Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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Gorbash
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Gorbash »

Arioch wrote:The trials are primarily a test of basic physical fitness and psychological temperament, and bands pass or fail as a group. The only way to really fail as an individual is if you give up (or to be so unlikable that your band-mates refuse to help you). There are plenty of warrior desk jobs, so there is no problem in sorting the graduates into roles that suit their individual skills. This also means that most of the people who failed didn't really want to be warriors in the first place -- or at least not badly enough to stick it out.
So there are kids that drop out of Warrior School in the (possibly hubris-filled) belief they can strike it rich in the Civilian Districts and live like queens?

That probably doesn't happen very often, but its a neat aspect of their culture.

Given that there is an inherent shortfall in the number of Warriors vs the number of Civilians (because Civilians are less likely to die before the end of their reproductive capacity, and 10% or so of the population of would-be Warriors drops out and joins the Civies), is there ever a point where the Loroi military would consider "drafting" a batch of civilians into the military to make up the difference? Or is that population discrepancy handled entirely by providing warriors with more male access?

Is there a "civil defense" program in place for the Loroi civilians, to train them in case of planetary invasion? Or is that considered too much of a risk? I'd imagine civilians end up "taking up arms" during Umiak invasions regardless (because the alternative is extermination), but there's a lot the Loroi can do to beef up resistance within their civilian population.
Arioch wrote:The Nedatan Timadi are essentially domestic versions of Farseers; they passively track the size, location and general condition of the population on a large scale. They do not read individual minds. The Nedatan Tiret are counselors who have individual sessions with clients. They are not thought police, and they don't compel thought in any way. Periodically the Nedatan operations poll the Tiret to learn what the mood of the population is, and a Tiret who encountered an individual who was clearly insane or had committed crimes would probably report it, but so would any other individual who came into contact with such a person. You don't need an inquisition when everyone has to tell the truth all the time.
So that brings up other questions regarding how Loroi telepathy affects their society. How do the Loroi handle reporting police/fire/emergency situations? The standard way (i.e. with telecoms), or has using their telepathy as a "carrier wave" to relay messages across a populated area ever been a thing? I imagine that runs into the same risks as the telephone game, but on the other hand, given that some members of the population have extreme farsensing range (and possibly extreme telepathic range as a result), having a few Fartalkers on-duty waiting for someone to tele-shout "Help I'm on fire" has some serious practical benefit to it -- or military benefit, if there's someone on-site in a ship battle who can tell the Captain "everyone on Deck Five just got vac'd" or "the flank regiments are getting stabbed and are really upset about it" on a ground battle.

Heck, depending on the potential range, Bronze-Age Loroi rulers would probably really have wanted a few Loroi in their capital who can talk to a village elder a hundred miles away and find out if anyone's currently raiding them.

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Arioch
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Gorbash wrote:Given that there is an inherent shortfall in the number of Warriors vs the number of Civilians (because Civilians are less likely to die before the end of their reproductive capacity, and 10% or so of the population of would-be Warriors drops out and joins the Civies), is there ever a point where the Loroi military would consider "drafting" a batch of civilians into the military to make up the difference? Or is that population discrepancy handled entirely by providing warriors with more male access?
They adjust access accordingly. It allows a fairly fine control over population sizes and ratios.
Gorbash wrote:Is there a "civil defense" program in place for the Loroi civilians, to train them in case of planetary invasion? Or is that considered too much of a risk? I'd imagine civilians end up "taking up arms" during Umiak invasions regardless (because the alternative is extermination), but there's a lot the Loroi can do to beef up resistance within their civilian population.
In ancient times there were some Loroi cultures that would levy civilians in military emergencies, but in most cases civilians were treated as non-combatants. This was less about worries over keeping the civilians in line, and more about the rules of warfare. For much of Loroi history on Deinar, civilians and infrastructure were not considered legitimate targets (to help the civilization withstand near-constant warfare), and so using them as troops was considered foul play, akin to the use of "human shields" in modern warfare. Not every culture in every time and place observed these rules, but most did.

The higher technology gets, the more specialized training is required in the military, and the less valuable conscript armies become. In particular, drafted starship crews are practically worthless. Since planetary invasions are rare in the current conflict, and most of the fighting and dying is being done in the starfleets, there isn't much of a shortage of infantry. Most Loroi communities have a civil defense organization, but this is mostly a sort of disaster response network that provides support and infrastructure in the event of invasion rather than actual fighting (as was the case with most real-world civil defense services).

