No Topic on this yet?
Well, here it is.

So, is Fireblade a Tadan or is she a Barrain?


2nd question:


On earth fauna is boosted by carbon dioxide AFAIK, is this different on Perrein? (On Earth oxygen level was 60% higher in that era, yes, but to my opinion more important is that CO2 level was 200% higher compared to today.)


Also on a side note: Would it be possible to flag changes so we can find them quicker?

You've confused Flora and Fauna.

Flora = Plants
Fauna = Animals

High oxygen levels allow for much larger invertebrates (insects, crustaceans, etc.) and more energetic vertebrates.

Oh, shoot me. You´re right, of course.

Tadan. Her skin is darker than most Loroi.

When I first read that article, I thought, "oh, so Alex's probably going to eat Perrein cuisine and find it appealing and that'll let him find some common ground with, I dunno, Tempo or someone."

Now, upon re-reading it, I suddenly remembered what Carboniferous fauna were actually like.

Centipedes three yards long and more than a foot wide on the land, the waterways ripe with arachnid-relatives the size of Volkswagens, the air full of the buzzing of predatory dragonflies with wingspans a yard across.

Not exactly the most appealing-sounding diet to an American, and there's no reason to believe it'd be more compatible with his digestive system than equally alien Soia-Liron foodstuffs.

The reason we don't still have anything of the sort today, even in Australia? Hemocyanin's kinda not the best thing for moving oxygen around. The Loroi only have to contend with part of what makes Earthly hemocyanin terrible (the way its copper bonds with oxygen); amongst the arthropods, their free-floating hemocyanin isn't even circulated. No hearts or anything. It oxygenates their tissues via passive diffusion, and so their volume is limited by how far a tissue can be from exposure to the air, lest that tissue be starved of oxygen. Turning hemocyanin into a more active transport system has its own problems, though; it's just not all that good at moving oxygen around.

And that's why you will never ride a giant spider into battle. Not even after the inevitable nuclear apocalypse brings about a world of mutants and zombies.

I wonder how this affects the native Loroi. Do they have diminished lung capacity and difficulty dealing with the (comparatively) low-oxygen environments of their spaceships and other worlds? (I'm assuming that Deinar, which is said to be comparable to Earth but with a thinner atmosphere, sets the standard oxygen level for their ships). Loroi, being genetically engineered and all, might be less developmentally influenced by the environment than humans are; their makers pretty obviously had some really powerful biological sorceries at their disposal. And then there's the cultural matters, assuming their diet is as terrifying as one might imagine. Like, Perrein Loroi looking at a field of dead Umiak infantry and thinking "looks like we're havin' us some good eatin' tonight!"


Except when it's referring to microbial flora, in which case it's an antiquated and misleading term for the collection of microorganisms within a given system.

Biology's kinda full of misleading and antiquated terms like that.

I mean, just look at all the different causes and treatments of varieties of Diabetes mellitus. Binomial nomenclature, properly classical-sounding, sounds like a genus-species name, right? But you can't tell me that Type 1 autoimmune diabetes is actually totally the same disease as Type 1 alcohol-cirrhosis-induced diabetes or the pancreatic cancer induced varieties, much less Type 2 obesity-induced variants. But, many centuries before modern medicine, a certain physician noticed that some patients had sweet-tasting urine (I find it best not to ask how he acquired this knowledge) and a lot of the symptoms were the same, so they're all stuck with the same name forever.

i would assume the Loroi had their lungs adapted to deal with the lower oxygen levels of other worlds

Interesting fact: The key to efficient oxygen transport isn't actually in the transport molecule's active ingredient.
It's the ability to moderate oxygen levels in the body!

Humans have both Haemoglobin and Myoglobin in their tissues: with Myoglobin binding and attracting oxygen at far lower concentrations of oxygen partial pressure than that bound to Haemoglobin, this gives muscles and other tissues the ability to store oxygen and draw it away from blood and provides something of a buffer against sudden changes in oxygen concentration when doing work.

