The Allbright System - A Sci-Fi Progression LitRPG Story

'Decorum.'

It comes from one of the oldest pre-Union Terran languages—meaning simply 'that which is fitting.'

Not 'that which is correct.' Not 'that which is kind,' or 'just,' or 'earned.'

Merely: Fitting.

Appropriate to the shape of the moment.

Appropriate to the shape of the person standing inside it.

Nobody knows where it started.

This is, in itself, remarkable—the UHF is an institution that tries to document everything, that has maintained unbroken administrative records across seven centuries of galactic warfare and expansion, that can tell you the exact tonnage of ammunition expended in engagements fought before your great-grandmother's grandmother was even born.

And yet the origin of Legacy Decorum exists nowhere in any official record, because Legacy Decorum was never written down in the first place—never codified. Was never, at any point in its history, the subject of a formal ruling or an institutional mandate of any kind.

It simply… appeared at some point. And since then it has persisted. And then, gradually and without anyone formally deciding that this was happening, it became the primary language through which the Legacy class communicated power to and over each other.

The basics, such as they are, can be described, of course—though describing them flattens them considerably, the way describing music as 'organised sound' is technically accurate and entirely misses the point.

Silence during public broadcasts is perhaps the most well-known tenet—the understanding that a Legacy representative does not speak, does not visibly react, does not allow their expression to shift in any way that could be read as weighted commentary, while official UHF communications are playing.

The pauses built into those broadcasts—and they are built in, deliberately, every sound engineer who works on official UHF media understanding exactly what those pauses are for—are the designated spaces for response and reaction.

To speak outside them is not illegal, of course. It is not punishable by any formal mechanism.

It simply marks you, instantly and permanently in the memory of everyone present, as someone who either does not know the rules or simply cannot control themselves sufficiently to follow them. Which reading is more damaging, is up for interpretation on this matter.

Clothing operates on a system of similarly invisible rigidity.

Prime Legacies wear certain cuts and fabrics, with saturated, expensive dyes that do not fade, that photograph well, that read across a ballroom as authority even before the face above them resolves into a recognisable person.

Major Legacies work within a slightly narrower selection of fabrics, and the specific colours available to them shift depending on regional affiliation, generational standing, and a dozen other variables that no document has ever fully captured but that every Major Legacy representative carries encoded in their bones from childhood.

Minor Legacies wear muted versions of their Legacy’s designs—present and identifiable, no doubt, but never saturating the room, never competing with the Majors and Primes for visual authority.

There are also colours that are simply forbidden to be worn.

Not by law, of course—by something older and, in the right circles, more binding than law.

The deep imperial crimson, gold, purple and black combination that has belonged to the Masters for six generations.

The specific pallor of green—a shade with no formal name, catalogued in no colour system—that is simply Dravain and has been Dravain for so long that an unrelated Legacy wearing it would produce, in every informed person present, the same visceral reaction as a clear forgery: Immediate, downright instinctive rejection.

To wear a forbidden colour by accident marks you as ignorant.

To wear one deliberately marks you as something considerably more dangerous.

The standing rules, the speaking rules, the specific geometry of how a Legacy representative positions themselves relative to their betters, their equals, and those below them—all of it unwritten, all of it enforced by nothing more than collective memory and the quiet, devastating social consequence of getting it wrong—with no second chances available.

Why does it persist? Nobody asks.

For asking, in certain company, would itself be a violation.

The more useful question—the one that the rare, clear-eyed observer occasionally gets close to asking before thinking better of it—is not why it persists, but whom it serves if it does.

And the answer, if you are willing to look at it plainly, is straightforward enough:

It serves whomever already knows the rules."

Excerpt from "The Emperor's Game: Legacy, Power, and the Politics of the UHF Marine Corps", Dr. Seren Vael, published in the UHF Academic Press, PFC 931