Caste grouping

Caste grouping is the practice of categorising individual blood castes into groups of several, generally with the aim of making the sorting of trolls within the hemospectrum much easier. Various grouping systems have been devised and come into popular use, to varying effect.

Standard halves
The most common system of caste grouping separates the hemospectrum into two equal halves, lowbloods and highbloods, most commonly between the jade and teal castes.

Thirds of temperature
While not as common as the standard halving system, another often used grouping system is that of thirds; most commonly lowbloods, midbloods and highbloods, split evenly between lime-olive and cobalt-indigo.

The splitting of the hemospectrum into thirds is mainly on a basis of blood temperature; lowbloods have the hottest internal systems, whereas midbloods are less so and highbloods are entirely coldblooded.

BUOY-OJA-CIP-Royal V (BOCV)
The BOCV system separates the hemospectrum into four segments - BUOY (burgundy-umber-ochre-yellowgreen), OJA (olive-jade-aqua), CIP (cobalt-indigo-purple) and Royal Vs (violets, including fuchsia) - based on their similarity in social standing.

The BUOY group represents the least developed castes, needing the most intervention from the authority of the CIP group; the OJAs are castes who are more developed and capable of contributing to the empire's strength, but still require intervention from higher authority. CIPs are, for the most part, the more developed castes who act out the enforcement of imperial authority. Royal Vs are completely unaffected by CIP authority.

The letters in the BOCV system's acronyms derive from neomutinous terms for the castes (e.g. "burgundy" rather than "rust") due to its origins in mutinous groups; while the perpetrators were terminated and the categorisation system adopted for legal use, the naming convention stuck.