It is devoted to mri, a golden-skinned, golden-eyed species who were considered the galaxy's finest warriors...up until they encountered humans, and found themselves unable to counter their scorched-earth strategy. The Regul, a race of traders from Nurag who've been hiring mri warriors as mercenaries in their war against humans, have just signed a peace treaty with the humans. By the time the series starts, the mri species is facing extinction, and their only hope of salvation lies in rediscovering their ancient homeworld - a task undertaken by a warrior, a priestess, and a human who swore to aid them.
Entries in the series are:
- The Faded Sun: Kesrith (1978)
- The Faded Sun: Shon'jir (1978)
- The Faded Sun: Kutath (1979)
This series contains examples /of:
- Abusive Alien Parents: The regul treat all of their own children as expendable slaves; the survival rate to adulthood is less than one in a hundred, and most pre-adult regul are killed, often quite casually, by adults of their own kind.
- Bait-and-Switch: In the third book, the senior kel'ein, including Ras—whose biological brother Niun killed, and who has been lurking around in a resentful and vaguely sinister manner—manipulate Duncan into playing shon'ai with them while Niun (their boss by this point) is busy elsewhere. And being warriors, they don't play with batons, they play with live steel. Ras makes a special point of replacing a less-experienced, nicer kel, and it looks more and more like they're trying to set up a situation where they can "accidentally" lop a couple fingers off the human, or worse. Nope. They genuinely just want to see if he can play. "Taking it easy on someone" isn't really a mri thing, but they do the closest equivalent by sussing out the top range of his skill level and staying there.
- Burial in Space: This is the preferred burial of kel, warrior-caste mri.
- Culture Clash: Both between humans from different planets and humans and other species.
- Stavros is from a world that was originally colonized by highly conservative religious settlers who believed in being The Stoic, so to Duncan he’s unreadably reserved. By the time Stavros has come to consider Duncan Like a Son to Me, Duncan still isn’t sure if the guy even likes him.
- Stavros accepts the regul’s strict rules confining where and when he and Duncan can leave their quarters, believing that to argue would offend the regul and endanger the treaty. In fact the regul were expecting Stavros to argue—a proper regul elder is a certain amount of demanding and self-important—and are baffled that he just goes along with it. When Stavros finally gets fed up and simply barges into wherever he wants to go and demands information he wants to know, the regul give in easily and he’s able to properly work with his regul counterpart.
- Invoked when Duncan is speaking to Niun about how Mri combat works. He notes that Niun simply runs into a wall trying to understand why it is humans fight in groups instead of dueling, and that if the Mri and humans could ever manage to explain why each fights the way they do to the other, it might’ve saved everybody a lot of grief.
- Eternal English: The high tongue (formal language) of the Mri is shown to have been completely stable between two isolated groups of Mri for approximately a million years. Deliberately enforced by Mri law, which requires any divergence from the high tongue to eventually be forgotten. The fact they have computer records written in the high tongue probably helps there too.
- Fantastic Caste System: The Mri divide themselves between kel — warriors (whom the humans fight), sen — scholars who manage their technology, and kath — "mothers and children", who collectively form a sort of nurturing caste that raises their young. Towards the end of the book, we discover a fourth "artist" caste, the elee, that stayed on the Mri homeworld and wanted no part in their wars.
- Foreshadowing: Everybody says the Mri don’t build things unless there’s absolutely no one else to do it for them, hence why they get all their advanced tech from the regul. Except once Duncan starts actually spending time with them, he realizes they do have technology that isn’t regul. Turns out there are Mri artisans/engineers, they just all stayed on Kutath.
- Going Native: In The Faded Sun: Shon'jir, Niun and Melein give Sten Duncan a choice: Go Native or die.
- Humans Are Warriors: The "Humans Are Soldiers" variant. The mri are in every sense superior to humanity as warriors. It is simply biologically impossible for any human to best a mri in lethally-armed combat, because their response times are entire tenths of seconds faster than ours. Culturally, too, the mri warrior tradition is incredibly fierce. Their alien psychology, however, just does not do organized mass combat, so humans (acting as unwilling pawns to another alien species) have nearly wiped them out.
- Intelligent Gerbil:
- The Regul seemed to bear a lot of resemblance to terrestrial hippopotamuses.
- The dusei (singular "dus"), the companion animals of the Mri, were Ursine Aliens.
- Last of His Kind: The hero/heroine protagonists are (apparently) the last of the Mri.
- Meaningful Echo: In the first book, Niun tells Duncan that kel do not bear burdens while he has Duncan prisoner, by way of explaining why Duncan has to carry all their stuff. In the second book, when Duncan says he's worried he's a burden to the mri on their cross-desert trek, since they're a lot better-adapted for the environment than he is, Niun says it again—this time in the spirit of friendship. (IE, since they don't carry burdens, they wouldn't be bringing Duncan along if he was one.)
- Of the People: Mri means "people". What do these catlike aliens call humans and regul? Tsi-mri, "not-people". This makes the entry of Duncan into their society all the more noteworthy, and the inclusion of three humans in their holy records unheard of for any other species.
- Proud Scholar Race: There is a surviving enclave on the Mri homeworld who descend from Mri who chose art, culture and pacifism. They are so pacifistic thought that they are unable to offer much resistance when attacked, until they Break Out The Museum Pieces.
- Proud Warrior Race Guy: The humans of the Alliance initially thought that the Mri were this. Actually only one caste is like that; the other two-thirds of the mri are non-combatant.
- Quest for the Rest: Most of the mri are massacred with the collusion of humanity. The two survivors search for others of their kind with the help of a sympathetic human. Eventually they find them, and their race's hidden planet of origin.
- Ursine Aliens: The companion animals of the Mri were the dusei (singular "dus"), bearlike creatures who were similar to one-owner dogs and somewhat empathic to their masters through touch.
- Walking Wasteland: Discussed by the human military leaders. They know the Mri are not native to their sector of space, and worry there might be larger force hiding. So they task Duncan with winning the trust of the last two surviving Mri and following helping them return to their homeworld. What he and his passengers discover is a trail of dead planets, each of whom the Mri previously served as hired mercenaries. Subverted when Melein reveals those aren't worlds the Mri destroyed—those are worlds where the Mri themselves were slaughtered, after their employers at the time decided they were too dangerous to live.