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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2019 1:52 am
by GabrielGABFonseca
In page 57, the Historian Construct says something that always made me curious:
Unseemly though it is to appear before you in such a meager form, our Loroi hosts are unwilling to permit access to any more resource than this. We must adapt.

Surely your excellency will allow for this circumstance and attribute any perceived lapses in decorum to this limitation of instrumentality.
So the lapses in decorum are a result of the limited instrumentality given by the Loroi for the Historian Construct (HC here on) to manifest.

So if I'm getting this right, does... Does it take extra processing power to not be rude?
Because if so, that's hilarious and I love it.

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2019 3:50 am
by cacambo43
GabrielGABFonseca wrote:In page 57, the Historian Construct says something that always made me curious:
Unseemly though it is to appear before you in such a meager form, our Loroi hosts are unwilling to permit access to any more resource than this. We must adapt.

Surely your excellency will allow for this circumstance and attribute any perceived lapses in decorum to this limitation of instrumentality.
So the lapses in decorum are a result of the limited instrumentality given by the Loroi for the Historian Construct (HC here on) to manifest.

So if I'm getting this right, does... Does it take extra processing power to not be rude?
Because if so, that's hilarious and I love it.
Um... I think it was pretty clear that the construct was making "excuses" in case Alex (obvious) overheard how impolite and sarcastic it was being about him and the situation. I believe Arioch included it to give us some inkling about the Historians' perspective and typical personality.

CJSF

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 6:30 pm
by dragoongfa
Do the Loroi have the ability to produce certain types of consumables on their major warships?

Relatively simple stuff, like personnel armor, bodysuits or an EVA suit?

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 7:45 pm
by Arioch
dragoongfa wrote:Do the Loroi have the ability to produce certain types of consumables on their major warships?

Relatively simple stuff, like personnel armor, bodysuits or an EVA suit?
Yes.

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Thu May 02, 2019 1:33 pm
by PhilTKaswahl
Arioch wrote: Whether it was a simplified version of an existing language or created from scratch is not known (as it predates the Soia fall), but it seems clearly adapted for international use, with a minimum of declination and other unnecessary complexities, and using a reduced phoneme set.

But there's no reason a natural language has to be gendered, especially since many of the intelligent species in the local bubble don't even have genders.
Long time reader and lurker and—of all things—this is what gets me to start posting something. So, um, hello everyone.

Anyway, this kinda grabbed me because I'm Filipino and both the local Tagalog-based Filipino national language and my regional Cebuano have gender-neutral pronouns ("siya" for "him" or "her"). And that's hardly unique to Filipino languages. So if even Earth languages can be ungendered, it's not such a big leap for alien languages to be.

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri May 03, 2019 8:42 pm
by Werra
Arioch wrote:The warrior class itself is a sort of hereditary "upper class," in a sense, similar to the samurai class of Japan or what the knightly landed class eventually became in Europe. Warriors are held to a strict code of conduct, and they can be demoted if they do not adhere to that code. Members of the military do not "clock out"
You've made the comparison with Samurai several times now and I've recently reread Usagi Yojimbo. Can you tell us more about the code of conduct Loroi have to adhere to? What is considered the harsher punishment, death penalty or expulsion from the caste?

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri May 03, 2019 11:12 pm
by Arioch
Werra wrote:
Arioch wrote:The warrior class itself is a sort of hereditary "upper class," in a sense, similar to the samurai class of Japan or what the knightly landed class eventually became in Europe. Warriors are held to a strict code of conduct, and they can be demoted if they do not adhere to that code. Members of the military do not "clock out"
You've made the comparison with Samurai several times now and I've recently reread Usagi Yojimbo. Can you tell us more about the code of conduct Loroi have to adhere to?
The specific rules of conduct are as specific and exhaustive as one would expect of any military Uniform Code, but the principles can be summarized as:
  1. Honesty: Warriors are required to be both truthful and righteous (meaning to do what is right, rather than merely expedient). "Sincerity is the end and the beginning of all things; without sincerity there is nothing."
  2. Duty: Unsurprisingly, warriors are required to follow orders and maintain discipline. Loroi are also expected to display self-control: reckless or suicidal behavior is considered destructive to the unit. A proper warrior fights with a cool head.
  3. Unity: Loyalty to the group is considered very important. "The interest of a group member becomes the interest of all members."
  4. Valor: More than simple bravery on the battlefield, fearlessness is required in doing one's duty. "Perceiving what is right, and doing it not, argues lack of courage."
  5. Austerity: Warriors are expected to live for the common good, not for individual enrichment. In general, a warrior is forbidden from having sources of income outside her military salary (if any), and she can own very little beyond personal gear. Property received from various sources or inherited from family must usually be placed in some kind of trust or similar arrangement.
Werra wrote:What is considered the harsher punishment, death penalty or expulsion from the caste?
I guess that would depend on the individual. I think that many of the acts that could get you expelled involve some form of cowardice, so there are probably plenty of individuals who would prefer expulsion.

