Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread
Posted: Tue May 21, 2013 8:27 am
Maybe they'll call him Al?
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(shrug) I haven't bothered to work it out.CJ Miller wrote:Hmm… interesting that the orbital period of a moon of Deinar equals 8 Perreinid days exactly. My math shows 203 days in a year over there, and 25-3/8 weeks in the same year. Is that about right?
Loroi don't have standard months or days of the week; these would be local things specific to a particular planet, and won't apply to your situation. Colonial Loroi won't be fastidious about using time units from their old planets (especially as many will have come from different planets). Most Loroi dates are counted from the moment of first contact between Deinar and Perrein: March 28, 850 CE.CJ Miller wrote:Also, does the Loroi standard calendar have months, and if so how long are they and what are they called? Also also, what if anything are the names of the days of the week? And how do they number their years?
Is...that a typo?Arioch wrote:5.5 beats per minute.
Yes. 55 beats per minute.fredgiblet wrote:Is...that a typo?Arioch wrote:5.5 beats per minute.
When you're inventing things for your project, try to avoid taking end-products of Human culture and just cloning a Loroi counterpart. Instead back up a few steps and consider that the Loroi are telepathic, not primarily literary, and not primarily vocal. Would such a culture have formalized vocal greetings? Probably not. Even Tempo, who is specifically trained for vocal diplomatic communication, did not use any flowery rhetoric when speaking with Alex; she was pretty direct and to the point.CJ Miller wrote:What would be a formal greeting in Trade (or an ordinary one if there's no distinction)?
Would the Loroi philosopher caste preserve the teachings of their great thinkers through the Listel caste (if they preserved them at all), or would they be more sequestered and secretive than that? We think of philosophy almost exclusively in terms of "Ivory Tower" intellectuals, but would the Loroi have a similar conception, or would their philosophy be more utilitarian, like Sun Tzu, maybe, or Confucius?Arioch wrote:Similarly, Loroi don't have proverbs. Sending is pretty immediate and specific, and usually doesn't deal in abstractions, so Loroi philosophy is generally not expressed in sayings. The Loroi find Alex's aphorisms unusual and entertaining.
The Nedatan has specialists with eidetic memories that fill the same kind of role as the Listel; in this case, of accurately remembering the telepathic litanies. The male Farseers look within rather than without, monitoring the local population rather than tracking distant ones. The Loroi philosophy is martial in nature, based on heroic tales like those of the Norse or Greeks, and is both spiritual and utilitarian in nature.CptWinters wrote:Would the Loroi philosopher caste preserve the teachings of their great thinkers through the Listel caste (if they preserved them at all), or would they be more sequestered and secretive than that? We think of philosophy almost exclusively in terms of "Ivory Tower" intellectuals, but would the Loroi have a similar conception, or would their philosophy be more utilitarian, like Sun Tzu, maybe, or Confucius?
This is something coming in the future.CptWinters wrote:As far as Alex's aphorisms are concerned, have there been any examples in the comic so far? Or do you just mean in general?
That is more or less how I look at it.icekatze wrote:I would suggest that perhaps all of Loroi speech is formal, since it is not their native language. It is an adaptor, if you will excuse the analogy. Sort of like how we might try to condense english into morse code.
I think that shame, like fear, is a basic part of the cultural toolbox for getting individuals to conform to the rules. It's easy to single out Judeo-Christian ideology in this regard, but nearly every human culture I've studied puts shame to work at some level, even if it's not always quite as overt as "original sin."CptWinters wrote:I don't know. I think there's a sort of "folk psychology" which prevails in (at least) European thought that separates the body from the mind, and which sees the body as dirty and often more than a little shameful. This has a long tradition which probably goes back at least to the Greeks, but is certainly most prevalent in Christian theology. This thought sees the mind as independent of the body, and the highest level of knowledge or purity is attained through leaving behind the body and viewing the world with the mind alone. But this is really a deceptive philosophy, and essentially incorrect; the most powerful expressions that we use in our language (and this is not unique to English) are related to the body. We say we have "butterflies" to express our fear, or that there is a "hole" in our knowledge, we "fall head over heels" in love and are "unspeakably" angry. Each of these expressions (and there are many, many more) use the body or sensate experience to convey information that has abstract meaning. Perhaps sanzai is similar in concept?