Note that the copper based molecules in insects serve the same purpose as Myoglobin, a buffer against sudden changes when work begins and ends, as opposed to the purpose of Haemoglobin found in animal cells which serves the purpose of transport.

Mind you, there are other possible alternative structures, each will change a prosthetic groups binding to oxygen. Any of which might be utilised by the biochemistry of the Loroi.
Look up Foetal Haemoglobin for an example of a small modification that leads to higher affinity for oxygen in human Haemoglobin.

Fireblade isn't from Deinar (she's from Seren) and so is not of direct lineage, but she would be classified as Barraid. Ashrain is also Barraid. Rune Laurel is an example of a Tadan Loroi. Stillstorm and Talon are Belerid, Forrest is Amenal, and Tempo is Lowland Perrein. Beryl and many of the other younger Loroi seen so far who were born in the colonies would be classified as Maiad (of mixed lineage).


The higher level of oxygen is caused by the proliferation of plant life, but I'm not sure the higher CO2 level is what caused the flora to go nuts. But I would expect that a flora boom would reduce the CO2 level, since it's being consumed and sequestered by the flora.


I'm not sure how I would do that, but I'll give it some thought.


To clarify, insects don't use their hemolymph for oxygen transport, but instead have trachea through which air is delivered directly to tissues throughout the body. It's true that oxygen delivery is the main limitation on the size of insects (and so they got much larger in eras with higher oxygen content), but this hasn't got anything to do with hemocyanin.


Whatever exotic oxygen transport mechanism the Soia-Liron use would be at least as capable as ours.

I barely remember result of some old research. High CO2 level will increase growth of plants, but the nutrients storaged are debleted.

There is a glaring, horrifying error in what I wrote there; "no hearts or anything." I either meant "no familiar humanlike heart-lung system in the breathing process," or I just went inexplicably dumb. Both have been known to happen.

Arthropods have hearts. Well, they have muscles that move their fluids around, though if I remember anything correctly at all, they don't do this to actually circulate it (which would involve moving it in a circuit, hence the name), more to keep it mixed.

Not all terrestrial arthropods exclusively use trachea (though, not all arthropods use hemocyanin either, others have come to embrace the Gospel of Iron, though from what I remember they don't use hemoglobin but rather some other iron metalloprotein, hemoritin or hemorathin or something like that, something with an "r," I'd google it but I can't google what I can't spell, some iron-based blood that's wrapped in a corpuscle but which doesn't cooperatively bind to oxygen the way hemoglobin does and which is nowhere near as efficient) so you need to use hemocyanin as an oxygen transport mechanism to support a number of tissues in a number of critters. Insects and their tubes everywhere approach is its own sort of thing, but if I recall, a number of the ancient, very large arthropods of the Carboniferous used book lungs, gills, and other such exchange systems that would require hemocyanin to disseminate oxygen to the rest of the systems, and which would require a significant concentration of oxygen to work at their scale. There are still arachnids with book lungs (which are less like lungs than they are like gills, iirc) rather than trachea, which serve to oxygenate the hemolymph rather than directly feeding each tissue. There are also arachnids with trachea, but, again if memory serves, that was something that likely evolved out of the book lung. So the oxygenation of tissues will still have something to do with hemocyanin for a number of terrestrial arthropods, particularly the book-lunged scorpions of the era.

Of course, a book lung is radically inferior as an oxygenator than a real lung with a vigorous, mammalian heart circulating deoxygenized blood into it and oxygenized blood away, so that doesn't necessarily reflect too poorly on hemocyanin.

