Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[Victor_D]

What are Loroi plans, if they have any, with respect to the Umiak and the territory they occupy when they win the war?

I am not talking about how they plan to win the war (at present they may have other more urgent things on their hands, such as not losing), but assuming they defeat Umiak fleets and invade the enemy territory, what will they do with the Umiak worlds and, more importantly, Umiak allies? Are they planning a wholesale genocide of the Umiak and/or their allied/subject species? Have they even considered invading and occupying the Umiak worlds, or are they so pissed off right now that they'd glass them all without a second thought?

[boldilocks]

What are Loroi plans, if they have any, with respect to the Umiak and the territory they occupy when they win the war?

I am not talking about how they plan to win the war (at present they may have other more urgent things on their hands, such as not losing), but assuming they defeat Umiak fleets and invade the enemy territory, what will they do with the Umiak worlds and, more importantly, Umiak allies? Are they planning a wholesale genocide of the Umiak and/or their allied/subject species? Have they even considered invading and occupying the Umiak worlds, or are they so pissed off right now that they'd glass them all without a second thought?

Lebensraum

[Arioch]

What are Loroi plans, if they have any, with respect to the Umiak and the territory they occupy when they win the war?

I am not talking about how they plan to win the war (at present they may have other more urgent things on their hands, such as not losing), but assuming they defeat Umiak fleets and invade the enemy territory, what will they do with the Umiak worlds and, more importantly, Umiak allies? Are they planning a wholesale genocide of the Umiak and/or their allied/subject species? Have they even considered invading and occupying the Umiak worlds, or are they so pissed off right now that they'd glass them all without a second thought?

There is no standing policy on the matter. It would depend on the circumstances.

[boldilocks]

On page 77
https://well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider077.html
I'm seeing the loroi ships have both blue and red beams, and one has both a blue and a red beam.
Are those beams of different iterations of the same technology? Is one an upgrade over the other, and the fleet not really fully up to speed in terms of loroi tech levels?

[Arioch]

On page 77
https://well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider077.html
I'm seeing the loroi ships have both blue and red beams, and one has both a blue and a red beam.
Are those beams of different iterations of the same technology? Is one an upgrade over the other, and the fleet not really fully up to speed in terms of loroi tech levels?

They're different weapons. The bluish-white beams are the plasma pulse cannons (heavy weapons), the magenta beams are the blasters/particle beams (medium weapons)), and the red beams seen on later pages are point defense lasers.

[Hālian]

Salinn Bladestorm

What do the Salinn do?

[Arioch]

Salinn Bladestorm

What do the Salinn do?

Salinn was a clan of Arran on Deinar, in the era before the clan names were replaced with caste names.

[sunphoenix]

I'm sure this has been asked before so bear with my laziness in asking again and not looking for the ~ likely already given answer...

Its a given that Loroi can share their thoughts with each other... does this include memories? And how much sensory input is transferred, if any, in such memory communication?

Could, perhaps, Tallon 'share' with her crewsisters how it felt to hold Alex's hand.. the softness and warmth of his touch with the memory of the contact? And would she do such a thing or is that too personal?

[boldilocks]

Salinn Bladestorm

What do the Salinn do?

They shoot their best commanders and attack in human waves.

[Arioch]

I'm sure this has been asked before so bear with my laziness in asking again and not looking for the ~ likely already given answer...

Its a given that Loroi can share their thoughts with each other... does this include memories? And how much sensory input is transferred, if any, in such memory communication?

Could, perhaps, Tallon 'share' with her crewsisters how it felt to hold Alex's hand.. the softness and warmth of his touch with the memory of the contact? And would she do such a thing or is that too personal?

Telepathy isn't fundamentally different from spoken communication in this respect, but it has higher bandwidth. You can pretty effectively describe an experience using spoken language, describing every sensory impression if you want to, but it's not quite like experiencing it yourself. Telepathy would be closer, but still not quite seeing through someone else's eyes.

As to whether this information is too personal, I think that's an individual character question. Talon and Spiral are very close, but most of the other occupants of the shuttle are not particularly so.

