Gata people
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| Approximately several trillion persons | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Across the Colonial Republic of Earth, particularly Earth SSR, New Star City County, Luxembourgia County, Nickopolis County, Nova Louisiana County | |
| Languages | |
| Gata Spanish, Dornalian English | |
| Religion | |
| Roman Catholicism, Jacintaist Catholicism, Gata Evangelical |
The Dornalian variant of the neko, more commonly called the Gata is a prominently represented group descended from genetically engineered humans whose origins date from before the CRE, or even the old Workers State.
Names
Anthropologists and linguists generally agree that the current name derives from the Spanish phrases "gentegata" or "gente de gata." The term Gata has entered into widespread usage, and has even supplanted the original name in many circles due to frequent use.
Less commonly used and regarded as an offensive slur is the word "Necker," derived from the word "neko." The term gained its offensive connotations during the Great Northern and Great Southern Gata Wars, where Dornalian soldiers engaged gata soldiers in extended engagements.
The term "neko" has also begun to gain popularity, and to a lesser extent "beastling" can be used without fear of offense.
History
Early Origins
The Gatas originated from a project conducted by a shadowy conglomerate which existed in the pre-Apocalypse era. Given the devastating nature of the Apocalypse, it is not likely the institution which desired to pursue the project will ever be definitively identified, although consensus is that the project sought to genetically engineer waitresses and other staff designed to be "cute." The Institution experimented with not only cat ears, but also wolf/dog ears as well.
Evidence suggests that after a "pilot program" on First Nations reservations in Alberta was stopped by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Institution started other branches in Mexico and Eastern Europe. While many of the Eastern European branches worked on the people who would become the "Forest Sisters," the Berlin-Kreuzberg, Sinaloa, Mindanao, and Yunnan branches worked on the people who would become the Gatas. According to historian Gerald Collins, "It is sufficient to note, dear reader, that the Institution selected populations in the Philippines and Mexico as well as ethnic Turks and Germans in Berlin as potentially useful test groups. Experiments were conducted, much of the archives of which were kept hidden from prying eyes and then incinerated due to the mass atomic warfare of the Apocalypse."
Unbeknownst to the public at large and to mainstream academics, the Institution behind the gatas was really none other than the notorious Majestic-12, a secretive and very rogue element of the US Government established in 1947 after the Roswell incident. Majestic's involvement in the creation of the gatas and other such creatures was simple. Profit through cuteness. Elements of Majestic-12's Steering Committee know the "truth", but given the destruction of records established above, even the truth they know is a half-remembered, barely-documented fable.
After the Apocalypse, many gata groups were left to fend for themselves as the Institution was nowhere to be found. While it is believed that much of the Berlin-Kreuzberg branch was wiped out in the Great Russian Invasion that resulted in the formation of the Russo-German Union, the Mexican branches began to break up into tribes that spread around into Mexico and the US Southwest. As they intermarried with local groups and coalesced into larger groups, they began to form large entities tended to be strong, posing threats to local post-Apocalyptic entities such as the Navajo Nation, but tended to be treated like any other group of raiders.
The Rise and Fall of the Jacintista Empire
However, the gata tribes would experience the great zenith of their history.
Jacinta de Albequerque and Elisabeta de Albequerque, later known as Jacinta La Valienta (the Bold) and Elisabeta The Fair, were two ordinary itinerants from New Mexico that migrated south into Northern Mexico. Living a menial existence and witnessing the power plays of the various surviving Cartels--which had become petty, constantly warring fiefdoms at this point--the two soon began to form a militia of vigilantes designed to defend the weak from banditry. After a particularly brutal siege in Nuevo Leon, the Jacinta Group declared a violent war on the cartels. In a large scale guerilla campaign characterized by the use of technicals and maneuver warfare, Jacinta and Elisabeta successfully purged Northern Mexico of the Cartels. Before long, she would also engage in other campaigns in Southern Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean (where legends say she battled a woman known as "La Loba," believed to be a Forest Sister who migrated to Cuba) and eventually South America up to the northern edge of the Southern Cone. Only action from the Americanadian Rump State and the South American Alliance based in Buenos Aires prevented Jacinta from ruling the Western Hemisphere in its entirety, as she eventually fell in battle in Paraguay in 2100.
