Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[Overkill Engine]

Which reminds me, what was the reaction of Deinari and Tabenese Loroi to the native lifeforms of Perrein?

In before "Kill it with fire"

Perhaps "Let's use it on the enemy!"?

Like the Perrein cuisine?

Heh....reminds me of the varied uses for capsaicin. One xeno's spice is another xeno's bioweapon!


Back to the Loroi:

Do they utilize telepathy to domesticate animals (and/or does it even work on/detect sub-sentient life?)?

[discord]

overkill: you are aware that capsaicin IS a nerve toxin towards humans right?

[Hālian]

Do they utilize telepathy to domesticate animals (and/or does it even work on/detect sub-sentient life?)?

Most if not all creatures are sentient; you're thinking of the adjective "sapient", which on our world can only be applied to humans.

[dragoongfa]

Do they utilize telepathy to domesticate animals (and/or does it even work on/detect sub-sentient life?)?

Most if not all creatures are sentient; you're thinking of the adjective "sapient", which on our world can only be applied to humans.

Fell into that trap myself before realizing the difference when I was writing something, I blame Hollywood for mixing up the words too fucking often since sentience sounds better than sapience.

[Arioch]

Do they utilize telepathy to domesticate animals (and/or does it even work on/detect sub-sentient life?)?

Telepathy can interact with any mind, and there is no clear dividing line between sapient and sub-sapient, though the more primitive the mind, the fainter the telepathic signature, and susceptibility to telepathy varies even among very intelligent animals (as with "sapient" aliens). Signature detection of animals is very useful in hunting, but most other telepathic abilities require extreme proximity or physical contact, which is not easy to achieve when dealing with wild animals.

A few exotic animals have extreme susceptibility to telepathy similar to the Golim (and some of them come from the Golim homeworld), but none of these are large enough to be domestically very useful, so they are mainly seen as shoulder-sitting exotic pets such as a pirate's parrot or an organ-grinder's monkey.

Loroi with Mizol-class telepathic abilities can interact with or even control wild animals, but this control is temporary and is lost the moment the animal leaves effective telepathic range (which in this case is usually very short). The dangerous sori fauna of Perrein are quite alien and not very intelligent, which makes them difficult to interact with telepathically, but there were skilled and specialized Perrein Loroi who acted as sori-handlers and used them for all sorts of nefarious purposes. This kind of interaction could make domestication easier, but sori resisted domestication and still had to be kept in cages when not being actively controlled, and the most common way for a sori-handler to be killed was by her own creatures.

Telepathy potentially allows sophisticated interaction with animals that are already domesticated, but unfortunately the domestic animals traditionally available to the Loroi don't make for great pals. Some of the clans of southwestern Mestirot on Deinar bred miros for size and ferocity; though they weren't large enough to ride, they could accompany Loroi into battle and were as dangerous as wild boars. In some cases, fighting miros developed unique telepathic bonds with their masters.

[JQBogus]

Kittens, Horses, chocolate*, and five times as many menfolk as they're used to?

If these things are as popular with Loroi women as they are with human ones, it is a good thing Loroi don't lie, Otherwise many of them would dismiss stories of Earth as the fevered dreams of some lonely young warrior!

[Tamri]

The fact that they are able to control their reproductive cycle, I understand, and the fact that they have feelings for affection as children and the partner, although the latter is more likely rudiment and the public isn't encouraged. And like Loroi works desire mechanism and libido? Either independently, as in humans, or these aspects, they are also able to limited manage?

[Arioch]

The fact that they are able to control their reproductive cycle, I understand, and the fact that they have feelings for affection as children and the partner, although the latter is more likely rudiment and the public isn't encouraged. And like Loroi works desire mechanism and libido? Either independently, as in humans, or these aspects, they are also able to limited manage?

Love and sex are mostly two different things for the Loroi. Loroi mating encounters last only a few days, before and after which the two mating partners will probably never meet again. Love for Loroi is a platonic relationship between relatives and close friends.

[raistlin34]

The fact that they are able to control their reproductive cycle, I understand, and the fact that they have feelings for affection as children and the partner, although the latter is more likely rudiment and the public isn't encouraged. And like Loroi works desire mechanism and libido? Either independently, as in humans, or these aspects, they are also able to limited manage?

Love and sex are mostly two different things for the Loroi. Loroi mating encounters last only a few days, before and after which the two mating partners will probably never meet again. Love for Loroi is a platonic relationship between relatives and close friends.

So if hypothetically a human wanted to form a romantic relationship with a Loroi, the later would be confused to the very concept of "romance" ?

