Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[Arioch]

Notice how elves tend to have a reputation of being insufferable in many settings?

Well, but they're being insufferable to other elves. Sure every intelligent species has at least one component that is insufferable to others. I think humans have quite a large number of such.

[Arent]

But of course and those "extra-snooty warriors" would be assigned somewhere else. Notice how elves tend to have a reputation of being insufferable in many settings?

The depiction of Elves as long lived, beautiful, magical, enigmatic, secluded, martial, completely good & arrogant is the definition of the archetypal race.

Similar to Orcs always being depicted as cruel, aggressive, dumb, entirely evil, tyrannical & wiping others out.

And Humans being depicted as gray zone between these poles.

These races are simply a mirror of humanity - the Elves are the 'perfect Humans', we would like to be, immortal, magical, completely good. The Orcs are the evil Humans we sadly often are - tyrannical, cruel, mob-like. And the Humans are showing how we sometimes lean this or the other direction.

[Sweforce]

Notice how elves tend to have a reputation of being insufferable in many settings?

Well, but they're being insufferable to other elves. Sure every intelligent species has at least one component that is insufferable to others. I think humans have quite a large number of such.

Naturally, playing Skyrim there are both resonable and insufferable kinds. In Windhelm there is thease two dunmer (dark elves) brothers that are on both ends of that spectrum. Everbody, including other Altmer (highelves) hate the Thalmor (Elven Supremacists, and over the top insufferable). But the resonable kind tend to be less vocal the the insufferable ones. And yes, you can play an elven dragonborn and join the Stormcloaks...

[Dan Wyatt]

Hello Arioch, I don't know if this question has been asked before, but does spiral has any child? I know Talon and Fireblade do not, whereas the others have children.

[Arioch]

Hello Arioch, I don't know if this question has been asked before, but does spiral has any child? I know Talon and Fireblade do not, whereas the others have children.

Nope, Spiral doesn't have any children.

[Dan Wyatt]

Hello Arioch, I don't know if this question has been asked before, but does spiral has any child? I know Talon and Fireblade do not, whereas the others have children.

Nope, Spiral doesn't have any children.

This question had been raised in the trade translation general a long time ago, what will be the general designation the Loroi would give to the humans?
Race without soul/Soulless race aka leneda sena meshreid or something?

[Snoofman]

Since we are on the subject of children, how many children has Greywind birthed? And how many generations of children in her bloodline have followed after her? Is Greywind a great grandmother? A great, great grandmother? And how many siblings does she have?

[Arioch]

This question had been raised in the trade translation general a long time ago, what will be the general designation the Loroi would give to the humans?
Race without soul/Soulless race aka leneda sena meshreid or something?

Since the Loroi have direct contact with humanity, and humanity's envoys are speaking Trade, I assume that we would be referred to as "human" or "humanity."

Loroi might subsequently develop epithets for humanity, but that is an element of the unknown future.

Since we are on the subject of children, how many children has Greywind birthed? And how many generations of children in her bloodline have followed after her? Is Greywind a great grandmother? A great, great grandmother? And how many siblings does she have?

Greywind was the fourth of seven sisters, three of whom have since died. She had four daughters, only one of which is still alive. Greywind is nearly 300, so she has something like 20 generations of descendants.

[Snoofman]

Since we are on the subject of children, how many children has Greywind birthed? And how many generations of children in her bloodline have followed after her? Is Greywind a great grandmother? A great, great grandmother? And how many siblings does she have?

Greywind was the fourth of seven sisters, three of whom have since died. She had four daughters, only one of which is still alive. Greywind is nearly 300, so she has something like 20 generations of descendants.

How damn! Loroi sure pop 'em out in a jiffy! If Greywind has 20 generations of descendants, would that mean that her descendants could number into thousands? Maybe tens of thousands? Even if many of them have died in the line of duty?

[Arioch]

How damn! Loroi sure pop 'em out in a jiffy! If Greywind has 20 generations of descendants, would that mean that her descendants could number into thousands? Maybe tens of thousands? Even if many of them have died in the line of duty?

Most Loroi females don't have more than 1 or 2 children during peacetime, so the number of direct descendants is probably a hundred or so. But Greywind's younger sister has a son (Dawn Star, Ashrain's grandfather), so she has a lot of relatives.

[Werra]

Most Loroi females don't have more than 1 or 2 children during peacetime, so the number of direct descendants is probably a hundred or so. But Greywind's younger sister has a son (Dawn Star, Ashrain's grandfather), so she has a lot of relatives.

Around...five to ten grandchildren from her son?

SpoilerShow

1/10 are male, 1/2 are warriors, ~ 5 warriors per male, 1-2 children per warrior

[Arioch]

Around...five to ten grandchildren from her son?

Males are constantly partnered with different females, so a 100 year old male can father thousands of children.

[Werra]

That shouldn't matter, should it? There are only 10 women per male and if they aren't having many children, the males can't either.

[Krulle]

Don't think too much about it, that math broke a while ago.