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 8:41 am
by boldilocks
In lieu of the recent flareup of the abortion debate, how would the Loroi feel about the concept of abortion?
Based on how their society functions, it seems almost preposterous for a Loroi woman to ever want to have one. Would they as a society find this kind discussion banal, or would at least the government find it a useful tool for population control? (I'm guessing abortion of male children would be considered a serious crime in either case.)

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 2:53 pm
by Arioch
boldilocks wrote:In lieu of the recent flareup of the abortion debate, how would the Loroi feel about the concept of abortion?
Based on how their society functions, it seems almost preposterous for a Loroi woman to ever want to have one. Would they as a society find this kind discussion banal, or would at least the government find it a useful tool for population control? (I'm guessing abortion of male children would be considered a serious crime in either case.)
It's not an important issue for the Loroi. The Loroi are not religious, and are pragmatic to an extreme... as you would expect of a warrior culture where the folks in charge kill people for a living. Under Loroi law, children have very limited rights until they come of age, and it's legal to euthanize them right up to that point... but they rarely exercise this option. As you allude to, the only reason that Loroi would want an abortion would be in the case of danger to the mother's life, and even then that would be questionable. Most Loroi don't use birth control, as that would defeat the whole purpose of sex.

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 2:47 pm
by boldilocks
Arioch wrote:
boldilocks wrote:In lieu of the recent flareup of the abortion debate, how would the Loroi feel about the concept of abortion?
Based on how their society functions, it seems almost preposterous for a Loroi woman to ever want to have one. Would they as a society find this kind discussion banal, or would at least the government find it a useful tool for population control? (I'm guessing abortion of male children would be considered a serious crime in either case.)
It's not an important issue for the Loroi. The Loroi are not religious, and are pragmatic to an extreme... as you would expect of a warrior culture where the folks in charge kill people for a living. Under Loroi law, children have very limited rights until they come of age, and it's legal to euthanize them right up to that point... but they rarely exercise this option. As you allude to, the only reason that Loroi would want an abortion would be in the case of danger to the mother's life, and even then that would be questionable. Most Loroi don't use birth control, as that would defeat the whole purpose of sex.
I suppose it's an interesting conundrum for a loroi mother to be whose life is in danger. To have the fetus terminated and perhaps gain another chance later in life, a life that can last for several hundred years, or to give birth and know that while she may die her genetic lineage will continue. But then, the way that family structures work it seems as a mother wouldn't be that bothered by the loss of a child, insofar as family bonds aren't supposed to be very close. Which is also interesting, since the sansai connection is supposed to be stronger with immediate skin contact one would think that pregnant loroi would have a constant and intense connections with their child while it is in the womb.
Are loroi fetuses immune to that kind of mental intrusion? I feel like a developing fetus would be in danger of having the mothers personality continually imprinted on it during the course of a pregnancy.

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 6:08 pm
by Arioch
boldilocks wrote:I suppose it's an interesting conundrum for a loroi mother to be whose life is in danger. To have the fetus terminated and perhaps gain another chance later in life, a life that can last for several hundred years, or to give birth and know that while she may die her genetic lineage will continue.
I think from a calculated point of view, the mother's life is clearly more valuable. But from an emotional point of view, a Loroi mother has to factor in the effort she had to put in to get pregnant in the first place, whether she has expectations of ever getting another chance to become pregnant, and the societal value of personal courage and acceptance of personal risk that is expected by a warrior culture, in addition to the biological imperative to protect one's offspring.

