Characters / Vorkosigan Saga Political Powers

Main Character Index Planets and Political Powers Vorkosigan House — Other Barrayarans — Dendarii Mercenaries

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Barrayar

Barrayar

Isolated from the rest of known space for centuries by a natural disaster that cut off contact with the rest of humanity, Barrayar survived by reverting to a feudal system based on a warrior caste. Unfortunately, their welcome back to the greater galaxy came in the form of an invasion by the Cetagandan empire, which they ultimately defeated through sheer bloody-mindedness (and perhaps being simply too crazy to give up). Barrayar is now struggling to adjust to a galaxy that views its social model as anything from quaintly anachronistic to dangerously primitive. Ruled by the Vor warrior caste, with The Emperor at their head. The homeworld of Miles, who has to deal with Barrayar's nasty prejudice against mutants like him, and the focus (and often the setting) of the Vorkosigan series.

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• Battle Butler: Armsmen. Each count is allowed twenty bodyguards, and only twenty bodyguards. Any more counts as a private army and is grounds for execution. Consequently, they tend to pick the cream of the crop.
• The Clan: Every Vor house.
• Decadent Court: Somewhat tamed by now. Miles' father Aral actually survived being Regent to Gregor until his majority, and since then Gregor has been applying his foster-father's lessons, toning down both the decadence and the deadliness.
  • More deadly than decadent. When an assassin appears during a session of the Counts, their first instinct is to charge him, not run away.
    Miles: Only on Barrayar would pulling a loaded needler start a stampede toward one.

• Fantastic Racism: Against mutants, disabled people and all genetic strangeness. It was only recently that infanticide was banned, and it still goes on in secret in parts of the back country. The prejudice is both understandable (mutations were historically a gigantic problem for the isolated Barrayaran colonists) and spurs much of Miles Vorkosigan's actions (viewed as a "mutie" by Barrayaran society, he struggles to prove himself in the face of unreasoning hatred). A more minor prejudice is between the speakers of various Earth-descended languages, but it can be dangerous as well; it's mentioned that riots along linguistic divisions are political points to take into consideration.
  • In the later volumes this feels like somewhat of an Informed Flaw. In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, for instance, Rish doesn't face much prejudice, certainly less than she would have faced in twenty-first century Earth. By that time however prejudice against "muties" was becoming less fashionable among the elites. Byerly suggests that Rish is so far on the other side of the Uncanny Valley that she's beyond what Barrayarans think of as a "mutie". That, and she's an eye witness to one of the most important High Vor's son getting married on a spur of the moment to a princess fleeing a palace coup (to Barrayan eyes) makes her a figure of mystery. Also, Byerly steers her away from the "prole" sections and there's an ImpSec team protecting them from the shadows.

• Had to Be Sharp: Between eugenic infanticide, living on a Deathworld, being isolated from technology for centuries, living in political turmoil, and then surviving the Cetagandans, pretty much yeah.
  • Maybe that's Mother Barrayar Makes You Strong?