SpoilerShow

Even if the ratio is 1 to 10, the math of how valuable men are doesn't add up..
They should be much rarer.
(And I remember the ratio being something like 1 out of 8.)
Since they can father a new kid every night, 1 in 100 should be sufficient to make the population go exponential.
1 to 10 makes it go exponential too, but the amount of non-working population you keep under direct state control would be tremendous, especially if the females become warriors and die, while all men are kept safe and survive.
The amount of population you need to feed a tenth of the population doing NOTHING but copulating and non-labour work which needs to be supported by the rest... (10% non-working, and actually needing care - how many caretakers are there (ratio "state wardens" to "female caretakers")?)
And there wouldn't be enough females around for all man to impregnate one.

But there might be other factor unknown to us, like 2 out of 3 men dying during childhood due to barely understood mechanisms.


I know, many men are not given a chance, while others (like males from the royal family) may be much sought after fathership partners, tipping the balances.
But if one out of 10 men produces "thousands of children" in his first century, that's 1 man for 100 women (1/10*1/10) producing "thousands of children".

I don't know the Loroi gestation period, but there shouldn't be enough women around to allow this to happen anywhere close to average. Because that's 10 children per Loroi female for 100 years, if only one thousand are fathered. (Which in itself isn't much (one child per ten years), but there is close to no natural death reducing the numbers of living Loroi again, and if a female can be live-giving for 250 years, that could sum up to nearly 25 kids per female, which results in the population growing by factor 12.5 for every generation, for n=1000 per Loroi male, if "thousands of children" means 2500, then the numbers are 2,5 times higher).
And that's BEFORE you factor in the other 9 Loroi men which may father further children.

Yes, we see why population control is so important. But we immediately run against the issue of not having enough females around.
1 male per 100 females would already be bad, as males can (on average) have 100 days with a fresh encounter a year, but would still have (for Earth-years) 2.5 days without a fresh encounter for every encounter. But 1 out of 10 Loroi being male? 35 days in-between...

[Mk_C]

That shouldn't matter, should it? There are only 10 women per male and if they aren't having many children, the males can't either.

1. That assumes that the fatherhood is equally distributed, which is not the case. Dawn Star is a direct nephew of the Azerein, and as such he's the single hottest piece of pedigree in the observed universe aside from I dunno, her father maybe. Boys from lines strong in mind powers or renowned for health and other capabilities could also have countless descendants. While the pleblower grade boys can probably live their entire lives making just a few daughters. Gives a whole new meaning to the word "proletarian".
2. Girls get wasted yo due to a somewhat significant tendency to die to unnatural causes even in peacetime - many females only score N<1/10M children where M is average number of sons a boy has, because they die early.

And then there's the clan nature of lineage in Loroi culture - as Arioch already explained, the busiest and most powerful blue mommies (like Greywind) don't breed like crazy themselves, they use their power and status to secure some more reproductive privileges to all the countless sisters and aunts and grandmothers and cousins and nieces who have the time to sit around hugging a belly. So Greywind could be even significantly below the average for renowned warriors, but the rest of her clan is probably quite above said average. All while countless lower rank girls only ever get 1 or two children, and the sprawling mass of civilians typically never reproduces.

[Werra]

1. That assumes that the fatherhood is equally distributed, which is not the case.

That would mean that a lot of males have to make do with very infrequent sex. Then they couldn't either be as horny or as dependent on intercourse as previously assumed.

[Mk_C]

Since they can father a new kid every night, 1 in 100 should be sufficient to make the population go exponential.

1 to 1 is already enough to make it go exponential if the circumstances allow for it. Rarer men only allow for making the curve steeper, and shifting the slider of male status between "a specialized class of society" and "reverently treasured living artefacts" (to the point where Alex would NEVER EVER meet a single Loroi male in his journeys, much less an important one - which fucks with the plot and makes exposition on a vital part of Loroi society a pain in the ass). Rarer males also introduce their own problems - like rapidly inflating the minimal size of a viable Loroi community. If it's one in a hundred, a small Loroi village can pass generations without ever delivering a single boy, and you need multiple to keep a lid on inbreeding - which is a big issue even with just 1 boy in 10.

1 to 10 makes it go exponential too, but the amount of non-working population you keep under direct state control would be tremendous, especially if the females become warriors and die, while all men are kept safe and survive.
The amount of population you need to feed a tenth of the population doing NOTHING but copulating and non-labour work which needs to be supported by the rest... (10% non-working, and actually needing care - how many caretakers are there (ratio "state wardens" to "female caretakers")?)

Eh, they already maintain a tremendous military, the major part of which is entirely unproductive. Mitigated by their haxx metabolisms and haxx crops, and general culture of austerity. Loroi were never described as paragons of productivity. Plus, boys are not entirely unproductive - they do social management stuff, provide comfort, and the Nedatan seem to form the entirety of Loroi humanities("Loroities?") intelligentsia.

But if one out of 10 men produces "thousands of children" in his first century

Men with thousands of children in a century can be much rarer than 1 out of 10.

but there is close to no natural death reducing the numbers of living Loroi again

Replacement rate. Longer lifetimes don't mean that there's fewer Loroi dying every generation - only that generations are longer, regardless of their degree of overlap.

that could sum up to nearly 25 kids per female

That assumes direct scalability between children per male and per female - which is very explicitly not the case.

