Well of Souls Forums

These questions would best be done in the Humanity and the Miscellaneous races threads but I think that I can give you some second hand answers:

1) Most of the technological development in the local bubble was done the old fashioned way with research and development after the collapse of the Soia. Having examples of non working artifacts laying around did help in guiding the development the right way but most of the tech had to be invented all over again. Large multi-species empires like the Union and the Hierarchy have a common pooled research and development.

2) Humanity advanced extremely fast by the standards of the local bubble, this was not done by a greater degree of intellectual ability but because human society incentivized scientific growth in a way no other race in the local bubble ever did. Arioch has mentioned that such scientific growth is bound to stall as technology reaches certain tech levels but I am an optimist in saying that Humans will find a way to invent new and amazing ways to either blow shit up or impress girls.

3) The Barsam aren't allies of the Union, they are full Union members with a presence in the assembly. The Loroi do dominate the Union's military forces but the Barsam do contribute in their own way. Arioch has mentioned that Barsam ground forces are common and well regarded so they do contribute in that front. As for Barsam pacifism, that is mainly down to their societal norms but we have to remember that they by their biology they must have been intended as highly effective shock troops; how this manifests in their personal outlooks is unknown but there is bound to be an instinctive desire to come to blows with someone that angers them.

Cthulhu wrote:1. As a rule of thumb, are all of the high-tech civilizations that advanced because of the head start provided by ancient artifacts (be it Soia, Dreiman or even their own, dating back before a catastrophic orbital bombardment set them back) or contacts with other races? Are there any civs on pair with the major empires which have developed all or most of their tech on their own?

There aren't really any such civilizations at hand to compare with. Humanity is very unusual in not having had any prior knowledge of the precursor civilizations.

Cthulhu wrote:2. Considering that humanity had no artifacts to learn from and didn't meet other civilizations to trade techs, how fast does it advance compared to other civilizations?

This has been discussed a lot before, but is difficult to quantify. Except perhaps to look at the timelines and see how long other civilizations took to progress through the same technological eras.

Cthulhu wrote:3. Just how pacifist are the Barsam? Considering that the Union is hard-pressed right now, would they sent ships and maybe ground troops to assist in defense? Do they have any ground troops and warships worth commiting? Would the Loroi ask for or accept such assistance?

The Barsam can and have gone to war in the past, but as a member of the Union, the Barsam are prohibited from having offensive military fleets; the defensive forces that they do have are mostly in their own territory (which is on the opposite side of Union space from the current offensive). The do have some ground forces in theater, which are not of very much help in the current stage of the conflict. There are also a number of Barsam support vessels (especially scouts, couriers, transports and tankers) in the area.

Do Beryl have children?

Yes, she does. It was mentioned more than one occasion, latest being the Page 127 discussion thread. Most if not all Loroi women get "male time" and a child as a result as sort of a "reward" for "graduating" from their Diral. (I'm putting it all in quotes, because I can't for the life of me say that with a straight face, sorry about that)

entity2636 wrote:Yes, she does. It was mentioned more than one occasion, latest being the Page 127 discussion thread. Most if not all Loroi women get "male time" and a child as a result as sort of a "reward" for "graduating" from their Diral. (I'm putting it all in quotes, because I can't for the life of me say that with a straight face, sorry about that)

So it's like a prom night were everyone gets lucky.

Arioch wrote: Soia-Liron food items contain mostly the same kinds of compounds in our own foods (sugars, proteins, carbohydrates, etc.), but in different proportions and chemical arrangements. The packaged shipboard food that Alex was given had been sterilized for preservation, so Soia-Liron microbes are not the biggest problem, but Alex's own gut microbiomes are not accustomed to the substances he is eating.

Are the Loroi, Baram and other SL-species notably quicker or slower with metabolising food than the higher temperature humans? I was just wondering if Alex tends to get hungry somewhat quicker than his travel mates.

The Soians made their custom underling races to be as "low maintenance" and cheap to operate as possible but with the loroi they went a bit overboard.

The loroi for one are more efficient in metabolizing food, i.e. they obtain more nutrients from the same amount of food than, for example, humans and also use said nutrients more efficiently. A loroi normally would eat once per day vs. three times per day for humans, and a loroi's body temperature is about 10 degrees lower than a human's, meaning they get more energy from their food and waste less of it in heat.

