Vara

Introduction
The planet Mara was a charming, hospitable, though somewhat chilly place, known for its splendid mountain ranges and azure oceans, until a series of regrettable occurrences in the year ???BBY left it a smoking ruin.

Its native people, the Marani, are more or less human in appearance. However, their world's gravity (.93 of the galactic standard) has given its people an average height greater than that of humanity, and in many cases a notable delicacy of build. Eye colours are more exotic than human norms, ranging through shades of brown, amber, green, blue, and violet, though never red. Rumours of some uncanny power, especially in their priestly caste, are no doubt exaggerated.

Their galactic reputation is that of a queer, artistic, highly feudal people, somewhat set in their cultural ways, yet very flexible when it comes to making a living. They are shrewd businesspeople, the reason their race survives at all today being that they had several trading fleets in space at the time of their world's unfortunate demise. These homeless Marani flocked at once to the Corporate Sector, under the leadership of their sole surviving royal, Beatrix Mara.

Society
(Archivist's Note: Must have one of the interns go over this material and replace all the present tenses with past tenses. Not a high priority, though.)

Marani society is notable for its division of all its citizens into two categories, "Ebo" and "Eba" (which terms, in their ancient tongue, translate as nothing more illuminating than "Left" and "Right"). In the early years after the rediscovery of the planet by the rest of the universe, there was some confusion about these terms, which were initially taken to be synonymous with "Female" and "Male". It is true that most female Marani are Ebo and most male Marani are Eba; however, some twenty percent of Marani women, and fifteen percent of Marani men, make the opposite choice at their age of majority, which is 22. For a woman to become an Eba, or a man an Ebo, is regarded as a brave choice, but not a dishonourable one; and those who go against the majority in that manner often become highly regarded within their particular spheres and are held up as examples.

The universal masculine pronoun shall henceforth be used for Eba, and the universal feminine for Ebo, for this chronicler finds it exhausting always to be drawing attention to the exceptions which are understood to exist.

The roles and duties of each half of the population are carefully circumscribed. Public life, government, commerce, the military, and the law, are the realm of the Eba; while the Ebo are responsible for private life, religion, medicine, and the rearing and training of the young. But those are simply the broadest shades: every task in a Marani household, every subtlety of Marani etiquette, every phrase in the Marani language, is the province of Ebo or Eba. Sometimes they're quite surprising to outsiders; for instance, there are restrictions upon what property an Ebo may own, but a married Eba turns over his entire salary to his Ebo, to be disposed of as she sees fit. If he's lucky, she'll assign him a generous allowance, but there have been cases in which an Eba kept on too short a financial leash has successfully appealed to the courts for control of a larger percentage of his income.

These rules become stricter further up the social scale. Working-class Marani are often comparatively lax in their divisions of labour, especially in the last several centuries, while the nobility is known for being exquisitely particular. An Ebo of the highest birth is almost never seen outside her own home, and only her closest family members and retainers are permitted to look upon her face.

Schooling is much the same for all Marani children up to the age of eleven, at which time a division is made between those who will attend vocational schools until the age of sixteen, and those who will pursue a more academic path, which may last any number of years. Whichever sort of formal education they receive, they are generally encouraged to pursue whatever interests them, be it Ebo or Eba, and try on many different hobbies and professions. Any Marani office or shop is typically awash with part-time interns, the children of those who work there and their relations and friends, learning from their elders and seeing if this is the path they wish to take. Some pass through briefly, others stick.

At the age of 22, young Marani celebrate the Ceremony of Affirmation (so named because it is usually just that, an affirmation of their essential nature, which has made itself apparent over the preceding years), after which they take their place in adult society as either Ebo or Eba.

Ancestor worship is an important part of Marani religion. Marriage, being linked very closely with procreation and the necessity of handing down to the next generation the religion by which it is sanctified, is always between an Ebo and an Eba. One must be male and one female; secular and sacred law are indifferent as to which is which. The lower classes have greater freedom to marry as they wish, whereas the upper classes customarily enter into negotiated alliances with other families of similar wealth and antiquity. There is a saying that each marriage contract is unique -- this may be an exaggeration, but it is true that Marani have several different flavours of marital union to choose between, and that contractual modifications agreed upon at the time of the signing are binding in perpetuity upon both partners. Divorce is unknown, though there is a mechanism in place to obtain (not without difficulty) the annulment of a marriage.

Casual polygamy is not uncommon amongst the aristocracy. An Eba of considerable resources may maintain any number of Ebo of either or both sexes, only one of which, however, will be his official spouse. To be the concubine of a well-placed Eba is regarded as rather better than being the spouse of an Eba who is nothing in particular, provided one's family's ancestors are being well-taken care of by one's siblings and their legitimate offspring. However, to be the child of a noble Eba and his concubine is to exist in a misty in-between state, neither one thing nor the other, and such persons often find it difficult to marry. (But they have fabulous novels written about them, so it's fine.)