White wrote:I just thought that the pipolsid had mastered politics and leveraged their biology to an extent that they were like a super efficient hive mind of sorts, even though they had free will, hence my use of the words "somehow managed to get direct democracy to work." Meaning, that they'd managed to get the theoretical efficiency of the proposed system by overcoming the practical hurdles, in the same sort of way that a hive mind would make communism work.
I suppose it depends on your definitions, but I'm not sure it's possible to have individual free will within a "hive mind."
White wrote:For example, compared to a human rate of progress, how fast were they going historically? Did their aquatic environment help or hinder them, and what was the effect of Soia Leon artifacts on their development, those kinds of things.
I'm not sure how much faster or slower development got after the formation of the Loroi union, and how much of that can be attributed to an advance in the difficulty of advancement.
The Pipolsid evolved to be able to fabricate sophisticated structures from chemical compounds secreted by their own bodies, which were necessary to protect their fragile bodies from predators. Their primitive ancestors initially used these "bubble cities" like bee hives, as storage and processing facilities for gathered foodstuffs, but they quickly worked out how to build structures that would foster the growth of algae- and fungus- like organisms, and so the Pipolsid emerged into sentience with a ready-made civilization complete with farming, city-building, and a complex society, completely skipping the lengthy tribal hunter-gathered mode that most species go through. However, since they were underwater and without easy access to fire or most forms of artificial metallurgy, most Pipolsid technology hit a roadblack at the pre-industrial level, and stayed there for a very long time.
In the archaeological record on Lenzano (the Pipolsid homeworld), remnants of a TL12 Pipolsid civilization suddenly appear at the beginning of the Soia era, so it seems fairly certainly that someone engaged in some uplift activity with the Pipolsid. This ultra-tech civilization was destroyed at the end of that era, as was the case across the Local Bubble, but the Pipolsid recovered their own "native" civilization much more quickly than other contemporaries because of their ability to rely on their own biological building materials, their ability to pass down memories across generations without external technology, and because of their cooperative and empathic nature that allowed them to avoid the kind of barbarism that ultimately consumed the early post-fall Loroi and Barsam civilizations. The Soia-era ruins on Lenzano helped the Pipolsid to eventually recover high technology, but this was a slow road. So the long-winded upshot of all that is that the Pipolsid are not especially rapid in terms of technological development.
They are also not at all warlike. When threatened by the Delrias or Mannadi, in the absence of Loroi protection, they simply gave in to whatever external demands were made on them.
White wrote:Also, Arioch, do you know the populations of the races in the local bubble? I'd expect the smaller creatures to have higher populations, but then that might just be a fallacy.
I don't have many specific numbers for total populations. But in a high-tech society, I'm not sure that physical size would have much correlation with population sizes.
White wrote:Also, how deep do the Pipolsid live? Their apperance seems to be based off deep underwater jellyfish. If so, it makes me wonder how difficult a seige of a Pipolsid city would be.
My sense is that anything several miles under an ocean is essentially nuke proof if they can maintain even local defences. And I doubt any race in the bubble has better underwater craft than the pipolsid. On the other hand, I'm not sure how powerful and effective anti matter would be. I remember reading that Turning on the engines of a warship inside an atmosphere would devestate the ecology, but I'm not sure what that means.
Would it mean that the ship could just fly by in the upper atmosphere and an extinction level event happens, or would it have to swim down to within several miles of a deep underwater Pipolsid city, exposing itself to enemy fire all the while?
Of course, this is a moot point if the pipolsid can survive only in shallow water. I can see that they have eyes, but their transparency and use of biolumencence makes it about even for me as to what level of the ocean they live in.
The Pipolsid structures (especially with high technology) allow them to live at almost any depth. Their flexible bodies can withstand variable pressures without much problem. However, they rarely live in the very deep ocean, as there's not much there to eat.
Being underwater will definitely give you some resistance to airbursts or attacks against ground targets, but whoever attacked Lenzano knew who their targets were, and adjusted their methods accordingly. I don't know that much about hydrodynamics, but I can infer from how depth charges work that the shock waves from sub-surface detonations can be very damaging. Still, it can be hard to find targets in deep water, and Lenzano has better than average survival of relics from that era.
White wrote:Also, for how long do Pipolsid live? And the rest of the union races?
I don't have that worked out for most of the races, but I think given their biology and lifestyle, it makes sense for Pipolsid individuals to be fairly long-lived.
nweismuller wrote:The Union race I'm actually interested in learning more about is the Neridi, as well as being curious to learn a little more about their constitutional monarchy.
I have an essay on the Neridi in the works, but that will take some more time to finish.