Kasatha are described as tradition bound, but we're only given two examples.
The first shows up in all their art - Kasatha keep their mouths covered. This is easy to explain - mouths are bodily orifices, and Kasatha wear masks for the same reason humans wear pants: they don't want to show off either end of their digestive tract. Humans and other species are then all being a little gross, but they're another species, so it's a bit more like seeing Donald Duck never wear pants than being outright rude.
The second is the preference for melee over ranged combat. This has a few roots that I can see. Most obviously, Kasatha have a racial Strength bonus, so on average they're better at melee compared to other races. But they also come from an old culture that plateaued some time ago. Wars fought with swords (even Laser Swords) have way less collateral death and destruction than those fought with guns and bombs. And duels are more manageable than wars. And duels using melee weapons are a lot easier to make non-lethal than duels using guns (fencing foils and bokken vs. laser tag and MILES gear.)
What other Kasatha traditions (and explanations thereof) are there?
One thing it mentions on d20psfrd, is the idea of clans. Kasatha belong to clans, go off on adventures when they are young, and are expected to return to their clans and help kasathan society and be adults. Renegades leave for adventuring permanently and forsake their people.
So, this tradition of temporarily leaving then returning to help Idara, could be useful in making a Kasathan character or seeing their society.
Not 100% sure if that's canon, but it seems like it.
That's canon, they call it 'the Tempering'. Lets young people feel like they aren't missing out, lets them see how weird aliens are, occasionally lets them come back with new or useful knowledge.
Since Kasath was a desert world, traditional Kasathan clothing probably is probably still manufactured with surviving in a desert in mind, even if the main Kasatha world is a generation ship now.
Kasatha's are also mentioned as being seen as aloof and standoffish to other races, which means that Kasathan culture probably prizes control of one's emotional reactions.
I cannot recall where I saw it, but I know I read somewhere (blog post maybe?) that the lower set of arms are not considered "public", ie using them for combat or out and about is considered rude or a faux pas. I see a lot of people forgetting that when they talk about starting with four arms and wielding a lot of weapons.
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That'd be Shirren. Shirren have 2 extra sets of stubby arms roughly equivalent to genitalia.
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I cannot recall where I saw it, but I know I read somewhere (blog post maybe?) that the lower set of arms are not considered "public", ie using them for combat or out and about is considered rude or a faux pas. I see a lot of people forgetting that when they talk about starting with four arms and wielding a lot of weapons.
This is actually something mentioned in regards to the Shirren, not Kasatha. It's directly from their race entry.
I mean, I guess it could have been said of Kasatha too, but that's unlikely.
EDIT: Ninja'd. Ah, well.
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I'm not sure if you're looking for things that are written by the Starfinder team as canon in the system or inspiration for how you could conduct Kasatha in your home games; but if it's the latter, you could probably take some inspiration by one of the sci-fi's most influential desert societies, the Fremen from Dune.
Some things you could lift from the Fremen:
-The idea that water is sacred. All water expelled by a body gets reconstituted for reuse; to not collect your water is considered wasteful and immoral, and crying is reserved for very very special occasions; the dead are collected for their water content, and if you best someone in combat, you own that body and the water content therein is a prize; asking someone to hold/carry your water supply (or otherwise be a temporary custodian of it) is akin to a courting ritual.
-Their homeworld has an apex predator that is worth confronting because it provides a valuable resource and/or ceremonial purpose. [In Dune, this is the sandworm, which provides both the spice and their crysknives; in Iron Gods it's inferred there's a giant "desert nautilus" that lives on Kasath, this could hold a similar meaning, maybe this is where they fashion their spinal swords from?]
-Everyone has a traditional knife, and major personal conflicts are settled by personal knife duels; the upside if you kill your opponent is you win the conflict, but then you're saddled with taking care of their family, you killed this family's husband/dad, that's your responsibility now. [This meshes with their proclivity towards melee combat, and the Spinal Sword equipment item entry in People of the Stars, and their traditional clan-based society.]
I haven't picked up Dune in a while, and there's definitely other gems of inspiration you could lift that I'm forgetting.
Doh! Thank you Tech and Deadman... That explains why I could not find the reference in regards to Kasatha when I went looking...
Tempus - It's the latter. Starfinder Canon is quite small at the moment.
Thread Necromancy time! But using Reincarnation instead of Raise Dead/Resurrection.
So I don't know what any early playtest material may or may not have said on the matter but kasatha actually don't have a racial strength bonus, not in their base stats or in either of the alternate stats released for them. Two of their three stat arrays give them dex bonuses which would make them better suited for ranged combat.
I find it interesting that despite having a strong solarion tradition to the point of essentially introducing the concept to the pact worlds - some isolated local traditions not withstanding - none of the kasatha arrays are actually particularly well suited for solarion use - or at least they weren't before the solar flare manifestation was released.
One might take from that that kasatha have some sort of cultural inclination for doing things the hard way and intentionally doing things that they aren't ideally suited for intentionally, perhaps as some sort of personal challenge.
So I don't know what any early playtest material may or may not have said on the matter but kasatha actually don't have a racial strength bonus, not in their base stats or in either of the alternate stats released for them. Two of their three stat arrays give them dex bonuses which would make them better suited for ranged combat.
I find it interesting that despite having a strong solarion tradition to the point of essentially introducing the concept to the pact worlds - some isolated local traditions not withstanding - none of the kasatha arrays are actually particularly well suited for solarion use - or at least they weren't before the solar flare manifestation was released.
One might take from that that kasatha have some sort of cultural inclination for doing things the hard way and intentionally doing things that they aren't ideally suited for intentionally, perhaps as some sort of personal challenge.
At the same time they don't have a racial penalty to strength and it is much easier to buy up a good score in Starfinder. There's much less of a barrier to mixing and matching races with concepts. If anything, it means they're more likely to have slightly better AC and have a back up ranged weapon on hand (or in hand as they have a few to spare).
I am not sure about that. Before the Kasatha moved to this region of space they did not have to contend with all the races that wanted to be solarians. I doubt wychwirds or shobads were into the solarian traditions on their home world.
If aliens that had telekinesis came to to earth and wanted to play basket ball they may be able to put our players to shame. But we would know the history, the rules and traditions in the game. We would take pride in playing the game despite the disadvantage.