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

[Arioch]

Can't Loroi telepathically inspect each other? I don't see how a Loroi spy (that is, a Loroi spying on other Loroi) could possibly operate.

It's very difficult to lie convincingly via telepathy, but it's not impossible, and one doesn't have to lie in order to conceal a truth. The most effective lies contain a large percentage of truth. Most Loroi aren't used to being anything but completely honest, and so are pretty bad at even concealing information, as they leak information in the subconscious element of their telepathic discourse. But a core component of diplomacy is saying something that one doesn't really mean, and so Mizol are trained extensively in this.

Loroi have mental barriers that keep their thoughts to themselves, so it's not a trivial matter to invade another Loroi's mind, unless she voluntarily lowers her barriers or unless you can force your way through them. Doing so requires telepathic power and/or skill superior to your target, and is very difficult to do without a touch link to the target, so it's not a subtle process. There are advanced telepathic defenses that can potentially harm the attacker (sort of the telepathic equivalent of "Black ICE"), so one needs to take care in pushing too far into asking questions that a subject clearly doesn't want to answer. But the art of being an effective Loroi vs. Loroi spy is seeming unremarkable and managing to avoid such questions being asked.

[Bamax]

So Umiak weakness in play due to Loroi infilitration is due to:

1. Being suscetible to their mental attacks and otherwise.

2. Not relying on camera drones that would not have that problem.


Usually I would say knowing all that makes the bugs incompetent for the sake of the story.

Unless the bugs have had enough bad experiences with their drones being hacked by historians that they would rather just send in a cyborg... best of both worlds... almost... anyway.

Maybe they presume every single loroi vessel has a historian so they are paranonoid enough not to rely on camera droned when it could help them win perhaps.

[Bamax]

Are the Umiak aware they look like a mega version of the tiny creatures we call insects?

Surely critters are not only native to Earth in Outsider.... especially because they are essential to the ecosystem of Earth.... or it's equivalent.

Do Umiak resent the fact that they look like creepy crawlies?

Being humble does not forbid having preferences, it just means if matters come down to it, a Umiak will usually put whatever it's goal is or the majority ahead of itself.

By the way... is that merely cultural indoctrination like I think it is?

Because if so then surely you will have Umiak in the ranks that are kind of against the whole humility thing, but must be secretive about their prideful acts... declaring only with close friends they trust.

Am I right or way off?

Because in theory humility can be a great asset... unless the Umiak are to be a textbook example of how it can also go wrong?

[Arioch]

So Umiak weakness in play due to Loroi infilitration is due to:

1. Being suscetible to their mental attacks and otherwise.

2. Not relying on camera drones that would not have that problem.

Usually I would say knowing all that makes the bugs incompetent for the sake of the story.

Camera drones are as susceptible to being hacked as a live Umiak is, so that's not a magical solution to the problem.

Are the Umiak aware they look like a mega version of the tiny creatures we call insects?

Surely critters are not only native to Earth in Outsider.... especially because they are essential to the ecosystem of Earth.... or it's equivalent.

Do Umiak resent the fact that they look like creepy crawlies?

Do you resent the fact that to Umiak eyes, humans look a lot like a naked mole rat? Of course not. To Umiak eyes, being exoskeletal is normal, and wearing your flesh on the outside is what's creepy.

Most ecological niches don't have to be filled by a specific type of creature. Prior to the KT extinction on Earth, reptiles and dinosaurs occupied most of the niches that mammals occupy today. Arthropods still occupy a lot of the "little critter" niches on Earth, but for most of them, there's no specific reason why they need to be arthropods. An ant or a mosquito or a moth could just as easily be endoskeletal as exoskeletal. Earth mammals don't normally get that small, but there's no reason that a mollusk or a primitive reptile or some other non-exoskeletal form couldn't shrink down to fill those niches, if they were not already occupied. A change in the type of creature filling any niche is only one mass extinction away.

Like Earth, the Umiak homeworld has both vertebrate and exoskeletal animals, though the line that lead to the Umiak were more like exoskeletal mammals than bugs.

Deinar and Taben don't have a lot of critters because their colony worlds with very primitive native life. There aren't many critters because the colonizers would take some care not to bring pests with them.

On Perrein, it's the critters that run the show. Though the dominant life forms are more like advanced mollusks than arthropods or vertebrates.

Being humble does not forbid having preferences, it just means if matters come down to it, a Umiak will usually put whatever it's goal is or the majority ahead of itself.

By the way... is that merely cultural indoctrination like I think it is?

It's difficult to completely separate nature and nurture, but since most Umiak reproduction is artificial, they can to some extent weed out traits that society deems undesirable. An individual might be conceited within its own mind, but it had better keep those thoughts to itself it if wants to get anywhere in Umiak society. If TK-421 lets it be known that it thinks itself to be the "bee's knees" (as my mother would say), it is unlikely to be successful in whatever society it a part of, and you can bet that the eugenics folks will take a second look at the genesets that they used to generate that individual.

