Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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Luge
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Luge »

Arioch wrote:The equipment lists in the characters sheets are items that the characters might be equipped with, rather than a list of all their personal effects (though I suppose that would be an interesting exercise). Fireblade for example doesn't own any weapons. She has a small pouch that is on her right leg when she's in her duty uniform, and which is on her left hip in the combat armor.
That makes sense. 21st century military personnel on duty don't generally "own" their weaponry either. Rather, they draw suitable weapons for their role and training from an armoury.

L.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

orion1836 wrote:other than having a dedicated Mizol minder, do Farseers have any other special sort of 'care and feeding' requirements?
Yes. Unfortunately, I can't really elaborate further.

Gorbash
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Gorbash »

orion1836 wrote: Though he might not be there when we do, would the Farseer be more disquieted by Alex's utter lack of telepathic presence than the rest of the Loroi because of her sensitivities?
My personal bet is that they'd be thrilled. Finally, someone they can hang out with who isn't effectively shouting at them all the time!

Some weird questions on civilians -- Arioch has mentioned previously that civilian industry makes most of Loroi manufacturing, and that civilians can organize themselves into different groups (and get rich by their work). Do different civilian groups compete with each other, and form "brands" with varying popularity within the population? Or is that type of commercial competition not really a thing in Loroi culture?

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orion1836
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by orion1836 »

Gorbash wrote:
orion1836 wrote: Though he might not be there when we do, would the Farseer be more disquieted by Alex's utter lack of telepathic presence than the rest of the Loroi because of her sensitivities?
My personal bet is that they'd be thrilled. Finally, someone they can hang out with who isn't effectively shouting at them all the time!

Some weird questions on civilians -- Arioch has mentioned previously that civilian industry makes most of Loroi manufacturing, and that civilians can organize themselves into different groups (and get rich by their work). Do different civilian groups compete with each other, and form "brands" with varying popularity within the population? Or is that type of commercial competition not really a thing in Loroi culture?
Loroi-Brand™ Telepanty: When your affections absolutely, positively, must get there instantly.

Arioch wrote:Yes. Unfortunately, I can't really elaborate further.
Kind of figured. Hopefully not as extensive as the Navigators in Dune.

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dragoongfa
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by dragoongfa »

orion1836 wrote:
Arioch wrote:Yes. Unfortunately, I can't really elaborate further.
Kind of figured. Hopefully not as extensive as the Navigators in Dune.

My money is on extensive cybernetics and/or something telepathically relevant from Perrein.

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icekatze
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

I seem to recall reading that being a farseer tends to shorten a Loroi's lifespan, but it has been ages ago, so I'm not 100% on that. If that's the case, I wouldn't be surprised if the farseer's special requirements involve mind altering drugs, or at least something that is taxing on their physical bodies. Could just be a result of the amplifiers though, since we've been told that they can cause damage too.

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Arioch
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Gorbash wrote:
orion1836 wrote:Some weird questions on civilians -- Arioch has mentioned previously that civilian industry makes most of Loroi manufacturing, and that civilians can organize themselves into different groups (and get rich by their work). Do different civilian groups compete with each other, and form "brands" with varying popularity within the population? Or is that type of commercial competition not really a thing in Loroi culture?
Loroi artisans/craftsmen/businesses in the same industry traditionally aggregate together into trade guilds. These would often form effective monopolies, and were often supported (and sometime even enforced) by the local governments, as a useful tool of mercantilism (which seeks to increase the power of the state at the expense of its neighbors by increasing trade surplus through tariffs and other protectionist measures). Unfortunately, monopolies are inherently inefficient, and later contact with other societies (notably the Neridi) exposed the Loroi to more free market practices and their benefits (namely, that trade is not a zero-sum game, and wealth is actually created when different entities are allowed to use their comparative advantages to export goods they are better at producing, and import goods that someone else is better at producing). Over time, more free market policies were introduced into the Loroi system, allowing for more competition and entrepreneurship, but the trade guilds still exist, and the Loroi are still protectionist at heart. Most Loroi civilians still stay in the same profession and guild as their mothers. It's now much easier to start an independent business, but you will have to compete directly against the local guild in the same industry that will be actively working against you.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Gorbash »

