Well of Souls Forums

Arioch,

Some clarification, if you can:

In panel 1, it says:

Panel 1 wrote: The Orgus were a peripheral race that had tried to stay out of the conflict, but this attempt failed when the Umiak devastated and occupied their homeworld.

(emphasis is mine)

In the Insider notes you say:

Arioch wrote: What they would have in common is that none would have much information on what diplomacy (if any) preceded the Umiak military action, nor many details about the invasion itself, once it had taken place, as no information left a system once the Umiak had taken control of it. The Orgus refugees did not know what the Umiak had in store for them, be it genocide, oppressive occupation, reorganization, or merely some more benign form of control.

(again, emphasis is mine)

These seem somewhat contradictory, at least on the surface. How do you reconcile the two statements?

CJSF

I don't see how the two are contradictory. One statement says that the Umiak occupied the Orgus homeworld, and the other says that the refugees don't know exactly what happened. But the narrator evidently does.

That makes sense. I was thinking that even the narrator, at that point, only knew what the Orgus refugee's told them, but in the bigger context, I can see what you mean. Thanks for clearing that up.

CJSF

I've been wondering, if there's any specific reason why the Umiak client races seem to all not be Soia-Lindon. If there's some sort of selective destruction of those that are, or if some are, but it just isn't mentioned on the races of the hierarchy page.

Compared to the loroi alliance which does seem to include quite a few.

junk wrote:I've been wondering, if there's any specific reason why the Umiak client races seem to all not be Soia-Lindon. If there's some sort of selective destruction of those that are, or if some are, but it just isn't mentioned on the races of the hierarchy page.

Compared to the loroi alliance which does seem to include quite a few.

It appears to be random chance. Out of the known sentient Soia-Liron races, one is under the "protection" (which I'm going to assume is basically inside of Sea World-analogues, since at this point, why not?) of the Historians, two are extinct from the calamity that destroyed the Soia empire, and the rest are part of the Loroi Union. Might as well ask if the very soil of the Asian continent rises up to destroy any Germanic tribes that take up residence on it.

The known Soia-Liron sentients happen to be on the Loroi side of the Umiak Iron Curtain. The Loroi know about only those Umiak client races who are near the border, and/or whom they interacted with before the war. If there are other Soia-Liron descendants beyond the curtain, the Loroi do not know about it.

Arioch, you've mentioned that the Orgus are "three-limbed". Do you mean 3 total limbs or 3 legged (and presumably have 2 arms)? I am having trouble picturing them beyond the image of them in the prologue.

cacambo43 wrote:Arioch, you've mentioned that the Orgus are "three-limbed". Do you mean 3 total limbs or 3 legged (and presumably have 2 arms)? I am having trouble picturing them beyond the image of them in the prologue.

The Orgus have three limbs: two arms and one leg. They use all three limbs for locomotion.

Are The Uniak the only "insectoide" race in their alliance, or do they have fellow bug people s buddies?

Has there been any discoveries of Soia ruins on worlds that may have, at one point, had an atmosphere? Or were fragments of one of the Soia's "dread-stars" ever been recovered?

saint of m wrote:Are The Uniak the only "insectoide" race in their alliance, or do they have fellow bug people s buddies?

The known members of the Umiak Hierarchy are listed here. It's unlikely that any of the other members will ever be discussed.

Jakelope13 wrote:Has there been any discoveries of Soia ruins on worlds that may have, at one point, had an atmosphere? Or were fragments of one of the Soia's "dread-stars" ever been recovered?

It's not clear who the "Soia" were. There are ruins of planetary settlements of four of the five known Soia-Liron races from during the Soia period (there is no planetside evidence of the Loroi until around the time of the fall). No remains of dread-stars have ever been found.

Did races other than the Loroi have legends of dread-stars, or was it only the Loroi?

Absalom wrote:Did races other than the Loroi have legends of dread-stars, or was it only the Loroi?

There are similar legends among many different cultures.

Ok, in the light of the new wealth of information made available on some of the other secondary and tertiary races in the Outsider-verse, I was hoping we could get a little more information on the relationship between the Historians and the Pol, as well as information about the Pol themselves. Obviously if there are any plot-relevant details feel free to leave it out, but the Insider entry is so tantalizing...

halftea wrote:Ok, in the light of the new wealth of information made available on some of the other secondary and tertiary races in the Outsider-verse, I was hoping we could get a little more information on the relationship between the Historians and the Pol, as well as information about the Pol themselves. Obviously if there are any plot-relevant details feel free to leave it out, but the Insider entry is so tantalizing...

Although the existence of the Pol is confirmed by the Historians, they refuse to reveal anything substantive about them, and so there is very little known except rumor. Barsam theorists seem to have got the impression that the Pol are a sentient aquatic Soia-Liron species, but it's not clear where this information came from or how the rumor got started; there is no known archaeological evidence of such a species. The Loroi telepathic rumor mill (which is less prone to unfounded speculation) has a story that goes something like this: when Loroi warships were in Historian territory during the Umiak invasion, the Farseers reported detecting an unfamiliar telepathic signature, indicating an unknown intelligent species. When the matter was brought up with the Historians, the Loroi were told that what they had detected was a species called the Pol, which was under Historian protection. The Historians declined to answer any further questions on the subject.

