The captain of the first Nomad ship, the Traveler, was Thorkild Erling. Thus, three hundred years later, the president of the Captain's Council is Traveler Thorkild Helmuth. Nomads marry out of their ships with the wife joining her husband's crew yet there is a Peregrine Thorkild Sean and a Mountain Man Thorkild Edward. How come? When a ship becomes overcrowded, all the Nomads help some young crew members to build a new ship. Thus, some Thorkilds must have been among those who transferred to the Peregrine and to the Mountain Man when those ships were built.
Mountain Man and Hadji have sold their souls, ceasing to be Nomads and instead becoming nobles and slave-owners on Erulan where, having taken over a barbaric system, they are gradually becoming barbarized. Other Nomads know, and even trade with Erulan, but protect the secret from the Coordination Service. By the time the Cordies learn, their will not be much that can be done. Erulan had been a slave-owning society before the Nomads arrived and the Mountain Man and Hadji generation guilty of the original crime will be dead. Sometimes, righting a wrong long after the event only causes further wrongs.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Conquerors becoming assimilated or absorbed by the nations they conquered is not in the least surprising. That has happened over and over many times in Earth's history. After about three centuries at the most, that is exactly what happened to the French speaking Normans who conquered England in 1066.
Ad astra! Sean
They couldn't be fully assimilated by aliens, because they can't interbreed with them.
Normans started marrying Englishwomen immediately after 1066.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Of course I agree! I was using "assimilated" more broadly to mean how the Nomads who conquered Urulan were being assimilated by the natives in the cultural and political senses of that word.
Ad astra! Sean
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