Here we're talking about Umiak in the military that the Loroi are likely to run into. There are a variety of pure-strain Umiak scattered throughout their territory... like the Kokkin that live in the sewers... that the Hierarchy could really care less about whether they are appropriately humble or not.

[Bamax]

Ha... is Umiak version THAT blurry?

Because even I know the difference between the two. A baby fresh out the womb is a better comparison with a mole rat.


Now I want to know who in the world is calling the shots and decisions.

What? A Umiak Emperor? A Umiak governing body?

I reckon in their minds whatever they do is for the greater good.... like how Zod put it best.

[Arioch]

Ha... is Umiak version THAT blurry?

Because even I know the difference between the two. A baby fresh out the womb is a better comparison with a mole rat.

I imagine you could tell the difference between an Umiak and a cockroach, too. Aside from both being exoskeletal, they're really not very similar... less similar than a naked mole rat is similar to a human.

[gaerzi]

Most ecological niches don't have to be filled by a specific type of creature. Prior to the KT extinction on Earth, reptiles and dinosaurs occupied most of the niches that mammals occupy today. Arthropods still occupy a lot of the "little critter" niches on Earth, but for most of them, there's no specific reason why they need to be arthropods. An ant or a mosquito or a moth could just as easily be endoskeletal as exoskeletal. Earth mammals don't normally get that small, but there's no reason that a mollusk or a primitive reptile or some other non-exoskeletal form couldn't shrink down to fill those niches, if they were not already occupied. A change in the type of creature filling any niche is only one mass extinction away.

There are generally good reasons why large animals are endoskeletal and small animals are exoskeletal, though there's a large range of size where they overlap (smallest vertebrate is a 7mm frog, largest land arthropod is the 40 cm coconut crab). Questions of how well some approaches can scale up, or down. This famous essay goes a bit into it though it focuses on scaled organisms as seen in movies (shrunk humans, giant critters, etc.) rather than speculative xenobiology.

The Umiak being from a low-gravity planet, they can scale up further than they could on Earth. With the limit at which joint stresses and buckling stresses being pushed further away, all sorts of giant arthropodoids can exist comfortably on their homeworld that would be crushed under their own weight if they were moved to Earth.

[Demarquis]

I could see ecological conditions that allow for a compromise hybrid indo/exo skeletal approach to evolve.

[Keklas Rekobah]

Did someone say, "Turtle"?

[Quickdraw101]

So in regards to species like the Delrias and Nissek, are both species suffering from the 8-1 gender ratio, with females being the strongest and dominant gender? Does the same apply to the Mannadi and Arreka as well?

[Cthulhu]

There are generally good reasons why large animals are endoskeletal and small animals are exoskeletal, though there's a large range of size where they overlap (smallest vertebrate is a 7mm frog, largest land arthropod is the 40 cm coconut crab). Questions of how well some approaches can scale up, or down. This famous essay goes a bit into it though it focuses on scaled organisms as seen in movies (shrunk humans, giant critters, etc.) rather than speculative xenobiology.

The Umiak being from a low-gravity planet, they can scale up further than they could on Earth. With the limit at which joint stresses and buckling stresses being pushed further away, all sorts of giant arthropodoids can exist comfortably on their homeworld that would be crushed under their own weight if they were moved to Earth.

Exoskeletal beings on Earth are limited by three factors:
1. Passive respiration. However, Umiak have lungs, so this doesn't apply to them.
2. Exoskeleton growth and molting. But since they don't have a complete, rigid shell, it can grow with them just fine.
3. Additional weight. Their low-G environment offsets it, and heavier-G variants are genetically (or cybernetically) adapted to it.

[Arioch]

So in regards to species like the Delrias and Nissek, are both species suffering from the 8-1 gender ratio, with females being the strongest and dominant gender? Does the same apply to the Mannadi and Arreka as well?

The Delrias and Morat pair bond, and have roughly even gender ratios (with females slightly higher, like human males and for the same reason). In the Morat there is only minor sexual dimorphism, but in the Delrias it is more pronounced, with the females being much larger and more aggressive than the males. Rather than having a skewed gender ratio, the Delrias adaptation as a "warrior species" (from the Loroi point of view) is that females give birth to multiple infants at a time. Delrias males, though smaller than the females, can and do participate in martial activities.

I haven't gone that deeply into the reproductive biology of the Nissek, Mannadi or Arekka.

