Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

raistlin34 wrote:Do the Loroi have any sort of Genova Convention, or at least some limits like "don't massacre civilians" or "don't kill children ". Outside the current conflict against the Umiaks, I mean.
No. The Union and the various regional government have a variety of laws protecting their citizens, but which do not apply outside of their jurisdictions. The only major conflicts since the formation of the Union have been the Neridi Succession War (a Loroi vs. Loroi civil war), and the current war with the Umiak.

Prior to the formation of the Union, there was an Interspecies Convention that attempted to set up guidelines for warfare, but it had no authority to enforce these rules, and they were routinely ignored by combatants.

Prior to the Loroi return to starflight, there were a variety of formal and informal rules to warfare (in most Mestirot Deinar cultures in the classical era, battles were by tradition fought in the open field and not in and around cities or civilian populations; city walls and defenses were considered a dirty trick, and a sort of "human shield"), which were sometimes followed and sometimes ignored.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by CF2 »

Arioch wrote: [...] in most Mestirot Deinar cultures in the classical era, battles were by tradition fought in the open field and not in and around cities or civilian populations; city walls and defenses were considered a dirty trick, and a sort of "human shield" [...]
That seems rather remarkable. Culture can warp the rules of survival when it comes to war, so long as you continue to win, but at a certain point you take every advantage you can in order to win. Given how militaristic the Loroi are, surely they must have produced some fortifications comparable to those built by mankind.
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

CF2 wrote:
Arioch wrote: [...] in most Mestirot Deinar cultures in the classical era, battles were by tradition fought in the open field and not in and around cities or civilian populations; city walls and defenses were considered a dirty trick, and a sort of "human shield" [...]
That seems rather remarkable. Culture can warp the rules of survival when it comes to war, so long as you continue to win, but at a certain point you take every advantage you can in order to win. Given how militaristic the Loroi are, surely they must have produced some fortifications comparable to those built by mankind.
Not every war is a total war. In certain eras and regions when wars were frequent but limited (such as in Europe in the 17th-19th centuries), all kinds of rules of war appeared. When power is partly about the prestige of the warrior class, warfare can become ritualized, and some seemingly counter-productive customs can arise. One example from our own history was the practice of allowing a battle to be decided by single combat between two champions. This is a little bit like dueling in the 17th-19th centuries; it was more often to save face and extract a concession rather than to kill the other party. There is always the danger of a desperate party breaking the rules, but when there are many different powers that belong to the same culture and practice the same set of rules, the consequences for violating these codes could sometimes be worse than those of losing a war.

Not all periods in Loroi history were as civilized, but in the classical period on Deinar (1750-50 BCE), warfare had become highly ritualized. Armies were composed almost exclusively of heavy and light infantry, with no cavalry (as there were no suitable riding animals), and essentially no missile weapons. Missiles could be largely countered by telekinetic officers, and were considered a "peasant weapon" and their development was therefore discouraged. When you don't have missile weapons, fortifications are of limited value. Most of the Loroi nations were not great builders, and so civilians and their infrastructure were not considered legitimate targets. Battles were savage but limited affairs between armies; whoever held the field won the day, and the loser was expected to make appropriate concessions to the victor. If you weren't strong enough to win a battle in the open field, you were not considered a legitimate ruling power. Civilian settlements changed hands frequently along the borders between rival nations; there was often little sense of kinship between the civilians and the warriors that fought over them.

Not all of the Loroi subcultures played by the same rules, of course. The nations of the eastern peninsula of Daiam were great builders, and fortified their cities (and eventually their entire peninsula) with great walls. In this way they were able to remain independent from the nearby Arran empire through most of its height, but they were always looked down upon as barbarian "civilians in armor."

This era of courtly warfare ended with the inevitable development of gunpowder firearms.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Gorbash »

Arioch wrote: Not every war is a total war. In certain eras and regions when wars were frequent but limited (such as in Europe in the 17th-19th centuries), all kinds of rules of war appeared. When power is partly about the prestige of the warrior class, warfare can become ritualized, and some seemingly counter-productive customs can arise. One example from our own history was the practice of allowing a battle to be decided by single combat between two champions. This is a little bit like dueling in the 17th-19th centuries; it was more often to save face and extract a concession rather than to kill the other party. There is always the danger of a desperate party breaking the rules, but when there are many different powers that belong to the same culture and practice the same set of rules, the consequences for violating these codes could sometimes be worse than those of losing a war.

Not all periods in Loroi history were as civilized, but in the classical period on Deinar (1750-50 BCE), warfare had become highly ritualized. Armies were composed almost exclusively of heavy and light infantry, with no cavalry (as there were no suitable riding animals), and essentially no missile weapons. Missiles could be largely countered by telekinetic officers, and were considered a "peasant weapon" and their development was therefore discouraged. When you don't have missile weapons, fortifications are of limited value. Most of the Loroi nations were not great builders, and so civilians and their infrastructure were not considered legitimate targets. Battles were savage but limited affairs between armies; whoever held the field won the day, and the loser was expected to make appropriate concessions to the victor. If you weren't strong enough to win a battle in the open field, you were not considered a legitimate ruling power. Civilian settlements changed hands frequently along the borders between rival nations; there was often little sense of kinship between the civilians and the warriors that fought over them.

