Proud Warrior Race

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The Proud Warrior Race is a fairly common archetype in speculative fiction for various civilizations and cultures, both sci-fi and fantasy. The basic idea is based (and this must be stressed, very loosely) on a variety of IRL cultures like the Vikings, Sengoku era Japan, medieval Knights, Spartans, Mongols and certain Native American tribes such as the Apaches. In any case what they have in common is this...

• Placing extreme value on marshal prowess and master of combat techniques. One should dedicate one's life towards mastering combat.
  • A veneration of heroic figures, often by oral record. To join their ranks in memory is often the end goal in a warrior's life.
  • Position in this society is generally dictated by being the best fighter one way or another.
• A strong and strict code of honour outlines the life of a Warrior, especially in combat.
  • An attitude towards death that's at the very least accepting and usually glorifies dying in Honorable combat. Often to the point that it's disgraceful to simply fade away in a hospital bed, as opposed to falling in battle.
• A decentralized society with power divided over small tightly knit sub-groups (often familial) which often fight with each other for position.
• A societal reverence towards war at the expense of other aspects of their society (economic, commercial, scientific, cultural, etc).
• A tendency to try to shoehorn warrior stuff in every aspect of their culture.

It should be noted that the "Race" part, while often a thing here, is not essential. You can have variations on this in which heritage is easily trumped by commitment to the code.

Problems

There are a lot of issues with the Proud Warrior Race and how they function, but the stem of it is that any society is complex and reducing them to one part of that greater whole makes as much sense as designing a car and only designing an engine.

The first and most obvious point is that even in a Warrior Culture, someone needs to keep them fed, clothed, armed and armoured. To get their sword, a warrior gets a blacksmith to forge it. To do so, the blacksmith needs food, fuel, metal, and a forge to work them in. This requires peasants to feed him and supply him, as well as a mason to build his forge (who also needs to be fed, requiring even more peasants) and the peasants and mason will need metal tools, so you'd probably want another smith, a carpenter, etc. In the end for every full time warrior, you need a bunch of other people behind them providing support.

Similarly, even in warlike cultures not everything was about war and fighting all the time. The Vikings and the Mongols were not only warriors, but skilled traders. The Samurai produced a lot of capable poets and artists who's work would as often be about flowers than battle and eventually they largely evolved into a class of Bureaucrats.

That said, a Warrior Culture can still exist and thrive in a pre-industrial context as they lord over civilian subjects and is not above doing some farming, herding, trade, accounting and landscape painting on the side. A few elite warriors clad in the best armour with the best weapons, trained from childhood to use them and willing to press on even when death seems certain can best several times their number of peasants with cheap spears and helmets and minimal training that are liable to panic if things don't go their way. The problem is that as things advance, this model gets less and less viable. A nation which both firearms and cannons as well as the apparatuses of state to recruit the sons of peasants, artisans, clerks, etc in the tens of thousands and train, drill and organize them into a professional army overcome mighty warriors.

In both fiction and IRL. 95% percent of the time they always get their asses kicked by dedicated infantry or a more technologically advanced opponent. More so when firearms are involved.

Examples

• Green Martians in John Carter of Mars
• Klingons in Star Trek - probably the most well known incarnation.
• Sontarans in Doctor Who are a rare exception to the rule, as their militaristic traditions are shown in a negative (or humorous) light rather than positive or at least neutral.
• Sangheili in Halo
• The Clans in BattleTech
• Orcs often fall into this trope.
  • Same can often be said for the Dark Elves.
• Saiyans in Dragonball
• Mandalorians in Star Wars sort of straddle the line between race and creed, but either way they only focus on warfare and making weapons for warfare.
• Turians from Mass Effect. The Turians an interesting case in that there 'proud warrior race guy' trope is manifested as a strong and legally mandated tradition of public service, which is often done through the army which does more then just fight and covers police forces, fire fighters, engineers and even civilian shipping via a merchant marine force. It does also mean that like a more stereotyped proud warrior race, every single Turian can if pressed join the armed forces and fight to the last and they openly practice Total War rather then doing anything in a limited fashion. Overall if your on the receiving end of a Turian war it probably look a lot like a Klingon or most other Proud Warrior Race Guys with the entire society mobilizing to kick your ass, but unlike other proud warrior race guy's there not actually looking for somebody to fight at all times.