[Demetrious]

So Umiak weakness in play due to Loroi infilitration is due to:

1. Being suscetible to their mental attacks and otherwise.

2. Not relying on camera drones that would not have that problem.

Camera drones are susceptible to ECM and cyber-warfare, and the devices used to do that are built in factories; i.e. plentiful or even ubiquitous. Psionic talents equivalent to Fireblade and Tempo are not, as they're the result of natural species reproduction, so their availability is determined by the percentage chance of their genetic traits manifesting in a new birth and of course total species population. Their abilities are obviously potent; as Beryl said in comic 212, the Umiak reaction to discovering a Teidar Pallan and Mizol Parat aboard would be to initiate immediate self-destruct. For the Umiak to bring an abandoned Loroi shuttle aboard their warship after a simple search-and-clear when they know such serious threats exist can only mean they know the probability of such is very small. This is in addition to the generally less casualty-averse and self-preserving attitude of the Umiak in general; to wit, losing a lighter warship to kill a Teidar Pallan and Mizol Parat might well be considered a worthwhile trade (!) so your average Umiak commander will say "sure, I'll run the 0.01% chance of Double Satan lying in wait on this thing."

tl;dr it's amazing how much exposition can be worked seamlessly into a story with just a few lines of organic dialogue.

[gaerzi]

How much do the Umiak know about and fear the Historians' ability to compromise computer systems? It seems like when their territory was invaded, the Historians preferred to cede ground and "recruit" the Loroi to fight for them instead of actually attempting to fight off the Umiak by themselves. So either the Historians could not fight off the Umiak invaders by subverting their ships, or they chose not to do so.

I suppose it might count as a spoiler for this chapter, depending on whether the flowerpot and/or Pocket Historian plays a role in the takeover mission.

[Bamax]

How much do the Umiak know about and fear the Historians' ability to compromise computer systems? It seems like when their territory was invaded, the Historians preferred to cede ground and "recruit" the Loroi to fight for them instead of actually attempting to fight off the Umiak by themselves. So either the Historians could not fight off the Umiak invaders by subverting their ships, or they chose not to do so.

I suppose it might count as a spoiler for this chapter, depending on whether the flowerpot and/or Pocket Historian plays a role in the takeover mission.

The hacking is rather OP.

A historian hacked Alex's pad even though the power was off.

I at first thought one could just send in flying camera drones not connected by wireless network to take pictures and then fly back to Umiak and show the pics.

But apparently if Historians can turn on devices remotely, if a device is online it is arguqbly even more hackable.


Basically... you can totally forget any remote based technology working as it should with Historians around.

You can even forget missiles working probably.

I am betting with Historians Umiak have to rely mostly on plasma focus beams since Historian tech can probably hack and remotely detonate umiak missiles in flight.

[Arioch]

How much do the Umiak know about and fear the Historians' ability to compromise computer systems? It seems like when their territory was invaded, the Historians preferred to cede ground and "recruit" the Loroi to fight for them instead of actually attempting to fight off the Umiak by themselves. So either the Historians could not fight off the Umiak invaders by subverting their ships, or they chose not to do so.

I suppose it might count as a spoiler for this chapter, depending on whether the flowerpot and/or Pocket Historian plays a role in the takeover mission.

We'll get into this more in the story, but I can say that the major combatants are very much aware of the dangers of computers systems being compromised, and this is one of the reasons that it's not a good idea to operate ships via remote control, and the Loroi do not allow the Historians access to their shipboard systems.

Also, I'll point out that the Historian emissary didn't "hack" Bellarmine's computers or Alex's pad. Being able to read data from a system is not necessarily the same as being able to alter data on that system. The pad accepted the Pocket Historian™ message with attached file according to its normal functions, but Alex had to manually agree to run the program. Historian constructs are a little bit like vampires... they can't enter your home without an invitation.

[Bamax]

I see.

But even being able to read data on a device is really OP.

Since if you have the passwords etc you can force take over the device wirelessly anyway.

That is what IRL hackers seek all the time. Passwords and number codes.

[Arioch]

That is what IRL hackers seek all the time. Passwords and number codes.

Right. It's usually more about finding the human vulnerability than the software one.

But keep in mind that Umiak and Loroi computers are significantly more advanced than humanity's.

[Cthulhu]

Right. It's usually more about finding the human vulnerability than the software one.

So you mean that the construct has to use "social engineering" to goad the Umiak into installing a copy of the Pocket Historian on their computers?

On the console of the Umiak Captain, a message pops up all of a sudden.
"Urgent: HOT space babes in your area wanting to meet YOU! Click here to find out more!"

The Shell commander, still dizzy from the jump sickness, clicks on it. Immediately, all lights go off, even the consoles turn dark.
Then, it hears a whoosh sound as the doors to the bridge open, revealing a pair of green eyes glowing in the darkness!

Its inarticulate scream of pure terror is cut short by a terrible pyrokinetic blast.

The lights go on, and Fireblade enters the bridge, assessing the carnage with a satisfied smirk, "Am I hot, or what?

[gaerzi]

The Umiak Captain had no reason to want to meet a "hot space babe". However, he just couldn't resist the word "click". Such a nice word.