2.5 days without a fresh encounter for every encounter. But 1 out of 10 Loroi being male? 35 days in-between...

That would mean that a lot of males have to make do with very infrequent sex.

Contraception exists, though. And we know that caretakers undergoing reversible sterilization is a thing. That is a necessity in any case, given that Loroi have a highly adjustable birth rate - the amount of encountersintense wall-slamming alien sex for thee purpose of procreation is directly stated to be constantly adjusted based on conditions, from peacetime stability, to rapid expansion into colonies, to wartime meatgrinder. While boys stay constantly much horny at all times.

Overall, balancing a population with skewed sex ratios is tricky and takes some mental gymnastics to even out with all the specific cultural facts that we know about the Loroi society, but I don't see canon being straight up contradictory on the issue - in a great deal due to wide degree of variety allowed by, eh, reproductive class inequality among both males and females.

[Gorbash]

And all of this begs the question: how do Loroi contraceptives work? If a male Loroi has "needs", do his caretakers toss him a copy of Playelf and thrust him into an isolation room for a few days? Or is he just given a shot in the arm and a lollipop until he feels better?

These have probably been asked before, so feel free to ignore them if they have.

[Arioch]

Don't think too much about it, that math broke a while ago.

SpoilerShow

Even if the ratio is 1 to 10, the math of how valuable men are doesn't add up..
They should be much rarer.
(And I remember the ratio being something like 1 out of 8.)
Since they can father a new kid every night, 1 in 100 should be sufficient to make the population go exponential.
1 to 10 makes it go exponential too, but the amount of non-working population you keep under direct state control would be tremendous, especially if the females become warriors and die, while all men are kept safe and survive.
The amount of population you need to feed a tenth of the population doing NOTHING but copulating and non-labour work which needs to be supported by the rest... (10% non-working, and actually needing care - how many caretakers are there (ratio "state wardens" to "female caretakers")?)
And there wouldn't be enough females around for all man to impregnate one.

But there might be other factor unknown to us, like 2 out of 3 men dying during childhood due to barely understood mechanisms.


I know, many men are not given a chance, while others (like males from the royal family) may be much sought after fathership partners, tipping the balances.
But if one out of 10 men produces "thousands of children" in his first century, that's 1 man for 100 women (1/10*1/10) producing "thousands of children".

I don't know the Loroi gestation period, but there shouldn't be enough women around to allow this to happen anywhere close to average. Because that's 10 children per Loroi female for 100 years, if only one thousand are fathered. (Which in itself isn't much (one child per ten years), but there is close to no natural death reducing the numbers of living Loroi again, and if a female can be live-giving for 250 years, that could sum up to nearly 25 kids per female, which results in the population growing by factor 12.5 for every generation, for n=1000 per Loroi male, if "thousands of children" means 2500, then the numbers are 2,5 times higher).
And that's BEFORE you factor in the other 9 Loroi men which may father further children.

Yes, we see why population control is so important. But we immediately run against the issue of not having enough females around.
1 male per 100 females would already be bad, as males can (on average) have 100 days with a fresh encounter a year, but would still have (for Earth-years) 2.5 days without a fresh encounter for every encounter. But 1 out of 10 Loroi being male? 35 days in-between...

We talked about this before. You're assuming that one night = one baby. The liaisons are not just one night, they're more like a week in most cases, and not every encounter will result in a pregnancy. For a young Loroi fresh out of boot, the pregnancy chance is higher, but this drops off as the female ages. And it's the older high-status females that are getting most of the sex.

For human females in their 20's, it takes one year of sex to have an ~80-90% chance of pregnancy. This declines to 50% for women in their 30's.

A hard-working Loroi male might have 50 encounters per year; that's 4,500 encounters in 90 years (we'll give the kid a chance to reach puberty first). He'd need a 22% round on target ratio to get a thousand kids, which is probably too high, even in the war environment when a larger percentage of the encounters will be with younger females. But it's not off by an order of magnitude. Obviously every male can't have a thousand children (as this would require each female to have 10), so coming close would have to be unusual.

How many different partners you have has nothing to do with the gender ratio. A human male could have sex with a different partner every night of his life, but that's got nothing to do with the 1:1 gender ratio. A Loroi male could have sex with a different female every week and still only have sex with 10% of the female population, if it's the same 10% that are getting all the sex.

And all of this begs the question: how do Loroi contraceptives work? If a male Loroi has "needs", do his caretakers toss him a copy of Playelf and thrust him into an isolation room for a few days? Or is he just given a shot in the arm and a lollipop until he feels better?

These have probably been asked before, so feel free to ignore them if they have.

Loroi contraceptives work the same way human contraceptives do, but it would be females using them (perhaps older high-ranking officers who have no interest in getting pregnant again). It's very unlikely that a male would find himself unable to get access to a female for sex. In an emergency, the sterile female attendants are at hand.

And there are not multiple female attendants for each male, any more than there are multiple teachers for each student.

[Quickdraw101]

How powerful and influential was Greywind's mother to the point she could have 7 kids?