exceptions, are identified by alliances with the major ones that often last for centuries. Even among the Clones, some minor bloodlines are rumoured to exist that have strange powers or are no longer human.

Each bloodline preserves its own cloning techniques, and espionage to retrieve them sometimes threaten to get out of hand. Bloodlines that are all male or all female generally have a strong tradition of homosexuality. Even clans with male and female members believe that the strongest bonds of affection can occur only between members of the same bloodline.

Culturally, Clones are deeply ambivalent about their nature. On the one hand, they celebrate it, favouring repetition of the same forms in their art and music, and defiantly upholding their heritage against the prejudice of the rest of the universe.

On the other hand, because some wish an end to discrimination and because clones are vulnerable to the copy effect, whereby mutations multiply with each successive generation, the Clones are constantly debating the wisdom of continuing their way of life. This debate has two schools of thought: the Endogamists, who want to control breeding in order to strengthen each bloodline's unique abilities, and the Exogamists, who wish bloodline members to marry outside the clan to improve the genetic stock. Endogamists are criticized for creating inbreeding, while Exogamists are accused of wishing to destroy the root of Clone identity by making them look like everyone else in the empire. The Exogamists are further divided into those who believe in inter-breeding only among Clones, and those who wish to relax the cultural mores against producing children with non-Clones.

Needless to say, Clones do sometimes have children outside the bloodline, but these offspring are shunned by many bloodlines, and allowed to reproduce within the bloodlines by none. Still, these hybrids are tolerated because they can pass more easily than pure Clones in other parts of the empire. Moreover, the hybrids are starting to become politically active themselves.

The Disappearance shook the Clone planets as badly as any other culturally advanced planets. However, the effect on different bloodlines varied considerably. the Myrmidons and Agricolae were almost unaffected, while the Witchbreed and, to a lesser extent, the Hawkings, were devastated. To some extent, the Witchbreed and Hawkings power bases collapsed, leaving a power vacuum that other bloodlines are still struggling to take advantage of.

Since the Disappearance, contact between centers of Clone power have grown infrequent. Drinking Gourd is now dominated by an alliance of the Myrmidons and Agricolae, who have encourage the growth of the Drinking Gourd navy and increased self-sufficiency. They also do all they can to cultivate hints of super-weapons they are holding in reserve in case they are overrun. As much as other clans dislike the Clones, these policies have made the Clones of Drinking Gourd, at any rate, a local power to be respected, especially since the planet continues to enjoy the patronage of Spartan Hold.

Relations to Other Clans and Intelligent Species

Other Clans usually have as little to do with the Clones as possible. Many members of the Aristocracy dislike the Clones because one or two bloodlines claim one of their ancestors as root stock. Similarly, the Aquans, Taurans, and Drylanders resent Clones' insinuations that they are simply bloodlines who have forgotten their origins as clones. However, the Mer are known to have friendly relationships with the Aquans because of their shared adaptation to aquatic environments.

The closest ties to other Clans are with the Spartans of Spartan Hold, who remain Drinking Gourd's patron. However, these ties do not extend to all Spartans everywhere -- especially not to the citizens of Lacodaemon, who, in their attempt to recreate ancient Sparta have enslaved an offshoot of the Agricolae bloodline. In fact, it is a rare year when some group on Drinking Gourd does not petition Spartan Hold to aid them in freeing the Clones of Lacodaemon.

Clones themselves tend to be embittered about other clans. However, the only clan they actually despise are the Walkers — perhaps because they are glad to find someone to look down on themselves.

Clones rarely mingle with other branches of humanity or with other intelligent species -- at least, not in situations where their clan membership is obvious. By hard experience, Clones have learned that they interact best with other humans as individuals. At other times, they prefer the respect of being heavily armed.

Contact between Clones and alien species is almost unknown, apart from occasional academic exchanges arranged by the Hawkings, and some interaction between the Mer bloodline and the Bappakana.

Names

In memory of Lin Chong, many Clones continue to take names from characters in The Outlaws of the Marsh (Song Jiang, Shi Jin, Wu Song). The other most popular strains of names is from famous slaves throughout history (Crixus, Spartacus, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman) and from Latin names derived from birth order (Primus, Secunda).