• I Gave My Word: An important part of the Vor code. Very important. Their whole system of government is based on verbal compacts — if you swear an oath, you better damn well mean it.
• Klingon Scientists Get No Respect: Subverted. The most honored profession is soldiering but scientists do in fact get respect. It seems to have played straighter in earlier generations.
  • Some of the most prestigious scientific institutions (notably the Imperial Military Hospital) are themselves attached to the military, making for a bit of a zig-zag. In addition, when new technology comes in, the first response is "How does it help the military?" (Uterine replicators, for instance, are examined as use for healing wounds, too.) Cordelia, who is in fact a brilliant scientist as all survey captains have to be, is usually remembered either as "Aral's embarrassingly eccentric wife", or "The woman who brought the usurper's head home in a bag."
• Noble Bigot: Add Honor Before Reason to Fantastic Racism and this is roughly what you get. They are getting a bit better about it, though.
• Never Be Hurt Again: The remembrance of the Cetagandan Occupation.
• Proud Warrior Race: the Vor.
• Planet of Hats: To just about everyone else in the Nexus, Barrayarans generally are a Proud Warrior Race. A visitor from Escobar expresses surprise at how "normal" the planet looks. He was expecting it to be all paved over and covered with soldiers marching around in formation. Another from Jackson's Whole "half expected to see gutted buildings with blackened timbers still smoking, bomb craters in the streets, and haunted, emaciated people scurrying like rats among the barricades." But since Barrayar is the primary setting of the stories, we get a more complex view, beyond the militaristic Vor class.
• La Résistance: During the Cetagandan occupation.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Bureaucratized: Inverted. They learned how to make a professional military force by fighting the Cetagandans and the spinoff from that is helping Barrayar evolve into a modern state.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: They were already not civilized when the Cetagandans arrived. They just channeled their barbarity into La Résistance.
• Rising Empire: Just recently conquered Komarr and founded a colony at Sergyar. Does not seem to have any more interest in expansionism at the moment.
• Rock Beats Laser: When invaded by Cetaganda they were at a serious technological disadvantage and drove them off using guerilla tactics.
  • This is mildly retconned/subverted later in the series. While the guerilla fighting was highly annoying to the occupying Ghem forces, the retreat was actually part of a ploy to use a Haut bioweapon without imperial approval. The idea was to withdraw from the planet, quietly steal and release a nightmare plague among the locals, and then reoccupy the planet a few years down the line when there wouldn't be enough people left to mount an effective resistance. Luckily for everyone else, the Haut were able to foil the part where one of their carefully hoarded bioweapons got released without their permission. They were not amused by the attempt to subvert their authority for mere military expediency, and some very high level Ghem generals were executed for their impertinence. Their military failure was just a convenient cover for the real story.
• Ruritania: In space.
• Secret Police: ImpSec, more so in the past when they were more focused on spying on their own citizens. In more recent times they are closer to standard military security.
• Settling the Frontier: Much of Barrayar's history and culture is about terraforming. The South Continent is still being settled, as is the newly-discovered planet Sergyar.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Until recently, mostly during the latter part of Gregor's reign.

Komarr

Komarr

A planet where everyone lives in domed cities, due to the planet's atmosphere not being breathable, whose considerable merchant wealth came through their prime planetary position at the nexus of several strategically important wormhole jumps. Komarr once made the mistake of allowing the Cetagandan Empire passage through their wormholes (for a fee of course) on their way to conquer the backwater world of Barrayar. The Komarrans responsible may not have lived to regret their decision, but their descendants certainly did when Barrayar came back with a conquering fleet to prevent a repeat performance. Once home to a strong La Résistance against the Barrayarans, but this is losing popularity as Komarr and Barrayar become more integrated.

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• Les Collaborateurs: Komarrans in Barrayaran service. More sympathetic than most, particularly Duv Galeni. Also, the Komarrans to the Cetagandans during the Barrayaran Occupation, at least in Barrayar's view.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Every city is built under a protective dome and the planet's great project is to terraform the whole planet. They are thus very tech-savvy and make splendid engineers.
• Neutral No Longer: The original Komarran shareholders voted to let the Cetagandans through the wormhole to Barrayar fully aware they weren't off to give the Barrayaran population fruit baskets, but they still viewed themselves as neutral. A generation or two later, the Barrayarans dropped in, with armed ships, to let them know they felt differently and they haven't left since.
• Planet of Hats: Komarr is all about business. The basic "democratic" unit is a shareholder, not a voter. Individuals can gain more shares (and hence votes) by financially contributing to the development of the planet, and these shares are transferable (via inheritance for example).
• Proud Merchant Race: Supposedly patterned on Medieval Venice -- IN SPACE!
• Puppet State: Ruled entirely by Barrayar.
• Terraform: Komarr is midway, having grown lichen and other oxygen-producing life to help change the atmosphere. However, going outside without a mask will result in slow asphixiation.
• You Will Be Assimilated: Present Barrayaran policy is to do this to Komarr. Since they've chosen to play the long game, this takes the form of things like Barrayarans paying for an expansion of Komarr's artificial solar array (to help with their terraforming) — and also quite a few prominent Barrayarans and Komarrans getting married across planet lines. This includes the Barrayaran Emperor himself to a member of one of Komarr's most prominent oligarchic families. Barrayar, however, leaves Komarr to its own planetary governing as before. It's only that there's another layer above it, and it rarely makes any imposition on the government. If anything, Barrayar has made life easier for Komarr, thanks to having very powerful military escorts for their trade fleets, and fixing its broken solettas, and building more to speed terraforming. Miles muses that most of Komarr's current mundane problems like traffic laws bogged down by voting deadlocks would do better with a monarchy than a democracy.

Sergyar

Sergyar

"Chaos Colony. We really don't need to make it up ..."

