The Alcor star system is a system of 12 planets, only 4 of which are standard planetary bodies with the remaining 8 being gas giants. The gas giants have many moons each but only a small handful are suitible for colonies. The Alcor star system has other unique properties as well. The first being that the system supports life and is a binary system.
The Alcor system is around 81.7 ly from Sol and consists of a red dwarf star and its companion a star of A5V spectral class, it is a very hot fast spinning main sequence dwarf star with heavy gravity.
General Information
The locals call the main star Zim and its red companion Zimmin, after a father and son in their creation mythology. Of the four standard planetary bodies two of them are too close to the stars to support life, with one occupying a middle point between the two stars though both are very small barely qualifying as more than a planetoid or asteroid. It is theorized that the center planet (known as Vyi [V-eye EE] a temptress who first was mother to Zimmin and then later was said to have married Zimmin and become mother to the rest of the gods in the standard ancient Alcor pantheon) was once a moon from one of the gas giants, caught in the gravity well at its ubique position from interaction with some passing high gravity object such as a black hole or stellar core fragment.
While Vyi is technically Alcor Prime, it is not known as such even in stellar cartography circles, rather is designated by the Earth-Greek letter of Alpha called Alcor Alpha to signify its strange position and lack of standard orbit.
The central inhabited planet of the Alcor system is Alcor 4, known to its inhabitants as Brisha (pronounced bREE shAW). It is fully Class M and has a diverse and very rich culture. Though there have been many wars and other conflicts on the planet, their base heritage and religious history has remained intact throughout most of that time.
Unique Attributes
Interestingly the Alcor system was the first in the quadrant to develop subspace communication. This is largely due to the close proximity of the quadruple system known as Mizar. Mizar 2 supports a pacifist society devoted to science and philosophy. The two systems are gravitationally linked and have a cyclical pattern that while not an orbit in the technical sense they do have a certain amount of predictable stellar drift. At their closes Mizar and Alcor are less than a light-year apart and never drift more than 1.49 light-years from each other.
Because of this proximity the two systems heavily influence each other even before formal communication was possible. Mizar sent several sub-light probes and vessels to Alcor, early space craft were manned and arrived at Alcor with a dead crew. This caused long lasting speculation at the true motives and meaning of the message Mizar was sending to Alcor. Eventually war broke out between the two systems using crude sub-light space craft spanning well over a century finally escalating in an attempted takeover of Mizar by Alcor. This takeover set the stage for how the two systems would develop all the way to the 24th century.
Social Development and History
Mizar became a pacifist society to prevent the destruction of their culture. While Alcor devoted their efforts to material fabrication and other industrial production services. While they are a profit driven society, unlike the Ferengi society the Alcorians (also called Brisharans) are known to deal honorably. However, the honest dealings has taken an extreme turn. They hate and find insulting all forms of apology or similar social niceties that are present in most other cultures. To gain and maintain trust brutal honesty is required. As such questions such as "How are you?" and "What's going on?" are asked seldom and considered to be very personal information. A standard greeting remains cordial by Federation standards but quickly becomes brutal and distasteful by those same standards. All commerce is negotiable and such negotiations become less about the actual product and more about the back-and-forth banter of furthering insults.
The insults and negotiation tactics are one of the rare places area of the culture where truth takes a back seat to social and cultural practices. The only other areas are dealing with courtship and sex. During courtship it is generally accepted that the woman will initiate interest in a male by directly making an obviously untrue but difficult to prove false insult to the males family. If the male is interested he makes a similar statement about the female's family but then adds an also untrue but somewhat difficult to prove allegation toward his own family. During sex it is generally understood that while truth before sex is to be adhered to, during and after the truthful brutality is increased and ventures beyond simply truth into harsh expressions of near humiliating statements. As with most cultures, these are the traditional norms but are not enforced by anything other than normal and reasonable cultural forces.
Marriage is almost always for love. However negotiations of the actual contract binding the couple legally progresses in a very similar way as commercial transactions. Marriage contracts have no official standard but must be strictly adhered to. Any breech of contract can be a reason to dismiss the legal contract. Divorces are unheard of for any reason other than breech of contract. Most contracts contain clauses for how the marriage will dissolve if a breech of contract occurs, if they do not the courts decide exactly how the marriage will dissolve.
Religiously the culture has a diverse set of beliefs in actual practice. Most of the beliefs trace back to the ancient texts that have been preserved throughout the centuries, disagreements crop up over interpretation and practice of beliefs. These disagreements rarely become violent, however, and mostly degenerate to legal squabbles over property and burial rights.
Politics
Politically the planet and its holdings are governed by a corporate council. The nature of the society allows this to work rather well with very little corporate greed in context of the culture. Though other Federation worlds have criticized the governing system as corrupt the general practices fall well within the scope of the laws which govern the society. Society itself is generally happy with these laws, government programs protect the needy - though not always to standards accepted by Earth or other worlds the society itself views them as overall fair and well designed. Medical care and protection from crime are also very well provided by the state through private contracts to different organizations. Regulations in the civil sector compliment the contracts and provide an infrastructure to provide fair and balanced social protections from medical ailments, crime, natural disaster, etc..
Economics
Economically the governing council concentrates its efforts with a few (sometimes only one) primary contract and then many smaller contracts. There is virtually no socialized economic support for anyone physically able to work. The only support comes in low-level government jobs in supporting infrastructure (garbage collection and disposal, cleaning services, environmental restoration, etc..). These jobs are greatly frowned upon and seen as sub-citizen in nature being for people who can be easily dismissed and classified as less-than-people then treated accordingly
Social Structure
Socially this rapidly moving undercurrent of infrastructure support jobs with very high turnover rates represent the greatest social disparity. The largest social class is a middle class defined by middle management of lower paid jobs. A close second is composed mostly of low paying but socially acceptable jobs in the private sector. The smallest two segments of society are divided by a combination of income level and amount of free time. The higher the income, the more free time a person has the higher they rank in society. There is a ceiling to social layer just above the middle class where someone without personal or familial connection finds is very difficult to progress further up the social ladder even if they meet general income levels and free time generally available to the higher social planes. The people see themselves as infinitely able to move up the social and economic ladder, despite this discrepancy at the highest levels of society.