But considering that the Loroi currently have pretty advanced medical technology, this kind of decision is probably rare.
boldilocks wrote:But then, the way that family structures work it seems as a mother wouldn't be that bothered by the loss of a child, insofar as family bonds aren't supposed to be very close. Which is also interesting, since the sansai connection is supposed to be stronger with immediate skin contact one would think that pregnant loroi would have a constant and intense connections with their child while it is in the womb.
Are loroi fetuses immune to that kind of mental intrusion? I feel like a developing fetus would be in danger of having the mothers personality continually imprinted on it during the course of a pregnancy.
The principal difference in Loroi society is that child care is distributed amongst the group rather than solely by the mother, but this doesn't mean that the mother has no role at all in child-rearing or that she considers her children expendable. A species such as ours that requires a lengthy, burdensome pregnancy and extensive parental care during infancy and young childhood probably wouldn't survive if mothers had no interest in their offspring. Loroi mothers often experience an intense bond with their children during pregnancy, as there is a telepathic as well as physical connection. After birth, some mothers and daughters may continue and build on those bonds, or they may not (especially if the mother is off on a starship most of the time, or if she is of a very high office and simply has no time).

Loroi telepathy is a form of communication; it does not imprint the sender's personality on the receiver. A fetus experiencing the mother's telepathy would be analogous to a human fetus hearing the mother's vocal speech, though more intense. From what I understand, human babies are stimulated by hearing voices while still in the womb, and that it can be positive for their development. I would expect that the pre-natal experience of telepathy is probably also beneficial for Loroi babies.

An unborn baby's mind has no telepathic defenses, but also not much to work with. It would probably be pretty easy to invade a fetus' mind, but I'm not sure what an attacker could do once there, since the fetus has very little in the way of conscious control over its own body. Such an attacker would also have to contend with the mother's telepathic abilities, as she would surely be aware of the intrusion attempt.

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 9:44 pm
by icekatze
hi hi

Being genetically engineered, I imagine the Loroi would also be faced with fewer natural complications that would require advanced medicine.

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Sun May 19, 2019 9:05 am
by White
I had some questions about Loroi culture, just point me to the webpage if these have already been addressed however.

1) Do Loroi have a war exemption clause for designated persons, ala Mosely. For instance, would any potential Einstein be shielded from battle, if so would this be a restriction of said Einstein's right to fight or an extension of their right to not fight?

2) Do Loroi in a warrior or any other cast who show special abilities get moved around? I remember reading that having telekinetic powers gets you a shot at the big time, i.e. being a soldier, but what about movements in the other way? For example, say a Loroi in a warrior caste is discovered to be a complete genius in the sciences, like, whoa, the force is strong with this one, totally equal to mass times acceleration squared. Would said Loroi be shunted away to where they might be more useful, or would their intelligence be seen as an asset to their ability to thrive in the military culture? Vonneuman could have exceed at many things after all. Would a particularly intelligent Loroi in say, a scientist caste, be able to leverage that skill to get into the military?

3) Has there ever been a mass upheval of Loroi society? Like, where there was a large percentage of the civilian population suddenly becoming warriors due to some reason or another.

4) What is loroi family life, like. I remember they are raised communally by females and segregated by gender, but..then what. What does a Loroi do when she grows up, I imagine once she goes through the respective right of passage for whatever her caste is she'd move on, but how are friendships and relationships maintained? Are siblings likely to stick together? do they just make new freinds at their new job? Do they have reunions?

5) Are communes for children segregated by caste/guild affiliation?

6) How do Loroi interact with societies that they move into. For example, if Loroi are moving to a colony do Loroi arrivals travel to said planet with the entire family? Do they keep in contact with the "main" family back home?

7) Do loroi have video games? Or animation? Do they have any equivalent to famous people in entertainment?

8) What creative tasks do Loroi take part in? I remember reading that they don't do much fiction and, perhaps wrongly, went away with the impression that they mostly use their sanzai to tell legends and other old stories.

