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What is life like for members of the Imperial Court? How much decadence is there?

Werra wrote:What is life like for members of the Imperial Court? How much decadence is there?

It's a military command structure, so decadence isn't really a thing... or rather, any decadence is personal in nature and hasn't got anything to do with official proceedings. During wartime, the Emperor and most of her staff are aboard ship and in the field. Cry of the Wind has plush facilities, but Versailles it ain't. There's no royal family or aristocracy, so the people surrounding the Emperor are her staff, not really courtiers.

Greywind has some males with her aboard the flagship, and she gets some flak for this from traditionalists, but they're her relatives; they're not there for her personal pleasure.

We will get to see what a formal reception on board Cry of the Wind looks like, so I won't go into too much detail about it.

Arioch wrote:We will get to see what a formal reception on board Cry of the Wind looks like, so I won't go into too much detail about it.

Will Alex be allowed to make up some kind of formal suit for the formal reception of Humaniti's first Ambassador to the court of the Loroi?

No, wait. Don't answer that. Show us. When the time is right.

(Don't put effort into answering my question, put the same amount of effort as a first step into the next page, please*, in the hope it might appear sooner.)


*Please with large puppy-eyes.

Quick question, it's established that telepathy is FTL with Farsense but does telekinesis share this FTL trait?

dragoongfa wrote:Quick question, it's established that telepathy is FTL with Farsense but does telekinesis share this FTL trait?

The range of telekinesis is functionally limited to line of sight (you must be able to somehow perceive the target), so even if there is a lag between the user's thought and the resulting action, I don't think this would have any relevant effects. I'm not sure how such a lag could even be accurately measured.

And just to clarify, although telepathy does operate faster than light, Farsensing is not the exchange of telepathic messages at interstellar distances. It's the passive detection of the locations of minds' telepathic signatures.

Passive? Will the comic at one point go into the specifics of farsensing?

Werra wrote:Passive? Will the comic at one point go into the specifics of farsensing?

Yes.

Telekinetic chocking via viewscreen.

From a human biologist perspective, what would be the taxonomy for the Loroi? Or the binomial nomenclature?

jterlecki wrote:From a human biologist perspective, what would be the taxonomy for the Loroi? Or the binomial nomenclature?

Alien organisms will require entirely new taxa, since they will be completely unrelated to Earth organisms. I'd be curious to talk to an exobiologist to see what, if anything, they have in mind, in terms of naming conventions, or if they will have to rely on a completely different system.

Our current classification system could be used to describe elements of a new alien ecosystem if we have a chance to study the whole thing, but it will be difficult if not impossible to classify individual organisms out of context to their home ecosystems using our current system.

Arioch wrote:

jterlecki wrote:From a human biologist perspective, what would be the taxonomy for the Loroi? Or the binomial nomenclature?

Alien organisms will require entirely new taxa, since they will be completely unrelated to Earth organisms. I'd be curious to talk to an exobiologist to see what, if anything, they have in mind, in terms of naming conventions, or if they will have to rely on a completely different system.

Our current classification system could be used to describe elements of a new alien ecosystem if we have a chance to study the whole thing, but it will be difficult if not impossible to classify individual organisms out of context to their home ecosystems using our current system.

If I were to make a guess, they would likely use our existing taxonomy structure with a single Latin word added to the front to denote planetary ecosystem of origin (and we would retroactively gain one for every lifeform on Earth).

Oh my, all the academics will have a field day. One wonders what the Loroi authorities would make of small but energetic hordes of academics attempting to go everywhere and get into everything.

orion1836 wrote:If I were to make a guess, they would likely use our existing taxonomy structure with a single Latin word added to the front to denote planetary ecosystem of origin (and we would retroactively gain one for every lifeform on Earth).

There would need to be a new classification category for the world of origin, to be sure. But I wonder how exobiologists would tackle classification when only presented with a few species.

Then again, I kind of wonder what exobiologists do all day, since there are no actual alien life forms to study. Which is why I suspect they may already be working on this classification problem.

I guess if you have a genetic sample, you can do some speculative work about the organism's evolutionary history. But I think our current methods of estimating age by rate of mutation requires multiple samples. If you only have one, you don't know what's a "mutation" and what isn't.

And in particular, biologists looking at the Loroi genome are going to be very confused.

Arioch wrote:And in particular, biologists looking at the Loroi genome are going to be very confused.

"Even the DNA is blue... how is the DNA blue?"

orion1836 wrote:

Arioch wrote:And in particular, biologists looking at the Loroi genome are going to be very confused.

"Even the DNA is blue... how is the DNA blue?"

"Huh, they look like women, sure enough, but I don't see the Kitchen chromosome anywhere in here..."

Arioch wrote:And in particular, biologists looking at the Loroi genome are going to be very confused.

Would Loroi DNA contain 'artificial' nucleotide bases like P, B, Z and S from Hachimoji DNA, on top of the usual A,T,G,C ?

jterlecki wrote:Would Loroi DNA contain 'artificial' nucleotide bases like P, B, Z and S from Hachimoji DNA, on top of the usual A,T,G,C ?

I don't know enough about molecular biology to speculate about such details... I wouldn't say for certain that the Loroi even have DNA.

Arioch wrote:

jterlecki wrote:Would Loroi DNA contain 'artificial' nucleotide bases like P, B, Z and S from Hachimoji DNA, on top of the usual A,T,G,C ?

I don't know enough about molecular biology to speculate about such details... I wouldn't say for certain that the Loroi even have DNA.

How would their cells replicate?

orion1836 wrote:How would their cells replicate?

Presumably the DNA molecule isn't the only possible way of storing genetic information.

Since Loroi food is at least somewhat compatible with human biochemistry -- that is, it contains proteins and fats and carbohydrates -- it it reasonable to assume that Loroi biochemistry is based on similar carbon compounds, and so it makes some sense that the cellular mechanics are protein-based, and so some control molecule that has similar properties to DNA seems very likely. It could be DNA, or some variant of DNA, or some other compound with similar functions but a very different structure. As I mentioned before, I don't know enough about the details of organic chemistry to drill down to this level, and as I don't think it's directly relevant to the story, I haven't tried to work it out (nor do I currently plan to... but you never know what the future holds).

Would they even have Mitochondria?
Or they have more than one type of Mytochondria, for different purposes.

In the end, the Loroi are nothing more than a colony of highly specialized bacteria cooperating and giving the impression of a being similar to humans.
That would confuse just about anyone.

Hi, XChaggers!