Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

[Grayhome]

There's no evidence at all that the Loroi were involved in a massive scale telepathic manipulation of the Barsam population.

&

As long as you can acknowledge that you're just making stuff up out of whole cloth, I guess that's cool though.

As I just stated, the Loroi treatment of the Golim and their treatment of Alex are more than enough reason to assume the worst. The Loroi have no need to manipulate entire populations of Barsam, or any species. A few individuals and leaders would more than suffice to convince the populations to fall in line, especially if the Barsam, like the loroi, were a feudal society were power was concentrated in the hands of a very few. Mind control the king and you get the kingdom. Easy.

Icekatz it's been... what, a decade since the comic started? At this point speculation about the story isn't really that crazy.

The Loroi don't even particularly like the Barsam's political philosophy.

Utterly irrelevant. The Barsam (along with any species) have resources that the Loroi can use in their war machine.

[GeoModder]

The Loroi appearantly go to great pain to at least keep areas of Golim-chei free of Loroi. It is hardly their fault the species is so susceptible to Loroi telepathy.

And Stillstorm is hardly an influential officer in the greater political picture of the Union/Empire. On the contrary, she was affiliated to the losing faction of the latest power struggle for the imperial throne, and likely still feels embittered towards her 'masters'. And her actions were almost at first opportunity apologized for towards Alex by the diplomatic officer under her command.

While the Loroi political dealings with other species sofar indeed come over arrogant, they did NOT in general start hostilities to those species that crossed their interests. The Empire/Union more or less formed by accident because of the tenacity Loroi employed in defeating those who attacked them.

[icekatze]

hi hi

Speculation is one thing. Stating that the speculation is obviously the truth unless proven otherwise is, well, an extraordinary claim without extraordinary evidence to back it up. At best it sounds like an appeal to possibility, but it honestly sounds more like a Nirvana Fallacy in progress. Just because someone isn't 100% perfect, doesn't mean they're 100% monstrous.

On the other hand, the Barsam appeared to be a driving force in creating the union and, in the process, managed to convince the Loroi to change their own policy in the process, which seems more like a traditional compromise rather than a overt take-over.

[Razor One]

As I just stated, the Loroi treatment of the Golim and their treatment of Alex are more than enough reason to assume the worst. The Loroi have no need to manipulate entire populations of Barsam, or any species. A few individuals and leaders would more than suffice to convince the populations to fall in line, especially if the Barsam, like the loroi, were a feudal society were power was concentrated in the hands of a very few. Mind control the king and you get the kingdom. Easy.

The Golim are hypersensitive to the Loroi's telepathy and actively seek out such contact when removed from it. The Loroi feel embarassed about this and go to pains to ensure that there are established free zones on their planet where no Loroi may tread. How exactly is this nefarious behaviour on their part?

Alex's initial treatment was done under the entirely reasonable assumption that he was some kind perfidy on the part of their enemy. That he was recovered in combat zone under combat conditions and the fact that the Umiak are known to fight dirty factors into all of this. Any reasonable commander would be suspicious under such circumstances. Even allowing that Stillstorms actions were unconscionable, the Loroi's history evidences the fact that soldiers make for terrible diplomats to the point that they have a specialised caste specifically for such a function and her first action upon getting a handle on the situation was "Shit, our bad, the commander fucked up and is too dumb to realise it, have some diplomatic status on my part and I'll keep her off your back."

The rest is only so much paranoid blather. The mesmerisation of the Golim does not read like out and out mind control. Even assuming that the Loroi were at all capable of pulling such a thing off on influential Barsam to take control of their culture, they'd need to keep up the act for decades, do so in a manner where they wouldn't be noticed, and basically play a Barsam exactly like a Barsam, and not a marionette with a puppeteer above it chuckling to themselves saying "Dance puppets! Dance!"

It basically reads like a bad conspiracy theory. The Loroi are all powerful, all competent, never caught, and have powers they've never been shown to actually have, whilst everyone else is stupid and easily duped, WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

If you're trolling, then well done sir, you done got me good. If you honestly believe your assertions though, I'm probably going to have to stop taking you seriously. It's fine to criticise the Loroi for what they are, but straw manning them just so you can knock 'em down is not a thing I can really respect.

