Trope-a-Day: Rite of Passage

Rite of Passage: Technically, the only universal rite of passage in the Empire (of course, there are also non-universal ones, like the Rite of Acceptance into your House used among the eldrae, seen in Adolescence) is the appointment with your tort insurer in which you finally self-sign enough cover to meet the Insurance Quota for Independence, making you an adult in the sight of the law.  Other things you may do in consequence may follow, but that’s the relevant part.

In practice, that’s usually merely the first part of a day-long extravaganza in which you first do that, then purchase and swear to your Imperial citizen-shareholdership as your first act as such, then are presented with the traditional symbolic gifts for the occasion, then have the Transcendent soul-shard (see: Touched By Vorlons) grafted to your mind-state, and then there’s a receiving line and the non-traditional, non-symbolic gifts, and finally the very traditional drinking and reveling to excess.  So.