Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[Arioch]

I really want to ask. How does the concept of hyperspace work in the Outsider universe? There’s not really much details on the technology itself. Doesn’t have to be a realistic explanation, I just want to know how it works

There's a description here: https://well-of-souls.com/outsider/forum_ftl_tech.html

Or was there something more specific that you wanted to know?

is hyperspace in outsider more like the warp from Warhammer 40K / Event Horizon film - OR - is it more like the hyperspace in Babylon 5

It doesn't really behave like either... it's not "folding space," you can't just wander in and out at will, and there aren't demons involved.

[Krulle]

Since there is no time in hyperspace (Outsider), it's definitely not B5 style.
And I do not know warhammer, so cannot comment on that.

[Krulle]

Read up a bit on the warhammer 40k, and indeed, it sounds a lot more like that.

Only specific points are viable for jumps, and navigation needs to be precise, as well as not all points are accessible, and longer jumps make it tremendously more difficult to get where you wanted to be, and not "become lost in HyperSpace"

[CaptainChaos]

for those who dont know, in Warhammer 40K, "the Warp" aka "the Immaterium", "Realm of Chaos" or "Hell" is basically a dimension of psychic energy that underpins all realties. in 40K, most forms of faster than light travel involve tearing a hole into the Warp and basically flinging your ship in the general direction of where you want to go and hope you pop back out near your target within a reasonable time (time doesnt flow logically in Immaterium so you can arrive back in real space years before or after you left). You need psychic "navigators" and the light of the Golden throne to have any hope of having a reasonable level of accuracy while traveling and becoming becalmed in the warp or having whole sectors of space isolated by warp storms for centuries at a time is a constant issue

Also dont turn off your Geller field generator or you'll find out why 40K fans think "Event Horizon" is a prequal for warhammer 40K from before the invention of Geller fields

[Snoofman]

And now for something completely different…

When it comes to loroi males, is there some sort of ritual involved during or before mating encounters? In fact, do males provide entertainment for females like music or dance? If so, what?

[Arioch]

When it comes to loroi males, is there some sort of ritual involved during or before mating encounters? In fact, do males provide entertainment for females like music or dance? If so, what?

The Loroi have many subcultures, and there are a wide variety of customs and rituals involved with mating encounters, but it is not usual for the males to provide entertainment for the females. In most cases, the males are of a higher social status than the females they are being mated with.

(The "geisha" analogy may not have been the best choice in this case.)

[gigachad]

Are loroi capable of monogamy? or does it seem to them as something unnatural and not possible for perception as a result of their development of their society? would the social structure of human society be of interest to the study of the union?

[Arioch]

Are loroi capable of monogamy? or does it seem to them as something unnatural and not possible for perception as a result of their development of their society? would the social structure of human society be of interest to the study of the union?

Loroi individuals are "capable" of pretty much anything, and there's no particular reason that the concept of something like monogamy would not be appealing to an individual Loroi female, but it doesn't make sense for Loroi society as a whole, since monogamy would mean excluding 90% of the female population from the equation.

I'm sure that Loroi anthropologists will be eager to study human society, but it's not as if the practice of monogamy will be something they've never seen before.

[Bamax]

In kindergarten and middle school kids were encouraged to sell pizza or candy for fundraisers for the school.

As a reward, if we met the goal set for us for candy or pizza sold (in reality money made but why say that to doting parents?), the principal would shave his beard or even his head and go bald.

Back then... that was exciting as little kid. Also remember during a school rally students got the chance to mash pie in teacher's faces or the principal, I cannot remember which.

Do the Loroi have customs like as they grow up in their massive crechy system for kids?

Or do the Loroi in general not allow for kids to have a day where they get throw pie at adults etc?

[Arioch]

Commerce is forbidden to the warrior class; only those who have renounced warrior status are permitted to engage in commercial activity of any kind. Since Loroi children (with only a few exceptions) are raised to be warriors, it would be very strange to assign them fundraising tasks.

