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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2022 6:51 am
by Krulle
gaerzi wrote:
Sun Jun 12, 2022 2:36 pm
The Umiak Captain had no reason to want to meet a "hot space babe". However, he just couldn't resist the word "click". Such a nice word.
Clickity-Clititty-Clickity-Click-Click.
Cthulhu wrote:
Sun Jun 12, 2022 9:56 am
The lights go on, and Fireblade enters the bridge, assessing the carnage with a satisfied smirk, "Am I hot, or what?
Oh yeah, Fireblade. It's even in your name. Hot. Hot. Hot.
But alas,
knife, fork, scissors, flames, have no place in children's games
(Messer, Schere, Feuer, Licht, sind für kleine Kinder nicht - haven't found an English version, so had to use an uncommon one)

But I fear the Pocket Historian which helped you open the doors cannot hear your Sanzai anyway.


edit: meh, it doesn't work as well if not below the posts I replied to.
Too lazy to cut in the quotes.
edit2: meh. OCD be damned.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2022 1:58 pm
by Keklas Rekobah
@ARIOCH: Did the Neridi in panel 4 of page 137 make it out in time?  Do they have a name?

"Leido System Control at Tizaba Depot" is otherwise all we know about that person.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2022 2:23 pm
by Keklas Rekobah
Krulle wrote:
Wed Jun 15, 2022 6:51 am
knife, fork, scissors, flames, have no place in children's games
(Messer, Schere, Feuer, Licht, sind für kleine Kinder nicht - haven't found an English version, so had to use an uncommon one)
Google translates the phrase as "Knife, scissors, fire, light, are not for small children".

Somehow, that just does not have the same impact as yours.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2022 2:45 pm
by Krulle
It's the rhyme.

In Germany well known, in two versions:
Messer, Schere, Feuer, Licht,
sind für kleine Kinder nicht.
is the one I grew up with, Light stands here for electricity, when electricity was basically only used in households to light the house.

Messer, Gabel, Schere, Licht
sind für kleine Kinder nicht.
is the apparently more widespread one, and Light stands for fire/flames.

So, guess which one is the older one?

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2022 9:51 pm
by Bamax
I apologize if this has been covered.... perhaps it has.

But what do Umiak eat as food?

I reckon the Umiak Star Navy may use feeding tubes for all I know about them... or then again they may forego efficiency for crew morale by making some tasy stuff they can enjoy.... maybe a bit of both.

I dunno.

I reckon at least Umiak civilians eat good if nothing else lol.

I do knew a bit about teeth though. Human like teeth (flat ends) are good for chewing and grinding down food.

Pointy teeth on the other hand are good for tearing chunks off of of something so they can swallow it. In fact if you ever watch a dog or cat eat you will notice that all they do is cut up their food and swallow it. That is what their teeth do.

So if Umiak indeed have only pointy teeth, they too would too.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2022 12:54 am
by Keklas Rekobah
The article on the Umiak says, “The mouth consists of two pairs of lateral mandibles and one lower ventral mandible, enclosing a fibrous tongue . . . without fleshy lips . . .”

Cockroaches, crickets, grasshoppers, ants, praying mantids, and beetles have chewing mouthparts similar to our teeth, except they’re called “mandibles” and they move sideways. Insects with these mouthparts bite off and grind solid food, much like we do.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2022 2:13 am
by Bamax
Keklas Rekobah wrote:
Tue Jul 12, 2022 12:54 am
The article on the Umiak says, “The mouth consists of two pairs of lateral mandibles and one lower ventral mandible, enclosing a fibrous tongue . . . without fleshy lips . . .”

Cockroaches, crickets, grasshoppers, ants, praying mantids, and beetles have chewing mouthparts similar to our teeth, except they’re called “mandibles” and they move sideways. Insects with these mouthparts bite off and grind solid food, much like we do.

And after the war Loroi are going to mock humans when they learn our Youtube has ASMR vids of Umiak eating ice cream lol.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2022 4:34 am
by Arioch
Umiak are omnivorous; they eat a wide variety of foods. Their mandibles have piercing, cutting and grinding parts, as our teeth do (though our canines don't pierce that well).

Modified Umiak such as hardtroops may not have their original mandibles (or all of their original digestive sytems), and so they may require specially prepared foods.