Along the way, Jacinta's forces, now reorganized into "Jungle Divisions" which began to emphasize the use of artillery and aggressive, audacious attacks--as well as brutal violence approaching war crimes against the enemy--began to earn a reputation for being seemingly unstoppable, and Jacinta herself became a figure who, according to Gata historian Alejandra Guerin, "became something like Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Virgin Mary all rolled into one." Indeed, to her men and the subjects under the rule of her American Union (known more commonly as the Jacintaist Empire), she became a folk hero and living legend. This was in no small part to her harsh but fair rule, aided considerably by Elisabeta's organizational acumen. This included the reestablishment of law and order using new courts and police forces, the reindustrialization of much of her lands to supply her army with artillery and weapons, and a comprehensive series of legal reforms which protected civilians from harassment and preserved civil liberties and rights. She also found favor for merchants in ensuring the safe passage of travelers and goods, and punished banditry with death. Gatas in particular enjoyed how she unified the disparate tribes into a powerful force--the image of the downtrodden gatas overthrowing corrupt human masters was too much to resist.
Such was the magnitude of her military and governmental achievements that Jacinta became the subject of a cult of personality after her death, which became an actual offshoot of the Catholic Church which persists to this day as a recognized church in communion with the Dornalian Holy See. Many particularly strict Catholics were, by all accounts, accepting of her rule as she worked to purge various folk cults favored by the hated Cartels. Indeed, much Gata iconography not only features the Virgin of Guadalupe, but also Jacinta and Elisabeta trampling upon Santa Muerte and Jesus Malverde as holy warriors.
With the fall of Jacinta and Elisabeta came the gradual decline and fall of the Jacintaist Empire, sped along by the fact that various Gata commanders coalesced into regional factions. Eventually, the gatas mostly came to reign over successor states, or just remained as large ethnic concentrations in their former territories either subject to various laws, or making the laws depending on how things went. In one particularly dramatic example, the local Gata run state in Mexico was overthrown by the People's Movement, a human-based organization, in 2110.
The result would be a massive exodus northwards into Western and Midwestern North America. In particular, a large number of Gatas entering Texas would, after some conflicts, become enrolled in the Texas Rangers and give yeoman service for many years to come. Other units under the Great Commandante Saavedra attempted to lead those under the Commandante's command to the fabled land of Chicago, and failed in the attempt only to settle around St. Louis and remain to this day. One unit even conquered New Orleans and ruled over New Orleans and Southern Louisiana as a city state of sorts. Some of these gata groups even included the units which would later become the Grand Army of the North and the Southern Junta--enemies of the Dornalians in their Gata Wars.
Dornalian Involvement With the Gatas
The Dornalian state, meanwhile, had a much more hostile relationship with the gatas--at first. Order Number 24 ordered that "necker tribals, bandits, and enemies of the People shall be compelled to engage in hard labor for the duration of their captivity in the Workers State." This resulted in a system of virtual slavery, as the Dornalians tended to use captured gatas as "POW labor." Additionally, the Dornalians engaged in the Great Northern and Southern Gata Wars, battling the tribes for dominance of old California. Eventually, with the MacIntyre Administration, relations improved drastically due to the cessation of Order Number 24.
Gatas during the MacIntyreist era were integrated into the power structure, and even amidst racial tensions like the Compton Riot of 2160 and became a common sight in Dornie areas. During the MacIntyreist Era, gata heroines became common--the biggest of which was Antonia "Fuzzy" Markham. Markham was a member of the "Rangers," an organization founded in the Abh world of D'hara, and would be known for her sniping prowess and antics on and off the battlefield with both the Rangers (of which she is a part) and the Dornalian Army during the Civil War.
For their part, the Gatas played a key role in Dornalian history, particularly as they settled on the ever expanding frontier during the heady days of expansionism. The gatas also became a common sight working on civil and military ships, and would participate in wars such as the Nova Louisiana War and Torusumi's War. Such was their presence that large portions of Luxembourgia acquired the name "the Kitty Litter" due to the high presence of gatas. With the Unification Period, the gatas now had to contend with their new compatriots from the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, and while relations were mostly the same as with other Dornalian groups, a moral panic set in as the gatas now (allegedly or actually) faced the threat of having their tails pulled.
During the Civil War, gata families like many others were split between the Mahdists and the Loyalists, and gata units formed on both sides of the war. These ranged from the 900th Infantry Division on the loyalist side to the pro-Mahdist militia known as "Red Command," implicated in a number of atrocities committed against Loyalist troops. Survivors of both factions have been known to commemorate the fallen.