9) Loroi mental health. I won't ask for too many specifics, but I just wanted to ask if all the workers in the profession were male.

10) If a Loroi dies, who shows up to the funeral, and who would be sad. I think this might just be a more clear distillation of what I was trying to ask with question 4.

11) How are the communes set up exactly? Would it be normal for a commune of children to be "self sufficient" in terms of child rearing? For example, it would have all the resources and people needed to give said children all the education and care they need, or would it have to outsource to things like schools (both of soft and hard knocks) and playgrounds and the like? And how often would different communes interact, is there any overlap between different communes in terms of their membership? How large is the average commune? I also imagine that a child to an important general would basically be like all the other children except that she doesn't have the advantage of her mother doting on her sometimes. Would this cut down on hereditary positions in the military or are there other mechanisms for advantaging heirs?

I understand that a lot of these things are subject to cultural forces as well as time period, but a generalized answer works for me.

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Sun May 19, 2019 4:37 pm
by Arioch
White wrote:1) Do Loroi have a war exemption clause for designated persons, ala Mosely. For instance, would any potential Einstein be shielded from battle, if so would this be a restriction of said Einstein's right to fight or an extension of their right to not fight?
There is no formal "exemption from fighting" for a warrior, but good administrators try to put their best people where they can be most effective, and so hopefully a top theoretical physicist would be put in a lab somewhere instead of in the infantry. The Loroi warrior class is responsible for a variety of government and infrastructure jobs that we would consider civilian, so being in the military for the Loroi doesn't necessarily mean fighting on the front line, and even in the fighting specialties there is no shortage of administrative jobs. It is unlikely that a Loroi Einstein would find herself in a foxhole.
White wrote:2) Do Loroi in a warrior or any other cast who show special abilities get moved around? I remember reading that having telekinetic powers gets you a shot at the big time, i.e. being a soldier, but what about movements in the other way? For example, say a Loroi in a warrior caste is discovered to be a complete genius in the sciences, like, whoa, the force is strong with this one, totally equal to mass times acceleration squared. Would said Loroi be shunted away to where they might be more useful, or would their intelligence be seen as an asset to their ability to thrive in the military culture? Vonneuman could have exceed at many things after all. Would a particularly intelligent Loroi in say, a scientist caste, be able to leverage that skill to get into the military?
Some science and engineering jobs are civilian, but many are military. The "scientist caste" is military. Families and administrators try to place children according to their aptitudes, but there is some movement between specialties allowed, if an individual later shows aptitudes for a different specialty. An example of this would be Ashrain, who started as Teidar due to her psychokinetic abilities, but who then switched to Soroin when it was clear that she had aptitudes for ship operation and command. But there is not normally movement allowed between military and civilian disciplines. There are science and engineering jobs in both the military and civilian worlds, so a top scientist could find a place regardless of whether she was a warrior or a worker.
White wrote:3) Has there ever been a mass upheval of Loroi society? Like, where there was a large percentage of the civilian population suddenly becoming warriors due to some reason or another.
Not in recent history. If you go back far enough (to the Deinar Iron Age), such upheavals were common, as civilization was constantly being destroyed and rebuilt. Probably the most recent such upheaval would have been the atomic wars on Perrein [edit: some time before] 800 CE. On Deinar after the Iron Age, a community which lost most of its warriors for whatever reason and had only civilians left would usually be assimilated (or conquered) by a neighboring community that still had warriors.
White wrote:4) What is loroi family life, like. I remember they are raised communally by females and segregated by gender, but..then what. What does a Loroi do when she grows up, I imagine once she goes through the respective right of passage for whatever her caste is she'd move on, but how are friendships and relationships maintained? Are siblings likely to stick together? do they just make new freinds at their new job? Do they have reunions?
In the warrior class, it depends on what kind of service she is in and where she will be assigned. Most military Loroi do not have much choice as to where they go. For many infrastructure, administration or local defense jobs, a warrior may be posted locally and able to stay close to her family. For many fleet jobs, duty may require her to be assigned to a ship or remote base, in which case she may be somewhat isolated from her family, and her co-workers will become her most important circle of friends. Members of the same training bands are often deployed together, so some of her new co-workers may already be friends and family (an example of this is Talon & Spiral, who trained as children together and were deployed to the same squadron). Warriors who are deployed remotely can stay in touch with family by mail and through occasional visits home on furlough.