[cacambo43]

The fact that they are able to control their reproductive cycle, I understand, and the fact that they have feelings for affection as children and the partner, although the latter is more likely rudiment and the public isn't encouraged. And like Loroi works desire mechanism and libido? Either independently, as in humans, or these aspects, they are also able to limited manage?

Love and sex are mostly two different things for the Loroi. Loroi mating encounters last only a few days, before and after which the two mating partners will probably never meet again. Love for Loroi is a platonic relationship between relatives and close friends.

So if hypothetically a human wanted to form a romantic relationship with a Loroi, the later would be confused to the very concept of "romance" ?

It would say something about the interplay of Loroi origins, psychology and biochemistry if a Loroi did end up having romantic-type feelings for a human (or another Loroi). A huge part of human sexual relationships seems to be a biochemical one that leads to a psychological bond (and I'm sure the more rigidly rational ones here would not even make a distinction). If that biochemistry is totally missing in Loroi, then that could explain it one way. If the lack of romance is largely psychological and cultural, it's possible a bridge could be made. Whether or not Alex could be that bridge is another matter entirely .

CJSF

[Arioch]

So if hypothetically a human wanted to form a romantic relationship with a Loroi, the later would be confused to the very concept of "romance" ?

Not "confused" exactly, but Loroi males and females don't normally pair bond or have any kind of long term relationship. There are well-known tales in which a female became obsessed with a particular male and the two became a sort of couple (friends who also have sex), but these are the kinds of tales in which the main characters usually don't survive to the end.

Having the potential for a long-term relationship with a member of the opposite gender might seem to a Loroi like a fantastic opportunity to have her cake and eat it too, but there might also be alarm bells going off (both for the individual and her associates) that something is about to go terribly wrong. However, since we're dealing with aliens in the case of humans, all bets are off.

[Tamri]

While thinking about the concept, I got one more question:

- How ancient Loroi times between the fall of the old and the creation of a new civilization controlled their population size? And why traces of these mechanisms in their today's culture does not appear?

Simply, according to information from the author, ~ 90% of the population Loroi - capable of childbearing women. Moreover, they are quite hardy, relatively unpretentious and have the potential to live long. Plus, according to the author's information, the Deinar's and Taben's biospheres quite tolerant to Loroi.

In connection with the above, there is a natural conclusion: Loroi population at the worlds above required some trouble-free internal mechanisms for control the population size, and this mechanisms aren't related to the culture (for the simple reason that it didn't have Loroi was). If we draw an analogy with humans or Earth species, they are should have been so actively destroying each other that surplus population if formed, then a small, or their wild society was to form the education like a wolf pack that reproduces only the alpha pair and all other members of the pack provide them with food and protection

The main problem with all these assumptions - neither mechanism that I have come to mind, isn't reflected in contemporary culture Loroi. If, again, to draw parallels with the people that we sometimes responding behavioral mechanisms that have arisen in our ancestors more 200-300k years ago (for example, seasonal monogamy and xenophobia). If you follow this logic chain further, the societies that cultured on Deinar, Taben and Perrein couldn't be similar. In my estimation, the most "democratic" traditions should be, oddly enough, on Perrein as Loroi, live there, there was no need to further control their numbers due to a dangerous environment. The most "cannibalistic" should be Taben tradition, due to strongly limited territory and resources. Well Deinar is something in between: on the one hand, the territory and resources scarce, the other - the problem of overpopulation anyway-time on-time was to appear.

The idea is that since Loroi occur (presumably) artificially, and considerable time there in the form of interstellar civilization, modern culture Loroi must be a fusion of partial elements of their culture before the fall, the survival mechanisms of the times of savagery and culture, which they created anew, by rebuilding their modern civilization .

[Arioch]

How ancient Loroi times between the fall of the old and the creation of a new civilization controlled their population size? And why traces of these mechanisms in their today's culture does not appear?

For the most part they didn't control population sizes, and that's part of why they were unable to maintain a stable civilization.

Most of the nascent early Loroi civilizations would develop some kind of population control -- usually a variant of the caste system that the modern Loroi use, which controls population through regulation of mating access. But the biggest problem during the Reign of Chaos was not city population size, but rather the huge populations of "barbarian" Loroi who lived in the countryside. These wild Loroi tribes had no population control, and so they would grow until they couldn't feed themselves, and they they'd destroy everything.

It wasn't until the wild tribes eventually adopted the caste system and learned to control their own populations that the city Loroi were finally able to establish civilizations that could survive.

