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Questions/Question 222

re: the defectors, wrio gave malkuth the neat idea to see if there's a relatively up-to-date census log in the libraries across karteria in order to determine if they can put any names to faces and possibly trace where the defectors generally hailed from! sort of on the same line as kal's question but with more of a focus on what group is centrally leaving karteria's safe walls and any hint as to why -- are they being pushed out? do they just see their chances better away from the government and patho-gen? that sort of thing

(malkuth assumes it's most likely the dispirited lower class rather than anyone from the cushier upper echelons, but a confirmation in some direction would be better!)

The assumption that the defectors hail from the most impoverished and lower class groups... that would be accurate. Anyone with means (and just as important: a support network) would not attempt to live outside the city. Almost everyone, even should they become unhoused, would remain in Karteria proper, scraping out a meager life that's still preferable to the quicker death by arcane radiation outside the barrier.

So those who do make the choice- or feel like they have to, with no where else to go, alienated from society- don't leave much behind them. It's possible to sift through census data to find names of people who are in Karteria one year, and gone the next time the census takers make their rounds. And the lower down you go in society, the more incomplete the information is, and the more people fall through the cracks.

Occasionally, a very dedicated government employee will risk going out to the defectors, feeling a duty that their existence should still be recorded. This helps to fill in some gaps, but the people who live out there... aren't the most forthcoming when it comes to their personal information.

The middle (and even, on some exceptionally rare occasion, upper) class have turned up amongst the defectors, but only for very short amounts of time, before someone (usually law enforcement) turns up to collect them. They still have people to look for them, are still under someone's watch, and going out there even in the short term is usually the result of a mental health crisis.

For the lower classes/impoverished who live out there permanently, there's no one left to take them in, or no one who wants to. Their reasons are various, but there are common underlying threads, such as a paranoia towards governmental structures/Patho-Gen/everything. Do they feel like they were pushed out? Some of them do, though they'd have a harder time naming a specific culprit. Society itself, maybe.