In the worker class, those children born to civilian mothers tend to stay with the family company or guild. Those born to warrior mothers (who fail dropped out of military training) are usually ostracized by their birth families and must create a new civilian circle of friends. On the positive side, civilian Loroi have more personal choice about where they go and what they do.

Here are some examples from characters in the story:
Tempo was born on Perrein before the war to a Mizol mother of a notable family working in the local intelligence community. She was raised in a family creche, and trained in the Perrein Mizol academy after her diral rites. Upon graduation, she was posted locally and maintained close ties to her family group. She had two daughters, both of whom also enrolled as Mizol. The war started when Tempo was 29, and since then she has been reassigned numerous times, but she has kept in relatively close contact with her family. Because of the nature of her job, Tempo does not form many new close friendships with her co-workers.

Beryl was born aboard a cruiser during the Semoset offensive. As a baby she was taken off the ship at the first port of call (a frontier colony in the Steppes), and her mother died shortly thereafter. Her mother was of no important family, she was taken into state custody and eventually transferred to a Listel community on Mezan, where she did her training and was educated. Beryl had a child while at the academy (it’s common for young warriors to get pregnant from their first sexual experience after passing the diral trials), and then was posted to a starship shortly after graduation. Beryl has been on active duty ever since. Beryl’s young son is currently in a Nedatan creche on Deinar; she has been able to visit him several times since her deployment. Beryl has only briefly met with several of her mother’s relatives, who are scattered around the empire, and she detests Mezan, so she doesn’t really have a “home” outside her current ship.
White wrote:5) Are communes for children segregated by caste/guild affiliation?
If you mean the creches that raise children from birth to about age 6, it varies. Some are run by caste/guild entities, in which case they will be segregated by specialty, but some are run by local communities, governments or even local family groups. Civilian creches are rare, found only on planets where civilian mothers are regularly allowed to reproduce, and where they exist they are always segregated from warrior creches.

The diral training facilities (age 6 to 8) are segregated by caste.
White wrote:6) How do Loroi interact with societies that they move into. For example, if Loroi are moving to a colony do Loroi arrivals travel to said planet with the entire family? Do they keep in contact with the "main" family back home?
In the warrior class, movement is usually the result of military reassignment/deployment, and affects only the individual. Other members of that individual's family have their own duties, and usually cannot move at will. This is part of the reason that children are usually raised communally. Local communities will often have "welcome wagons" to help integrate new arrivals, as I imagine many military barracks towns do today.
White wrote:7) Do loroi have video games? Or animation? Do they have any equivalent to famous people in entertainment?

8) What creative tasks do Loroi take part in? I remember reading that they don't do much fiction and, perhaps wrongly, went away with the impression that they mostly use their sanzai to tell legends and other old stories.
Loroi creative outlets include art and sculpture, dance, athletic competition and the like. Writing is limited to academic or technical works; storytelling is limited to history and legends. Sanzai is truthful, and the Loroi consider fiction to be a form of falsehood. They do not have native equivalents of vocal music, creative writing, movies or dramatic television (though some alien members of the Union do, and so many Loroi will have some exposure to these forms of media). Loroi do play games, including some computer games.

Loroi entertainment mostly involves live performances. There are famous performers, though not to same degree as in our media culture.
White wrote:9) Loroi mental health. I won't ask for too many specifics, but I just wanted to ask if all the workers in the profession were male.
No, most mental health workers are female, though certain specialties are exclusively male.
White wrote:10) If a Loroi dies, who shows up to the funeral, and who would be sad. I think this might just be a more clear distillation of what I was trying to ask with question 4.
It depends very much on the individual and the community. Usually it would be combination of family and friends/co-workers, much as in most human societies.
White wrote:11) How are the communes set up exactly? Would it be normal for a commune of children to be "self sufficient" in terms of child rearing? For example, it would have all the resources and people needed to give said children all the education and care they need, or would it have to outsource to things like schools (both of soft and hard knocks) and playgrounds and the like? And how often would different communes interact, is there any overlap between different communes in terms of their membership? How large is the average commune? I also imagine that a child to an important general would basically be like all the other children except that she doesn't have the advantage of her mother doting on her sometimes. Would this cut down on hereditary positions in the military or are there other mechanisms for advantaging heirs?
In the developmental creches (age 0 to 6) there is no requirement that the children be segregated, and so they may rely on outsourced expertise, and children may move between facilities as needed. There is substantial diversity in how such creches are operated, and how large they are. At this phase, there is no explicit isolation from family or birth mother (some being run by the family itself if it's large enough), and a mother who is local and interested can spend time with the child.