Given the genocidal turn of the conflict, it's certainly possible that the Loroi might form civilian militias in response to an invasion (since they have nothing to lose), but this hasn't happened recently. Since the Semoset offensive, any Loroi planet that comes under Umiak attack is bombarded and not invaded.
Gorbash wrote:So that brings up other questions regarding how Loroi telepathy affects their society. How do the Loroi handle reporting police/fire/emergency situations? The standard way (i.e. with telecoms), or has using their telepathy as a "carrier wave" to relay messages across a populated area ever been a thing? I imagine that runs into the same risks as the telephone game, but on the other hand, given that some members of the population have extreme farsensing range (and possibly extreme telepathic range as a result), having a few Fartalkers on-duty waiting for someone to tele-shout "Help I'm on fire" has some serious practical benefit to it -- or military benefit, if there's someone on-site in a ship battle who can tell the Captain "everyone on Deck Five just got vac'd" or "the flank regiments are getting stabbed and are really upset about it" on a ground battle.
Any group of Loroi constitutes a telepathic network which can relay messages quickly across its breadth, as long as elements are within range of each other. This works fairly well within cities (and ships) but breaks down over distances between them. So as in our society, in addition to shouting "fire!", Loroi will also pull alarms and make conventional technological calls for help (and in an ultra-tech environment, smoke detectors and the like will also automatically notify the appropriate systems).

Telepathy has never been well suited to long-range communication. In ancient times before amplifiers, telepathic sensitivity could only increase reception range of normal messages by say an order of magnitude (~1 km), which is not enough to reach between settlements. Therefore a long-range telepathic message must be "shouted" by a powerful telepath, which is potentially injurious to nearby Loroi. It would be like using a loudspeaker that could send an audio message miles away... it would severely damage the hearing of anyone nearby. This is only really usable for brief messages in dire emergency situations.

In the current era, Farseers and their equipment are specialized for detecting the presence, location, and condition of remote minds. They are not specialized for receiving distant telepathic signals, and so do not make for good FTL radios. It is possible to send amplified messages that a Farseer can receive at distance, but this presents the same problem as above; it's dangerous to other Loroi near to the sender (not to mention the sender herself).

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Siber
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Siber »

Is the minimum safe distance for an interstellar message(detectable to a farseer in the 5-10LY range) like that defined?
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by CF2 »

How is the Loroi-Trade vocabulary managed? Do the various species that use trade keep a common dictionary, with a local dictionary of slang and culture specific words kept for themselves?
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

CF2 wrote:How is the Loroi-Trade vocabulary managed? Do the various species that use trade keep a common dictionary, with a local dictionary of slang and culture specific words kept for themselves?
I don't think much management is necessary, since Trade is not really a conversational language with a lot of idiom or slang or the like. Trade to the Loroi is kind of like Latin to medieval Europeans: an archaic language used for scientific, diplomatic, and archival purposes. There is almost no one for whom Loroi Trade is a primary language.

Given the time and distance scales of the setting, there are still going to be drifts and dialects of Trade. In particular, there would have had to have been some compromise between the widely varying dialects of the various splinter colonies upon reunification. But for other Union cultures, whatever version of Trade they might have previously been exposed to, the Loroi version is the one everyone had to standardize on.

The Barsam and Neridi are not telepathic, and so each developed its own native spoken languages. The Barsam native languages have some variety, but do not resemble Trade at all, but instead can be linked to the more primitive languages spoken by the Nibiren. Though almost all Barsam are fluent in Trade, they also maintain their own native languages. This might be somewhat analogous to modern Indian speakers who are expected to know both Hindi (or another native language) and English, even though the two are somewhat alien to each other.

Neridi also have a variety of native dialects which are clearly derived from ancient Trade, but which have varied and diversified greatly. However, the Neridi have officially standardized on the Loroi version of Trade. This is roughly analogous to the modern Netherlands, where speakers are expected to know both their local dialect and English, though it's a little bit easier because the two have strong similarities.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by GabrielGABFonseca »

Arioch wrote:In the current era, Farseers and their equipment are specialized for detecting the presence, location, and condition of remote minds. They are not specialized for receiving distant telepathic signals, and so do not make for good FTL radios. It is possible to send amplified messages that a Farseer can receive at distance, but this presents the same problem as above; it's dangerous to other Loroi near to the sender (not to mention the sender herself).
This actually presents us with an interesting hypothetical scenario. Picture this:

Humanity sides up with the Loroi. Their deafness to Sanzai allows them to be near a Farseer screaming an FTL message to another Farseer in another system without any harmful effects. Each ship of the human fleet is quickly retrofitted with Loroi technology and assigned a Farseer. The Loroi now have at their disposition a task force of FTL-Comms equipped ships crewed by competent hands, a significant strategical/tactical asset to employ against the Umiak.