Which begs the question, have Loroi Farseers ever detected a confirmed Historian telepathic signature?

In a bit of free time I've managed to claw in recently, I felt like obliging my somewhat "anoraky" tendencies, and scanned through the Umiak lore and technology. I noticed a slight inconstancy however with regards to Umiak plasma weapons. On the warship class page seven plasma focus types are described with Medium range & short range versions of the Heavy, Medium and Light plasma focus plus a PD plasma cannon. The weaps page however only lists five umiak plasma weapons. So I guess I was just curious to whether this is just a mistake being that both pages are time stamped a year apart?

Another curiosity is the Umiak-Morat Blasters which don't appear to be equipped on Umiak ship classes, are those then only normally found on Morat ships, and was it ever the intention for morat ships to be seen? Also with regards to the vast number of varieties of umiak torpedoes, which logistically would present a considerable challenge (real life example would be for instance that British, US and most NATO infantry deploy with the FN minimi to keep all rounds in the platoon 5.56mm, and try to avoid 7.62mm rounds due to the extra logistics), so I guess the question here would be are each of these torpedoes deployed normally by a certain class of warship? Such that a fleet has a,b & c class ships, so it needs 1,2,3 class torpedoes. Or is the menagerie of torpedoes more driven by artistic reasons? As lots of the same bland torpedoes would be boring to draw and boring to look at I imagine...

N.B. In a completely unrelated note, I also looked at your recent concepts for the Stars in Shadow project Arioch, and other than just being awesome, it immediately struck me that the Death's Head faction's colours of yellow and black instantly matched that of the Death's Head Hawk Moth (or rather the Acherontia atropos species). Was that intentional, or a rather a pretty cool coincidence?

Smithy wrote:In a bit of free time I've managed to claw in recently, I felt like obliging my somewhat "anoraky" tendencies, and scanned through the Umiak lore and technology. I noticed a slight inconstancy however with regards to Umiak plasma weapons. On the warship class page seven plasma focus types are described with Medium range & short range versions of the Heavy, Medium and Light plasma focus plus a PD plasma cannon. The weaps page however only lists five umiak plasma weapons. So I guess I was just curious to whether this is just a mistake being that both pages are time stamped a year apart?

There's a combination of some mis-classification and some inconsistent nomenclature there. I'll clean it up when I get the chance -- thanks for bringing it up. The material difference is that the ship list describes 3 variants of the MR focus while the weapon list only has one. The medium and heavy versions of the MR are the same thing, and the light version only appears on one ship.

Smithy wrote:Another curiosity is the Umiak-Morat Blasters which don't appear to be equipped on Umiak ship classes, are those then only normally found on Morat ships, and was it ever the intention for morat ships to be seen?

The Umiak don't have classes per se; each ship is individually designed. The list of ships shows typical examples in each size/role category, but shapes and individual weapons loadouts vary widely from ship to ship. Generally, the builders will make use of whatever parts are available locally, and so many of the Umiak ships manufactured in the Morat region do use blasters. Also, we will see Morat-built ships.

Smithy wrote:Also with regards to the vast number of varieties of umiak torpedoes, which logistically would present a considerable challenge (real life example would be for instance that British, US and most NATO infantry deploy with the FN minimi to keep all rounds in the platoon 5.56mm, and try to avoid 7.62mm rounds due to the extra logistics), so I guess the question here would be are each of these torpedoes deployed normally by a certain class of warship? Such that a fleet has a,b & c class ships, so it needs 1,2,3 class torpedoes. Or is the menagerie of torpedoes more driven by artistic reasons? As lots of the same bland torpedoes would be boring to draw and boring to look at I imagine...

The Umiak resist standardization, and ammunition is the one area in which they are forced to standardize to a certain extent... but even so they have a wide variety of torpedo standards. I'm sure this must be a logistical nightmare, but that's the way the Umiak like it.

Smithy wrote:N.B. In a completely unrelated note, I also looked at your recent concepts for the Stars in Shadow project Arioch, and other than just being awesome, it immediately struck me that the Death's Head faction's colours of yellow and black instantly matched that of the Death's Head Hawk Moth (or rather the Acherontia atropos species). Was that intentional, or a rather a pretty cool coincidence?

It's a coincidence. The yellow and black "Jolly Roger" color scheme predates the Death's Head version of the concept.

Did the Union, Hierarchy, etc ever use ballistic firearms? If so, who was the last to phase them out, and when?

Carl Miller wrote:Did the Union, Hierarchy, etc ever use ballistic firearms? If so, who was the last to phase them out, and when?

If you're talking about small arms, both the Union and Hierarchy still use them.