Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[Arent]

but the gender ratio is always close to 50:50 to avoid population bottlenecks and inbreeding.

It's actually more than that. It's statistics

(1) If you have a typical Loroi that has 90:10 daughters : boys, then of course every boy will have (statistically) 9 times as many children as his sisters because he has 9x as many sexual partners.
(2) Now assume there is a Loroi that has some variation of a gene that slightly raises the chance to have a boy instead of a daughter. You always have such a variation, you don't even need to go to mutations. Let's say there are 1:100 Loroi who have 80:20 or 70:30. Or 1:10000 Loroi that have 60:40. These Loroi would have many more children (over several generations) simply because more of them are boys.
(3) Which means there is a strong selection for the Loroi that are closer to 50:50. It's simply a question of time until only Loroi are left that have a variation around 50:50.

[SVlad]

the majority of Loroi likely go through their whole lives having only experienced one mating encounter with a male

If an average Loroi girl has one mating encounter per life, the average Loroi boy would have about ten such encounters. Once per forty years of their 400 years life. Or in case of noneven distribution 10% would have about 100 encounters (once per four year), and 90% just never have sex. Or a more extreme case, if some handsome Loroi boy regularly have mating encounters twice a year (and queue for ten years ahead), there had to be one hundred of boys who never mate.

Looks like Beryl was heavy exaggerating saying males can't stay too long without sex.
Or safe sex just doesn't count as mating encounter and not restricted by government.

[entity2636]

the majority of Loroi likely go through their whole lives having only experienced one mating encounter with a male

If an average Loroi girl has one mating encounter per life, the average Loroi boy would have about ten such encounters. Once per forty years of their 400 years life. Or in case of noneven distribution 10% would have about 100 encounters (once per four year), and 90% just never have sex. Or a more extreme case, if some handsome Loroi boy regularly have mating encounters twice a year (and queue for ten years ahead), there had to be one hundred of boys who never mate.

Dorfington talks about loroi girls. The loroi boys, few and far between as they are, however, have a long queue of girls waiting to spend time with them. Much more than they could naturally handle or what would be healthy for them and thus the loroi boys actually have to be protected from the hordes of girls, else the girls might tear them apart, literally. The girls also have to be kept in line to not start a war over a boy. This probably has happened in the past and could be regarded as the reason for loroi aggressiveness and strict mating restrictions.

[Werra]

Wasn't the gender dispaeity not something like 1:10? That would still leave every Loroi woman with sex once every three weeks if we assume one day of rest for males between mating encounters. That's hardly critical.

What is happening may be the result of merit and prestige based mating encounters. Older, less fertile Loroi may take up lots of male time.

[SVlad]

Yes, it's about 8-10 girls per boy. So in general boys would have sex 10 times more often than girls. And if girl allowed to have only one mating encounter per life, the boy would have ten such encounters. It's simple math. And remember that you will have this ten encounters in your 400 years life only in the best case of even girl distribution.
In more realistic approach we have rare handsome boys with long queue of girls and thousands of 400 years old virgins.

Whoops, I've just made Loroi society into a dystopia of 1984 (or We) level.

[Zarya]

Whoops, I've just made Loroi society into a dystopia of 1984 (or We) level.

There also is an highlight in cinematic history in which the 10:1 ratio is seen as... an astonishingly good idea.
There’s one reason why Loroi women are extremely good looking.

Beryl’s remarks about a safe period between encounters and “mental well-being” are interesting too.

Loroi males require a steady supply of encounters, and appear biologically geared to meet “production requirements”.

[entity2636]

I remember a caricature from an old magazine or newspaper about a man stranded on a deserted island with a whole bunch of women, but can't seem to find it online anywhere. The picture had the man sitting atop a palm tree, holding on for his life and the women standing around it angrily yelling at him "get down, your 30 minutes are up!"

[boldilocks]

Whoops, I've just made Loroi society into a dystopia of 1984 (or We) level.

There also is an highlight in cinematic history in which the 10:1 ratio is seen as... an astonishingly good idea.
There’s one reason why Loroi women are extremely good looking.

Beryl’s remarks about a safe period between encounters and “mental well-being” are interesting too.

Loroi males require a steady supply of encounters, and appear biologically geared to meet “production requirements”.

The mating convention described in the Outsider Insider Extras describes the procedure as a female and male having multiple encounters over several weeks.

[boldilocks]

I remember a caricature from an old magazine or newspaper about a man stranded on a deserted island with a whole bunch of women, but can't seem to find it online anywhere. The picture had the man sitting atop a palm tree, holding on for his life and the women standing around it angrily yelling at him "get down, your 30 minutes are up!"

Many think living alone as a man within a harem of women wherein you must perform a mans duties for them all is something of a paradise, however a man can only continuously maintain the lawn, trim the hedges and check out mysterious noises in the night for so long before he goes insane.