Arioch wrote: Loroi artisans/craftsmen/businesses in the same industry traditionally aggregate together into trade guilds. These would often form effective monopolies, and were often supported (and sometime even enforced) by the local governments, as a useful tool of mercantilism (which seeks to increase the power of the state at the expense of its neighbors by increasing trade surplus through tariffs and other protectionist measures). Unfortunately, monopolies are inherently inefficient, and later contact with other societies (notably the Neridi) exposed the Loroi to more free market practices and their benefits (namely, that trade is not a zero-sum game, and wealth is actually created when different entities are allowed to use their comparative advantages to export goods they are better at producing, and import goods that someone else is better at producing). Over time, more free market policies were introduced into the Loroi system, allowing for more competition and entrepreneurship, but the trade guilds still exist, and the Loroi are still protectionist at heart. Most Loroi civilians still stay in the same profession and guild as their mothers. It's now much easier to start an independent business, but you will have to compete directly against the local guild in the same industry that will be actively working against you.
So there's a good chance that Earth will rock the Loroi economy with the introduction of franchises, aggressive advertising, and Coca-Cola?

Admittedly, aggressive advertising might not go over well (the Loroi have a strong negative reaction to lying), but competition has made companies on Earth very good at taking advantage of "new" markets. It sounds like the Loroi have some exposure to that already, but Earth corps might have advantages Neridi ones haven't -- such as having worked against a population with a similar general shape, and being able to display themselves as "exotic" (kind of the way fast food restaurants play up their attachment to the US when franchising abroad, such as with KFC and their Thanksgiving dinner special in Japan).

I enjoy the idea of Loroi civilian populations having internal conflicts over "all these damn kids with their crazy Earth music and syrupy sodas and blue jeans!"

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by cacambo43 »

How much time has passed between pages 119 and 124? Has Alex really assimilated the Loroi alphabet as quickly as it seems? I know - the story needs to move forward, but it seems really quick.

CJSF

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Diodri
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Diodri »

Well, it is still the Trade language, just in a different script. I remember being bored in social studies class so I taught myself how to write English using Greek runes, and I picked it up pretty quickly. I know it's not exactly the same thing, but learning a new alphabet is a lot easier than learning a new language.

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orion1836
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by orion1836 »

cacambo43 wrote:How much time has passed between pages 119 and 124? Has Alex really assimilated the Loroi alphabet as quickly as it seems? I know - the story needs to move forward, but it seems really quick.

CJSF
Seems like only a few minutes. Even so, he is *very* smart and as Diodri said, Alex knows the language, he's just matching letters.

Even so, he seems uncertain of his translation, so that seems reasonable for someone who has only just started.

entity2636
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by entity2636 »

To me it also seems like the actions and conversations between pages 119 and 124 are happening pretty much "in real time". Between Page 119 and 121 it could be a bit longer with Alex writing his "cheat sheet" of the Loroi alphabet, say, maximum 30 minutes, the rest would be "live".

By the way - what is Alex writing his cheat sheet on? I highly doubt it's paper... A piece of plastic foil or cloth, a piece of his undershirt? :D

And one more question - do the Loroi have handwriting, or is everything either digital or listel-ized? Did they have handwriting at some point in the past or they went straight from oral tradition to printed or digital text when they discovered the appropriate Soia tech (the electronic computer)?

One reason for asking is curiosity, the other being that from my perspective the Loroi letters don't appear to lend themselves well to be written by hand. But, since the Loroi write/type from the right to the left, it kind of suggests that they did write by hand at some point, because this direction of text feels "natural" for a left-handed person, most Loroi being left-handed.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

cacambo43 wrote:How much time has passed between pages 119 and 124? Has Alex really assimilated the Loroi alphabet as quickly as it seems? I know - the story needs to move forward, but it seems really quick.
The narration summarizes Beryl showing Alex how to operate the console, Beryl tutoring him through a demonstration of the Trade script, Alex explaining some English spelling and grammar, and then Beryl and Talon showing him how to use the starmap and system tactical display. This interchange could potentially take the better part of an hour.
entity2636 wrote:By the way - what is Alex writing his cheat sheet on? I highly doubt it's paper... A piece of plastic foil or cloth, a piece of his undershirt?
It's some sort of foil or wrapper that he obtained from the Loroi.
entity2636 wrote:And one more question - do the Loroi have handwriting, or is everything either digital or listel-ized? Did they have handwriting at some point in the past or they went straight from oral tradition to printed or digital text when they discovered the appropriate Soia tech (the electronic computer)?

