A Billion Suns by thedace

Greetings from Tarka Dal of the Vindaloovian empire!

I have decided to base my Billion Suns Corporation on the Vindaloovian empire which briefly appeared on an episode of Red Dwarf.

This fictional empire was extended upon by the Red Dwarf RPG and here is an overview –

Vindaloovians are a small, but proud, martial culture who descended from experimental GELFs that were left to evolve over millions of years with the aid of 20th century war movies and a plentiful supply of curry and other spicy foods (the Vindaloovian colonies are described as having “garlic nan trees” and rivers of madras).

Vindaloovians resemble humanoid eggs with a single prominent, blue eye in their tiny forehead above a horizontal mouth. They stand roughly one meter tall and are almost as broad, and have a wide variety of skin tones and hair colors (though they often shave their heads bald). They have only three digits (a thumb and two roughly equal length fingers) on either hand. Vindaloovian fashion leans heavily towards ostentatious military costumes; if it doesn’t have epaulets, spurred jackboots and a half-cape, they don’t want it.

Vindaloovians originally were highly xenophobic and aimed to destroy all other intelligent lifeforms, but have in recent times relaxed this to merely hating humans with a passion. Imperial edict is that humans are absolute scum, intergalactic vermin who cannot be trusted, and the official strategy, enforced by their aggressive society, is “brutally dismember first, ask questions later”.

Vindaloovian society consists of three tiers. The topmost tier are the high officials, a member of which is referred to as a Tarka, from whose number is selected the Emperor or Empress of the Vindaloovian Empire. Below them are the skilled middle class, which includes the military officers, whose official title is Bindi. The final tier makes up the majority of the labor and military rank-and-file, and carries the title of Grunti. Social mobility is possible through individual deeds, but does not apply to the Vindaloovian’s family unit (mainly because they reproduce through cloning vats and offspring are raised by the state).

Some Vindaloovians do rebel against the Imperial doctrine (which, among other things, requires a devout love of Wagner and Prokofiev) and are banished to wander Deep Space, either with fellow renegades or with motley bands of space drifters.

Credit to

https://reddwarf.fandom.com/wiki/Vindaloovian for the article.

I am going to build on this with my own story and ideas and look forward to doing so.