Klingons.

This is k'oolbert:

"Ship? Is that all you think about, is ship? Enjoy yourself, my brother, for tomorrow we may all be dead!!" - - The Klingon Kurn speaking to his brother Worf.

Of all the alien races shown in the television series "Star Trek", perhaps none generates as much interest as the Klingons. An entire "race" of people devoted to the warrior ethic.

A warrior "race" of humanoid aliens to whom the greatest goal and virtue is honor.

Honor that is primarily garnered by demonstrations of prowess and courage [klin] in battle.

Klingons that are proficient at war and demonstrate the proper klin are allowed to become officers. ONLY officers are allowed to breed and reproduce. A Darwinian selection process that ensures offspring of sound genetic material. Those Klingons not showing proper or adequate klin become NCO's [non-commissioned-officers]. NCO's are NOT allowed to procreate. Defective genetic material is not passed on to future generations.

[there actually was an instance of this in terran history. A Russian Tsar forbade one of his naval Captains to EVER MARRY. It seems that this captain had his ship sunk in battle, BUT DID NOT GO DOWN WITH THE SHIP, AS WAS THE CUSTOM OF THE TIME!! The Tsar did not want "THIS BREED TO PERPETUATE ITSELF!!"]

It is said that the screenwriters of "Star Trek" modeled the Klingon "race" after the terran [earth dwellers] Vikings.

Others have said that the Japanese samurai are the model for the Klingon warrior.

I would suggest the Viking analogy is more correct. A whole society [Viking] devoted to warfare and warmaking. The samurai, while great warriors devoted to a warrior ethic, constituted only a small fraction of the overall Japanese society.

Klingons, as with Vikings, did NOT desire to live to old age.

Rather to die a warriors death in combat.

Klingons dying in combat join Kahless in Sto-Vo-Kor [Klingon heaven].

Vikings dying in combat are carried to Valhalla. Upon arriving in Valhalla, Viking warrior begin a never-ending ritual of feasting, merrymaking, drinking of prodigious amounts of mead.

Both the Klingon and the Viking were/are expansionist humanoid "races".

Klingons, with the development of "warp" drive, have spread their ethic and "race" to parts of the galaxy and created a conquering Empire.

The Viking too ranged far from their "homelands". Viking conquest, trade, and raiding [to go a-Viking means raiding] extended as far as Iceland, Greenland, Ireland, England and probably North America in the west, to France [Normandy, land of the northmen] and Sicily in the south, Russia, and Constantinople [Varangian Guard of the Byzantine Emperor] in the east.

[a National Geographic magazine article on the church of the Hagia Sophia in what is now Istanbul showed where some Viking had carved runic symbols into the stones of the church. Have lasted a thousand years and visible if you know where to look!! Sort of like "Kilroy was here!"]

There have been in the history of terran humanoids other societies that have embraced the warrior ethic. Cossacks and Sikhs for example. But these tend to be less expansionist than either the Klingon or Viking were/are. If expansionist, being so on the behalf of others [Russian Tsar, British Raj].

Klingons and Vikings are in a class all by themselves.

k'oolbert.