Salinn Bladestorm

What do the Salinn do?

They shoot their best commanders and attack in human waves.

Salinn, not Stalin.

[orion1836]

There's a question... if one Loroi has song stuck in her head, will it 'infect' others?

Link COMPLETELY unrelated. You have been warned.

[Krulle]

Heh, I've been betting you'd rickroll us.

[kiwi]

At risk of reopening the “sanzai is faster than speaking” debate (TL;DR: it’s faster because the author has built it that way), a recent paper has shown that many human languages apparently come out at the same information speed. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09 ... um=Twitter

Of course, this neglects the use of heavy idiom and jargon for purposes of “compression.” Which Alex won’t be able to do because he’s the only representative of his culture in the comic at present. This is where a fiction culture could be helpful: it is willing to explore and discuss impossible things.

I’m now imaging the rare Loroi fiction junkie to be regarded like a raving Anime otaku: “Stay calm, back away slowly, do not engage in cross-narrative meta discussion.”

[Ithekro]

I’m now imaging the rare Loroi fiction junkie to be regarded like a raving Anime otaku: “Stay calm, back away slowly, do not engage in cross-narrative meta discussion.”

What would you call that? It shouldn't be Terran fiction, but give then a few decades, and you could be Terboos.

[folti]

At risk of reopening the “sanzai is faster than speaking” debate (TL;DR: it’s faster because the author has built it that way), a recent paper has shown that many human languages apparently come out at the same information speed. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09 ... um=Twitter

Of course, this neglects the use of heavy idiom and jargon for purposes of “compression.” Which Alex won’t be able to do because he’s the only representative of his culture in the comic at present. This is where a fiction culture could be helpful: it is willing to explore and discuss impossible things.

Slang is always evolving and highly group specific, so while it'd take some time you'd see a mixed crew to develop their own specific lingo centered around their jobs/social class/etc, which may or not be a hybrid language taking words/expressions from both sides..

[Angle]

Actually i was thinking about freedom of what to do and what you can achieve.
With loroi life span, even if she is not highly trained specialist she can probably live like queen amongst humans.
As for the motive of smugglers- you can get either specialist who can accumulate hundreds of years of expirience over time, or you can get specialist with knowlege way beyond human technologies.
With 2 tech levels ahead even novice civilian engineer will have something usefull.
Land of possibilities, like USA in the beggining.

Well, Loroi with technical and scientific knowledge would certainly be valuable for knowledge transfer, I'll grant you that.

But in terms of "freedom of what to do and what you can achieve", a Loroi civilian will have no more "freedom" in human society than she did in Loroi society. She will still be a second-class citizen, she still won't be able to run the government, and she still won't be able to have children. Loroi civilians aren't slaves in Loroi society... they have more freedoms, in some sense, than the warriors do.

I'm not saying there wouldn't be transfer of migrants, but I'm not sure there would be a mass exodus. And I don't think the migrants would need to be "smuggled."

Well, I think they meant material freedom, A.K.A the freedom to make more money and buy more things. Which, might be very compelling for a human, but I don't think that's quite how most Loroi think.

But even beyond that, it's not impossible? It would be a complicated and risky thing to pull off, but it's not impossible that a liberal and ambitious human nation would be willing to offer citizenship to Loroi with sufficiently valuable skills and knowledge. They could also try to crack the science behind Loroi artificial conception, or even just aim for a Loroi with the appropriate knowledge - even today, I don't think we're that far from being able to create embryos without sperm. With 140~ years of scientific progress, we should almost certainly be able to do it. Doing so for Loroi would be more difficult, but it shouldn't take more than a decade of science to figure out, at that point? Of course, I have no idea how you want to treat science in outsider, you may not be interested in having biology be quite so advanced as that, because it alters the character of the setting. And of course, this scheme runs a chance of running into all sorts of problems and might very well result in a diplomatic incident of some sort. But, as I said, it's not impossible... :/