One reason for asking is curiosity, the other being that from my perspective the Loroi letters don't appear to lend themselves well to be written by hand. But, since the Loroi write/type from the right to the left, it kind of suggests that they did write by hand at some point, because this direction of text feels "natural" for a left-handed person, most Loroi being left-handed.
The Loroi have a variety of different versions of the script, including fancy calligraphic versions that are not commonly used, but the two most basic versions used the comic demonstrate the difference between the block "printed" version and the handwritten version:

Image

Most writing is digital at the time of the comic, but there will still be rare occasions when something is written by hand (such as Alex marking things with his sharpie), and some Loroi signage does use the "handwritten" version. I find myself rarely using handwriting much these days; aside from filling out archaic forms, it's mostly (ironically) using the computer writing out text on images with my digital stylus. And as you can see in the above example, I mostly use a block font rather than a cursive one.

The Soia-era source characters would have been mostly printed or inscribed, and so more like the block font; however, through a large chunk of Loroi history the characters would have been handwritten in some kind of pigment, and so more script-like versions developed.

Not all of our handwriting goes to the extreme of the cursive versions of Roman and Arabic characters; in particular, in East Asian scripts (notably Chinese, Japanese and Korean) the characters do not flow together even in the more calligraphic styles.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by entity2636 »

Thanks for the info :)
Arioch wrote:Most writing is digital at the time of the comic, but there will still be rare occasions when something is written by hand (such as Alex marking things with his sharpie), and some Loroi signage does use the "handwritten" version. I find myself rarely using handwriting much these days; aside from filling out archaic forms, it's mostly (ironically) using the computer writing out text on images with my digital stylus. And as you can see in the above example, I mostly use a block font rather than a cursive one.
I as manager/engineer find myself both typing a lot and also writing quite a bit by hand on paper, calculations, thoughts, comments on drawings, meeting notes, etc. so handwriting is far from obsolete here and find it both odd and slightly disturbing that a lot of younger people have either poor handwriting, use printed letters when writing by hand, or are very slow at that :) But that's just me I guess, I'm not old but old fashioned.
Arioch wrote:The Soia-era source characters would have been mostly printed or inscribed, and so more like the block font; however, through a large chunk of Loroi history the characters would have been handwritten in some kind of pigment, and so more script-like versions developed.

Not all of our handwriting goes to the extreme of the cursive versions of Roman and Arabic characters; in particular, in East Asian scripts (notably Chinese, Japanese and Korean) the characters do not flow together even in the more calligraphic styles.
I'd say that's a bit of an extreme example. I may be wrong, but isn't it so that, when symbols are used to describe discrete sounds or syllables, as in European and Arabic alphabets, the script generally becomes cursive and flowing as to facilitate fast and smooth writing (basically you have to write down sound as you hear or speak it), but when symbols stand for concepts as in East Asian, ancient Egyptian and other scripts, the script consists of discrete and often complicated hieroglyphs?

The Trade language and Loroi alphabet apparently use symbols for discrete sounds and words appear to be made up of discrete sounds (like Latin) so would it not make sense that for scribbling down quick "sticky notes" and general handwriting etc. the Loroi would also use a fast, easy flowing script? No offense, but your Loroi Hand script looks like drawing printed/block letters by hand which is unnatural, slow and inefficient, like the handwriting of people who have forgotten or never learned how to properly write by hand?