[Siber]

The rest is only so much paranoid blather. The mesmerisation of the Golim does not read like out and out mind control.

And even if it were, it is unique. There's no mention I can see in the telepathy article about this kind of mind control even in Loroi vs Loroi combat, which seems like a place it'd come up if it was possible anywhere. What was done to Alex seems to effectively be mental torture, breaking down a target's ability to control their own mental state so that it's easier to surface specific information for reading. While some kind of brainwashing or implanted suggestions MIGHT be possible under those circumstances, that still seems very hypothetical and would require the Loroi to capture and effectively torture the subject without anyone noticing. Doing that to a persuasive set of a civilization's leaders seems pretty long odds.

Put another way, this kind of stunt seems like it requires the Insider to lie by omission. That seems quite out of character for it, at least in my estimation.

[Grayhome]

I guess we'll just have to watch as the story unfolds.

[dragoongfa]

The rest is only so much paranoid blather. The mesmerisation of the Golim does not read like out and out mind control.

And even if it were, it is unique. There's no mention I can see in the telepathy article about this kind of mind control even in Loroi vs Loroi combat, which seems like a place it'd come up if it was possible anywhere. What was done to Alex seems to effectively be mental torture, breaking down a target's ability to control their own mental state so that it's easier to surface specific information for reading. While some kind of brainwashing or implanted suggestions MIGHT be possible under those circumstances, that still seems very hypothetical and would require the Loroi to capture and effectively torture the subject without anyone noticing. Doing that to a persuasive set of a civilization's leaders seems pretty long odds.

Put another way, this kind of stunt seems like it requires the Insider to lie by omission. That seems quite out of character for it, at least in my estimation.

Arioch has confirmed it that what Alex went through was Telekinetic water-boarding, not a telepathic intrusion.

[discord]

Greyhome: just saying that the US did not create ISIS since they were murdering torah thumping crazies before anything the US did in Iraq, what happened as often does in such situations was a time of patriotism and 'get rid of the foreign monsters!' which was well capitalized by those crazies, the US did not really help the situation, but they did not create it.

and militarily speaking both Iraq 1&2 were halfway competently handled, the occupation was a clusterfuck though.

after a few years of everyone complaining and no one wanting them there the US said 'Well fuck it!' and threw the world police badge on the ground and went home.
the current situation is basically what every bleeding heart liberal was asking for when they said 'US out of Iraq!' and now they are complaining about the results.

[majorminor]

That's a bit of a simplification of all the issues that lead to the status of Iraq today.

The disbanding of the Iraqi military post invasion, The general issues that make up the chain of command in the Iraqi military, Sunni-Shia conflicts in both government and in general, the list goes on and on....

The United States couldn't stay there forever, hence why it elected a representative that made those political promises of pulling out. Wars are easy to sell, occupations not so much.

[discord]

major: and this is why colonialism isn't always such a bad idea, funny thing about that since the US is pretty much the only country in the world still doing it.

ISIS is a threat to civilization as we know it, it says so in their manifesto, convert to Islam or die, surrender your country and all it's resources to ISIS or die, so why do we(international community) allow these buggers to exist? the Russians do not like them, several EU members(especially the french) do not like them at all, the US do not like them, the Japanese rewrote their bloody constitution so they legally could do something about them, the Turks are sick'n'tired of their antics and want to wipe'em out, just to mention a few.


compared to these buggers the Umiak seem like rather benign and friendly masters and lords.

heck compared to these ISIS fellows Nazi Germany seem like a humanitarian and downright good neighbor.
although the Germans were quite a bit more competent at the time.

[Krulle]

Where will you draw the line what is acceptable and what not?
I agree, we need to get rid of the IS.

But the Turks use the IS to get rid of Bashar al-Assad, and use attacks against the IS as a pre-text to actually bomb the Curdish militia, the only working groundforce against the IS, which has been actively strengthened by the alliance....