[Zarya]

The mating convention described in the Outsider Insider Extras describes the procedure as a female and male having multiple encounters over several weeks.

Hm, halfway this one it says it’s done over the course of several days.
There is no mention anywhere of a male *urge* that has to be satisfied for mental well-being.

[boldilocks]

but the gender ratio is always close to 50:50 to avoid population bottlenecks and inbreeding.

It's actually more than that. It's statistics

(1) If you have a typical Loroi that has 90:10 daughters : boys, then of course every boy will have (statistically) 9 times as many children as his sisters because he has 9x as many sexual partners.
(2) Now assume there is a Loroi that has some variation of a gene that slightly raises the chance to have a boy instead of a daughter. You always have such a variation, you don't even need to go to mutations. Let's say there are 1:100 Loroi who have 80:20 or 70:30. Or 1:10000 Loroi that have 60:40. These Loroi would have many more children (over several generations) simply because more of them are boys.
(3) Which means there is a strong selection for the Loroi that are closer to 50:50. It's simply a question of time until only Loroi are left that have a variation around 50:50.

The simple handwave is to say that this is a result of some genetic modification of the loroi from a bygone age, thus giving it a genetic reason not to occur.
Personally I'd love to see this as a conspiratorial drama, in which socio-economic forces ensure that loroi society maintains it's 10-1 / 8-1 ratio through direct medical intervention.

Ie, perhaps
1. The loroi leadership realizes that a 50-50 ratio would be disastrous to the loroi empire as the resulting population explosion would be uncontainable.
or
2. The loroi leadership has an ideological reason (for example: warrior caste supremacy requires control of access to males and a higher ratio of males makes that control both unjustifiable and unenforcable)


However, the socio-economic cause doesn't really make sense given that the loroi fell to stone-age level technology during which outright mass infanticide of male children would have been necessary, which I don't think could have been suppressed. Unless beryl is lying through her teeth about "males have traditionally been protected". (And I think the insider information would have to be lying as well for that to be the case.)

[boldilocks]

The mating convention described in the Outsider Insider Extras describes the procedure as a female and male having multiple encounters over several weeks.

Hm, halfway this one it says it’s done over the course of several days.
There is no mention anywhere of a male *urge* that has to be satisfied for mental well-being.

Maybe that's just beryl referring to good old fashioned horniness. Perhaps loroi males are constantly stuck in their teens.

[entity2636]

The simple handwave is to say that this is a result of some genetic modification of the loroi from a bygone age, thus giving it a genetic reason not to occur.
Personally I'd love to see this as a conspiratorial drama, in which socio-economic forces ensure that loroi society maintains it's 10-1 / 8-1 ratio through direct medical intervention.

Ie, perhaps
1. The loroi leadership realizes that a 50-50 ratio would be disastrous to the loroi empire as the resulting population explosion would be uncontainable.
or
2. The loroi leadership has an ideological reason (for example: warrior caste supremacy requires control of access to males and a higher ratio of males makes that control both unjustifiable and unenforcable)


However, the socio-economic cause doesn't really make sense given that the loroi fell to stone-age level technology during which outright mass infanticide of male children would have been necessary, which I don't think could have been suppressed. Unless beryl is lying through her teeth about "males have traditionally been protected". (And I think the insider information would have to be lying as well for that to be the case.)

The conspiracy theory certainly has merit. Unless I've understood this dead wrong, the loroi don't bother much with their history and don't keep many written records and accounts of the past, most is remembered and telepathically retold by listels. It only takes one unscrupulous listel, or one that's been intimidated to retell the history the way you want and voila! your whole world just bent itself over so that your faction or caste has always been in the right, or certain things have always been like you want them to. Beryl would not be lying but honestly telling what she believes to be the truth as it was handed down to her.

It could very well be that under orders from the government, 80% of male embryos are aborted to keep the male part of the population down and the female one under control.

Doranzer to a pregnant loroi woman: "I'm very sorry to inform you that according to these test results the fetus is defective and must be aborted. But don't worry, we'll move you up the queue so you'll have a new chance very soon".

[Mr.Tucker]

The simple handwave is to say that this is a result of some genetic modification of the loroi from a bygone age, thus giving it a genetic reason not to occur.
Personally I'd love to see this as a conspiratorial drama, in which socio-economic forces ensure that loroi society maintains it's 10-1 / 8-1 ratio through direct medical intervention.