Most Loroi subcultures practice a sort of ancestor worship connected to the recounting of the heroic deeds of the litanies, and the oldest of these have been abstracted to the point that they sound not dissimilar to the kinds of godlike characters that one encounters in human mythology. Though they may seem less fanciful when one considers that the Loroi ancestors really did have supernatural-seeming power, both in psionic abilities and in the godlike technologies that existed in the Soia era.CJ Miller wrote:Do the Loroi have gods?
Arioch wrote:The Nedatan has specialists with eidetic memories that fill the same kind of role as the Listel; in this case, of accurately remembering the telepathic litanies. The male Farseers look within rather than without, monitoring the local population rather than tracking distant ones. The Loroi philosophy is martial in nature, based on heroic tales like those of the Norse or Greeks, and is both spiritual and utilitarian in nature.
Cool! That should be interesting to see.Arioch wrote:This is something coming in the future.
CJ Miller wrote:What would be a formal greeting in Trade (or an ordinary one if there's no distinction)?
Arioch wrote:(shrug) I haven't bothered to work it out.CJ Miller wrote:Hmm… interesting that the orbital period of a moon of Deinar equals 8 Perreinid days exactly. My math shows 203 days in a year over there, and 25-3/8 weeks in the same year. Is that about right?
Loroi don't have standard months or days of the week; these would be local things specific to a particular planet, and won't apply to your situation. Colonial Loroi won't be fastidious about using time units from their old planets (especially as many will have come from different planets). Most Loroi dates are counted from the moment of first contact between Deinar and Perrein: March 28, 803 CE.CJ Miller wrote:Also, does the Loroi standard calendar have months, and if so how long are they and what are they called? Also also, what if anything are the names of the days of the week? And how do they number their years?
These are the Loroi units that I have in my notes:
1 solon “beat”: one heartbeat, 1.092 seconds. The average rest heartbeat for a female Loroi is approx. 55 beats per minute.
1 bima “moment” = 1 dinosolon = 64 solon (70 seconds). Infrequently used unit between beat and cycle.
1 digel “cycle” 1 danzosolon = 1 dinobima = 64 bima = 8 nestasolon = 4096 solon = 4473 seconds (1.25 hours)
1 tibos “day” = 21 digel = 26.09 Earth hours
1 nanapi “transit”= 241.92 hours (10.08 Earth days)
1 mannal “pace” = 0.776 m
1 malir solon “radiance beat”~= 1.1 light second, 327,373 km.
1 Deinar sina “Deinar gravity” or “standard gravity”: 9.216 m/s^2, ~= 0.94G
1 nasitosdal sina “shipboard gravity” = 7/8 (0.875) standard gravity = 0.82G
1 Deinar tozon = one Deinar year, similar to one Earth year
1 nistil tozon = “standard year;” 44 months (22,195,037 seconds, 256.887 Earth days, .7033 Earth years)
I'm not really sure about which standard day and year the shipboard Loroi will use (as my notes conflict on the subject), but I'll work that out before long, as it's something Alex and Beryl are going to discuss.
HA! Good one.Karst45 wrote:CJ Miller wrote:What would be a formal greeting in Trade (or an ordinary one if there's no distinction)?
Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong ?
Here is a link that explains it, in case you didn't get the joke and had to google the phrase like me.Karst45 wrote:CJ Miller wrote:What would be a formal greeting in Trade (or an ordinary one if there's no distinction)?
Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong ?
Yes, they had drums and bells and the like. Most troop commands were probably telepathic, but there would have been alternatives for some cases where perhaps telepathy might be jammed.manticore7 wrote:watching the movie "Gettysburg" made me wonder, did pre space Loroi armies have musicians?
Arioch wrote:Yes, they had drums and bells and the like. Most troop commands were probably telepathic, but there would have been alternatives for some cases where perhaps telepathy might be jammed.manticore7 wrote:watching the movie "Gettysburg" made me wonder, did pre space Loroi armies have musicians?