However, I do recall a lecture I was given, which stated, among other things, that with an equal concentration of hemocyanin and corpuscular hemoglobin (that is, as many moles of hemoglobin as hemocyanin, with the hemoglobin wrapped in blood cells and the hemocyanin floating free), over a given period of time the hemoglobin would be able to transfer about three to five times as much oxygen per unit volume as the hemocyanin (depending on the type of hemocyanin; certain varieties of hemocyanin are more likely to bind oxygen cooperatively). I don't honestly recall if this was attributed primarily to the hemoglobin's innate chemistry or to it's packaging in a corpuscle, but I suspect it was both, and have been acting from that assumption for a while. ("Hemocyanin has more oxygen binding sites, but is so reluctant to bind cooperatively that it actually ends up moving less oxygen at standard temperature and pressure…" "Octopi are actually pretty close to a similar concentration of hemocyanin in their hemolymph as you have hemoglobin in your blood, and a fair approximation of the concentration of hemolymph as you have blood in your body, and a circulatory system that's actually pretty interesting. The reason they're fine with hemocyanin is because they live in extremely cold temperatures and at pressures where it transfers more oxygen than hemoglobin would; still less than hemoglobin does at stp…" blah blah blah the octopus has three hearts and a gill system that's the envy of the ocean and its hemolymph still doesn't get anything like the blood-oxygen per blood-volume of a mammal, though marine mammals need the extra oxygen to stay warm and have to surface to breathe so it's not like one's objectively more advantageous in all ways than the other in all ways and so on and so forth).

If I've been misremembering that lecture for all these years I'm going to be kicking myself about it for a long time. My memory's far from perfect, but usually it's better than that.

(I'm focusing on the arthropods even though there were a lot of very large and interesting vertebrates in our own Carboniferous, and Perrein's arthropods might have been forced into smaller evolutionary niches by vertebrates and all sorts of things might or might not be. I am doing so because it is funnier to me to imagine cute blue girls messily devouring enormous deadly scorpion-analogues, or creatures that superficially resemble the Umiak, or any number of carapaced nightmares, than to imagine them eating vaguely reptilian steak. And far, far funnier to imagine them trying to share this with Alex. "Just try it. Only the top four sets of mouthparts are venomous. And it really is dead, they all keep twitching like that for a couple of hours after they go. It's chemically pretty similar to your rations, it should sit fine with you, I swear.")



My question there didn't have to do with the transport mechanism itself (though I admit, I was responsible for bringing that subject up, for no real reason, because I am dumb), but rather with how they acclimate to local conditions.

A human born and raised at sea level will have more trouble breathing mountain air than a Himalayan native will; I wanted to know if Perrein locals have similar issues when adjusting to, say, Deinar's atmosphere.

I asked because if the Loroi were genetically engineered to grow into a certain template with little deviation, then I would think the Perrein locals might have much less difficulty making the transition from an oxygen-rich to an oxygen-normal or even oxygen-poor atmosphere than a human born in similar conditions would. If their physical capabilities are less influenced by the environment they lived in and more pre-programmed for efficiency's sake than ours are.

As a different example of this line of thinking, say you've got a member of servant race engineered for ground combat on a high-gravity world. You wouldn't want it to develop the weaker muscles and thinner bones you'd expect from a normal-grav world just because he was mass-produced on a normal-grav space station or space ship or planet, right? So if you could, you'd make its body grow those thick bones and strong muscles regardless of upbringing--so there'd be less difference between it and its high-grav-born counterparts than you'd expect if it were from a natural species. (This is assuming that artificial gravity is energy expensive and you wouldn't just crank it up for his species wherever you go--though, looking at Outsider, I would have no reason to make that assumption for this particular setting, since even species just barely getting into interstellar travel like humans have constant gravity on their ships). That sort of thinking, though in a different situation.

Specializing versus standardizing could be a pretty significant advantage in some circumstances and a disadvantage in others, though I'm far too tired to think of a coherent way to explain the good and bad sides of each way. Human tolerance curves shift, Loroi tolerance curves might not--but might be more impressive overall anyways.

It wasn't whether the Loroi would be short of breath compared with humans, but whether Perrein natives have the same sort of difficulty adjusting to lower-oxygen environments that you'd expect from a human.

Sorry for putting that question right after that misleading and inaccurate tangent, that was dumb of me.

