Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2023 5:25 am
Wouldn't a Mizol Parat be just as skilled at detecting evasion as she would be at being evasive?
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Possibly more so, depending on the individual.Keklas Rekobah wrote: ↑Wed Mar 01, 2023 5:25 amWouldn't a Mizol Parat be just as skilled at detecting evasion as she would be at being evasive?
Compensation for a warrior depends on her rank and station; it's not open to negotiation. Asking for more than was her due (or asking for a promotion or commendation) would be essentially the same as asking for a bribe. I think that's a big no-no in any professional military organization, but it's an especially egregious thing in the Loroi system, which has very strict laws governing warrior compensation. Unless the person she asked was also corrupt, the asker would be promptly arrested and brought up on charges.
Arioch wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 1:29 amCompensation for a warrior depends on her rank and station; it's not open to negotiation. Asking for more than was her due (or asking for a promotion or commendation) would be essentially the same as asking for a bribe. I think that's a big no-no in any professional military organization, but it's an especially egregious thing in the Loroi system, which has very strict laws governing warrior compensation. Unless the person she asked was also corrupt, the asker would be promptly arrested and brought up on charges.
Not a raise, but they do get a few royalties... such as discounts for veterans etc.
How are soldiers in the Loroi Imperial Fleet compensated?
Which sources are those?
Which kinds of things are those?
Okay, that's a broad subject, but I can put together a few bullet points:
Costs for education, health care and living expenses are covered by the state. Low-ranking warriors will usually receive some kind of allowance for personal expenses, which may be mostly in military scrip, or partially in cash if the warrior is stationed planetside or anywhere that not all needs can be met through military sources.
Essentially all the above sources, that is, those provided in an official capacity by the government. Most other income from assets (stock, real estate, etc.) or gifts or payments from companies or other individuals are not legal.What income sources are legal?
It varies by circumstance, but for the most part it is limited to what a warrior may transport with her in the course of her duty. For most lower-ranking warriors this means only what she can fit in her footlocker or cabin. All items owned by a warrior above a certain value must be registered with the authorities, as must all transactions above a certain value.What kinds of property may a warrior own?
Aside from the fact that warriors are a social class as much as they are a profession, and many warriors would simply never consider giving up their hard-won social status as their society's elite, the short answer is that they can't. An obvious route around these anti-corruption rules would be for a warrior to somehow feather a nest for herself (such as through some accumulation of hidden assets, or through an agreement with a civilian organization trading favors with the promise of future compensation) and then just resign as a warrior and claim those profits as a civilian. So, a young warrior is free to drop from the trials or resign her warrior status without penalty, but once a warrior has obtained a certain level of seniority, her option to be honorably discharged as a civilian expires. A warrior may still be expelled from the warrior class past this point (voluntarily or involuntarily), and she will become a civilian, but she will in effect be a convicted criminal, and there will be restrictions on her financial activity and on any civilian organization that employs her or conducts business with her.nobody wrote:Why don't high-ranking warriors retire from military service so they can become rich civilians?
Warriors, workers, and a Queen. And a hivemind. Forget about the Umiak, the Loroi were the real ant-people all along!
No, Loroi don't have a declining population. Warriors are less than half of the female population, but not that much less. Males are only about ten percent of the total population, so even if less than half of the females reproduce, each having 2-3 kids is more than enough to keep the population growing. Males and worker females have 2-3 times the average lifespan of warrior females, so you'd probably need an average of less than 2 offspring per warrior if you wanted to maintain zero population growth.
I think you have misunderstood me. There are some civilian females who are allowed to have children, but it's a small minority, mostly very high-status individuals. The vast majority of Loroi, including males and worker females, are born to warrior mothers.Demarquis wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 3:43 pmAh, I see. Warrior reproduction is high enough to achieve replacement not only for themselves, but also the worker half of the population. Also, "most" children are born to warrior mothers, but not ''that many" more. If worker reproduction is 2 kids per female, and warrior is 2.5, then (if I can do this right) Warriors have approx. 12% or so more kids than workers (I did that in my head, so not precise).
If all Loroi females were allowed to reproduce freely, with a generation length of only 10 years and 90% of the population able to give birth, the population would get out of control very quickly. This was the situation early in Deinar history, shortly after the collapse of the Soia civilization, which kept the Loroi in a dark age for millennia, since the population would explode until food supplies were exhausted, collapse, and repeat.Demarquis wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 3:43 pmA couple of things jump out at me. One is that Loroi society is operating below their potential reproductive rate. Given their involvement in a potentially existential war, I would think that they would want as many Loroi as possible to fill all available war-related jobs and tasks (warrior or worker). So there must be other bottlenecks in play. The food supply?
The Loroi warrior class are not just soldiers; they perform nearly all public sector jobs, including local and national government and administration, police and emergency services, education, etc. There are Earth nations today with public sector jobs as high as 40% of the population (notably Russia), so this shouldn't be that hard to imagine.Demarquis wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 3:43 pmAnother is that their society's logistic and economic elements must function differently than ours. Most human countries have an average .5-1% soldier per capita ratio (it's .6% for NATO) (see https://www.nationmaster.com/country-in ... Per-capita). The most militarized country in the world (North Korea) is only 5%. Either the Loroi have an entirely different way of producing economically important goods and services, or they use the Warriors for a wide range of economic tasks we give to civilians.
Loroi have different levels of government: interstellar (imperial), sector, planetary, national, and various levels of local. Individual Loroi nations have different forms of local government.Demarquis wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 3:43 pmI can well believe that, given the war, Worker life is almost as rigidly structured and organized as the Warriors. Given that the Loroi are a totalitarian Empire, who handles local issues that the Imperial Palace would have no interest in or knowledge of? Are there local governors? Or
For many, Loroi warrior family relations can be a little bit like those of the English upper class -- raised by a nanny, sent off to boarding school, then to university, etc. etc. But at some level, family is still family.Demarquis wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 7:39 pmOk, I get it now. Loroi biology is so different from ours that parallels to human institutions just don't translate. Psychologically, they must be very different from us. Since they are not raised in families (and I'm assuming that Tempo doesn't have a close familial relationship with all those descendants of hers), the formative experience of the Loroi must be the creche, and after that the school. Given that they treat their close circle of friends as something like the functional equivalent of a family, then they must perceive relationships of affection and intimacy very differently. That, and the fact that they are empaths- they must develop some sort of sympatico with their close friends, and more guarded relations with everyone else. I wonder how members of the same guild, but who are not close peers, manage to get along. They must have some pretty formalized approaches to dispute resolution.
I'm sometimes surprised that humans were able to do it either, but that's mostly when I'm feeling particularly pessimistic.
The more traditional Loroi societies still use an updated version of the mercantilist guild system that's not a completely free market, and so it's not the most efficient. Though some of the frontier nations (like those on pre-war Seren) havemore modern and open economies.