SVlad wrote:Do Beryl have children?

Yes.

Zarya wrote:Are the Loroi, Baram and other SL-species notably quicker or slower with metabolising food than the higher temperature humans? I was just wondering if Alex tends to get hungry somewhat quicker than his travel mates.

Loroi metabolisms are more efficient and therefore they require less food per day, and so tend to eat only once per day. So yes, Alex will be getting hungry more often, but I'm not sure that's directly related to the "speed" of the metabolism.

Being larger and much heavier, Barsam require much more food, and so tend to eat twice per day.

entity2636 wrote:Yes, she does. It was mentioned more than one occasion, latest being the Page 127 discussion thread. Most if not all Loroi women get "male time" and a child as a result as sort of a "reward" for "graduating" from their Diral. (I'm putting it all in quotes, because I can't for the life of me say that with a straight face, sorry about that)

It's for the warrior castes, and the usual policy of only getting access to a male for good service have been suspended due to the wartime losses (or even due to the preparation before) to have all warrior caste females becoming adults/neophyte warriors have at least one child while still in training to make sure there are always replacements.

boldilocks wrote:So it's like a prom night were everyone gets lucky.

They are locked in a total war against another civilization. It's less of prom night and more of "Congratulations on becoming a warrior/legal adult. Now pop one for the empire while you are still in training, before we ship you off into the meat grinder".

folti wrote:

boldilocks wrote:So it's like a prom night were everyone gets lucky.

They are locked in a total war against another civilization. It's less of prom night and more of "Congratulations on becoming a warrior/legal adult. Now pop one for the empire while you are still in training, before we ship you off into the meat grinder".

You're a soldier. As such you have to fight, and give birth to the next generation of soldiers.
If you survive your fights, we will have you create more soldiers.


I find this a weird arrangement.
Biological evolutionary also unlikely.
But then, the Loroi are engineered.

Krulle wrote:

folti wrote:

boldilocks wrote:So it's like a prom night were everyone gets lucky.

They are locked in a total war against another civilization. It's less of prom night and more of "Congratulations on becoming a warrior/legal adult. Now pop one for the empire while you are still in training, before we ship you off into the meat grinder".

You're a soldier. As such you have to fight, and give birth to the next generation of soldiers.
If you survive your fights, we will have you create more soldiers.


I find this a weird arrangement.
Biological evolutionary also unlikely.
But then, the Loroi are engineered.

They are an alien species with a different reproductive setup, related sexual dimorphism, and thus societal mores, who only look as human as they are because the author wanted it, whose society is under an immense pressure from being locked into a life-or-death struggle with another alien species, thus forced to take some drastic measures to shore up the losses.

It's weird to us, but they are an actual alien species, engineered or not, and not one or more human civilizations of the past with rubber foreheads, and the serial numbers filed off.

And even human civilizations in the past took to some drastic to unorthodox measures to deal with huge losses as a result of wartime losses, or trying to ensure population growth.

This included things like banning young men to join monasteries (Nürnberg at the end of the Thirty Years War), allowing or not punishing polygamy (Nürnberg again, Paraguay after the War of the Triple Alliance), (re-)banning abortion, running propaganda to encourage people to have more children, tax childless adults(all done in Stalinist Hungary in the Ratkó era, named after the then Minister of Health Anna Ratkó, or in Socialist Romania under Ceausescu).

folti wrote:

boldilocks wrote:So it's like a prom night were everyone gets lucky.

They are locked in a total war against another civilization. It's less of prom night and more of "Congratulations on becoming a warrior/legal adult. Now pop one for the empire while you are still in training, before we ship you off into the meat grinder".

Ah, so it's like a prom night where everyone gets lucky, or else.

boldilocks wrote:
Ah, so it's like a prom night where everyone gets lucky, or else.

Arioch wrote:

Cthulhu wrote:1. As a rule of thumb, are all of the high-tech civilizations that advanced because of the head start provided by ancient artifacts (be it Soia, Dreiman or even their own, dating back before a catastrophic orbital bombardment set them back) or contacts with other races? Are there any civs on pair with the major empires which have developed all or most of their tech on their own?

