Some people said that the Quarian race was dying. Dying a slow death of biological degradation. Every new generation revealed more and more vulnerabilities and immunologic deficiencies.
Space was a great place to be and it harboured many wonders to behold. But the Flotilla was still a makeshift fleet and not a real home Quarians could return to in order to relax or retire. Basically the whole situation was a gamble about whether the Quarian could adapt more quickly than suffer from the adverse effects of continuous space travel.
Individuals dealt differently with this. Some turned vengeful and bitter against their fate, others tried to do the "right thing" to advance the situation. With health concerns being a major factor people came up with ideas to adapt society radically to their environment.
Quarian children regularly had to experience zero-g environments. Compared to human standards the Quarian physical education was far superior when it comes to space environment and applied technology. As a result, the Quarian marines could pick from a pool of very suitable candidates. These troops were trained thoroughly and for boarding mission in a hostile environment they were considered to be among the very best: Grown in a suit, moving in zero-g since they were kids, every trooper a seasoned tech expert and very creative in finding and exploiting an enemy weakness.
Quarians named their marine platoons "teams", because they were organised similarly to the workforce. Being a Quarian inevitably meant to take responsibility for other people. Doing an extra-vehicular job meant to look out for colleagues in problems.
In space, things can be frighteningly quiet and lonesome. Suit malfunction, space "hysteria", disorientation or simply "losing the grip" could spell doom on anybody. And anybody had to do this dangerous tasks on the normal rotation - unless they were really bad at the job - but that's another story.
There even were people who thought that a Krogan might add to the toughness of the Quarian. Skills that aren't challenged might wither and become rusty some day. So yes, a good portion of people had a pragmatic stance to the Krogan appearance named Zar abord the Qwib Qwib.
Not the peers of Zar, however. Zar was different and the suit he wore (he didn't need it but it had become a cultural custom already to conceal the face) couldn't hide it. Children can be atrocious to each other at times and Zar suffered a lot from nit-picking, isolation and being strongly discouraged from dealing with conflicts in a more Krogan fashion. Deliberately breaking a suit was considered a capital offense for adult delinquents and was accordingly dealt with.
Frustration, sadness and suppressed instincts were an all too common experience made by Zar. The successful attempts of socialising him with other kids couldn't quite make up for this.
Things almost became even gloomier when Zar was schooled. At this age he hadn't revealed any technical excellence.
Kon and Shia had tried to make him acquainted to the world of technical knowledge with lots of incentives but Zar mostly climbed on their lap and begged to hear another story about one of their missions.
They finally gave up. It was almost impossible to evade these eyes that gazed and them in awe and wonder when they told their stories.
The trembling little body when it came to the showdown, the fist-shaking and "Ha! That told them a lesson!" and the constant vows to become stronger, faster and more agile in order to join them once "Zar got big" one day. They sighed a lot when the boy immediately ran off after the stories to exercise for faster, stronger and more agile as he never mentioned "smarter".
Their son clearly perceived them as heros and he turned out to be very dedicated about the skills that would turn him into one as well.
Modifié par dr_random, 01 octobre 2012 - 08:39 .
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