Grey Orion

Grey Orions are a subrace of the Orions, a scientifically and technically adept caste held prisoner by their array of crippling handicaps.

Biology
Grey Orions were a humanoid species related to the Green Orions and Ruddy Orions, but they tended to be shorter, slighter, quite frail and much weaker than their racial cousins, and less charismatic, but also a little more dextrous and great deal more intelligent. Their numbers were small, making up at most 5% of the Orion population.

Their primary difference was their colouration, with skin ranging from a light grey to a charcoal black. In strong sunlight, this would tan with a deep metallic hue. Their hair and eye colours were similar, and usually matched the skin colour. Their hair was straight and stiff, and their teeth were large and naturally yellow. Between their appearance and their disabilities and deformities, Grey Orions suffered a frightful aspect.

But the most significant aspect of their biology was their inherent genetic damage, which inflicted a wide range of random mutations, deformities, handicaps and physical and mental disabilities upon them at birth, of varying severity. Though inherited, these were unpredictable, and a Grey Orion could suffer from one to a half dozen such conditions, sometimes minor (though enough to be a problem), sometimes quite major, and sometimes opposing, contradicting or even balancing each other. These included:
 * Allergies to food, requiring a special diet
 * Allergies to natural materials, synthetic materials, plants, animals, people or light, leading to skin eruptions or respiratory difficulties
 * Anxiety: emotional problems and fear about new and unknown activities or dealing with people.
 * Arthritis
 * Asthma
 * Balance problems due to faults in the inner ear
 * Baldness or increased hair all over the body.
 * Cardiac weakness against exertion
 * Constant itching
 * Cystic fibrosis
 * Depression: a chronic depression or even a chronic sense of euphoria, or a manic depression.
 * Digestive disorders, constant abdominal pain or nausea
 * Dwarfism
 * Epilepsy, or stress-related convulsions that lead to uncontrolled attacks upon people or vandalism of a room
 * Gigantism
 * Hearing problems, from tinnitus to impaired hearing to total deafness.
 * Hormonal immaturity, causing the body to never grow to adulthood, with possible childish behaviour (though with an adult mind)
 * Hunchback
 * Hydrocephaly, an enlarged and possibly asymmetrical head.
 * Immune deficiency disorders, leading to an inability to resist disease
 * Insensitivity to cuts, burns, bruises, even to all pain or a total numbness to all feeling
 * Missing or deformed body parts, from a hand or a foot to whole limbs
 * Missing or displaced facial features, such as an eye, ear, nose, or mouth (requiring being fed through a tube)
 * Myasthenia gravis, a chronic muscle weakness
 * Narcolepsy
 * Neurofibromatosis, or Elephant Man’s Disease, causing tumors to grow throughout the body.
 * Obesity or an inability to gain weight, becoming skeletally thin
 * Ossification, with bony growth over the joints
 * Osteoporosis
 * Palsies, from facial twitching to bodily shaking, occasional or constant
 * Paranoia
 * Premature aging
 * Plated skin, rendering the skin into a coarse pattern of horn-like plates or scales, across all skin and causing hair to fall out.
 * Sensitivity to dust or humidity (small quantities of either lead to respiratory arrest), heat (leading to heat exhaustion), or cold (causing hypothermia).
 * Smell: no sense of smell or an over-sensitivity of smell
 * Skin colouration errors: instead of being Grey, sometimes they appear Ruddy or Green or another colour, or even striped or spotted like a muni half-breed.
 * Skin rashes, eruptions, ulcers, blisters, peeling, even shedding skin down to raw flesh
 * Skin sensitivity to light (causing burns), touch or pressure (causing pain).
 * Spastic paralysis
 * Too many or too few fingers and toes
 * Vision problems, such as distorted vision (astigmatism), short-sightedness, far-sightedness, colour-blindness (red-green, blue-green, yellow-orange, or complete black-and-white vision), night-blindness, day-blindness, or total blindness.
 * Water retention

A very few lucky Grey Orions were born with no handicap at all, or one so minor as to not be a problem, or perhaps a perfect balance of opposing conditions, and were left completely normal. However, most faked a handicap to avoid the attention of their non-Grey masters.

With constant and expensive medical care, most Grey Orions would die outside their guldin. These sealed, controlled environments and life-support chambers, together with supplies of medicines and drugs and regulated diets kept Grey Orions alive and as healthy as they could be. However, Grey Orions were allergic to some treatments, such as ocular compounds like Retinax V, and the destruction of Orion medical knowledge that accompanied the genetic curse on the Grey Orions meant that available treatments are limited or unknown.

