Peacekeepers (Farscape) - Society

Society

Peacekeeper society is a harsh, unforgiving meritocracy. Success is rewarded quickly and richly, and failure is punished brutally. Individuals are expected to conform completely to the ideals of Peacekeeper life, including the belief that all other species are inferior.

While some Peacekeepers are forcibly "recruited" from non-military Sebacean settlements, including Crais and his brother, many Peacekeepers are born and reared aboard Command Carriers. They are trained from infancy to be elite soldiers and support staff and to follow orders without question. Reproduction is assigned in order to fill the ranks, and parents have no role in raising their children. It is a punishable breach of protocol for a parent to initiate contact with their child.

Peacekeepers are encouraged to be discreet but promiscuous with their sexuality. Having regular sexual outlets (called "recreating") is seen as a way of relieving stress and of fulfilling biological urges so they do not become additional sources of stress. Forming a close personal relationship with a specific partner, however, or even just "recreating" with the same partner over a long period of time, is strictly taboo. Unintentional pregnancies are not uncommon, but it is assumed that the woman will not know or care about who the father is. As such, the child always takes the mother's surname, despite the fact that neither parent's identity will be known to or have any effect on the upbringing of the child. Intentionally having a child with a specific partner, or, presumably, intentionally becoming pregnant when it has not been assigned, is seen as a sign of sentimentality (and thus, weakness) and is a punishable offence.

Subordinates usually display unwavering loyalty to their superiors, though there are examples of an ambitious subordinate noticing and exploiting a weakness in their superior that allows them to usurp power.

Sebaceans seem to make up the bulk of the Peacekeepers. One notable exception is the half-breed Scorpius, who had to prove his loyalty to be declared exempt from the Peacekeepers' racial purity rules. The Peacekeepers also employ several large groups as slave laborers, notably the Banik.

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