Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[Hālian]

Maybe they'll call him Al?

[Hālian]

I derped and didn't notice the calendar bits on page 1

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?

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?

Sorry for all the questions, I just find this stuff interesting and pertinent to The Emirate

[Arioch]

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?

(shrug) I haven't bothered to work it out.

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?

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.

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;” (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.

[fredgiblet]

5.5 beats per minute.

Is...that a typo?

[Arioch]

5.5 beats per minute.

Is...that a typo?

Yes. 55 beats per minute.

[Hālian]

What would be a formal greeting in Trade (or an ordinary one if there's no distinction)?

[Arioch]

What would be a formal greeting in Trade (or an ordinary one if there's no distinction)?

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.

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.

[CptWinters]

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.

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?

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?

[icekatze]

hi hi

The Barsam and the Historian Construct, on the other hand, seemed to have some rather formal greetings and farewells.

Its hard to imagine communication without words at all, I mean, humans tend to think in language after all. Even basic symbols like images may not be applicable. Its easy to imagine an image of an apple, and conceive of someone sending that image of what they think the apple is like when the thought is sent. But for more complex or abstract concepts, I'd think they'd either have their own telepathic language or it would be so far removed from what we could understand that words might have a hard time explaining it. How does one send the concept of infinity, or how about five dimensional objects?

All language is an abstraction to some degree. The word apple is not an apple, obviously. And the word apple can apply to objects that are not the same thing. Some are sweet, some are sour, etc.

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.

[CptWinters]

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?

[Hālian]

Do the Loroi have gods?

[Arioch]

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?

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.

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?

This is something coming in the future.

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.

That is more or less how I look at it.

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?

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."

Our proverbs generally involve analogy or allegory, and often some kind of clever word-play: "Revenge is a dish best served cold." Since sending is very literal, there is much less room for such artfulness. The Loroi have truisms of a sort, but they come across like "One should not stick one's hand in a fire, because fire is hot and it will damage flesh." Not really the stuff of poetry. The heroic tales are ancient enough to have inevitably become somewhat abstracted, and this is one area in which some room for allegory can be found. But these are not the sorts of things that Loroi utter sagely to each other as a commentary on current events; if one Loroi sent "thus was Tempest deceived by her wicked sisters," somebody would probably respond "WICKED SISTERS?!? WHERE????"

Do the Loroi have gods?

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.

The closest a Loroi subculture comes to having what we would recognize as a formal "religion" was in some of the highlands cultures of ancient Perrein, which worshipped the sun. They had formal ritual practices including idols, a male priesthood, et cetera.

Some Loroi do follow alien religions, including the Barsam religion. They are probably viewed by Loroi society at large in a similar way that we view cultists.

[CptWinters]

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.

This is something coming in the future.

Cool! That should be interesting to see.

[Karst45]

What would be a formal greeting in Trade (or an ordinary one if there's no distinction)?

Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong ?

[sunphoenix]

THANK YOU Arioch! This helps A lot!

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?

(shrug) I haven't bothered to work it out.

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?

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.

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.

[Jericho]

What would be a formal greeting in Trade (or an ordinary one if there's no distinction)?

Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong ?

HA! Good one.

[Turrosh Mak]

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.

[manticore7]

watching the movie "Gettysburg" made me wonder, did pre space Loroi armies have musicians?

[Arioch]

watching the movie "Gettysburg" made me wonder, did pre space Loroi armies have musicians?

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.

[Karst45]

watching the movie "Gettysburg" made me wonder, did pre space Loroi armies have musicians?

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.

So.... are you implying that telepathy jamming isnt unheard of in the loroi socity?