That's quite a bargain we have to offer to the Loroi, eh? ;)
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Absalom »

The concept of Humanity in the Union is filled with corner-cases where the human lack of telepathy becomes in some way a highly specialized boon to the telepaths themselves.

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Siber
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Siber »

@GabrielGABFonseca: I'm pretty sure this burns out the screamer, too, both from some comments of Arioch elsewhere and by means of the analogy of long-distance shouting. If by some device or magic you could shout loudly enough to be heard a thousand miles away, would you survive the experience? Without some additional protections, I would think not, and since there's no known way to shield against psionics... Of course, you could imagine a system where the sender is immune to their sending, but I suspect that's not the case here, at least not at the kind of power we're talking about.

Even if you didn't need anyone special to achieve that feat, killing someone every time you send a message is a pretty high price, and probably pretty rough on morale if it gets out. And I bet someone capable of sending those messages even with a great amp would be at least a little special.
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by harlequin2262 »

Absalom wrote:The concept of Humanity in the Union is filled with corner-cases where the human lack of telepathy becomes in some way a highly specialized boon to the telepaths themselves.
Particualrly with Fireblade, the more I think about it. She can speak aloud, because she knows that Alex (from first hand experience) is a telepathic null and no threat to her. And, indeed, he will not be disturbed by her, as not only can he empathise with her situation, he's also utterly deaf to her sanzai transmitted PTSD nightmares, unlike most Loroi. IIRC, Arioch even mentioned that she's given a wide berth when sleeping by other Loroi as a result of them.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by cacambo43 »

harlequin2262 wrote:
Absalom wrote:The concept of Humanity in the Union is filled with corner-cases where the human lack of telepathy becomes in some way a highly specialized boon to the telepaths themselves.
Particualrly with Fireblade, the more I think about it. She can speak aloud, because she knows that Alex (from first hand experience) is a telepathic null and no threat to her. And, indeed, he will not be disturbed by her, as not only can he empathise with her situation, he's also utterly deaf to her sanzai transmitted PTSD nightmares, unlike most Loroi. IIRC, Arioch even mentioned that she's given a wide berth when sleeping by other Loroi as a result of them.
I would like to see a friendship between the two of them, even if it's one that involves them glaring at each other now and then.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Jayngfet »

When one works with complex systems, a "null" will invariably have value, simply because blank space that you can actually orient something around(as opposed to a formless void or a more obvious value with more weight) will invariably come in handy. You see this a lot in digital animation and computer effects, where in order to get an object to move properly you need to assign it to a point that's visually empty, but can be recognized by the system as having a fixed point. The concept exists in programming, mathematics, you name it.

The actual applications of having a psychic value of zero attached to an individual(as opposed to something that would register, or empty space) would probably be rather convenient once you actually break it down as someone who knows the ins and outs of how it works. The fact is that Alex being undetected, and earth as a whole as well, raises a whole lot of questions that aren't important to the story.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Dorfington »

I was gonna post this in the WIP thread as a follow up to my response to you, but then I thought it'd probably be more appropriate here.

What swear words do the Loroi use?

Do ours translate well into the language, or does Loroi trade have unique expletives?

An odd question I know, but I promise that this is purely for science. You understand don't you Arioch? For science?

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Dorfington wrote:What swear words do the Loroi use?
Do ours translate well into the language, or does Loroi trade have unique expletives?
Loroi Trade is relatively formal, and the Loroi aren't really a verbal cultural, so they don't usually make verbal exclamations or oaths/curses, and the rudeness or insulting quality of a word is implicit in its meaning; for the most part they don't have special "rude" synonyms. Most rudeness is done telepathically (so you can be sure they know you mean it), which is very literal. However, since it is a little bit extra rude to speak to someone who's right in front of you, a verbal string of insults can sometimes achieve that extra notch of rudeness.

Most literal insults that we use would be recognizable as insults to the Loroi: calling into question someone's abilities, intelligence, appearance, cleanliness, behavior, integrity, courage, loyalty, duty, or especially honesty; comparing them to animals or anything unflattering, scatological references, etc. Exaggeration should be carefully phrased: statements like "you are a pig" or "you are an anus" or "you are as dumb as a rock" are clearly false; but "you eat like a pig" or "your mouth works like an anus" (e.g. nothing but shit comes out of it) or "you aren't much smarter than a rock" would be considered acceptable insults.