I think that most technological species will probably be omnivorous... most of the smartest Earth land animals tend to be opportunists. I think the Delrias are the only technological species in known space that are exclusively carnivorous.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2022 1:58 pm
by Keklas Rekobah
Bamax wrote:
Tue Jul 12, 2022 2:13 am
. . . after the war Loroi are going to mock humans when they learn our Youtube has ASMR vids of Umiak eating ice cream lol.
Image

First Edition: 1977-11-12

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2022 2:20 pm
by Bamax
Cute and thank you.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2022 1:45 am
by Bamax
I reckon I probably should not pursue this questioning since Outsider is NOT about Umiak cook books, but curiousity is what I do so... anyway now that I know what a traditional Loroi meal is (flat breads and finger foods as well as weird fruit and veggies), I was curious about Umiak gastronomy.

What does a traditional Umiak meal look like? I presume it is optimized like all else is. For soldiers they probably have allotted portions per day and trying to get more than the usual will cast suspicious glances in that Umiak's direction. Civillian Umiak likely have more freedom in regard to what they consume.

I say this because if their stuff is any good (even if it is not) humans will wanna try it.

Any Umiak Gordon Ramsay's or Martha Stewart's lol?

Like I know they are as humble as can be, but surely Umiak know where to get the best tasting stuff and avoid that shop around the corner that is closer because they rather go all the way across town to get the good stuff from a better Umiak cook.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2022 5:08 am
by Arioch
Bamax wrote:
Fri Jul 22, 2022 1:45 am
I reckon I probably should not pursue this questioning since Outsider is NOT about Umiak cook books, but curiousity is what I do so... anyway now that I know what a traditional Loroi meal is (flat breads and finger foods as well as weird fruit and veggies), I was curious about Umiak gastronomy.

What does a traditional Umiak meal look like? I presume it is optimized like all else is. For soldiers they probably have allotted portions per day and trying to get more than the usual will cast suspicious glances in that Umiak's direction.
I think food is a fairly consequential element of a fictional alien race, since it plays an important role not just in expressions of culture but in basic biology. So it's worth thinking about even if there won't be many ways to directly address it in the story.

A key point to consider when thinking about Umiak cuisine (and Umiak culture in general) is that Umiak social structures tend to be decentralized... Umiak totalitarianism flows from the bottom up as much as from the top down. We can expect Umiak food customs to be fairly diverse... there will be some ancient traditional food types that date all the way back to the three Umiak subspecies on their homeworld, but local groups throughout the expanse of Umiak-controlled territory will put the local resources to the best use they can, and obsessive-compulsive Umiak cooks will work hard to optimize recipes according to every imaginable factor (and a few maybe not so easy to imagine... like a certain percentage of every meal must be particular colors).

The oldest food traditions date back to the semi-historical tales of Empire, the Umiak homeworld, and its three sentient subspecies. Most modern Umiak have genes from all three lineages (along with a lot of manual tweaking), though the majority of their genome is inherited from the Hal-tik nomads. Hal-tik culture was based on pastoralism (the Hal-tik have their own built-in ponies, but they herded both vertebrate and exoskeletal livestock), and so traditional foods revolve around herd food sources (meat, blood, eggs, etc.) and ease of preservation (dried meats and produce, salted dry food or pickling brines, fermentation, etc.). The end results usually hover around the "extremely gross" to the "unspeakably gross." However, as with Loroi military cuisine, the importance of food preservation leads a lot of these traditional recipes to find their way into modern military cooking, even if they are made with alien ingredients. Many Umiak-controlled worlds have Soia-liron organisms, and so at least part of the Umiak ingredient list will be familiar to Loroi cooking.

The more "civilized" Tizik-tik had moved beyond technological limits on available foods, and many had very "refined" tastes. If this sybaritic element still exists in the modern Umiak, it is probably in an Umiak cook's obsessive need to add just that certain variety of spices to that synthesized protein paste, and to painstakingly sculpt it into an ephemeral postmodern sculpture (and in the crew which will solemnly and reverently admire each carefully extracted portion... before violently devouring them).

The third subspecies, the Kikkut, literally lived in the sewers of Tizik-tik urban centers... so you can imagine what they were eating. In the modern Umiak, this manifests itself in the Umiak willingness to eat almost anything. And, together with the Hal-tik nomadic heritage, in the ability to go for long stretches with very little food.

Umiak starships will be stocked with whatever was available and cost-effective at their most recent supply stop (after some hysterical screaming from the chief cook at the three captains about "WHAT DO YOU EXPECT ME TO MAKE OUT OF THIS SLOP?!?!?!"); mostly pre-prepared preserved foods and ingredients along with some fresh meat and produce when available, for however long they last... and a little beyond. There would also be the nutrient goo fed to the hardtroops, which is probably synthesized aboard ship, and is something the entire crew can fall back on if supplies fail.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2022 5:54 am
by Bamax
Arioch wrote:
Fri Jul 22, 2022 5:08 am
[snip]

Hilarious... too bad expressions for Umiak would be... hard to pull off?