The post-Civil War era, however, would turn things around, as the gata populations of the CRE began to pick up the pieces. At the current time of writing, it's sufficient to indicate the gatas continue to play a part in the Republic's life, including most recently its interactions with the peoples of Mystria.
Ethnic and Genetic Makeup
Most gatas encountered nowadays have significant Mexican-Filipino genetic makeup, with a smattering of other Asian and Hispanic groups as well as feline genetics of unknown origin to produce the tail and ears, which come in a variety of different colors. Additionally, genealogists and geneticists note that other Hispanic groups (and even other groups such as Guyanese, Jamaicans and Haitians) are included in the gata makeup. Historians uniformly attribute this to the legacy of the Jacintaist era. Such was the reach of the Jacintaists that significant communities exist to this day in Brazil and even in parts of the Southern Cone of Latin America, although much less than in other parts due to wide resistance in the Jacintaist era.
There were once Turkish and German tribes in Eastern Germany, but these are mostly extinct, with the survivors of the War of 2020 having been subsumed into the greater Gata community Still, research is being done to preserve what is left of the traditions of these groups. Note that isolated groups of gatas in parts of East Asia and the Philippines exist as well, suggesting the Yunnan Branch and the Mindanao Branch's gatas survived the Apocalypse. Research is being done by a collaborative project of UCLA and the Sociedad de las Gatas to ascertain the history of these peoples.
Powers and Abilities
Gatas, like their Forest Sister cousins, have heightened senses due to their genetic modifications. However, this mainly manifests in the form of a biological "sixth sense" or "Spidey Sense" that grants somewhat quicker response time than that of a baseline human, derived from the inevitable combination of better eyesight and hearing and smell than a baseline human's. Fuzzy Markham's sniping particularly showed this to be the case. They are also slightly more agile and limber than baseline humans, and more than one gata has jumped onto a random object to demonstrate this--presumably in a nod to the fact cats will jump onto anything they see even if its fairly high up.
Gatas also have a higher genetic disposition to developing magical/psychic powers, including Force sensitivity. Consensus puts this down to the somewhat unstable nature of their genetic engineering and mutations caused by nuclear war. This results in a large percentage of them displaying the usual gamut of magical/psychic abilities, including telekinesis.
Of note is that gatas are still affected by catnip, a downside to the Enhanced Senses. Gatas are known to brew a potent tea involving catnip, and in large quantities catnip has been known to induce psychoactive effects. It seems that the people who engineered the catlike ears and senses forgot to leave out the part of the genome that rendered cats vulnerable to catnip.
Strangely enough, the gatas and their Bonk/Forest Sister cousins share a common trait--while they don't hunt in packs like the Sisters, the gatas have their own type of emphasis on teamwork that is looser, but just as bound in some ways. It shows in tight-knit groups like the Ley Jacinta gang, whose members tend to cover for each other with repetitive regularity, and the emphasis on "familia," as shown below.
Organization
Gatas tend to live all over Earth, although many of them are concentrated in the American Southwest, California and Mexico, with significant populations in other parts of Earth (Guatemala, Brazil, and parts of Argentina come to mind). Addiitonally, there are a large number of them in offworld populations in Luxembourgia and other regions due to the MacIntyre Administration's policies encouraging stellar expansion.
They tend to recognize themselves as being in clan groupings called "tribes." These groups are clans of extended kin and kind, like the Scottish clans are. The clans usually have a dominant family, with a matriarch and/or a council, but this authority is mostly ceremonial. Emphasis on mostly--in frontier regions and in times of upheaval like the Civil War, it can prove quite decisive.
Additionally, there exists among the gatas a sort of noble class known as the "Silverados." These descend from Jacinta La Valienta's elite bodyguard units/companion cavalry, which took their name from the large numbers of pickup trucks used by their ranks. Although tactics changed during the Jacintaist Wars and the Silverados became a form of mounted infantry, they continued to maintain their elite role as a form of shock infantry/bodyguard unit. When the Jacintaist Empire collapsed, the Silverados evolved from a formal elite unit to a sort of elite warrior caste, particularly in the case of the tribal militias that moved north from Mexico. The descendants of the Silverados nowadays don't hold any special privileges on a formal level, but within gata society there is some recognition of their status--particularly if they maintain the AR-10s, black fatigues and tactical gear, and other signs of Silverado status.