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

It is my understanding, from the way Han logograms are typed on a keyboard, that they are more like compound letters than they are unique symbols. Each symbol is made up of a few recognizable strokes.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

entity2636 wrote:I may be wrong, but isn't it so that, when symbols are used to describe discrete sounds or syllables, as in European and Arabic alphabets, the script generally becomes cursive and flowing as to facilitate fast and smooth writing (basically you have to write down sound as you hear or speak it), but when symbols stand for concepts as in East Asian, ancient Egyptian and other scripts, the script consists of discrete and often complicated hieroglyphs?
No. Korean hangul and Japanese hiragana and katakana are syllabic rather than symbolic, and they don't run together as in Western cursive scripts. The shapes of the characters just don't facilitate this. This doesn't seem to be a problem for them.
icekatze wrote:It is my understanding, from the way Han logograms are typed on a keyboard, that they are more like compound letters than they are unique symbols. Each symbol is made up of a few recognizable strokes.
This is true, but (as I understand it) they are purely phonetic rather than symbolic, unlike Chinese characters.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Vyrnie »

I think there are enough languages where the characters don't blend together (even where each character merely represents a syllable instead of a full word) that it shouldn't be out of the question for Loroi/Trade to be so. Tamil is another example of such a language, and the characters in it definitely do represent just syllables - in fact you literally can't blend them together because the "wisps" that connect characters together in cursive writing are used instead to denote other information so one would literally be writing a different character all together if a character flowed/connected too well into the next.

Anyway, I'm curious about just how intricate the characters are. One common "theme" in written human language seems to be that each character only takes one or two strokes to write, most of which are very simple; this is certainly the case for all the letters in the Latin alphabet. I think the more complicated shapes show up mainly in languages where each character has to convey the meaning of a full word instead of just a syllable. I mean, look at that symbol on the last row+last column, bet that's a real pain in the ass to write... and given only 16 characters, probably shows up often enough too.

Is it just a "rule of cool" type thing, or is there a reason for it being so intricate?

Don't get me wrong, normally I wouldn't even think of asking something like this, but what I find really cool about the outsider universe is just how much effort you put into world building. :D

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Vyrnie wrote:Anyway, I'm curious about just how intricate the characters are. One common "theme" in written human language seems to be that each character only takes one or two strokes to write, most of which are very simple; this is certainly the case for all the letters in the Latin alphabet. I think the more complicated shapes show up mainly in languages where each character has to convey the meaning of a full word instead of just a syllable. I mean, look at that symbol on the last row+last column, bet that's a real pain in the ass to write... and given only 16 characters, probably shows up often enough too.

Is it just a "rule of cool" type thing, or is there a reason for it being so intricate?
The primary consideration in the creation of the characters was that they should be instantly recognizable as alien to the reader, and so distinctly different from the Roman alphabet and any other common symbols that the reader would be familiar with. This means that many of the most simple shapes are not available; by necessity, the script needs to be a little bit more complex. However, it's really not all that complex; almost all of the characters can be written with 3 or 4 strokes, the exception being "S" which requires 6.

In-universe, the script is a high-tech standardized version of an alphabet that is based on an ancient ultra-tech version, that is being used by a society that is not exceptionally literate but is highly concerned with aesthetics and tradition. There are a lot of available explanations for why this may not be the most efficient possible script for handwriting.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by boldilocks »

Why is the interior of the Loroi ship here: http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider048.html so sheer?
Maybe it's a trick of the angle, but that looks like a very steep climb, considering they're walking on what seems like a slippery floor with flat-soled shoes, so it looks like stairs would be more useful and safe. (And possibly easier on the ankles)

I suppose its easier to move something on wheels up and down the corridor in this case, but then why not have both stairs and a trolley section?

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Krulle »

On a ship with artificial gravity, this may be less relevant than you think.
The gravity can be tweaked if heavy stuff is moved to make the moving of that stuff easier.

For the crew it's a good way for their training exercises. Going up and down slopes is a tad more difficult than just running flat corridors.


Otherwise it is rule of cool. It just makes the ship look very spacious, more so than any Human engineer in the current state of technology would allow a corridor to have, thus emphasizing that this is an alien ship.
Vote for Outsider on TWC: Image
charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
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