In the diral trial phase (age 6 to 8), the children are sent to training facilities appropriate for their specialty and are explicitly isolated from family and society at large. They are grouped into bands of about 50 children each of similar age; there may be many such groups at a particular facility. The training at this phase is light on "book learning" and mostly about military fitness and temperament training. Most formal education will be conducted in the formal caste academies after graduation from the trials (or in the civilian equivalents for those who fail the trials).

Ideally, all children are treated the same within a band without regard to parentage, though training facilities may be affected in quality by local affluence, and they are not totally immune to the influence of very powerful mothers.

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Sun May 19, 2019 7:20 pm
by Werra
Arioch wrote: Not in recent history. If you go back far enough (to the Deinar Iron Age), such upheavals were common, as civilization was constantly being destroyed and rebuilt. Probably the most recent such upheaval would have been the atomic wars on Perrein c.800 CE.
How do the atomic wars line up with telepathic discovery (and contact?) by Deinar?

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Sun May 19, 2019 8:00 pm
by GeoModder
It does kinda look as if the Deinar Loroi had a walkover at Perrein once their ships were able to reach the sister world.

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Sun May 19, 2019 10:02 pm
by Arioch
Oops, I misread my notes: 800 CE is when reunification happened, not the atomic wars. The atomic wars were some time before then; it's not specific when.

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Tue May 21, 2019 4:38 am
by Sweforce
Arioch wrote:Oops, I misread my notes: 800 CE is when reunification happened, not the atomic wars. The atomic wars were some time before then; it's not specific when.
Maybe they bombed themselves out of the calendar and simply no longer know the exact dates.

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Wed May 22, 2019 2:11 am
by White
Arioch wrote:
Beryl was born aboard a cruiser during the Semoset offensive. As a baby she was taken off the ship at the first port of call (a frontier colony in the Steppes), and her mother died shortly thereafter. Her mother was of no important family, she was taken into state custody and eventually transferred to a Listel community on Mezan, where she did her training and was educated. Beryl had a child while at the academy (it’s common for young warriors to get pregnant from their first sexual experience after passing the diral trials), and then was posted to a starship shortly after graduation. Beryl has been on active duty ever since. Beryl’s young son is currently in a Nedatan creche on Deinar; she has been able to visit him several times since her deployment. Beryl has only briefly met with several of her mother’s relatives, who are scattered around the empire, and she detests Mezan, so she doesn’t really have a “home” outside her current ship.

White wrote:6) How do Loroi interact with societies that they move into. For example, if Loroi are moving to a colony do Loroi arrivals travel to said planet with the entire family? Do they keep in contact with the "main" family back home?
In the warrior class, movement is usually the result of military reassignment/deployment, and affects only the individual. Other members of that individual's family have their own duties, and usually cannot move at will. This is part of the reason that children are usually raised communally. Local communities will often have "welcome wagons" to help integrate new arrivals, as I imagine many military barracks towns do today.

Loroi do play games, including some computer games.
Thanks for taking the time to answer; it seems you've got a pretty comprehensive universe here. I've got some clarification questions in mind too.

1) If it doesn't precede something you're planning to put in the comic, could you say why Beryl doesn't like Mezan?

2) I was actually referring more to how civilian families handle moving to a planet that is undergoing colonization in this case, especially how powerful families keep, or try to keep, contact and unity between separated tribes.