Edit: And as a side benefit of such a policy, you also get a population of Loroi, with the potential for telepathic and telekinetic recruits. And given that they're aliens, it's also likely that they have different aptitudes than humans even beyond that, which means that an economy containing both will likely be more efficient. SO, all the more reason to try and recruit a population of Loroi. Of course, theres no gaurantee that the human population of your country will be on board with this. We have enough trouble with racism and xenophobia among ourselves, throw actual aliens into the mix? Yeah, I bet that's gonna cause problems. I dunno, we might have it all figured out by 2160? Or, we might not. Honestly for this story, I'm gonna guess not. XD

[Arioch]

Actually i was thinking about freedom of what to do and what you can achieve.
With loroi life span, even if she is not highly trained specialist she can probably live like queen amongst humans.
As for the motive of smugglers- you can get either specialist who can accumulate hundreds of years of expirience over time, or you can get specialist with knowlege way beyond human technologies.
With 2 tech levels ahead even novice civilian engineer will have something usefull.
Land of possibilities, like USA in the beggining.

Well, Loroi with technical and scientific knowledge would certainly be valuable for knowledge transfer, I'll grant you that.

But in terms of "freedom of what to do and what you can achieve", a Loroi civilian will have no more "freedom" in human society than she did in Loroi society. She will still be a second-class citizen, she still won't be able to run the government, and she still won't be able to have children. Loroi civilians aren't slaves in Loroi society... they have more freedoms, in some sense, than the warriors do.

I'm not saying there wouldn't be transfer of migrants, but I'm not sure there would be a mass exodus. And I don't think the migrants would need to be "smuggled."

Well, I think they meant material freedom, A.K.A the freedom to make more money and buy more things. Which, might be very compelling for a human, but I don't think that's quite how most Loroi think.

But even beyond that, it's not impossible? It would be a complicated and risky thing to pull off, but it's not impossible that a liberal and ambitious human nation would be willing to offer citizenship to Loroi with sufficiently valuable skills and knowledge. They could also try to crack the science behind Loroi artificial conception, or even just aim for a Loroi with the appropriate knowledge - even today, I don't think we're that far from being able to create embryos without sperm. With 140~ years of scientific progress, we should almost certainly be able to do it. Doing so for Loroi would be more difficult, but it shouldn't take more than a decade of science to figure out, at that point? Of course, I have no idea how you want to treat science in outsider, you may not be interested in having biology be quite so advanced as that, because it alters the character of the setting. And of course, this scheme runs a chance of running into all sorts of problems and might very well result in a diplomatic incident of some sort. But, as I said, it's not impossible... :/

Edit: And as a side benefit of such a policy, you also get a population of Loroi, with the potential for telepathic and telekinetic recruits. And given that they're aliens, it's also likely that they have different aptitudes than humans even beyond that, which means that an economy containing both will likely be more efficient. SO, all the more reason to try and recruit a population of Loroi. Of course, theres no gaurantee that the human population of your country will be on board with this. We have enough trouble with racism and xenophobia among ourselves, throw actual aliens into the mix? Yeah, I bet that's gonna cause problems. I dunno, we might have it all figured out by 2160? Or, we might not. Honestly for this story, I'm gonna guess not. XD

As I said in my post above, far from being impossible, I can easily imagine that there would be a few migrants, and there wouldn't be any need to "smuggle" them. If a Loroi worker wants to leave and the destination nation wants to accept her, then the Loroi government has no cause to try to prevent her, unless it's some kind of national security issue where she has sensitive information (which is unlikely). Loroi workers can and do migrate to alien worlds in the Union, and the Loroi government is perfectly content to see them go. Underpopulation is not a major concern for the hyper-reproductive Loroi, at least in the long term.

However, it's not a mass migration because there is little incentive for large numbers of Loroi workers to emigrate to alien societies, or for the alien societies to encourage them. The Loroi are insular and slightly xenophobic, and rely very heavily on telepathy for a sense of community. Most Loroi civilians speak Trade poorly if at all, and will find it difficult to learn local languages. The sort of personalities you see migrating are either xenophiles who just enjoy the experience of being in an alien environment, or savvy and charismatic entrepreneurs with the means to exploit alien markets. But there is not a lot of demand for ordinary Loroi workers in most alien societies; they are no more productive than native workers, and their telepathy is as much of potential problem as it is a benefit to the locals. Large numbers of Loroi migrants would naturally form little telepathically-connected ghettos, which is not a good situation for their them or the host nation. Mass immigration really only works well when the migrants integrate and assimilate into the host society, and that will be very difficult for Loroi. On those alien worlds where there are significant populations of Loroi, they tend to segregate themselves into separate enclaves that follow the normal rules of Loroi society.