—Cordelia, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen

Third planet in the Barrayaran Empire. The planet and nearby wormholes providing a convenient shortcut to Escobar were discovered by Barrayar shortly before Shards of Honor. It was then rediscovered by Captain Cordelia Naismith of the Betan Astronomical Survey, bringing her into conflict with the Barrayaran local commander Aral Vorkosigan and kicking off the whole saga. The population is still rather low, and it's often referred to as Chaos Colony. After Aral's heart attack and subsequent retirement as Prime Minister following the events of Mirror Dance, Gregor appoints Aral and Cordelia Viceroy and Vicereine, a joint co-appointment.

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• Chekhov's Volcano: Averting this is at the top of Cordelia's agenda for the last year of her viceroyalty, by shifting the planet's capital city away from a dormant volcano, even though it isn't likely to blow for decades.
  Cordelia: The future of Kareenburg is a lava flow. If the earthquakes don't get it first.
• Egopolis:
  • Sergyar -> Prince Serg
  • Kareenburg -> Princess Kareen
  • Mount Rosemont -> Reg Rosemont
• Settling the Frontier: In Gentlemen Jole and the Red Queen, Kareenburg is the only town with a spaceport, with a second one being built at Gridgrad. Land is incredibly available, and the doctors at the local university say it'll take 5000 years to document the animal and plant life of the planet.
• Unfortunate Names: Cordelia loves everything about the planet save its name (being named after The Caligula and Villain with Good Publicity), and aims to get it changed sometime in the future, especially when Prince Serg's true nature becomes public knowledge.

Beta Colony

Beta Colony

Home of Cordelia, mother of Miles, before she switched allegiance to Aral (and Barrayar). The most technologically and socially progressive society in known space, or a degenerate planet full of unspeakable perversions, madness, and mutations, depending on where you stand. Beta does produce a lot of Science Heroes...just don't run afoul of their therapists.

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• Arms Dealer: A major line of business for them. But if they're selling you the "latest new weapon" you can bet that they're holding the defense against that weapon in their back pockets. Beta Colony sells leading edge weapons, but only after they are confident that those weapons can't be used against them.
• Bold Explorer: The Betan Astronomical Survey, which also functions as a kind of military, almost like an expy of Starfleet.
• Free-Love Future: Not quite "free" as in lawless. Their only sexual rules are "don't be deceptive with your earrings" (the signals of one's sexual status) and "don't have children without a license". But these are kept fanatically. And while the age of consent seems to vary between twelve to fourteen, Cordelia is outraged when she learns that Bothari's mother used to sell him to her customers when he was a child, saying that would not be allowed back home.
• Future Food Is Artificial: As Beta Colony has no naturally occurring biosphere, virtually all their locally-produced consumable organics are done in interior grow houses or are vat-grown cultures.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Strongly encouraged. Even their Astronomical Survey ship captains are expected to have academic qualifications that professional scientists from other colonies consider daunting.
• Iconic Outfit: Sarongs. On Beta Colony, often without a top.
• Intimate Psychotherapy: Licensed Practical Sexuality Therapists are a respected profession. To people from other colonies it looks more like Unproblematic Prostitution.
• Planet of Hats: Most within the Nexus strongly identify Beta Colony with social liberalism and technological innovation.
• Political Overcorrectness: Certainly in the view of a lot of terminally old-fashioned Barrayarans. The rest of the galaxy seems to view the Betans as kind of out there but with enough strong points to overlook the sarongs and the scarily-overpowered role of therapy.
• Population Control: Because of limited space in the colony, a license is needed to have children. It is very rare to be authorized to have more than two children. Word of God is that one's first license is technically two half-permits, so a person can either have two children with another person or use both permits as a whole to clone themselves; and a calculated number of third-child variances are given out each year by lottery or reserved as rewards.
• Proud Scholar Race: Of the Scientist variety.
• Underground City: Beta Colony was settled before the discovery of wormhole travel, and the planetary surface is actually very inhospitable to human life. Therefore the colony is underground and space is at a premium (hence the strict population control). Large open spaces are few in number, so Betans favor interior design over architecture as an art form. To impress a Betan, all you need to do is light the fireplace, as burning wood for warmth is the equivalent of bathing in champagne to a Betan.