But they know what their clicks mean so I suppose such would matter less to them.

When I see ants they all look the same to me and are the same... to me.

In actuality ants use scent organs to tell who is who... and ants have been displayed showning individual behavior.

For example I think I read an artucle about an ant that faked an injury up worse than what it actually was just to be carried off by fellow workers.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2022 9:09 am
by Snoofman
Not sure if this has been touched on before, but where do Umiak place themselves on the Hierarchy social class? Hierarchies are best expressed with a pyramid, with the ruling class on top and the serfdom on the bottom. So where do Umiak place themselves on the scale?

While most leaders would naturally place themselves on top, I cannot help but wonder if the Umiak place themselves on the bottom. Umiak are naturally overflowing with humility and are dedicated to their appointed task. While they run the Hierarchy, they seem to classify themselves as dedicated servants. Gears in the Great Machine. If that were the case, perhaps then they view their allies/subjects as elevated servants of their Great Machine called Hierarchy. And therein would place said allies/subjects on a higher scale. Albeit it seems like a very obscure view of elevating someone.

Yes the Umiak make hefty demands of allied/subjugated races and drive planets into depleted ruin, but something tells me the Umiak have some appreciation for aliens that think like them and act like them; pouring all their energy/resources into fueling the Great Machine.

<NOTE TO USERS ALERT ACCESORS OF INTERWEBS. THIS USER ONE ACCESSING INTERWEBS DOES NOT CONDONE VIOLENT ACTS IN NAME OF HIERARCHY FOR HIERARCHY'S BENEFIT. DOES NOT CONDONE THOUGH ACKNOWLEDGES AS NECESSARY SACRIFICE DOES NOT APPROVE BUT MUST RESPECT SUPERIOR'S CHOICES FOR BETTERMENT OF HIERARCHY. THIS USER ONE ACCESSING INTERWEBS ONLY SPECULATES OFFERS PONDERINGS. ANTICIPATING RESPONSE THIS ONE WANTS USERS' OPINIONS. APPRECIATE QUICK RESPONSE, BUT THIS ONE DOES NOT EXPECT QUICK RESPONSE WISHES NOT TO ADD UNNECESSARY STRESS BUT FEELING NECESSARY TO INSIST FOR AN ANSWER. WAITING COSTS US NOTHING WE CAN WAIT.>

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:02 pm
by Arioch
Snoofman wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 9:09 am
Not sure if this has been touched on before, but where do Umiak place themselves on the Hierarchy social class? Hierarchies are best expressed with a pyramid, with the ruling class on top and the serfdom on the bottom. So where do Umiak place themselves on the scale?

While most leaders would naturally place themselves on top, I cannot help but wonder if the Umiak place themselves on the bottom. Umiak are naturally overflowing with humility and are dedicated to their appointed task. While they run the Hierarchy, they seem to classify themselves as dedicated servants. Gears in the Great Machine. If that were the case, perhaps then they view their allies/subjects as elevated servants of their Great Machine called Hierarchy. And therein would place said allies/subjects on a higher scale. Albeit it seems like a very obscure view of elevating someone.
The Umiak Hierarchy is more of a tree (or org chart) than a pyramid; it's a hierarchy of hierarchies, each node in the tree with its own bureaucracy, privileges and responsibilities. The highest node in this many-headed hydra is, of course, an Umiak bureaucracy, but the various alien members of the hierarchy that report to the top-level Umiak government have their own governments and social organization. In the Umiak spirit of decentralization, the alien governments are supplied with rules to follow and quotas to meet, but otherwise they are left to their own devices. Even those alien nations that have been conquered and are still occupied by Umiak troops are nominally run by native puppet governments (under close Umiak scrutiny).

The Umiak have a traditionally classless society, with any worker or soldier able, in theory, to end up at the highest levels of government if they have the appropriate achievements, but the realities of biological specialization of the Umiak total war machine have resulted in de facto separation between management and the heavily modified rank and file. A crewman or engineer on a typical Umiak starship is statistically unlikely to ever return home alive, much less rise in the political system, and an armored cyborg monster makes for an awkward assembly member. But also, a common Umiak soldier knows very little about the empire and its government, since it has been taught only what is necessary for its job. Things are a little bit less restrictive for civilian workers, as continuing education is provided for those who demonstrate appropriate aptitudes, but during wartime it's nose to the grindstone.