There aren't really any such civilizations at hand to compare with. Humanity is very unusual in not having had any prior knowledge of the precursor civilizations.

We also have the cultural aspect here. We have a LOT of rumors about precursor civilizations but most of us just ignore them or consider them entertainment. Most of us know that Atlantis never existed but if it DID we could miss it due to dismissing it alongside other such rumors. Artifacts would be deemed unrelated to them, or forgeries and so on.

Sweforce wrote:

Arioch wrote:

Cthulhu wrote:1. As a rule of thumb, are all of the high-tech civilizations that advanced because of the head start provided by ancient artifacts (be it Soia, Dreiman or even their own, dating back before a catastrophic orbital bombardment set them back) or contacts with other races? Are there any civs on pair with the major empires which have developed all or most of their tech on their own?

There aren't really any such civilizations at hand to compare with. Humanity is very unusual in not having had any prior knowledge of the precursor civilizations.

We also have the cultural aspect here. We have a LOT of rumors about precursor civilizations but most of us just ignore them or consider them entertainment. Most of us know that Atlantis never existed but if it DID we could miss it due to dismissing it alongside other such rumors. Artifacts would be deemed unrelated to them, or forgeries and so on.

Indeed.
In space, archeology would work differently.
If we were to find a shipwreck or an artifact found on some asteroid while exploring our own system, I would deem it unlikely that we would dismiss that as having been Human created and just "forgotten" colelctively we did that.
But we've found nothing of the like so far.

And Atlantis is in the Pegasus galaxy.

boldilocks wrote:

folti wrote:

boldilocks wrote:So it's like a prom night were everyone gets lucky.

They are locked in a total war against another civilization. It's less of prom night and more of "Congratulations on becoming a warrior/legal adult. Now pop one for the empire while you are still in training, before we ship you off into the meat grinder".

Ah, so it's like a prom night where everyone gets lucky, or else.

I doubt they even consider the or else part.

Apart from the indoctrination, would you pass up the only sure chance to have a kid? Especially that pregnancy and childbirth is not as problematic/debiliating to Loroi females as to human ones, and they will be raised by the state/tribe even if you die.

Sweforce wrote:We also have the cultural aspect here. We have a LOT of rumors about precursor civilizations but most of us just ignore them or consider them entertainment. Most of us know that Atlantis never existed but if it DID we could miss it due to dismissing it alongside other such rumors. Artifacts would be deemed unrelated to them, or forgeries and so on.

You have to take a lot of things into account when you deal with old myths/stories/writings about mythical civilizations on Earth.

A lot of the stories have been oral history for generations before being written down, thus subject to usual corruption and embellishments. What was considered great and/or rich was quite different for people over time, and we have archaeological records of civilizational collapses which surely colored the survivors' view, and have been woven into the subsequent myths.

Plus Atlantis might have been a fictional place made up by Plato for his philosophical works, which might have based on some actual Greek city that have been destroyed by a nearby volcanic eruption and/or it's tsunami.

Are the Loroi poisonous?

With regard to Earth biology, the norm is that a blue tongue is an indicator that the creature is poisonous, or mimicking a poisonous animal's coloration.

For that matter, would humans be poisonous to Loroi?

CF2 wrote: With regard to Earth biology, the norm is that a blue tongue is an indicator that the creature is poisonous, or mimicking a poisonous animal's coloration. ?

I don't remember seeing or learning this ever. Where did you learn it?

CJSF

cacambo43 wrote:I don't remember seeing or learning this ever. Where did you learn it?

Was looking up which animals have blue tongues, the majority appear to be lizards whose tongues serve to ward off predators.

Alex has been having difficulty digesting the various Soia-Liron foods he has been trying, so I doubt he would enjoy eating Loroi flesh... but I also don't think he'll have the opportunity to try any. Nor are any Loroi likely to try eating Human flesh.

If you mean venomous, no... Loroi are not venomous.

I haven't heard anything about blue-tongued animals being poisonous. A quick search suggests that blue-tongued lizards and skinks are neither poisonous nor venomous.