[Tamri]

This limiter, not of the control mechanism. If things were so, then the population Loroi at Deinar and Taben have virtually all of their time in a state of permanent over-population and the catastrophic shortage of resources. For example, the number of people in similar circumstances have limited for disease, harsh living conditions and low lifetime. At Loroi on the above worlds have nothing. They are, in fact, were all his prehistoric (or, rather, between historical) period were the dominant species on the planet, which was supposed to capture all the available space for life, and then all of the available territory, and having exhausted the available resources, to begin an unprecedented competition for them with his tribesman. And this conflict was to last permanently, according to your history, about 100-120k years. And it must be accompanied, in theory, constant hunger and the lack of living space.

Yes, result of all this stuff could only fully frostbite militarized civilization ...

Extrapolating this analysis further, we find that the Mizol caste as caste of spies and saboteurs, which likely would have occurred at the same Taben or Deinar than Perrein because there this was a vital necessity, whereas Perrein, from my point of view more like the role of a certain homeland caste diplomats and negotiators, as in aggressive fauna, hostile flora and lack of resources, coordination of efforts and consolidate resources are more profitable way of interaction than the continuous wars for these resources.

[saint of m]

Two Questions:

One is courtship.

A very large number of animals on Earth have some sort of courtship rituals, or what apears to be that, to see who is worthy of mating.

Be it shows of strength, intelligence, creativity, or simply impressing her enough not to bite his head off before the deed, these are all ways for perspective females to judge who is the best set of genes to go with hers. Conversly its also a measure to scare off or impress other bachlors.

Do th the Loroi have something similar? And no I am not talking about love, just the hooking up to roll in the hay part.



2. How will humans be of service? Fast breeding cannon fodder ala goblins?

A warrior race on par of the Klingons for them to use?

Or my personal favorite, why the Asgard wanted to ally with the Humans: After countless generations of genetic modification, they are no longer able to think on any level other then hyper intelligent, which has in a way handicapped them. So they need someone who literaly thinks much simpler then they can to get a new perspective.

Or to use the show:

[sunphoenix]

Oh Gods! Richard Dean Anderson's one-liners in that show were a scream!

And the 'END' of the Asgard as a race was so heart-wrenching in the end, I actually felt sad, and shed a few tears for them. The Asgard left ALL their technology to mankind in the form of their last space dreadnought warship~ because they felt of all the races they had met... mankind had proven itself worthy of their legacy and trust as 'true' friends. It was the last episode of "STARGATE SG-1", they made and I was heart-broken at the story, not the end of the series.

[Arioch]

This limiter, not of the control mechanism. If things were so, then the population Loroi at Deinar and Taben have virtually all of their time in a state of permanent over-population and the catastrophic shortage of resources.

There was no equilibrium, it was cyclical. The hunter-gatherer tribal societies would start small and grow, and some of them would found permanent settlements and make some advances toward civilization. Meanwhile the wild tribes continued to grow and consume resources and fight amongst each other and raid the settlers (who usually had more food). Eventually the barbarians would destroy the settlers, and then most of those who weren't killed in the conflict would starve, and the population would collapse. Most of the progress of the settlers would be lost. Then the food flora and fauna would recover, and the hunter-gatherer population would start to grow again, and the cycle would repeat.

Taben and Perrein had more challenging or limited ecosystems that kept Loroi populations under constant pressure, but Deinar was a hunter-gatherer's buffet table, with semi-domesticated game animals and gene-tailored self-sowing supergrains, fruits and nuts growing wild.

A very large number of animals on Earth have some sort of courtship rituals, or what apears to be that, to see who is worthy of mating.

Do the the Loroi have something similar?

Sort of. Loroi individuals do not choose their mates; society does. And so it's society that a prospective mate has to impress in order to win the right to mate. She does this by succeeding at the tasks that society sets for her, such as completing warrior trials, or reaching career milestones, or gaining sufficient power and influence.

How will humans be of service?

You don't really expect an answer to this question, do you?

[Krulle]

We do, in comic form, within the next decade, if üossible!

[thicket]

How will humans be of service?

[saint of m]

A very large number of animals on Earth have some sort of courtship rituals, or what apears to be that, to see who is worthy of mating.

Do the the Loroi have something similar?

Sort of. Loroi individuals do not choose their mates; society does. And so it's society that a prospective mate has to impress in order to win the right to mate. She does this by succeeding at the tasks that society sets for her, such as completing warrior trials, or reaching career milestones, or gaining sufficient power and influence.

How will humans be of service?

You don't really expect an answer to this question, do you?

First one makes sense, propositin head of household kind of a deal.

Second one: Should have expected this one, but its hard to see how it can turn out.

As is the only things I can think of at the moment that wouldn't be too cliche beyond redemption is we just happen to be at the right time at the right place to turn things around and we just get lucky, or the Loroi Evil Overlord list will now include: Must have a pinky on every planning meeting. If there is a flaw they can spot, put the plan back to the drawing board.