This is an important thing to consider in the Umiak treatment of their alien subjects; to compare it to the treatment of their own citizens. This is a race that uses its own people as cannon fodder and who are willing to literally work until they drop, and to run their own infrastructure at unsustainable levels (and who by all accounts ruined their own homeworld in this manner). Admittedly this is driven by their own paranoid monomania and need for security at all costs, but from the Umiak point of view, they are not asking anything of their subjects that they do not ask of their own people times ten. The Umiak know that their system is unsustainable, but "it's just until we can make our territory secure."discord wrote:On the lower levels they treat everyone as if they were Umiak(not very well at all.) and on the higher levels they simply do not allow non Umiak(so you have mostly control over ONE system? big whoppity do!) due to mostly reasonable trust issues would be my guess.
Which of course is not a practical possibility; there will always be some new threat, real or perceived. But I think you'd have a tough time convincing the Umiak of that.
I think this is a good point, and I've had a similar observation: because the Loroi are more like us, we tend to judge them more harshly by our standards, whereas the more alien Umiak seem to be given more latitude. Many people seem suspicious of Loroi motives, but more willing to take the Umiak at face value. When I was writing the scene in which Stillstorm and Kikitik-27 interact, I was concerned that readers would find Kikitik's offer totally unbelievable; I was a bit surprised when the majority of those who commented seemed to believe Kikitik implicitly, some even to the point of judging Stillstorm to be "Stupid Evil" for not promptly surrendering to her mortal enemy based on his word alone.discord wrote:Remember the fact that aliens are alien, Loroi however are closely enough related to humans that they are not alien enough(uncanny valley) and we apply human standards on non humans.
I'm afraid there's no way I can answer that question.TrashMan wrote:I'm curious, if humans were to negotiate with Umiak, what kind of a deal could they pull off? Could they avoid the harsh quotas?