Solemn wrote:The Loroi claim to be a warrior race, and I am willing to believe them. I believe that that is what they were created for, that is. I do not know what role they played in the militaries of the Soia Empire, but as telepaths it was presumably something of extreme value, otherwise I believe their telepathy would make them too dangerous to be permitted to live.
If the Loroi were intended as telepathic ground troops, then they presumably wouldn't be too dangerous. They would have little if any of their own air-support, and presumably no space-superiority of their own. They would, instead, get used in the less threatening ground role, and could be either isolated or eliminated from orbit if they rebelled.
As for ship-board, they could be contained, perhaps even in a brig similar to that of Tempest. They would presumably also be restricted to lightly-armed and comparatively slow ground-assault ships in the first place, making it much easier to eliminate them than would otherwise be the case.
Solemn wrote:If I were the creator of the Loroi, I would not want them birthing their own children independent of my race's patronage and our own medical procedures. If they do that, they might start raising their children on their own. Making their own families. Their own culture. Their own civilization. And where does that end? With a conflict between our two different civilizations, which we had allowed to grow apart? I would not want to fight a race I had engineered to be psionic warriors.
I would want all Loroi children to be raised by my people.
Reasonable plan, but what if you knew that
1: You could not guarantee that enemy raids would never eliminate your access to your soldier-production regions for extended periods, and
2: That you could ensure through a variety of means that you would likely be able to reassert your control over the "nativized"/feral descendants of those soldiers if and when you were able to regain your previous access? Remember, I'm talking about the equivalent of an island of tribal warriors in the face of the 18th century British Empire: they'd presumably be able to regain control through a short but overwhelming offensive, and if they couldn't then they'd likely have already been reduced to the point that they were no longer a major power anyways.
Solemn wrote:Of course, if the Loroi were not created to be warriors, that makes things more complicated. You suggested that they might have been created as survivalists. Perhaps the intention was that the Soia knew some cataclysm was coming that would destroy their civilization, and that they themselves lacked the ability to return themselves to their previous state after whatever catastrophe struck, so they created the Loroi as essentially a time capsule of Soia culture. That would make the Loroi the true heirs of the Soia empire, entrusted by the Soia with the burden of carrying on the ways of their ancestors and so forth, so the discovery of humanity and the truth of their origins would if anything help cement their grip on the galaxy.
Actually, I was just thinking that the artificial travel link that allowed FTL to this back-water of the Soia empire, and had presumably taken several thousand years to prepare, could potentially have been destroyed by an attack by a rival empire. The Soia discover that they can't stop the offensive before it gets here, but do have enough time to withdraw their own forces; so they seed several worlds with the warrior strains to "harvest" whenever they get around to coming back, leave, and their rivals sweep through destroying anything that they can figure out that they want to. They eliminate two of the Soia-engineered races in the process (or maybe those two just got really unlucky), but miss enough of the Neridi, Barsam, and Loroi for those races to reach their current status.
Solemn wrote:Or perhaps the Neridi are the true Soia, and the Loroi were expected to protect and shield them during and after the disaster.
Quite possible! They might have also be the descendants of some Soia tourists who got stranded when the accidentally missed the last ferry out before the line got scrapped as uneconomical, or something else comedic.
Solemn wrote:Absalom wrote:Then again, maybe the Soia just had the ability to produce mind-control effects at Farseer ranges, in which case the development of Lotai-capable Loroi was possibly their downfall.
That raises more questions than it would answer. Questions like "why would they give the Loroi shorter range telepathy if they're going to be using their super-telepathy to telepathically control the in-range Loroi into using their weaker telepathic powers, instead of just doing whatever telewhatsis themselves, since they have both the range and the power to do so?"
Ah, no, that was intended as a separate scenario. Imagine that the Loroi were created as part of an experiment to try to figure out why Humans had Lotai, so that the Soia could counter it, and you'll be closer to what I was thinking. Telepathy would have been entirely unintentional.
For that matter, the Soia could have been more telepathically sensitive than the Golim.
I
do think this entire line of reasoning is rather flimsy, though, since I doubt that there would have been enough opportunity for the Loroi to actually achieve this.
daelyte wrote:The advantage of narrow hips is a more efficient, energy-conserving gait when walking or running.
At the expense of natural births. Ergo, natural births were considered more important. One of the reasons I think the Loroi were intended as survivalists.
daelyte wrote:Large breasts seems to be mainly due to sexual selection, small ones work just as well for lactation purposes. Given that Loroi males don't really choose their mates, big boobs make little sense.
As I understand it (I'm not a doctor by any means), bigger breasts == bigger fat stores == more chance of bringing a child to term, AND of keeping that child alive long enough to wean. Another reason in favor of the Loroi being designed as survivalists.
daelyte wrote:Wide shoulders give more reach which is a great advantage in melee. Broad backs gives more room for muscles for increased upper body strength. Large lungs give more oxygen for high exertion in combat.
Therefore a race of warrior women would be more likely to have large muscular chests and small breasts.
Hence, Barsam == Primary assault troops (the regeneration helps too).
daelyte wrote:If the Loroi were developed/intended as special forces their attributes would be a better fit.
Agreed.