Class society in the Horde

Overview

With the Horde's consumption and invasion of Earth, all existing layers of society were dramatically affected by the dramatic environmental shifts, as well as the general "stellar culture shock" that would naturally upend most of society. Most major cities around the globe were almost entirely destroyed in the initial conflict, either through mega-fungi consumption or from desperate nuclear strikes as the nuclear-armed powers began to lose territory. What remains for most remaining human life are the small towns, hamlets, and villages. Places considered too unimportant by human leaders take center stage in a world now colonized by the Horde. Global human population collapsed to under a billion people, and now remain separated from one another in villages with walls surrounding them. Because of this, all trade has ended, and all forms of complex production have ended as well. Farm labor is eliminated to a great extent as well, with the Horde providing food directly to the settlements utilizing its own organic processes to produce nutrients needed to sustain basic human life.

It is necessary to discriminate between the people living inside the towns and those who live outside. It is estimated that a little under half of the human population remained outside the towns and cities all together by the end of the invasion, forcing many groups of people to face the elements now separated from the towns entirely. The Horde also discriminates between the town and the countryside, keeping the majority of their animals and grown structures away from the town centers, instead focusing on consuming the countryside outright. In the towns, crime and punishment is now handled by the Scholars and their militias themselves, while in the country the Horde does not see the difference between a human and any other animal to eat. This has created an extreme dichotomy between what is necessary for human survival the two environments, especially contrasted within and without a place like Chicago.

In the towns

• The Scholars: The rulers of the new society. Practically a Brahmin caste. They are loyal and studious to what they perceive as the Beast, willing to devote their entire lives to the study -- and worship -- of the Horde. Most come from backgrounds in practicing doomsday cults, whispering in esoteric sloganeering. Others come from already-existing religious sects, simply taking a "revisionist" approach with their holy texts to justify the situation. They consider themselves to hold the knowledge of the "secrets of the universe," appearing to be mad, babbling fools by the rest of the human population. They intentionally malnourish themselves and feed exclusively upon the Horde's "teat," consuming god-knows-what that seems to act as a nutritional paste as well as a psychedelic substance. Scholars are often dressed in loose-fitting white rags in many of the towns, however the Chicagoans tend to wear more formal business attire. They have a large burn mark in the symbol of the Horde burned into their right temple to signify their status as a Scholar, and will sometimes wear a necklace made up of wishbones from various Horde animals. Many, many scholars often express the belief that they are working for a malevolent god. Some Scholars were previously Satanists, now believing that Hell has come to Earth. Others have begun to worship the Horde as some sort of new "true" God, which punished humanity for believing in other, so-called fairer versions of Him. A small faction of Scholars who may be a little more educated in biology know what happened to create these beings, and have come up with the strange belief that nature itself took revenge against humanity. Only about a quarter of the Scholar class know that the Horde is of alien origin. Very few living members of the caste actually know that the Horde is of alien origin, but some speculate privately.
• Volunteer Militias: The enforcing caste of the new society. Far from being professional soldiers in the contemporary understanding, they do serve a role as a standing army to put down rebellion. When the war ended, the world was left in a smoldering ruin, and thousands upon thousands of soldiers remained despite the horrific destruction. When the walls came down, many soldiers who once fought against the horrific tides of xenomorphs storming their cities were now working for them with nowhere left to go. They exist to patrol and police the remaining cities of Earth, to watch over the corralled masses slaving away, and to keep them in line. To keep them from leaving the cities. "Tinheads" are the unofficial names for these "soldiers," simply a colloquial term given by the human majority population. It is a volunteer service. If you're a good person, you're simply not a volunteer. Good people working in this line of work end up blowing their brains out less than a year in. Psychopaths, control freaks, and all other kinds of unsavory dehumanizers take up a job working in the volunteers. The double rations are worth it to those people for the things they are expected to do sometimes.
• Workers and the lumpenproletariat: What remains at the bottom of society is everyone else. About ninety percent of a town's population are mostly people who have been left to sit around with an incapability do really *do* anything. The vast majority of this majority are unemployed and uneducated. They fight one another at the feeding pits, and have generally degraded to a state of being to what someone might call "feral pets." They have mostly unconditional access to low-quality food, but are still prone to illness. Housing is a dwindling resource as nothing new is built for them, and most families will usually share a room with each other. Alcoholism runs rampant, with some workers making their own living off of maturing some of the Horde's slop into thick, high-alcohol content slurry. Violence is quite common among the majority, with it breaking usually breaking out over personal disputes. On average, though, around a fifth of this lowest rung of society has found employment. Usually, this is done through state controlled industry by the Scholars, creating basic metalworking and wood industries to throw together new structures. With how often workers get sick or injured from this labor, there is more than enough unemployed to fill that role. Towns such as White River will usually have a twelve hour working day, while Chicago has the advantage with much greater resources, facilities, and workers to have a ten hour workday.

Outside the towns

The vast majority of surviving human communities outside the towns are primarily nomadic, as it becomes absolute necessity to clear out of an area before the Horde marches in and eats it all. Communities tend to be extremely small out in the wastelands, with some numbering a dozen people at most. In these communities, all hands are on deck; everybody has to contribute what they can when they can to collective survival. These are effectively primitive communist communities, just with a greater variety of tools and prior knowledge necessary for survival.

However, there are some people who have taken the chance to settle in place across the wastelands, hoping to slide under the Horde's radar. In some particular places, this works well. In areas of the world totally colonized by the Horde (all old flora and fauna uprooted and replaced with new species) tend to act as blind spots. Some small communities carefully and quietly harvest from the Horde's own flora more often than not. Chewy, nutritious bark can be removed from Horde stump-tree forests easily by peeling it off with a blade soaked in alcohol, dulling the nervous system in the stumps. These communities have forced themselves to adapt to new environments, remaining hidden in plain sight.

In some cases, former militaries will still try to hold out in "base areas" to this day, holding onto the faint belief that they are simply engaged in a prolonged guerilla war against the enemy. Former Soviet officer Lyosha Lagunov linked up with American National Guardsman Mason Parker to take up an abandoned Titan missile silo in the Pacific Northwest as a "base of operations" to continue their long war against the alien threat. However, after decades of hiding out, morale is extremely low. What was once an international fighting force in 1985 has been reduced to about a hundred old men and women. Nonetheless, various communities from across the wasteland see the fighting force as useful protection, coming to hide out in the missile base with the soldiers. However, their condition isn't much better than the workers living in the towns are. The youth are expected to be young recruits for the cause, and those too unfit for fighting are to be scavenging the dwindling resources across the wasteland. In effect, the Titan missile silo is ruled by a military caste which leverages its protection against the scavengers to force them to work or join the army.