Cetaganda

Cetaganda

An empire of interconnected planets ruled by a caste dedicated to raising themselves to transhuman status by genetic manipulation, Cetaganda once invaded and unsuccessfully occupied Barrayar. In many ways, it remains the main opponent of the Vorkosigan series as, unlike Barrayar, Cetaganda generally favours expansion, although by the end of the series it appears that Miles' sustained efforts have bought Barrayar some goodwill with its once and future enemy ...not that it means much, but by Diplomatic Immunity he can actually talk the Cetagandans out of starting another war with Barrayar.

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• Brilliant, but Lazy: Many young ghem lords and ladies end up this way, simply because Cetagandans have long life-times, and a lot of ghem are stuck doing nothing of value. This results in many Impoverished Patricians, while other ghem have said "screw the system" and attached themselves to less glorious but lucrative work; in Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, an ambassador's aide is trying to pursue a diplomatic career while the rest of his family are wealthy plumbers.^note His asylum on Sergyar requires he take up plumbing.
• Bureaucratically Arranged Marriage: A haut lady who doesn't make "the cut" may be given to a distinguished ghem as a bride.
• Decadent Court: The ghem and the haut both have this going on, both individually and to some extent against each other.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Star Crèche sounds like the Bene Gesserit.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first written appearances of Cetagandans imply a much more militaristic culture ruled by the ghem, as the haut had not yet been invented. There are a few handwaves to try and explain the inconsistencies.
• The Empire: Expansionist, with a preference for targeting weak and isolated planets for conquest. Hence Barrayar seemed like an ideal target since the Time of Isolation had left them in Medieval Stasis. That did not end well. Cetaganda is still prone to eyeballing other potential conquests, but is somewhat checked by a number of the more advanced and powerful planets being willing to oppose their expansionism.
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French: Cetagandans are depicted as haughty, sophisticated and with their entire culture suffused with making everything beautiful and aesthetically pleasing, and their society key elements often have a french name ("Haut", "Ba(s)", "Crèche"^note Though crèche is an English loan word from the French...).
• Evilutionary Biologist: While plenty of other worlds could also do this given their technology, Cetaganda stands alone in designing their whole society around it.
• Fantastic Caste System: The haut geneticist caste rule over the ghem warrior caste, with the non-genetically engineered planetary inhabitants below them and outlanders at the very bottom.
• Fantastic Racism: The haut consider the ghem "half-breeds", and non-Cetagandans as barbarian outlanders.
• If I Wanted You Dead...: Miles and Duv's research finds that the Cetagandan invasion was not authorized by either the Emperor or (more importantly) the Star Crèche, who were more interested in studying Barrayaran genes, which to them was akin to Darwin exploring the Galapagos Islands. If the Crèche really wanted to conquer Barrayar, they could have annihilated them with one or two of their bioweapons (which the offending ghem generals had stolen but failed to implement). Miles and company all suffer a bit of Fridge Horror after he relates the story in Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. invoked
  Miles: The real pullout plan called for the use of stolen haut bioweapons — some kind of virulent plague, as I understand it, rekeyed to Barrayaran genetics. Picture it. Pull all your people out, release this hell-brew, seal the wormholes behind you and let it work in tidy isolation. A planet-sized culture dish. Come back in a year or two to a neatly depopulated landscape freed of that pesky native crowd who kept irrationally refusing to be culturally uplifted, and move in. There would be galactic outcry, sure, but — too bad, so sad, too late.
• Inhumanly Beautiful Race: Haut women are specifically bred to be — by themselves, to the point they never ever cut their hair, which can achieve several meters. In contrast, the haut males are bred for intelligence and social skills (to clarify, they're still very handsome, just not works of avant-garde artwork), while the ba and ghem are basically petri dishes to the Star Crèche. Keep in mind, with all that beauty and intelligence, they aren't immune to doing some insanely stupid things. Common sense isn't genetic.
• Mad Artist: Even their bioweapons are artistic.
• Master Race: Their society is built around attempting to evolve themselves into an example of this trope. Miles notes at one point that they do not currently consider this process complete. What they will have become by the time they do consider themselves finished, not even they can guess.
• Meaningful Name: While ‘haut’ (a corruption of ‘haute’, or ‘high’, in French) is an entirely literal descriptor of the Cetagandan ruling caste, it also carries certain other connotations in English. ‘Haute couture’ is the far end of fashion — taboo-breakingly innovative, obscenely expensive, exotically beautiful, and (often) completely impractical. The haut, meanwhile, are the same principle applied to human beings rather than clothing.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Not all of the haut who get pegged as trophy wives to distinguished ghem take the change of station gracefully. Some of them become sufficiently peeved to say "F*** Cetaganda!", Lady Moira ghem Estif^note Tej's grandma among them.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In the setting's history, the ghem hugely overstepped their authority during the invasion of Barryar, leading the haut to order some very high profile suicides of the more expansionist ghem generals. This paved the way for the (relatively) peaceful relations between Cetaganda and Barryar seen in the books. The two are by no means friendly, but at least they can be talked out of a shooting war these days.
• Planet of Hats: Everything revolves around eugenic breeding, and genetic fitness defines an individual's role in the society.
• Proud Warrior Race: The Ghem were created that way, and it's hinted that Vorish delegates might actually get along with them because they're not that different. However, while this is still the case among soldiers and security like Colonel Benin, out-of-work Court Ghem are a subversion — often so exaggeratedly refined that they make Ivan look as fierce as Bloody Pierre by comparison.

