The Lowborn

The Imperial Nobility comprise of less than 1% of the estimated population, but are widely believed to represent over 50% of the educated population of any Imperial Sector. Most Lowborn citizens will never receive anything in the way of a formal education - adult literacy rates in the Imperium are incredibly low among the Lowborn; although this varies from world to world, with Lowborn from more urbanised planets being the most likely to receive primary education. The exact figures are unknown and fluctuate from world to world, marred by the general impossibility of an Imperial census - the estimated literacy levels on abhuman worlds are incredibly high, for example, because abhuman populations are not counted towards the records.

For this reason, opportunities for social advancement are incredibly low. Most Lowborn are born without money; the Imperium prefers to reward labour with the necessities of living, rather than providing the freedom to its citizens that being paid Imperial coinage would give.

Lowborn who wish to accumulate wealth legitimately must do so through great effort. Due to the difficulty of getting out of the position they are born to, many Lowborn who do want to escape turn to crime – though few Highborn families, generations later, will ever admit to beginning as a street gang.

Because getting employment or passing Guard selection is difficult - and crime comes hand-in-hand with a short lifespan - most Lowborn opt not to challenge the status quo or to dream of something bigger. The Imperium is happy with this; Lowborn who keep their heads down and slave away at whatever jobs they are temporary assigned to largely rely on Imperial protection and welfare - and, thus, tend to live unremarkable, impoverished lives.

In truth, the Imperium is utterly terrified of the Lowborn classes. If they were fully aware and mobilised, they would dwarf even the largest of the Imperial armies; and they vastly outnumber the Nobility that claims it has blood right to rule them. Keeping them ignorant and ill-educated is as much a deliberate choice as it is a consequence of the scale the Imperium works with. To this end, the rights of the Lowborn are severely curtailed, and they are often subject to unprompted repression by Imperial authorities terrified of rebellion.

Class Divisions and Employment

Though opportunities are few for Lowborn citizens, work can be roughly divided as follows:

The Serving Class encompasses the personal and household servants of the Nobility, Adeptus Administratum functionaries and the Ecclesiarchy – to be a servant is to live in comfort. Most are paid a small stipend which allows them to access luxuries most Lowborn will never imagine, and are housed in great estates in relative luxury compared to most Lowborn hab-blocks. They have the most friction with other Lowborn, as they often serve as apologists for the excesses of the Highborn – in many ways, the Serving Class is separate from other Lowborn because they are usually born into a life of service, with entire families serving a single House for generations. Still, some Lowborn not born into service might luck out, and find service jobs if they are fortunate or talented enough.

Next to the serving classes, those Lowborn in Planetary Service also enjoy a relatively cushy existence. Most planetary defence formations are formed out of part-time volunteers, who are rewarded with extra welfare rations for training once a week against potential threats; their Officers generally enjoy full-time employment and a stipend, as do the footsoldiers in the Household Guard of Noble Houses. Enforcers, the common police forces responsible for local law, vary in their professionalism, but are mostly Lowborn citizens. Some are employed in formal forces, while some are paid a stipend by local nobility to serve as ‘sheriffs’. Some talented few might be assigned to the Adeptus Arbites, but that ancient body of Imperial law rarely recruits anyone below Schola Progenia graduates.

The Enlisted Ranks of the Imperial military are filled with Lowborn - few will ever see an Officer rank, for those are often controlled by the Highborn; but enlistment guarantees a stipend, an education and a pension, with the potential of other rewards such as prizes of land on captured worlds. The story of many a minor noble began with an ancestor fortunate enough to earn wealth and fame in military service - such are the benefits of the Imperium’s fetishization of the military.

The Mercantile Class encompasses those few Lowborn who possess a trade or a business, be they crafters or shop owners, publicans or common medicae. Able to exchange their services for coin from those who possess it, or barter services and goods from other Lowborn, this ‘middle’ class enjoys some comforts. Mercantile wealth immensely varies, from those who provide ‘common’ services to the lower strata of society, to tailors who own boutiques frequented by nobles.

The majority of Lowborn however belong to the Vassal Class. On some worlds, these individuals are ‘Serfs’ bound by feudal laws as the legal property of their planetary nobility, but most are common citizens. Few if any Lowborn of this class earn any profit from their work; most drift between various state-assigned work assignments, occasionally finding employment with members of the mercantile class to earn some coin for luxuries. The greater majority are dependent on Imperial welfare to survive, which keeps them largely obedient to the Imperial state.

Slavery is not uncommon in the Imperium, be it because someone has committed a criminal act and sentenced to indentured labour their contract sold to some guild or Imperial institution, or they were simply born into a family destined for indentured servitude to a Noble House by ancient oaths sworn to it Slaves are found everywhere in the Imperium in a myriad of circumstances.

Language and Slang

The spoken and written language of the Imperium is the ‘common tongue’ known as Low Gothic, born from pre-Age of Strife human settlement of the galaxy. Because it predates the Imperium, Low Gothic is generally understood on most worlds in the Prosperitas Sector, even those where the Imperium is not in formal control – however, on many worlds dialect differences and slang can create language barriers despite the common tongue they share.

Barely any individuals outside of the higher echelons of society speak the archaic homogenised root language from which Low Gothic sprung, High Gothic, which is used almost universally only in official communication to prevent dialect drifts confounding clarity.

There are places in the Imperium where non-Gothic tongues are spoken - like isolated feral populations. There also exist ethnic Languages in sectors recently conquered by the Imperium, these languages are rare, and the Imperium actively seeks to replace them with the universal Low Gothic tongue where it can before stamping out what of them remains or is not assimilated into local dialects.

Ethnicity and Culture

Culture varies greatly from planet to planet across the Imperium, with the vast majority of the population going their whole lives without considering themselves part of any group larger than their local township or - at most - their planet. Each world has a shared history and a shared past usually based on the Culture that first settled there and expressions of cultures of 'Old Earth' are often found amongst the stars preserved in some form by the generations who have been raised on the world they settled in the distant history of mankind.