To call someone or something "bloody" is essentially to say that it is cursed (destined to be covered in blood).

Insults that would not land particularly well with Loroi would include references to hell or damnation (which most Loroi don't believe in), and most sex references (Loroi don't consider the sex act aggressive or shameful or violating and so "fuck" has little impact; comparing someone to the female genitalia has about as much impact as comparing someone to an elbow; comparing someone to the male genitalia is roughly equivalent to calling someone a "busy bee", and not particularly insulting).

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Dorfington »

How exactly is the plural of a noun denoted?

On the lexicon you (singular) is listed as "lozen" whilst you (plural) is listed as "lozener".

Is the "er" the plural? Would the plural of "lenzano" (bubble) be "lenzanoer"? (bubbles) or "lenzaner"?

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by CF2 »

Are there particular themes that as a result of culture strike the Loroi sense of humor particularly well, or especially poorly?
Alex's remark about "thinking out loud", seemed quite amusing to Beryl, so juxtaposition and contrast apparently work as themes. Would slapstick, or misunderstanding, or Pinky & the Brain intelligence humor go over well?

Is it possible to bring a Loroi to tears with humor, or cause them to lose their breath laughing? If so, is it at all problematic to tell jokes telepathically where it can be unintentionally crack up people working on tasks that require concentration or finesse? Are there customs to when humor may be shared?
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Dorfington »

If I remember correctly, slapstick and absurdist humor would translate rather well with Loroi. An example that has already been provided would be the "ministry of silly walks" sketch from Monty python.

The reasoning behind this that Arioch has stated (I think it was Arioch) is that the more rigid and strict a society is, the more that society's humor will be outrageous and silly.

Supposedly.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Hālian »

Dorfington wrote:How exactly is the plural of a noun denoted?

On the lexicon you (singular) is listed as "lozen" whilst you (plural) is listed as "lozener".

Is the "er" the plural? Would the plural of "lenzano" (bubble) be "lenzanoer"? (bubbles) or "lenzaner"?
If I recall correctly, all non-pro nouns in Loroi Trade are invariant, i.e. the plural is the same as the singular. But don't quote me on that.
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Dorfington wrote:How exactly is the plural of a noun denoted?

On the lexicon you (singular) is listed as "lozen" whilst you (plural) is listed as "lozener".
Trade nouns have no plural forms. One samurai, two samurai. One teidar, two teidar.
CF2 wrote:Are there particular themes that as a result of culture strike the Loroi sense of humor particularly well, or especially poorly?
Alex's remark about "thinking out loud", seemed quite amusing to Beryl, so juxtaposition and contrast apparently work as themes. Would slapstick, or misunderstanding, or Pinky & the Brain intelligence humor go over well?
I think physical humor translates well to any culture than understand humor at all (and not all do). Absurdist and ironic humor probably work well, up to the point past which the literal Loroi may start to get confused. Misunderstanding humor probably doesn't work well in a telepathic mode where misunderstanding is unlikely.
CF2 wrote:Is it possible to bring a Loroi to tears with humor, or cause them to lose their breath laughing? If so, is it at all problematic to tell jokes telepathically where it can be unintentionally crack up people working on tasks that require concentration or finesse? Are there customs to when humor may be shared?
I think the more dire your situation, the more humor (even fairly dark humor) becomes a necessity. The Loroi have been in a pretty dire situation for some time, so their appreciate for humor is pretty strong. I can easily imagine serious situations in which Loroi have a hard time not be cracked up (analogous to the "giggling in church" situation), but I think once your life is in danger most things stop being funny. At least to the point where you can't function.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Gorbash »

Arioch wrote:I think once your life is in danger most things stop being funny. At least to the point where you can't function.
Do they still have the same post-stress reaction humans do (such as suddenly bursting into intense, uncontrollable laughter after an extremely stressful or nearly-deadly situation)? That's got to have some weird effects with telepathy.

Do the Loroi ever delve into cybernetics and bio-engineering for their soldiers, or is that kind of frowned upon because of the association with the Umiak?

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Jayngfet »

Random question, but is there a plan, explicit or implicit, for the millions to billions of military caste born during this war and because of it when and if the Loroi actually WIN? Having multitudes of bored soldiers and decommissioned ships seems like a recipe for disaster.

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