Thukker Tribe
According to what remains of the historical records of the Minmatar, the Thukker tribe have always been a nomadic people, journeying back and forth across Matar in large caravans. The development of the Minmatar Empire appears to have done little to inhibit the wandering of the Thukker, and they evidently played an important role in establishing communication and trade between tribal settlements.
The ancient Thukker seem to have been careful to make sure of secure bases for their people, establishing many way stations and caravanserais across Matar. Their surviving architecture, as at the Great Caravanserai, is considered remarkable. Much of it was simply left alone by the Amarr occupation forces, likely due to the abandonment of many sites following their suppression of large-scale movements such as the Thukker caravans. On the one hand, this rare failure of the Amarr to destroy a significant aspect of Minmatar culture has left a connection to the past for the Thukker; on the other, the dislocation of the Thukker from their sites and from contact with other caravans left them particularly fragmented as a tribe.
The Thukker are believed to have been particularly problematic and on occasion highly intransigent under the Amarr occupation. The Amarr appear to have regarded the Thukker as not particularly useful in any special regard and wished to mix them in with the general population of the large settled tribes such as the Brutor and Sebiestor. The Thukker evidently chafed at this, and Amarr records left behind on Matar tell of many mass escapes and minor rebellions by isolated pockets of the unruly nomads.
The Amarr tendency to use dramatic collective punishments and assumption of guilt by association evidently resulted in casualties among other Minmatar alongside the Thukker. It is thought by some that the reputation of the Thukker as troublemakers stems from this period in Minmatar history, rather than from earlier times. If so, and it accords with the evidence that the Thukker were a positive force within the Minmatar Empire, this is yet another dark legacy of the Amarr slavers.
One means by which some of the Thukker could guarantee their freedom was to seize ships and take to space, and this appears to have been successfully achieved by several groups of escaped nomads. Not a tribe that appears to have been interested in space and colonization of other worlds prior to the Amarr invasion, the Thukker by force of circumstance took to the life of wandering among the stars. Thukker rebels took part in many actions before and during the Great Rebellion, with their pilots and fleet commanders well known for daring and innovative maneuvers.
While the Thukker willingly fought alongside other Matari during the rebellion, the tribe chose not to join in the foundation of the Minmatar Republic. Instead, the Thukker tribe traveled to the relatively remote expanses of the Great Wildlands region. The Thukker have not given up their nomadic ways, and the greater part of their population lives in the Great Caravans: large fleets of ships that constantly roam from system to system. For many Thukker, these Great Caravans are the most important social group, and they are in many ways equivalent to the clans of the other Minmatar tribes.
While the Great Caravans are preeminent in the tribe’s rather loose organization, there are many lesser caravans, often offshoots of Great Caravans, and there are others who consider themselves members of a named clan. The latter are usually groups of Thukker who are even more independent than the norm, and Thukker “clans” are often renegades, crime families, or outright pirates. The Thukker tribe as a whole pays little heed to its self-declared clans and is controlled by a Council of Caravans that selects the tribe’s chief.