3) I'd known that they'd played computed versions of real games. As clarification, however, do their games consist solely of online Chess and Flight simulator, or does it ever cross over into "Mortal Kombat" and "Doom" territory. I'm not sure how to delineate the difference between the two game types except to say that the second category is more attentive to the artistic aspects of the field. For example, a chess simulator can be run with basically any graphics level as long as you can show the pieces and the board, and flight simulators are focused on realism. Fighting games and the like, on the other hand, focus a lot of effort on the "fun" aspects like flashy designs and game mechanics which, in my opinion, is where the "art of virtual games" lies.


4) Where do Loroi live? I'm sure this is subject to great variability, but do they get houses or apartments, or do they live in communal living areas with the rest of their caste/guild? I'm also betting that there's going to be a great difference between the military and civilian sides, but I'm mainly interested in the civilian aspect here.

Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Posted: Wed May 22, 2019 4:55 am
by Arioch
White wrote:1) If it doesn't precede something you're planning to put in the comic, could you say why Beryl doesn't like Mezan?
Mainly, it's just a very harsh place to live. Part of her survival training there involved going out of the underground habitats into the desert without breathing apparatus and a limited supply of water. Beryl did not enjoy herself during this training.
White wrote:2) I was actually referring more to how civilian families handle moving to a planet that is undergoing colonization in this case, especially how powerful families keep, or try to keep, contact and unity between separated tribes.
When we're talking about powerful Loroi families, strictly speaking, we're mostly talking about the warrior class. Most civilians are not permitted to reproduce; the majority of civilians were born to warrior families, with which they no longer associate, and so actual biological civilian families tend to be rare and small. Instead, civilians form new circles of close friends, mostly within the company or guild they work with. It would be kind of like moving from Europe to the New World during the Age of Sail.

Civilians moving to a new colony might go as individuals seeking a new job, or as part of an existing company branching out to a new location, or perhaps as a group of friends striking out on their own. In any of these cases, the migrants can stay in contact with those they left behind via mail and occasional visits. However, telepathy tends to make Loroi somewhat insular, and so it will be difficult to maintain the same level of intimacy with those who are far away as one can with the people who are in the same community.
White wrote:3) I'd known that they'd played computed versions of real games. As clarification, however, do their games consist solely of online Chess and Flight simulator, or does it ever cross over into "Mortal Kombat" and "Doom" territory. I'm not sure how to delineate the difference between the two game types except to say that the second category is more attentive to the artistic aspects of the field. For example, a chess simulator can be run with basically any graphics level as long as you can show the pieces and the board, and flight simulators are focused on realism. Fighting games and the like, on the other hand, focus a lot of effort on the "fun" aspects like flashy designs and game mechanics which, in my opinion, is where the "art of virtual games" lies.
Any kind of game can be fun; whether it's a flight simulator or a fighting game or a shooter or an abstract game like chess or Tetris or Bejeweled. Fun is not the issue. Games like Mortal Kombat and DOOM are different from fighting simulators not because they're fun, but because they are based on a fictional, fantasy narrative. Such things aren't completely alien to the Loroi, but the Loroi are deeply suspicious of them. The more abstract a game is, the less it needs to resemble reality, but the more realistic you make your fantasy game, the more a Loroi is likely to start asking questions about what it is supposed to represent.

It wasn't too long ago here in the United States when parents were deeply concerned about their kids playing Dungeons and Dragons. It's easy to see what concerned them: at best their children seemed to be wasting time and losing touch with the real world, and at worst there were concerns that they were going to hurt each other or become Satan worshippers.
White wrote:4) Where do Loroi live? I'm sure this is subject to great variability, but do they get houses or apartments, or do they live in communal living areas with the rest of their caste/guild? I'm also betting that there's going to be a great difference between the military and civilian sides, but I'm mainly interested in the civilian aspect here.
It's not that much different from how we live. Loroi civilians tend to live near where they work, whether in the city or the countryside or somewhere in between. Some larger companies or guilds may have their own housing in urban areas, and some may be self-contained, either due to practical reasons (like hostile environments) or perhaps because the company is trying to get its employees to use only its own services. Other times employees must find their own housing, purchased or rented from third parties. Some civilians are self-employed.