Appearance
Generally, they resemble ordinary humans, particularly Filipino-Mexican people, with cat ears and tails. The gatas are statistically noted to be a bit slimmer than usual, but otherwise, there's nothing to write home about except for the ears and tail. They also tend to be rather well armed, disproportionately so, especially as they tend to be kinda average height at most, and even a little short. Fuzzy this time is an exception--she's kinda tall.
Culture and Customs
General
Generally, gata culture is best described as a "mulligan stew" of sorts. While there is a strong mixture of Hispanic (especially Mexican and Mexican-American) influence with the use of Spanish language, Northern Mexican cooking (influenced by other Hispanic cuisines such as Peruvian seafood, Brazilian steaks etc) and even the Quincianera for teenage girls, there are also influences from other cultures which are distinctly felt, mainly American and Asian. These include items such as martial arts skills which show a distinct Filipino influence and a love of hip hop/soul music and street culture.
Strangely but appropriately enough, the gatas, due to their history, have been known to occasionally embrace a love of artillery and iconography related to cannons.
Gender Roles
Gata communities have received attention from scholars who note that they are generally matriarchal in alignment. The gatas prize loyalty to the "familia" centered around the influence of prominent female figures as one of the cornerstones of their livelihoods, along with strength and womanhood. Scholars have also noted that Gata traditions, as a result, do tend to occasionally treat Gata males in a discriminatory manner, although this is changing.
Gata Names
In old Gata customs descended from the "Tribe Law of Elisabeta the Fair," many did not have standard last names. In lieu of this, a female first name, corresponding to a prominent leader of the Jacintaist Empire (there are a canon of family names thus fashioned, although new ones get added), and the suffix "Chibi" is affixed, designating the new tribal entities to which the gatas were to be organized. This is the equivalent of old Scandanvian names liked "Carlsson," which mean "Son of Carl;" a name like "Linda-chibi" means "Child of Linda." However, due to increasing intermarriage, many gatas now have ordinary surnames; however traditionalists and old timers will have names arranged according to the system above, and among some gatas middle names are likewise fashioned.
Social Norms
Finally, sociologists have noted that the gata emphasis on strength, womanhood, and the adaptation and inversion of a number of cultural tropes involving masculinity has resulted in "a proud people." In a seminal but controversial work known indeed as The Proud People by Stella Ivanovic, the Gatas tend to be very proud of their heritage and strong ethnic identity, and tend to cultivate a confident swagger among other markers of pride. However, as Ivanovic notes, this has lead to social behaviors which have lead to culture clashes with negative effects, including the fact the Gatas have inherited the infamous "Sassy Black Woman" stereotype. Anecdotal evidence quoted by Ivanovic (e.g. supermarket cashiers who got snarky) suggests that gatas have on occasion tended to be quite aggressive and moody when backed into a corner, or otherwise crossed or if they feel slighted. Conversely, at least compared to the Forest Sisters/Bonks, they are very sociable--and if you win a gata's trust, it'll pay dividends, even more so than your average Dornalian.
Note that Ivanovic's book is controversial, not of least which for the reason she is a "Forest Sister/Bonk". The latter Dornalian group is known to have some rivalry with the Gatas, feeling they are too loud. The gatas in turn see them as prima donnas. This hasn't stopped them from working together, but it does lead to awkward "cat vs. dog" moments on plenty of occasions.
It also helps not to pull their tails, although it is very amusing to outsiders, as among Gatas this is seen as an invasion of personal space and even potential sexual harassment. Gatas don't mind getting their tails pulled by their significant others, however.
Societal Contributions
Gatas tend to be strongly represented in the Order and in Military service, be it PMCs or regular service. An example of this is the current head of the Order, Kylie Walker, an adopted gata raised in Wisconsin and a survivor of the notorious Camp 13 Detention Center. Gatas also tend to be well represented in the civil service, working at jobs such as the Department of Motor Vehicles and Customs posts at airports. In the civil services, injokes, stereotypes and other images have contributed to the Gata reputation as being "surly bureaucrats," although the truth of this is debatable.
Dornalia's adult entertainment industry also sees a significant gata presence, but they do tend to have a high presence due to Fuzzy and imitators--a fact which embarrasses segments of the gata community.