As for the rest, it would depend on local customs and the attitudes of individual teachers, but it's hard to imagine that "pie the principal" activities would be very common in a stratified, authoritarian system such as the Loroi have.

[Bamax]

Commerce is forbidden to the warrior class; only those who have renounced warrior status are permitted to engage in commercial activity of any kind. Since Loroi children (with only a few exceptions) are raised to be warriors, it would be very strange to assign them fundraising tasks.

As for the rest, it would depend on local customs and the attitudes of individual teachers, but it's hard to imagine that "pie the principal" activities would be very common in a stratified, authoritarian system such as the Loroi have.

Damn... please don't take this the wrong way, but the more I learn about the Loroi and their strict, competitive society (because what else will warriors do with each other if they cannot engage in commerce?) the more I see they have in common with the religion I left less than 2 years ago.

1. No birthdays.

2. Trained from birth into a religious authortian society that is so stratified that those with titles often look down on those who do not, and EVERYONE is expected abd encouraged to aim for those titled positions and if you're not, somethings wrong with you.

Well... at least the Loroi don't practice shunning... or do they?

When I say shun I mean zero contact with those who abandon my former religion UNLESS it's absolutely necessary or an emergency.... even if family related by blood.

The Loroi do that? Or is it simply something that depends on the specific Loroi culture?

Some are at the far end of extremism and others are more liberal.

The latter is most likely true since you have taken great pains to explain that the Loroi are anything but a monolithic society like your standard Klingon or Ferengi.

[Said2k]

Why don't Loroi just modify the chromosomes in the womb to create more males? or is that a taboo?

[Bamax]

Why don't Loroi just modify the chromosomes in the womb to create more males? or is that a taboo?

That's a really good point. Especially because the Loroi are designer made species and are even aware of it.

I reckom they know about this but they don't do it because it would threaten the power of the status quo.

The population would get over crowded and violence over lack of sufficient resources would result.

Remember the Reign of Chaos? A time where Loroi were not so strict about having sex and were tribal?

Like that

[Said2k]

During conflicts, a larger population can be beneficial as it provides greater economical support and a larger pool of people for military purposes. Given their advanced space travel capabilities, it's reasonable to assume they can support a larger population, don't you agree?

Alternatively, the Loroi could have done the opposite. They might have changed their chromosomes to have more female soldiers during war, which could explain the unbalanced sex ratio among the Loroi.

[Arioch]

When a warrior is expelled from the warrior class (either by choice or involuntarily), she is traditionally shunned by her former friends and family.

Why don't Loroi just modify the chromosomes in the womb to create more males? or is that a taboo?

Why would they want to?

During conflicts, a larger population can be beneficial as it provides greater economical support and a larger pool of people for military purposes. Given their advanced space travel capabilities, it's reasonable to assume they can support a larger population, don't you agree?

Alternatively, the Loroi could have done the opposite. They might have changed their chromosomes to have more female soldiers during war, which could explain the unbalanced sex ratio among the Loroi.

Having more females than males doesn't hamper your population growth; quite the opposite. Reproduction rate is limited by the number of females who can give birth; as long as you have enough males to impregnate those females (which the Loroi do), having more males actually reduces population growth potential. Loroi males aren't completely useless economically, but they don't contribute in any direct way to the war effort -- they can't fight, and they don't produce material goods.

In humans, only ~50% of the population can have babies, and it takes 18 years to grow to adulthood (though females are reproductively viable at ~14... but let's not go there).

In Loroi, ~90% of the population can have babies, and they're fully adult in 8 years. Loroi can increase their population much faster than humans can.

[Krulle]

Although many Loroi will be killed in service, and might therefore not be able to give birth.....

But for that actually to slow them down to Human reproductive speeds, the losses/in service amount would have to be 8/9th of the whole female population (to bring the quota of men/female to app. 1:1). And even then the shorter maturation rate (which is likely also accompanied by a shorter pregnancy time) would still be in favour of the Loroi. And on top of that would come the longer lifetime and reproduction time the Loroi have.

