Household

Households are major social and political bodies consisting of millions, billions, or even trillions of Vespians related to one another by blood. Each household is governed by the father of the household, or in the cases of the more powerful and longer established houses, the eldest male elected from a select group of men within that house. Because of their sizes, as well as the financial and political power they wield, houses form an integral part of Vespian society and culture. The government of the Unified Vespian Directorate was even designed to accommodate the houses which made up its political apparatus. Though the households described below are the primary of their type, there are also the soldiery households, houses which have entirely given themselves over to the auspices Vespian Defense Forces, and the Houseless, outcast and criminal Vespians who have either been exiled or banished by their houses.

History
A household forms the basis of Vespian society and culture, an extension of the original seven great houses established by the forefather of the Vespian species, Mikael O'Neill. Though Mikael had established seven great houses as the basis of Vespian society, that is, the seven male Vespians who would become the first fathers of the Vespian species, the idea of what a household was had not yet been established. In the eyes of the average Vespian of the time, a household was simply the family of descendants belonging to one of the aptly named Seven Forefathers. As sons were introduced into the family structure along with their children, the concept of the household expanded to include the father's children, and the children of his sons and grandsons, effectively giving rise to the modern view of what a household was. It wasn't until the first round on world wars on Vespia that the idea of what a house truly was began to emerge.

The concept of what a household is in the modern day sense, is well known to all Vespians. Each household is a massive family of Vespians related to one another through one or more Vespian men who are the progenitors of the entire population of house members. A single male Vespian can individually give birth to millions of Vespians, a result of the modification by Mikael to counter numerous issues he ran into trying to get around what he called "Eden syndrome", a lethal type of hyper-inbreeding. With a single male fathering millions upon millions of Vespians, entire populations found themselves viewing one another as siblings, and identifying themselves as united under the direct control of a single man who was their shared father. From there, a household is an exclusive entity closed off to all but those related to one another by blood, establish massive bodies which united by blood and shared parentage. Today, loyalty to the house often comes before loyalty to the nation, a dangerous view which has resulted in numerous conflicts thousand Vespian history.

Patriarchs are often revered by their children and grandchildren to such an extent, that they are often regarded as religious leaders in their own right. Though Vespians do not worship their fathers, they do believe their fathers represent an extension of spiritual authority passed on to them by their original father, Mikael, and the Seven Forefathers from whom all the Vespians are descended. Religious aspects aside, the Vespians, though united as a species under a single government and a largely homogenous culture, find themselves more divided by house, which is often viewed as an inescapable fact of life. One cannot deny that it is difficult to get pass the concept of the house when 90% of your homeworld's population consists of your brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, and only a handful from another household. Because of this view, many Vespians simply prefer not to ignore their house as an organizaton, and support the concept with open arms.

Types of households
Households each control an array of worlds based on their size and the manner in which they operate. A house with limited resources and a small population would naturally find itself restrained to a single world in the Directorate, while a larger household with billions of members and countless trillions of credits, would have an easier time colonizing and governing new worlds. Numerous factors play into the type of household that will be formed, however, it is very clear that the great houses are often a group until themselves, unique in their history and development, and the only group of households who cannot be matched by any other house in terms of political influence, financial power, and cultural footstep.

Great houses
A great household is the most powerful of the households in Vespia. Consisting of trillions of Vespians, thousands of worlds, and wielding vast political power, a great house's might can only be challenged by another great house or a coalition of major and minor houses. Originally established by Mikael the Traveler when he settled Vespia more than seven thousand years ago, sticking close with tradition, there are only seven great houses today. These houses are House Nazarov, House O'Neill, House Madora, House Veilleux, House Archambeau, House Morgan, and House Kane. These houses have been the source of much strife within the Vespian nation throughout its history, and it is well known that the great houses were partly responsible for the start of the Vespian Civil War.

The economy strength of the great houses comes from their collection of house taxes from their members, as well as their control of major industrial centers throughout Vespia. Additionally, the political influence each house wields is fuelled by their control over the bulk of the Vepsian population, and in particular, its male population, which is the only group of Vespians permitted to vote in elections. With control over the majority of voting male Vespians, great houses can pass laws favorable to themselves. However, there are limits to their power. Great houses are not permitted to field their own military forces as a result of the civil war, but are known to employ mercenaries to protect their interests throughout the Directorate.