Ie, perhaps
1. The loroi leadership realizes that a 50-50 ratio would be disastrous to the loroi empire as the resulting population explosion would be uncontainable.
or
2. The loroi leadership has an ideological reason (for example: warrior caste supremacy requires control of access to males and a higher ratio of males makes that control both unjustifiable and unenforcable)


However, the socio-economic cause doesn't really make sense given that the loroi fell to stone-age level technology during which outright mass infanticide of male children would have been necessary, which I don't think could have been suppressed. Unless beryl is lying through her teeth about "males have traditionally been protected". (And I think the insider information would have to be lying as well for that to be the case.)

The conspiracy theory certainly has merit. Unless I've understood this dead wrong, the loroi don't bother much with their history and don't keep many written records and accounts of the past, most is remembered and telepathically retold by listels. It only takes one unscrupulous listel, or one that's been intimidated to retell the history the way you want and voila! your whole world just bent itself over so that your faction or caste has always been in the right, or certain things have always been like you want them to. Beryl would not be lying but honestly telling what she believes to be the truth as it was handed down to her.

It could very well be that under orders from the government, 80% of male embryos are aborted to keep the male part of the population down and the female one under control.

Doranzer to a pregnant loroi woman: "I'm very sorry to inform you that according to these test results the fetus is defective and must be aborted. But don't worry, we'll move you up the queue so you'll have a new chance very soon".

Implausible, since that would mean that the Loroi have a high rate of miscarriage, something that would stand out like a sore thumb for a technologically advanced species. Nowhere does it mention that.
Also a Listel that has malevolent intent or is intimidated can't hide that. When she regurgitates the information, the message would be "This is what I have been told/want to tell you:.....". Telepathy is truthful, remember?

[Arioch]

We've been through this before. Loroi females aren't limited to one child, they don't automatically get pregnant every time they have sex (especially as they age), and very few live to be 400.

[orion1836]

Loroi gender imbalance applied to human society in another work of speculative fiction. In case you are interested.

The alternate-history/alternate-Earth aspect of it was done well enough that it got me over the fact I was reading a romance novel.

[Jericho]

Arioch

What kind of adaptation do the delrias have? I remember reading this old qoute from the forum dump (yes i've bothered to read those aswell, chocking )

It is certainly a biased comment, as it reflects the Loroi view that their hyper-specialized society is "normal" and more generalized societies are backward and possibly inferior. However, her comment is in reference to other examples of what the Loroi consider to be "warrior" races -- the Umiak and Barsam -- that also have biological strategies for very aggressive population growth (the Umiak strategy being hermaphroditism, in which all individuals can bear offspring). The Loroi contrast these "successful" warrior species with other examples like the Delrias, who despite having had a very martial culture, have a more conventional system of reproduction similar to ours (balanced gender ratios, slower maturation). The speed with which the Loroi were able to conquer the Delrias makes it easier for them to view the Delrias as inferior, and not a "true" warrior species. Ignoring, of course, the fact that the speed of Loroi victory meant that the relative rate of Delrias reproduction had nothing to do with the outcome of the war. But it is true that without their high reproductive rate, the Loroi probably would not have been able to keep up with the Umiak in the current war.

[Arioch]

What kind of adaptation do the delrias have?

They have multiple-birth litters, and the females slightly outnumber the males.

[GabrielGABFonseca]

Arioch, I was wondering, do the Loroi have any inhibitions against eating their dead? As a warrior species, I guess funeral rites would be important to them, but at the seem time, they do seem to me the kind of efficiency-oriented species that wouldn't want to waste the snack.

[Arioch]

Arioch, I was wondering, do the Loroi have any inhibitions against eating their dead? As a warrior species, I guess funeral rites would be important to them, but at the seem time, they do seem to me the kind of efficiency-oriented species that wouldn't want to waste the snack.

Cannibalism is very rare, not just in humans, but in pretty much all higher animals (especially mammals). In addition to the obvious social taboos against viewing your own kind as food, and that other carnivores tend not to be very tasty, I think the primary reason for this is that disease organisms pass most easily between members of the same species; eating the flesh of one of your own kind leaves you very prone to catching whatever nasty bugs he may have had (hence the spread of diseases like Mad Cow). You're also more likely to consume species-specific hormones or other chemical compounds which may improperly signal your own body to do something you don't want it to do.

The few mammals that do cannibalize tend to be scavengers, like hyenas. They can probably get away with this because they have to have a robust gut microbiome that allows them to eat carrion without dying. So I think any species that regularly engages in cannibalism will probably need to be specialized to do so.

Ironically, eating your own young or your juvenile siblings is probably the safest form of cannibalism, as they are unlikely to have any diseases that you don't already have. I think this is the most common form of cannibalism in non-scavenger mammals and birds.

Loroi are not carrion eaters, and they are just as emotionally attached to their friends and family as humans are, so I don't expect cannibalism will be any more common among Loroi than it is in humans. Which is for the most part, limited to rare instances of emergency famine, insanity, or bizarre (and usually short-lived) tribal rituals.