On average, not including the effects of various illnesses, Greys typically lived shorter lives and aged faster than other Orions. Physical and mental deterioration began around age 40, with only a few decades left to them. They usually died of old age or in a rare moment of physical exertion.

History

 * See main article: Orion history

Society
Grey Orions were never seen in public, nor discussed in any way. Most other Orions scorned them, and found them disgusting to look at, unwholesome and even unworthy of life, for their deformities and ill health. They were completely off the Orion social scale, and were the only true Orion slaves, not even classed as slaves and without even a contract to protect their rights. Their very existence was dependent on others, their Utan, or 'Masters'.

Each Grey Orion was utterly under the control of their Uta, whom they depended on completely for materials, wealth and their very survival. They did what they were told, they were occasionally spied upon for unauthorised activities, and could have vital supplies withheld for punishment. Subtly rebellious, they responded with minor insults, small delays and annoyances, instead of an open revolt that was practically impossible for them.

Grey Orions were kept prisoners in guldin, usually found underground in a sub-basement beneath a villa or in a secure section of an office building (and only in large, established settlements) or in the bowels of a starship. A guldi was a hermetically sealed, environmentally controlled set of quarters specially designed for Grey Orions and their handicaps, supplying all their requirements for staying alive and as healthy as they can be. These included life-support machinery, for recycling food, water and air, and as such, they were difficult to transport. Grey Orions lived almost their entire lives in these rooms, where they lived, ate, slept, worked, studied, communicated with other Grey Orions or their owners, or found their own amusements. Whole Grey Orion families or working groups could be found in some.

Despite the prejudice and hatred they suffered, Grey Orions were kept alive since they possessed technical talents and knowledge that no other Orions had or bothered with. Highly intelligent and dextrous (when not handicapped in that area), they were skilled with tools, machines and computers, they understood higher mathematics and physics, and they guarded all that remained of ancient Orion medical knowledge, since their own survival depended on it. They were also the only Orions to pursue knowledge and conduct research for its own sake. They usually had the time to do so, and it was their sole occupation, as commanded by their owners.

From within their guldin, Greys were employed in several areas, usually careers forbidden to other Orions. Many worked as librarians, running computers and memory banks, and provided valuable research. They also conducted scientific research, aided planning and strategy, and designed machines and starships. They were also used to disarm traps and break security on computer systems, vehicles, spacecraft, and buildings.

Despite their sometimes-crippling handicaps that hampered their skills and capabilities, they usually managed to find a mechanical means of working around their disabilities, and considered no problem impossible to overcome. For example, even a blind Grey could become a medical doctor, utilizing special instruments, sonar and sight-to-touch translation programs to conduct examinations, as capably as a sighted doctor could.

Customs
As their work was usually light, occasional or easy, Greys led a life of relative leisure. They spent their time finding ways to relieve their boredom, fiddling with machines, carrying out research, and communicating with Greys in other guldin. Nevertheless, all of them, despite their captivity and handicaps, possessed a desire for freedom and more normal and active pursuits, even if they were physically incapable of performing them.

It wasn’t unusual, however, for Greys to carry out long-distance petty feuds with others of their kind. Trapped in their guldin, they could consider even the most minor irritations and problems to be major offenses, or reacted badly to minute differences of opinion or disagreements, for things even children might find ridiculous. A typically Orion power struggle would play out over the computers and communications, feeding each other false data, remotely sabotaging their projects, and so on, sometimes with murderous intent.

Others at least found some form of companionship, and could form close relationships and alliances with which to plot against their owners. To break these up, Utan swapped and traded Greys amongst themselves.

From earliest childhood, every young Grey was bound by their kin to memorize a lost book of Grey Orion history, recited by an older member of the guldin. Several hundred books passed through Grey society in this way, though in different ‘editions’ and in multiple locations. These works included histories, biographies, and accounts relating to Grey Orions throughout Orion history, material that was destroyed in the Reverse. There were even a few written afterwards, short personal tales that told of the great crime done to them.

Even many Ruddy Orion Utan forgot that Greys had any history prior to their enslaved state, and since contact was made with the Federation, Greys began secretly transcribing their oral history into computers, hidden in complex ciphers and codes, which the Utan did not think to examine. These recordings were well guarded and destroyed at the very first sign of Ruddy suspicion.

Upon reaching the age of 14, Grey Orions began the educations required for their professions, depending on what was required of them. Basic computer use took one a half years, while computer technology and electronics took two years. Three years were spent studying engineering, three and half each for the sciences or for medicine, while finance and protocol took four years.

They were prohibited by their Utan from learning certain skills that they deemed dangerous, though they secretly gained some forbidden knowledge via simulations and computer connections, as far as they were able.