Well of Souls Forums

Do Loroi create pet-names for each other?
Not nicknames that are semi-official and specific to individuals, but rather general names that indicate fondness/friendliness/familiarity between people.

CF2 wrote:Do Loroi create pet-names for each other?
Not nicknames that are semi-official and specific to individuals, but rather general names that indicate fondness/friendliness/familiarity between people.

Not usually. The closer and friendlier Loroi are, the less they usually speak with each other.

Loroi who had to talk with their friends frequently over radio (such as pilots) might be an exception.

Arioch wrote:Not usually. The closer and friendlier Loroi are, the less they usually speak with each other.

TFW I want to be a Loroi now. (And not just because I'm a dude, waka-waka.)

Arioch, this may have been asked before (maybe even by me, sorry), but having gone through some Insider information again:

What exactly *is* the "Well of Souls" stellar remnant? What does that mean? I expect it's not a black hole or a neutron star/pulsar (else you would have called it that). How did it disrupt hyperspace travel in the past and how did the nearby civilizations get around the problem? Will it be relevant to Alex's story?

CJSF

Arioch! A new question, critical to the storyline. I'd like to know as much as possible about...

Jardin's marker pen.

It looks like it says ECS-154 on it, which is the Bellarmine's identifier. So I presume it was in his uniform pocket under his suit and was recovered with him. He was seen writing down the results of his Loroi food "experiments" earlier in the series.

What do the Loroi think of it? Is it seen as primitive, since everything else on board is digitised?

Was anything else recovered with Jardin? I'm wondering if there might have been some basic tools, ID/security tags, mini-tablet phone/communicator devices or other items in his uniform or suit that survived? Pocket lint?

Whether the Loroi gave it back to him or not is another matter entirely of course...

Jardin was also told that the Loroi did recover other bodies from the debris of his old ship. Did he get to see any of those, or what scrap they might have salvaged before destroying what remained?

Thanks!

L.

cacambo43 wrote:What exactly *is* the "Well of Souls" stellar remnant? What does that mean? I expect it's not a black hole or a neutron star/pulsar (else you would have called it that). How did it disrupt hyperspace travel in the past and how did the nearby civilizations get around the problem? Will it be relevant to Alex's story?

All the Union folks know about it that it's a compact radio source, presumably a very massive object, that periodically gives off x-ray/gamma ray bursts and gravitational waves. Most think it's probably a black hole or an orbiting pair of black holes, but that doesn't fully explain its behavior. It's located on the far side of Historian territory, so no Union researchers have been able to get very close to it.

During the period from 1436-1451 CE, the gravitational waves increased in intensity, to the point where they added significantly to variance in hyperspace jumps. This effectively reduced the safe jump range, making some longer links extremely dangerous. This reduction isolated some regions, in particular the space between the warring Loroi and Mannadi. After a time, the intensity of the waves subsided; nobody knows why.

It does figure into the story.

Luge wrote:It looks like it says ECS-154 on it, which is the Bellarmine's identifier. So I presume it was in his uniform pocket under his suit and was recovered with him. He was seen writing down the results of his Loroi food "experiments" earlier in the series.

What do the Loroi think of it? Is it seen as primitive, since everything else on board is digitised?

It's essentially a tool as much as a writing instrument, for making measuring marks and the like (I doubt the Scout Corps folks are going to writing essays with a marker). Loroi engineers and damage control people probably have similar tools.

Luge wrote:Was anything else recovered with Jardin? I'm wondering if there might have been some basic tools, ID/security tags, mini-tablet phone/communicator devices or other items in his uniform or suit that survived? Pocket lint?

Whether the Loroi gave it back to him or not is another matter entirely of course...

Jardin was also told that the Loroi did recover other bodies from the debris of his old ship. Did he get to see any of those, or what scrap they might have salvaged before destroying what remained?

Alex probably had some other random items in his pockets, but nothing that is worth mentioning (that I can think of). There were other items recovered by the Loroi in addition to the human bodies, and this is something that will be addressed.

Arioch wrote:There were other items recovered by the Loroi in addition to the human bodies, and this is something that will be addressed.

Fingers crossed that Alex discovers a few candy bars / energy bars among the recovered objects. Perhaps once Beryl has a decent grasp some of the wrapper packaging will jump to mind and he can introduce chocolate to the Loroi.

Jardin: "Please God, tell me they didn't find my porn stash."

How clean is the area of space that the Loroi and Umiak territory occupy? With all the terraforming and other planetary projects of empires past, how much of the interstellar dust and debris was simply removed as a matter of course? How tidy are the solar systems in terms of loose asteroids, meteoroids, and comets?