• Secret War: With Barrayar. Constantly. Although at the current stage it's more of a Space Cold War.
• Shout-Out: Cetagandan Haut Ladies all look like extras from a Leiji Matsumoto anime.

• Space Elves: Sort of. Humans who are deliberately evolving themselves into Space Elves
• Transhuman Aliens: Perhaps not quite, but if the haut breeding program continues on schedule... soon. Arguably the haut are already there.
• You Have Failed Me: The fate of members of the ghem warrior caste who do disappointing things like not outwitting Miles.

Jackson's Whole

Jackson's Whole

Planet ruled by criminal houses where you can get anything for enough money. And that does mean anything.

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• Always Chaotic Evil: Even the "good" Jacksonians are charmingly amoral.
• Arms Dealer: Inevitably. A little seedier than Beta, to say the least.
• Better the Devil You Know: Miles once reflects grimly that if Jackson's Whole didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent it. The galaxy can keep all its scum there, away from everyone else but still within convenient reach. And since every imaginable abuse of technology occurs there, nobody else has be the ones to develop them.
• The Clan: Each criminal house.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: What passes for a "respectable" Jacksonian would count as this.
• Deconstruction: Of the Heinleinian notion of a libertarian utopia, showing just how dystopian such a society would likely be in reality. It's named for Jackson Hole (formerly Jackson's Hole) in Wyoming, USA, a valley that since the early 1980s has hosted a "summer camp for bankers." This popularity for the rich has had adverse effects on property values and costs of services, which (to prey upon rich tourists) have grown so high that locals can face a serious economic burden. Not entirely unlike what life must be like for common people on the Whole.
• Do You Want to Haggle?: Someone who can do this well is admired. Ezar's skill in keeping Sergyar after the Escobar war is taught to Jacksonian children. Udine semi-complains that Gregor bargained House Cordonnah to 5% of the spoils of a treasure cache; Tej notes that Udine is actually appreciating Gregor's skills.
• Dystopia: For anyone not connected to a House — and even for some who are.
• Exact Words: However, Jacksonians will bend the wording of the deal as far as it can without snapping.
  Mark: (on Baron Fell's payment) I predict that I will be seriously short-changed, but not quite enough so that I would risk going back to Fell and arguing about it. (inserts the card into the read-slot, and smiles) Spot-on.
• Expendable Clone: One of the services provided on the planet is making clone slaves tailored for any purpose; mental, physical, sexual — including clones, perfectly sapient individuals with artificially induced maturity, intended to receive the transplanted brains of wealthy but aging people (the clone's brain is then just medical waste). No other planet allows such things, so if you want that service desperately enough, this is the only place to get it. However, it is an extremely dangerous procedure — the transplant doesn't always take. Assuming, of course, all of your surgeons are totally loyal and didn't "accidentally" misplace the crucial brain...
• I Gave My Word: The only thing considered sacred here is "the Deal". "Deal" seems to be as much a shibboleth on Jackson's as "Oaths" are on Barrayar.
• The Mafia: The whole planet is basically organized crime.
• Noble Demon: The best one can expect from House Barons, such as Fell.
• Planet of Hats: It can be bought. No matter what "it" is.
• Wretched Hive: The only thing anyone respects on Jackson's Whole is money. Thus, those with the money are the law, and can buy and sell far more than just your life. (There are law enforcement officials and prisons, but they're essentially organised bounty hunters and pens for human livestock, respectively.) Those unwilling to compromise their morals don't survive long. It's telling that Miles' reaction to finding out where he's been revived despite suffering amnesia? A panicked "Holy shit! I'm on Jackson's Hole!", dropping his post-comatose slurred speech.

