Clockwork Ninja wrote:If its not too specific, could you talk about about how the Loroi developed from post-fall hunter gatherers without domesticated animals, without a complete ecosystem?
Animals are not just for meat, milk, and leather, but also labor and transportation, among many other things. On Earth it wasn't until well into the 20th century that machines were common, reliable and cheap enough to replace animals as a power source in most peoples lives. Plowing a field or pulling a cart with only humanoids, especially if they are physically weaker than an average human, is really quite difficult.
Many a war has been decided by who had the most horses, not just for cavalry, but for the extensive baggage train an army requires. I think it was mentioned most civilian Loroi lived in compounds encircled by protective warriors? Without widespread farms to steal provision from, a pre-modern army would find it very hard to operate over long distances. Unless the Soia left the planet completely covered with fruit and nut trees, berry bushes and edible roots?
You say the Loroi favored warfare over anything else, but societies who invest little in scientific or economic development tend to... not develop much. How did they get to the level of an industrial revolution, much less interstellar flight?
The Loroi on Deinar had no riding animals or beasts of burden, so everything had to be powered by Loroi "manpower" and the only travel was on foot or by boat. Loroi had to use manual farming techniques; fortunately, the Soia-Liron crops require a lot less labor than most Earth crops. This definitely had an impact on the speed of their development, compared to humans. However, animals are not a prerequisite for farming; even on Earth, people used hoes and digging-sticks long before the plow was invented, and there were plenty of civilizations that arose without any draft or riding animals at all. They're also not a prerequisite for great works of engineering; the pyramids in Egypt and Mesoamerica were all built purely with human power.
Similarly, without riding animals, armies consist entirely of infantry. This is not any kind of problem, and again, human history is no stranger to infantry-only armies. Early horses were not large enough for conventional cavalry, and prior to the development of the wheel there were no chariots, so early armies were all-infantry by definition. Even well into the Iron Age, many European armies continued to be all-infantry, such as in Classical Greece, with chariots being used mainly for transportation of heroes around the battlefield. Cultures in sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas (as late as just prior to European colonization) didn't any riding animals or cavalry either, and this didn't prevent them from fielding large and effective armies.
Werra wrote:What do the Loroi eat during their Diral? I was under the impression that they have to life off the land for 2 years. That kind of environment should make them used to eating every single part of an animal. Wtf, Beryl?
What they eat depends on what's available; in some locations (such as Beryl's diral on Mezan, or when training is on a space station) there is no native life at all. In such a case the diral is usually given an insufficient supply of rations, and they are expected (and encouraged) to steal more. A feature of many dirals is staging mock raids on local settlements, stealing from the civilians.
Beryl is implying nursing directly from a farm animal, which is a rather different sanitary concern than cooking and eating meat.
Werra wrote:Btw, people do milk fish, for breeding purposes and for caviar.
That's not "milk."