And if you understood that and I misread you, I'm doubly sorry, but I still must ask for clarification on the matter as I did not understand your answer.

Sorry, I just didn't read the question closely enough. The mention of "native" Loroi should have been the tip-off.

Speaking hypothetically, if you were going to design an oxygen transport system (or select one from nature) to go into your engineered species, I would think you'd want first and foremost a system that works effectively in lower-oxygen and colder environments (since that's the difficult condition), but which can adjust to higher-oxygen and warmer environments (which is the easier condition; all you need to do is dial down the rate of delivery). And ideally, the method you use to adapt to a high-oxygen mode of operation is non-permanent and reversible, as opposed to a permanent loss of transport efficiency. Off the top of my head, I suspect the best way to do that would be to have more than one kind of delivery mechanism. (It would be amusing if it were the case that when you take a Loroi into a warm, high-oxygen environment, she starts to turn purple or pink. Mood Loroi!)

I think that a Loroi born on Perrein will never have as good lung efficiency in the mountains of Deinar as a Loroi who was born there, but given time, the Perrein Loroi's body should be able to just adequately to the lower-oxygen environment so that she can function there.

*raises hand* American, have eaten bugs with relish. They're crunchy. Woodland survival training the first time, second time was culinary-grade crickets. They're not bad at all, but you have to chew thoroughly or the legs... tickle. Alex has probably had survival training in which he learned to eat whatever was at hand without puking it back up., and bugs are an excellent source of protein.

One of those giant centipedes might be a prestige food, actually. Lobsterlike, complete with a gooey hepatopancreas the size of your head. I could see Alex freaking out if he's offered some (suggested ritual reaction to the Loroi warrior-caste discomfort with eating around males; offer males a symbolic quantity of the highest-status cuts and organs, like the aforementioned huge tomalley), only to realize that it's actually delicious. Can't be that hard to kill telekinetically, either.

Giant arachnid probably isn't too different from crab - the legs, steamed, would be an entertaining fast food if we ever see that much of Loroi civilian life.

Aren´t they hairy?

Nothing deters the true gourmet!

For Earth life, varies with the species. If they ARE hairy, treat them like a prickly-pear cactus and run them through an open flame first.

Would hairiness really matter? You would eat what's inside the shell, so you'd totally avoid any hair. Of course, this is all beside the fact that you'd be eating a giant, alien spider-thing...

Might make handling them a wee bit difficult. Who knows--maybe Loroi spiders have poison glands in their skin or something. In any case, getting rid of the hair before partaking of arachnid might or might not be a necessary step to take. Then there's the aesthetic factor: who wants to eat something with lots of hair on it?

that what i told her.... (too easy i had to do it)

If their hair is anything like a tarantula's, it could get quite itchy... As to eating things with hair, well... I've seen where those tangents can go.

...And I see Karst decided to follow the tangent. Good on ya!

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@ Arioch: Estrow?

Or is Eloree too purple?

Hadn't even though of that. Been building the list for a long time, and OIC is pretty new.

Only trouble is, we really don't know much about the Estrow yet. And Eloree is pretty purple.

Thanks for the suggestion.

And as a honorable mention Doc Manhattan from watchmen?

You already put Drow, my default favorite non-human-colored ladies.

In fact, I often describe Loroi to my D&D friends as "Telepathic Space Drow"

Hmm...

I thought I had something, but after a few dozen pages on a vague google search it turned out I was just thinking of the Vineans.

Anyways, if bit players like the Bolians count, how about these guys?

They always looked pretty bluish to me.

EDIT:
Also, to go for an honorable mention here, it's pretty common to see certain ice-related beings from Norse mythology drawn as if they were blue.
I don't know if such characters or races were described as blue in actual Norse mythology, but it's a pretty common sight nonetheless, so in things like fantasy games (such as the "Vrikul" from WoW you mentioned, who, from their given place-names [I have never played WoW], seem like an obvious proxy for Norse Jotun) and fantasy art books you'll see characters with names like "Skadi" with blue skin.