Athos

Athos

A planet settled by a very gynophobic religious group of men after the invention of the uterine replicator makes a society without women possible. Athos holds itself separate from the Galactic Nexus to prevent "contamination" from baleful (i.e. female) outside influences. They even censor Galactic media so that only men with very high clearances have ever even seen pictures of women.

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• Cult Colony: An ultra-radical Christian splinter group, to be exact. Ironically, though the original Founding Fathers were celibate, the long-term result over the course of centuries was to create a society where there are same-sex marriages. Unlike many cases of this trope, the Athosians are not depicted as evil or repressive. Indeed, most of them seem quite content with their way of life and while most inhabitants are religious, they are not fanatically so.
• He-Man Woman Hater: The Founders of Athos held a religious belief that women are the root cause of all male sin. This attitude persists even among more secular modern Athosians, who believe that women are inherently dangerous to men and thus must be avoided at all costs.
• Homosexual Reproduction: Not easy, but they make it work. Sort of. With advances in reproductive science now spreading throughout the Nexus, they may be able to achieve this for real before too long.
• Irony: Dr. Cynthia Jane Baruch, is one of the founders of Athos, from whom her ovaries (dubbed CJB by the Athosians) are valued.
• Lamarck Was Right: Athosians believe people's professions are influenced by their genetics. For example, CJB is supposed to make scientists.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: Helping to raise another man's child is one of the quickest ways to earn social credits toward having one's own child, so a lot of men end up in parenting partnerships where they help raise each other's children. Their relationship of the respective parents is not necessarily a romantic or sexual one, but it often is.
• Planet of Hats: The population of Athos is 100% male, which leads to the misconception of Athos as "the Planet of Fags". As of the end of Ethan of Athos, they are on their way to becoming a planet of telepaths as well.
• Population Control: Relatively easily enforced as a single-sex population necessarily relies entirely on artificial means. Reproduction centers are national facilities, and the privilege of having a child conceived there can be bought with "social credits", which any member of the population can earn by volunteering their efforts toward things which benefit the colony directly. One of the quickest ways of earning such credits is to help another man raise one of his children, which also gives the prospective parent experience for when they have their own child.
• Situational Sexuality: Most Athosian men will never even see a woman, nor have their ancestors going back generations. Homosexual relationships are therefore the norm, although some men, implied to be strongly heterosexual, remain celibate instead (within the culture of Athos they're considered to be practicing a very orthodox interpretation of the colony's Founding Fathers' intent.) Oddly, emigration from Athos is virtually unheard of, possibly because of religious indoctrination about how women can Mind Control men.

Quaddiespace

The Union of Free Habitats (Quaddiespace)

Home to the setting's largest society of Transhuman Aliens, Quaddiespace is situated in a star system with no habitable planets. The original quaddies (humans genetically engineered for free fall with a second pair of arms in place of legs) chose it because it gives them an advantage over any "downsiders" who come to visit. Graf Station was created out of the remains of the spaceship they stole in their escape from slavery to the corporation that created them. Since they were bred to be laborers, their society is based on the work gang.