Now as for Loroi migration to human nations, first of all, we are assuming a hypothetical post-war scenario in which the Loroi and Humanity both survive, are on good terms and hadn't ended up on opposite sides and done horrible things to each other, and that in the post-war order Loroi ships even have access to human territory. None of these situations is guaranteed. But in this hypothetical scenario, there would indeed be demand for technical specialists in a variety of fields, but aside from the above mentioned xenophiles and entrepreneurs, I don't think there would be much demand beyond that. Loroi workers are not especially productive, and in a human society their telepathy will have no positive value at all. The large population centers on Earth in 2160 are already experiencing overpopulation and almost certainly have some kind of reproductive and immigration controls, so the largest demand for labor would be in the new frontier colonies... and the "material freedom" for a Loroi worker in a human colony would be very little different from what she would experience in a similar sized Loroi frontier colony. In human societies, the Loroi will be surrounded by telepathic mutes, which will probably amplify their sense of being telepathically disconnected from other Loroi, and make the potential for ghettoization even stronger.

I think human medical technology in 2160 is easily up to the task of figuring out Loroi in vitro fertilization... but doing so would seem to me to be a little nuts. The Loroi are a hyper-reproductive gene-tailored warrior species with a long history of uncontrolled population growth and internal strife... why would anyone deliberately open this Pandora's box inside their own society by giving them unlimited capability to reproduce? I don't think it is irrational or bigoted to be concerned about the potentially catastrophic consequences of introducing large numbers of such an alien species into one's own population, and to weigh the benefits of doing so. People may view the restrictions of Loroi society as unpleasant or cruel, but they are necessary to prevent their civilization from over-reproducing and cyclically destroying itself as it did in the distant past. Starting new reproductive populations of Loroi in an alien society without these restrictions sounds to me like a recipe for disaster.

[boldilocks]

I think human medical technology in 2160 is easily up to the task of figuring out Loroi in vitro fertilization... but doing so would seem to me to be a little nuts. The Loroi are a hyper-reproductive gene-tailored warrior species with a long history of uncontrolled population growth and internal strife... why would anyone deliberately open this Pandora's box inside their own society by giving them unlimited capability to reproduce?

Well, the third world is pretty rife with populations who have both a high reproductive rate and a history of ethnic violence, and yet 1st world societies (at least the european/american ones) don't seem too worried about importing them at rates never seen before in history, so there is some contemporary evidence of this happening.
Throw in a few propaganda campaigns about how Loroi need feminism and neo-liberal liberation from their oppressive feudal structures, and add the fact that every single male human with a functional libido will probably be willing to go to the barricades to make such an exodus happen, and you have a recipe for a possible extinction event.

[Werra]

Well, the third world is pretty rife with populations who have both a high reproductive rate and a history of ethnic violence, and yet 1st world societies (at least the european/american ones) don't seem too worried about importing them at rates never seen before in history, so there is some contemporary evidence of this happening.

Wait 10 more years until Babyboomers start dying off and several european countries suddenly have -viable- muslim/islamic parties cropping up. Check the worry meter once the shoe drops that voting is a privilege that gets diluted with every new citizen.

The powermove for the Loroi government would be to send humanity a few million Loroi + males to turn an eventual Loroi-Human conflict into a Loroi civil war.

@Arioch
Loroi get children at 10. Do any of the characters still have their only slightly older mums? With their lifespan it could even be Stillstorm.

SpoilerShow

I once had a friend who picked up his own uncle from Kindergarten.

[icekatze]

hi hi

1st world countries aren't worried about the ethnic violence because they've got a long history of that too. It's just another day in the life of the human race.

You might be surprised at how much an influence peoples' environment has on their behavior.