If 80% of all adult population would be in the war/lost in the war, such a war would be tremendously devastating for the economy if seen from Human perspective, to the point a civilisation would break down (and for the Loroi it only works because basically all of their economy is run by the revolution forces - eh - military castes...).

[Said2k]

so the Loroi have:
1. shorter maturation rate so they can quickly reproduce. (2.25 times younger)
2. longer lifespan so they can reproduce for a long time. (5-7 times older)
3. no menopause so they can never stop reproducing.
4. 90% reproductively viable population so everyone can reproduce? (1.8 times higher rate)
5. only need to eat once a day, so loroi children are resource efficient than human children (3 times less resources)

They've got everything they need (and even more) to support a crazy high rate of reproduction, what are the odds? I won't be surprised if their overall population reaches trillions.

But what's the usual number of kids a female Loroi wants to have in her lifetime? I guess being monogamous helps in taking care of the children, as the parents can stick together and give them all the attention they need. This makes me wonder what actually motivates a female Loroi to have babies, since they're not seen as traditional moms. And how does their society distribute resources to these Loroi "families" if there's no visible caregiver around?

LOROIVSHUMANSTRATEGY.png (58.88 KiB) Viewed 49691 times

It seems that a male only needs a mating encounter with roughly 9-10 female loroi to match human populations then he's done for a lifetime, I assume that a male loroi doesn't have sex frequently at all, 10% is a bit too much if their role is only to reproduce.

[Demarquis]

"Damn... please don't take this the wrong way, but the more I learn about the Loroi and their strict, competitive society (because what else will warriors do with each other if they cannot engage in commerce?) the more I see they have in common with the religion I left less than 2 years ago."

I beleive (correct me if I'm wrong) that Loroi culture is loosely based on Japanese society leading up to WWII. So the parallel you see is probably not just coincidence (two authoritarian cultures having quite a bit in common).

[Arioch]

But what's the usual number of kids a female Loroi wants to have in her lifetime? -/- This makes me wonder what actually motivates a female Loroi to have babies, since they're not seen as traditional moms.

I think the biological impulse in species like Loroi or humans is usually "as many offspring as you can." In a primitive society, child/infant mortality and hazards to adults means constant attrition, and there's a very tangible benefit to the labor provided to a family by children, so there's a distinct advantage to having as many kids as you can reasonably feed.

As human societies become more technologically advanced, birth rates fall, I think primarily because the desire of women to pursue their own interests competes directly with the impulse to raise children. In Loroi, there's less of a direct impact to a female's career in having children, so I don't think Loroi experience the same natural falloff in birth rates with the advance of technology... which is one of the reasons why birth rates have to be artificially controlled by society.

And how does their society distribute resources to these Loroi "families" if there's no visible caregiver around?

Loroi mothers and their families are still directly responsible for their children... a child doesn't become an orphan just because you send her to a boarding school. However, in most Loroi nations the costs of child-rearing are mostly covered by the state, regardless of who the mother is.

I beleive (correct me if I'm wrong) that Loroi culture is loosely based on Japanese society leading up to WWII. So the parallel you see is probably not just coincidence (two authoritarian cultures having quite a bit in common).

Loroi society is informed by several examples of human warrior societies, including the Japanese but also specifically the Spartans and Maasai. Early human cultures were mostly warrior cultures, which had developed from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and they were almost universally very strict and harsh.

(Warrior Culture digression moved to this thread)

[SVlad]

I remembered an old conversation about "how Loroi can recreate telepathy amplifiers if they don't even understand how telepathy works".
And I think I found a good example in real life:

These resonant camerton boxes can be recreated at almost any tech level, down to probably the Bronze Age, if a sample were given. But without an understanding of waves and resonance, its functioning would look like magic.