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• Asteroid Miners: And they are singularly good at it, since they don't have to drag anything into or out of planetary gravity wells.
• Call-Back: They pause in their escape to rescue Madame Minchenko, a music teacher and concert violinist. Two centuries later, the Minchenko ballet is their crowning cultural accomplishment.
• Dancing Is Serious Business: One of the things they are most proud of is their null-grav ballet.
• Fantastic Racism: Averted, since their hero, Leo Graf, was a downsider who had a famous relationship with Silver, a quaddie (on which "The Crossing" is partly based.) They instead have condescension to people who 1) are lazy, or 2) won't respect their traditions.
• Life in Zero G: Quaddies are a Human Subspecies genetically engineered with an extra set of hands where their legs would normally be and with a number of other genetic modifications to make them capable of surviving indefinitely in microgravity or freefall. They're a former Slave Race rendered surplus to requirements by the invention of Artificial Gravity and fled to a remote asteroid-laden system to escape being sterilized and dumped on a lifeless planet.
• The Migration: Across several star systems. "The Crossing" is the subject of a classic ballet. "Keep boosting" indeed.
• Only One Name: Quaddies do not have last names. Originally all living quaddies had unique names derived from their serial numbers, but as the population grew from the initial thousand to millions, they had to allow duplication. If someone wants to use a name that someone else already has, they have to attach a numerical suffix to it, with their home dome being an additional designation seldom used. "Leo Ninety-nine" is given as an example. The highest number ever seen attached to any other name is "Sixteen" (attached to the name of another hero of the migration). The quaddies really remember Leo Graf fondly.
• Planet of Hats: Not technically a "planet" per se, but their space-based society is designed for the convenience of people who were genetically engineered for zero gravity and have arms instead of legs. As the descendants of people genetically-engineered to be laborers (And whose greatest cultural hero was an engineer), the quaddies attach great value to doing one's job well. They are impressed by how "task-oriented" Miles is, expecting a downsider ambassador to be more pretentious. Their most visible hat is music and dance, since one of their other cultural heroes (a founding mother, as it were) was a music teacher and concert violinist. The first quaddy character introduced is a musician, who takes advantage of null gravity to play a double-sided dulcimer.
• Proud Industrious Race: Quaddies are genetically engineered to live in zero-g and thus need to build their own space habitats. Their unit of cultural organization is the "work gang" and Miles notes (and takes advantage of) the fact that "work" was a word with extra resonance in Quaddiespace, much as "honor" has extra resonance on Barrayar.
• Reluctant Warrior: The last murder before Miles' visit was years ago. Quaddies don't bother to keep a proper forensics team because they have so few murders. And they seem somewhat confused by fairly normal concepts of military discipline like objecting to deserters and AWOLs (though Barrayarans take it farther than most at the best of times, and in Diplomatic Immunity were applying it in a very ham-fisted manner). On the other hand, they do at least have a security force and a militia capable of dealing with harbor brawls with reasonable efficiency.
• Space People: They don't need inhabitable planets, and specifically chose a star system without one to avoid competition.
• Transhuman Aliens: The biggest and most instantly-recognisable faction thereof in the setting.
• Turned Against Their Masters: A non-violent example that was made substantially easier by the introduction of practical grav-tech right when the first group of them was reaching full maturity. One imagines their creators were just as happy to get an insurance payout for their act of self "piracy" as continue to take care of an increasingly niche and marginal group of zero-g construction workers.

Earth

Earth

Earth. Old, romantic, historic Earth, the big blue marble itself. Miles had always expected to travel here someday, although not, surely, under these conditions.
Earth was still the largest, richest, most varied and populous planet in scattered humanity's entire worm-hole nexus of explored space. Its dearth of good exit points in solar local space and governmental disunity left it militarily and strategically minor from the greater galactic point of view. But Earth still reigned, if it did not rule, culturally supreme. More war-scarred than Barrayar, as technically advanced as Beta Colony, the end-point of all pilgrimages both religious and secular — in light of which, major embassies from every world that could afford one were collected here.

—Brothers in Arms

The homeworld of humanity, Earth straddles the Center of the Universe / Insignificant Little Blue Planet divide. In some ways, it's the first, but in others the second.

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• Earth That Used to Be Better: The homeworld of humanity has been through some rough times, including major wars. While it is by no means a shambles, it has definitely been surpassed in terms of interstellar influence by many of its colonies. Thus Earth is a contradiction in that it possesses a powerful sense of historical significance for all of humankind, but its strategic importance is comparatively low.
• Global Warming: Sea levels are much higher on Earth than they used to be, and many major coastal cities are now either protected by elaborate flood barriers or completely submerged.
• Holy City: Miles notes all pilgrimages, both religious and secular, end at Earth, since it still is humanity's cradle.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: Earth is in a cul-de-sac of the the Wormhole Nexus, which makes getting there a bit of a hassle. Its out-of-the-way location puts it off all the major trade routes, resulting in it having less galactic influence than, for example, Tau Ceti. And since Subspace Ansible technology is absent in this universe, meaning that messages have to be carried by ship through wormholes, Earth could never function as anything even close to a real-time interstellar government. However, thanks to every single power having a major embassy there, a lot of galactic haggling and espionage goes on there.
• Jack of All Stats: Earth does have highly advanced science, arts and so on, but is just second best to most.
• One World Order: Averted. Earth never has quite managed to politically unify its multitude of nations. Which is another major reason why it does not wield more influence throughout the Nexus despite its huge population and level of technological advancement. Colonies that have a Planetary Nation can often exert greater influence simply by virtue of being able to put forth a single unified economic and political policy.

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