Not all of the Loroi subcultures played by the same rules, of course. The nations of the eastern peninsula of Daiam were great builders, and fortified their cities (and eventually their entire peninsula) with great walls. In this way they were able to remain independent from the nearby Arran empire through most of its height, but they were always looked down upon as barbarian "civilians in armor."

This era of courtly warfare ended with the inevitable development of gunpowder firearms.
All right. Silly thought scenario time.

Through unusual alien shenanigans, the French forces from the 15th-century Battle of Agincourt (let's go with the lower estimate of 10,000 knights and men-at-arms (1200 of which are cavalry), and an assume 2000 crossbowmen) face down a roughly equivalent force of Loroi from the Deinar period. What happens?
SpoilerShow
My initial assumption is that, weight for weight, Loroi light and heavy infantry are roughly equivalent to their opposites within the French, but that mounted cavalry will be a difficult (and perhaps morale-degrading) problem to counter -- especially if crossbows were used to effectively distract the Loroi's telekinetics so the French cavalry could line up and charge with less interference. If the telekinetics had time to focus, however, they could probably devastate the French cavalry by tripping large swaths of horses mid-charge.
Thought experiment over, here's a more serious question. We know the Loroi don't really have 'fiction' the same way humanity does, and most likely don't really have a media industry as a result (unless there's a military communications department dedicated to "recreating" battles as propaganda pieces to spread to other members of the Union). So what's their reaction to other species that *do* have one. Do they consider it a waste of time, or an interesting tool? Are there small subcultures of Loroi that view Barsam broadcasts in their free time, whom most Loroi make fun of for their strange ideas and actions?

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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Gorbash wrote:We know the Loroi don't really have 'fiction' the same way humanity does, and most likely don't really have a media industry as a result (unless there's a military communications department dedicated to "recreating" battles as propaganda pieces to spread to other members of the Union). So what's their reaction to other species that *do* have one. Do they consider it a waste of time, or an interesting tool? Are there small subcultures of Loroi that view Barsam broadcasts in their free time, whom most Loroi make fun of for their strange ideas and actions?
The Barsam have mass media, but not a strong tradition of fiction (unless you consider religious teachings to be works of fiction :D). The religious portion of it is a combination of ceremony, oration, and music; the storytelling portion of it is allegorical, but the Loroi can recognize it as analogous to their own heroic myths. Most secular Barsam media are non-fiction related to politics, business, or science and technology.

The Neridi have a diverse media culture that is probably the most like ours among the Union nations, and they do have arts that we would recognize as literature, theater and teleplay, which present tales of pure fiction. Loroi mainstream culture views these media as a silly waste of everyone's time at best (and dangerous disinformation at worst), and the Neridi sense of irony and humor is mostly lost on the Loroi.

There will always be Loroi individuals who consume and enjoy alien media, but I'm not sure that it would rise to the level of a "sub-culture." Unless you emigrate and live among the aliens (which some Loroi individuals do), it can be difficult to get a steady supply of alien media in Loroi territory; each planetary network is isolated by the lightspeed barrier, and so must wait for ship-carried updates, which can be irregular (especially in wartime) and can take weeks or months to propagate. Neridi soap operas are definitely going to be considered low-priority data by the folks running the Loroi courier networks. On the other hand, there are a lot of mixed Loroi and Neridi settlements in the Tinza sector near the frontier, so there may be more opportunity for cultural exchange there.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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Arioch wrote:There will always be Loroi individuals who consume and enjoy alien media, but I'm not sure that it would rise to the level of a "sub-culture."
I'd bet that Humanity romantic fiction (and possibly porn) has some definite advantages in becoming a "sub-culture" among Loroi, even with the limitations posed by transporting the media across the gulf of space. Though I could see the Loroi government treating it as something of a restricted media.
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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Of course, this is all based on the idea that human broadcasts will simply propagate normally along usual channels. If they thought it would be beneficial I don't doubt a hundred different national leaders would start picking things out to send out. Remember the moment humans realized a probe would leave earths solar system they packed it full of pictures and music, even knowing the chances it would ever be seen by any kind of aliens were essentially zero.

The moment it becomes clear someone is out there to listen you're going to get literal thousands of people compiling data to be sent. It doesn't matter if it's a case of total war, someone will invariably find a way, even if it's stupid, won't work, or their time is better spent doing something else, someone will eventually start sending data out. Even if they have to scratch build something overly complicated to do a job the watcher probably doesn't care about to see material they probably won't even like.

Hell, you tell a cable company there are hundreds of billions to trillions of new people, they'll work out a system to sell them the latest low budget tv show, even without knowing currency exchange rates or cultural preferences, they'll try it just to get in first. Or whatever diplomat thinks some group could use it to gain leverage. Or a million other people and their excuses.