CF2 wrote:How clean is the area of space that the Loroi and Umiak territory occupy? With all the terraforming and other planetary projects of empires past, how much of the interstellar dust and debris was simply removed as a matter of course? How tidy are the solar systems in terms of loose asteroids, meteoroids, and comets?

Not particularly tidy.

Considering that a quarter of a million years passed since the Soians were active then I would be surprised if space was anywhere near tidy. It would take a great amount of resources to keep asteroids and known comets from doing real damage. To do a proper and lasting clean sweep of dozens if not hundreds of solar systems would be a pharaonic project even for dysonian level empires since it would demand to methodically clean the dark space between solar systems in order to avoid the random junk floating there from causing trouble after a few dozen millennia.

Someone who doesn't want or isn't able to do what I would affectionately describe as 'stellar sculpting' would take the cheap route and just clean the stuff that is dangerous and leave the rest as they are until something dangerous pops back up again. A quarter of a million years later there is bound to be a lot a 'new dangerous' stuff floating around.

dragoongfa wrote:Considering that a quarter of a million years passed since the Soians were active then I would be surprised if space was anywhere near tidy. It would take a great amount of resources to keep asteroids and known comets from doing real damage. To do a proper and lasting clean sweep of dozens if not hundreds of solar systems would be a pharaonic project even for dysonian level empires since it would demand to methodically clean the dark space between solar systems in order to avoid the random junk floating there from causing trouble after a few dozen millennia.

Someone who doesn't want or isn't able to do what I would affectionately describe as 'stellar sculpting' would take the cheap route and just clean the stuff that is dangerous and leave the rest as they are until something dangerous pops back up again. A quarter of a million years later there is bound to be a lot a 'new dangerous' stuff floating around.

Cleaning may also mean MINING. Asteroids that are hunted down and turned into dust while their resources are extracted. Lot's of mining may create so much dust that the local suns light output may go down in relation to an outside observer. Modern SETI methods have begun looking for these things. This are necessary to do if you intend to build a Dyson Swarm for instance.

An important aspect to the gradual technological advancement in Human civilization is that we've had so many different means of harnessing energy. In particular, was the use of domesticated animals as a kind of engine, before it was well understood how to harness moving water or wind. Horses, cattle, oxen, elephants, and other large animals have all been used as key parts of early contraptions and machines.

How did the Loroi progress up their tech tree to eventually reach electronics, in the absence of large domesticable animals? Or did they have a few, and if so what are they like?

CF2 wrote:An important aspect to the gradual technological advancement in Human civilization is that we've had so many different means of harnessing energy. In particular, was the use of domesticated animals as a kind of engine, before it was well understood how to harness moving water or wind. Horses, cattle, oxen, elephants, and other large animals have all been used as key parts of early contraptions and machines.

How did the Loroi progress up their tech tree to eventually reach electronics, in the absence of large domesticable animals? Or did they have a few, and if so what are they like?

The Loroi do have the pig like miros who can grow in a large enough size but I think that the answer to the above is more in line with their caste system at large, bottom castes were bound to do extremely menial jobs and I wager that they did cover jobs that beasts of burden covered for us.

CF2 wrote:An important aspect to the gradual technological advancement in Human civilization is that we've had so many different means of harnessing energy. In particular, was the use of domesticated animals as a kind of engine, before it was well understood how to harness moving water or wind. Horses, cattle, oxen, elephants, and other large animals have all been used as key parts of early contraptions and machines.

How did the Loroi progress up their tech tree to eventually reach electronics, in the absence of large domesticable animals? Or did they have a few, and if so what are they like?

Without any domestic animals larger than a pig or goat, everything had to be done by Loroi manpower.

hi hi

I would imagine that wind mills and water mills would be popular, without beasts of burden to help out. Unless, maybe they had strong telekinetics just sitting around pushing heavy things all day?

icekatze wrote:Unless, maybe they had strong telekinetics just sitting around pushing heavy things all day?

This would be like trying to get a knight to plow a field with his warhorse. Possible in a pinch, but unlikely as a regular process.

Quick lexicon question, what are the Trade words for 'drone' and 'worker'?

dragoongfa wrote:Quick lexicon question, what are the Trade words for 'drone' and 'worker'?

If you mean drone in the sense of an automaton, the word is ligepir.

Work is sobe, so worker is sobedi.

What happens to kineticists or Mizol-level telepaths who fail the trials? Are they put down or?