What this boils down to is that most Umiak individuals view their own status in regard to their own social hierarchy, and not really in comparison to alien societies. An Umiak soldier typically does not view itself as superior to the Jilaad civilians it is watching over, and has no authority to interfere in Jilaad business except in enforcement of rules from higher authorities. This may require the use of deadly force, but you can be assured that the Umiak troops will be extremely polite in the course of its application.

As a whole and as a functioning government, however, the Umiak are not at all humble, or benign, or compassionate in their high-level dealings with alien neighbors. If anything, Umiak humility on this scale manifests itself as an inferiority complex, paranoia and a manic obsession with national security. Umiak conquer their neighbors not out of any sense of superiority, but rather in the name of self-defense and security of frontiers. (Which of course leads to new frontiers, and new security concerns, and so on...)

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:27 pm
by Bamax
Sounds like... something familiar going on in Europe.

Aaand I will leave it at that. Not a political forum. Did listen to their President's justification for war and it was essentially just what you said is the Umiak reason.

Beyond that they have been surrounded by on/off again enemies and rivals since like forever so there is that.

That is the nature of Europe.

Relatively small continent. Lots of 'beefs' with the neighbors.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Sun Jul 24, 2022 11:40 am
by Cthulhu
Bamax wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:27 pm
Sounds like... something familiar going on in Europe.
Aaand I will leave it at that. Not a political forum. Did listen to their President's justification for war and it was essentially just what you said is the Umiak reason.
Without dragging it down into a political discussion, that wasn't the true reason (the stated ones rarely are). Both the trigger and the core of this conflict are quite different.
Arioch wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:02 pm
The Umiak Hierarchy is more of a tree (or org chart) than a pyramid; it's a hierarchy of hierarchies, each node in the tree with its own bureaucracy, privileges and responsibilities. The highest node in this many-headed hydra is, of course, an Umiak bureaucracy, but the various alien members of the hierarchy that report to the top-level Umiak government have their own governments and social organization. In the Umiak spirit of decentralization, the alien governments are supplied with rules to follow and quotas to meet, but otherwise they are left to their own devices. Even those alien nations that have been conquered and are still occupied by Umiak troops are nominally run by native puppet governments (under close Umiak scrutiny).
So is there a Head of State? Maybe some sort of Central Committee? Or a Swarm Queen? :shock:

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Sun Jul 24, 2022 6:55 pm
by Arioch
Cthulhu wrote:
Sun Jul 24, 2022 11:40 am
So is there a Head of State? Maybe some sort of Central Committee? Or a Swarm Queen? :shock:
There's no single head of state or even a single governing body; the Umiak are big into co-equal branches of government, separation of powers and checks & balances. At any given moment there are individuals who may be assembly speakers, committee chairmen, bureau chiefs, etc., who are calling the shots on a particular issue, but it takes an Umiak's hyper attention to detail to know who that is.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Sun Jul 24, 2022 8:13 pm
by Bamax
Arioch wrote:
Sun Jul 24, 2022 6:55 pm
Cthulhu wrote:
Sun Jul 24, 2022 11:40 am
So is there a Head of State? Maybe some sort of Central Committee? Or a Swarm Queen? :shock:
There's no single head of state or even a single governing body; the Umiak are big into co-equal branches of government, separation of powers and checks & balances. At any given moment there are individuals who may be assembly speakers, committee chairmen, bureau chiefs, etc., who are calling the shots on a particular issue, but it takes an Umiak's hyper attention to detail to know who that is.

If hyper attention to detail is common to Umiak then they ought to be good at tactics with a limited number of good options... in other words situations like the game chess.

Thousands of potential moves but far less good ones to win.

Seems to me if it were not for Loroi trump cards of long range firepower and Farseers, the Umiak would and could be superior in combat against them.

One of these they have neutralized so far... the other they will pay in lots of gallons of Umiak blood to neutralize.

Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Posted: Sun Jul 24, 2022 9:37 pm
by Arioch
Memorizing chess moves doesn't make someone a good tactician. The movement of chess pieces is 100% deterministic; one piece captures another 100% of the time, and so for any given board state, there is a mathematically "best" move. Real battles don't work like that, which is why most wargames include a random element in combat resolution. On any given Sunday, any unit can defeat any other unit, and so tactics is about what you do after the strategic plan fails to survive contact with the enemy, and how you balance risk vs. reward. "Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have."