A complete lack of current technology at their disposal, a lack of interest in prospective customers, and the genocidal space war for the fate of the cosmos are just roadblocks, so long as there's a human out there who thinks there's a profit to be made. Obviously this isn't that human's story though, so this is largely an academic discussion.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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Sure, cultural sharing is something humans like to do, but it's more a question of what the Loroi might take an interest in / already have an interest in.
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Krulle »

[color=#FF0000]Arioch[/color] wrote: Unless you emigrate and live among the aliens (which some Loroi individuals do), it can be difficult to get a steady supply of alien media in Loroi territory; each planetary network is isolated by the lightspeed barrier, and so must wait for ship-carried updates, which can be irregular (especially in wartime) and can take weeks or months to propagate. Neridi soap operas are definitely going to be considered low-priority data by the folks running the Loroi courier networks. On the other hand, there are a lot of mixed Loroi and Neridi settlements in the Tinza sector near the frontier, so there may be more opportunity for cultural exchange there.
Well, Amazon's binge watching will be the way to go.
Modern storage capacity for data will mean that every ship will bring gigantic amounts of episodes, but the latency times after a request will be tremendous: the time of ships travelling...
But data is a rather cheap commodity, transport wise, and the light barrier means you could possibly sell the data in every system you pass.again and again.
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Jayngfet »

CF2 wrote:Sure, cultural sharing is something humans like to do, but it's more a question of what the Loroi might take an interest in / already have an interest in.
And of course there's the issue of getting that info out there. By the time you've gone to a planet with initial material, gotten your data, and come back from human space with that material, months will have gone by.

Of course I doubt they'll sell to the Loroi as a main customer base if there are other species nearby that have equivalents. Neridi would probably be reasonably profitable as people who already understand what it is you're trying to sell or exchange.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Hālian »

Do the letters of the Trade alphabet have names? If so, what are they?
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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Hālian wrote:Do the letters of the Trade alphabet have names? If so, what are they?
Not formal names exactly (like "aleph" or "alpha"), but they do have vocalizations similar to those we use in English:

P - "po"
Z - "zo"
E - "eh"
G - "go"
T - "to"
A - "ah"
R - "ro"
M - "mo"
L - "lo"
O - "oh"
S - "so"
SH - "sho"
D - "do"
B - "bo"
I - "ih"
N - "no"

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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How do Loroi come by their names? Given the lack of a human family structure, is it still the parents giving young Loroi their names, or is it something they choose for themselves at a certain point?
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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CF2 wrote:How do Loroi come by their names? Given the lack of a human family structure, is it still the parents giving young Loroi their names, or is it something they choose for themselves at a certain point?
Spoken names are formally assigned upon graduation from the warrior trials, but these are often based on nicknames that the children earned earlier.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by DevilDalek »

So a sort of formalisation of school nick names?

I can see that having a rich thread of stories through a Loroi's life.. do the names change at all? say a formal re naming to acknowledge some heroic action? possibly add ons to the name, similar to how many of us have middle names, but don't use them unless in formal conversation?

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

If memory serves, don't telepathic names and spoken names differ? It's been a while, but I thought that a lot of Loroi, especially those not in the military caste, don't end up with spoken names in the same way.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by DevilDalek »

icekatze wrote:I thought that a lot of Loroi, especially those not in the military caste, don't end up with spoken names in the same way.
Yes I was wondering about this to, I can see how Fireblade would have got her name in some form of warrior trials.
(Beryl:- actually she was so terrible at wilderness survival she managed to set fire to her own survival knife)

But names like Beryl, from the research caste, would that be from research papers? (Use of beryl and its meaning as a religious artefact in primitive species for instance) or more personal level things, like she really like shiny things..

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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What is the main manner in which Loroi research is performed? Are they strictly bent on rediscovery of the knowledge the former empire had? Do they have both their own avenues of research and ancient tech research?

Also, would you describe the Loroi as imaginatively impaired by their views on truth and fiction?
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Spoken names are not as big a deal to the Loroi as they are to us, as they are secondary to telepathic names. Telepathic names are based in part on the individual's telepathic signature, and they do evolve over time.
CF2 wrote:What is the main manner in which Loroi research is performed? Are they strictly bent on rediscovery of the knowledge the former empire had? Do they have both their own avenues of research and ancient tech research?
Loroi use the same kind of scientific techniques that we do. Having existing examples to follow just helps a lot.
CF2 wrote:Also, would you describe the Loroi as imaginatively impaired by their views on truth and fiction?
If you're drawing a connection to science proficiency, I'm not sure the two are linked. I think that science often has more to do with logic than with imagination. Even in those cases where scientific advancement is aided by "thinking outside the box," I'm not sure fiction is a strong help. Contrary to popular belief, Star Trek was not responsible for the creation of modern computers and cell phones (though it probably spurred interest in science in general).

The Loroi are not very good at science, but this has more to do with their rigid customs and insular social makeup.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Jayngfet »

I would say there are a lot of inventions that only exist because the inventor heard about it in fiction first. Even if you discount those, the word only gets out as fast as it does in a lot of cases because "Remember X from Y, it's totally real now!", which will usually gather attention long before a viable model is around.

If it's not a sole or even major contributor, it's certainly conductive to ideas getting around and into the public consciousness.

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