It is not black-and-white.

[majorminor]

Wars and any related occupations cost time, money, resources, and political will. Wars between conventional forces and normal governmental entities are much easier than dealing with a conflict in multiple countries with numerous combatants and several backers each seeking a different end game for the region as a whole. If all the major players regionally and globally weren't at odds over many different related and unrelated issues, a more concise plan in dealing with IS and general stability issues facing the Middle East would be put in place. That is not the case for we are a stubborn lot who's nations and groups are all fighting for their own reasons and goals.

[Absalom]

major: and this is why colonialism isn't always such a bad idea, funny thing about that since the US is pretty much the only country in the world still doing it.

The good news is that we phone it in (bases, bases, everywhere, and none of that empire baggage to drag them down), the bad news is that we phone it in (if we use shock-and-awe, a replacement government will magically be spawned by pixie dust!). Our current colonialism techniques clearly suck when used for anything stronger than a slight nudge.

the Japanese rewrote their bloody constitution so they legally could do something about them,

If you mean the stuff they did/are doing this year, I believe that's aimed at China, actually. That, and Koizumi (it's Koizumi, right?) clearly has empathy for the nationalists.

Where will you draw the line what is acceptable and what not?
I agree, we need to get rid of the IS.

But the Turks use the IS to get rid of Bashar al-Assad,

In the defense of the genocidal-within-living-memory Turks, al-Assad really probably needs to get taken out by someone before Syria at least will be capable of calming down. We can only get a few dozen anti-ISIS guys trained because everyone is either terrified of post-Assad genocide, or is ticked off at current-Assad oppression. Unless we plan to work with him, any near-term peace will depend on working without him.

[Krulle]

What I wanted to point out is, that the Turks don't have a plan, and interfere on all possibilities: they want to get rid of al-Assad, so they help the IS, or at least don't block them. They want to get rid of the strongest and currently most organised force against the IS too.
That is a call for desaster...

As far as our western European media, the Curdish treat any non-Curish people rather fairly (maybe only to no anger the ones delivering weapons), while most other militias definitely try to get rid of anyone not from their group in the zones they control....
If you don't want the Curdish, then there is no other force that is able to gain power that would be better than al-Assad....

And the Curdish limit their activities to any regions where they can expect to have future support by the population.
They already built up infrastructure for a working economy once, they know how important it is for a long term future (which I do not see with all other militias, and definitley not with the IS, who are bulding fiefdoms within their sphere of influence), and it is one with included non-Curdish minorities. The Curdish seem to have proven what they can and will do, and seem to know their limits.

[dragoongfa]

From this answer

http://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vie ... 473#p20473

Vat-growing a person isn't possible at this tech level. They could tinker with the conception process to make more embryos male, but why would they want to do that? There are enough males to keep all of the females constantly pregnant (if that was what they wanted), and if there weren't they could just use artificial insemination. The Loroi don't have a problem with how their system works. They consider the small number of males to be a good thing, since they're essentially economic dead weight.

Considering that both combatants are roughly the same tech level the above comes in conflict with this from the insider:

The Umiak have only a single gender, and while unmodified individuals are still reproductively viable, little is known about the details of their reproductive practices. Indeed, it is suspected that they may have entirely abandoned their natural life cycle; judging by the ease with which they replace losses and their apparent lack of concern for the safety of individuals, it seems likely that the Umiak now rely substantially or wholly on artificial forms of reproduction.

While in page 56 Tempo actually says that many believe that Alex is an artifice of the enemy.

It could be that the Umiak have managed to artificially reproduce due to their unique biological traits but iirc you have mentioned that they have used 'Loroi duplicates' in the past as infiltrators.

On the other hand technological innovation isn't a straight line so they may have mastered the tech early. In the same way that humans had gunpowder projectiles in the middle ages while the Loroi got them in their industrial age.