Major houses
A major household is a household with influence spreading across several planets within a region, and billions of members spread across a dozen or more planets, or a single heavily-industrialized planet. Major houses have a difficult time pushing their influence into the more settled and politically fortified Cardinal Worlds, where four of the seven great houses are located. Though major houses are no threat to the great houses in the Vespian core regions, they are their own kings outside of them. Absolutely ruthless and cutthroat in political maneuvering, the major houses fight against one another politically and financially as they seek to gain prominence in the eyes of the government and their peers. Major houses are the most likely to employ mercenaries in a more direct and hostile manner when compared to the great and minor houses, resulting in most military action by the VDF to be centered in major household territory.

Minor houses
At the bottom of the barrel sit the minor households, newly established by aspiring fathers or just poor and broke houses located in the underdeveloped regions of the Outback Worlds. Such houses only consist of millions or hundreds of millions of members, and have just enough money to get by, or not enough to secure greater resources needed to mature in a major household. Often the victims of pirating by the Houseless, political maneuvering on the part of larger houses, or just the misfortune of being located in a resource-poor area, minor houses often have little chance of gaining power for themselves unless they work together to move forward as a reputable force.

Heavily-reliant on handouts from the federal government, minor houses are largely defenseless and the products of poor decision-making or the actions of great houses exploiting the smaller houses. Many fathers seeking to gain power and wealth by settling a world for the Directorate and reap the benefits of doing so, often find themselves broke and tied down to a population of their offspring they have to stay with and govern. For the minor houses which do succeed, they are able to turn a modest profit, and get a seat in the federal government for representation with a group of other minor houses as a sign of their recognition by the Directorate.

Soldiery household
Soldiery households are unique and rare houses which consist of Vespian fathers and their offspring who have given themselves over entirely for the waging of war. Originally established in the wake of the Vespian Civil War, the soldiery houses were established out of need, after countless households wishing to avoid incurring the wrath of the Great Houses, refused to let their daughters join the federal military, starving the government needed troops and personnel to bring peace back to Vespia. In a desperate attempt, the government offered high-ranking commissions, federal tax exemptions, and unique privileges to any patriarchs who agreed to hand their children over the military to stop the civil war. Those who did became the first soldiery households, and their houses came to form the core of the Vespian Defense Forces.

Today, these houses are few in number, with only eighteen in existence, and very few created every couple of centuries as needed. Vespians hailing from the soldiery houses are raised from the moment of their birth, to serve their country and to die for it if needed, as per the terms of their forefathers' agreement within the federal government of Vespia. Soldiery houses stand apart from their civilian counterparts in that they have been drilled into giving their loyalty to the government through their fathers, and refuse to take part in the bickering of the average household, making them invaluable assets to the government during times of civil strife and war. The value of these houses is such that the government has long made it an official policy to prevent the number of non-soldiery household Vespian volunteers from outnumbering soldiery Vespians in the military.

Houseless
The Houseless are Vespians who have been expelled from their households either by judicial actions, death of their sole male patriarch, or otherwise separated from their household as a member. This houseless individuals are widely ostracized by their fellow Vespians, and listed at the bottom of Vespia's highly stratified social ladder. Houseless Vespians typically survive on the edges of society, often becoming pirates, drug dealers, thugs, prostitutes, and mercenaries, while the most fortunate of the lot are accepted into other households as adopted members with "special status", though sidelined nonetheless as a result of their "otherness" in the eyes of biological members. The amount of shame that surrounds the concept of "houselessness" is hard to express in ways humans would be able to understand, with the closest analogy being that of the disgust that would be attracted to the reputation of a rapist or a pedophile in human society.

Because of their status within Vespian society, it is almost impossible for a houseless Vespian to attain any form of meaningful employment within the public sector, and only the most devoted and ruthless Vespians have been able to break out of the poverty and collective disgust that being houseless brings. However, due to the difficulty that surviving on the fringes of society has brought for those at the bottom of the social ladder brings, the bulk of these Vespians have joined houseless clans, which provide the family and belonging members of this caste of Vespians have been deprived of and yearn for. These clans have been the greatest source of violence and instability in the Directorate, controlling the bulk of the known pirate fleets in the galaxy, and dominating the majority lawless regions in the Directorate. Likewise, these clans control the growing drug trade in Vespia, and were responsible for the waging of the Great Solar War, the largest conflict in Vespian history.