[Arioch]

What I meant by "vat-growing a person" is the ability to manufacture a fully-formed adult organism (the popular notion of "cloning"). An organism can be created artificially in the same way as a "test tube baby", but it still needs to grow from an embryo to an adult normally. You can manipulate the genes to speed up maturation, and you can use artificial wombs or the like, but you can't just snap your fingers and create an adult organism. Genes don't work like that; they're procedural instructions for growing a baby rather than a schematic for assembling an adult. Manufacturing an adult organism would require transporter-like technology, which is well beyond the capabilities of the major combatants.

Using artificially-created embryos instead of normal sexual reproduction is especially convenient for the Umiak, because their eggs develop outside the body, and so they don't need to use surrogate mothers or artificial wombs. Most Umiak reproduction is artificial, in the sense that the gene-tailored embryos are artificially mass produced, but the resulting larvae must still be raised to adulthood in the same way that a naturally-conceived child would, requiring the same amount of time.

The Umiak "tricks" that Tempo refers to have variously been surgically altered Umiak, surgically and/or mentally altered captured Loroi, or gene-tailored Loroi variants that were artificially conceived, birthed and raised from childhood by the Umiak.

[Sweforce]

The Umiak "tricks" that Tempo refers to have variously been surgically altered Umiak, surgically and/or mentally altered captured Loroi, or gene-tailored Loroi variants that were artificially conceived, birthed and raised from childhood by the Umiak.

The amount of surgery needed to alter an Umiak to look like an loroi is rather extreme. Or did they somehow just put an umiak brain in a loroi body or a robotic humanoid body creating a cyborg? The Umiak brain in an robotic loroi body should be technically possible but easy to expose. Quislings and Jannisars (captured young raised by the enemy) are probably more likely there is also the Manchurian agent option. The easiest is probably to just show a computer animation of a loroi and use synthetic speech in ranged communication. Just because a ship looks like a loroi ship, it does not have to be. It is of course also possible the Umiak have some ally that more easily can pass for a loroi.

[dragoongfa]

What I meant by "vat-growing a person" is the ability to manufacture a fully-formed adult organism (the popular notion of "cloning"). An organism can be created artificially in the same way as a "test tube baby", but it still needs to grow from an embryo to an adult normally. You can manipulate the genes to speed up maturation, and you can use artificial wombs or the like, but you can't just snap your fingers and create an adult organism. Genes don't work like that; they're procedural instructions for growing a baby rather than a schematic for assembling an adult. Manufacturing an adult organism would require transporter-like technology, which is well beyond the capabilities of the major combatants.

Using artificially-created embryos instead of normal sexual reproduction is especially convenient for the Umiak, because their eggs develop outside the body, and so they don't need to use surrogate mothers or artificial wombs. Most Umiak reproduction is artificial, in the sense that the gene-tailored embryos are artificially mass produced, but the resulting larvae must still be raised to adulthood in the same way that a naturally-conceived child would, requiring the same amount of time.

The Umiak "tricks" that Tempo refers to have variously been surgically altered Umiak, surgically and/or mentally altered captured Loroi, or gene-tailored Loroi variants that were artificially conceived, birthed and raised from childhood by the Umiak.

I see, that's much more reasonable and is in line with the current developments in Japan where they managed to maintain goat fetuses for weeks in an artificial womb.

[Sweforce]

I see, that's much more reasonable and is in line with the current developments in Japan where they managed to maintain goat fetuses for weeks in an artificial womb.

Japan, as the western world suffer from declining birthrates and the Japanese are more open to ground breaking research into controversial subjects. Japan are trying to use technology to solve their problems. If they succed, I guess we wil fllow. Nowadays I do not even bother to be impressed by the sight of an robotic lawnmower. Robots, artificial wombs and eugenics are coming. And for those afraid of eugenics, they do not need to kill anyone like the Nazis did. Encourage fit people to breed and discourage the unfit can get you far. So what will a lazy welfare draining cough potato say about a bribe to accept sterilization?

[Krulle]

[quote="Sweforce"So what will a [...] cough potato say [...]?[/Quote]
*cough*, *cough*?

Sorry, couldn't resist....

(S)He might take the money offered, but might not take any conclusions from having taken money. They have nothing you could take away from them if they still have kids anyway.