Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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Jagged
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Jagged »

orion1836 wrote: For us Americans, Britain = England. We gave up caring sometime around 1776 or so.

To be fair, that distinction might become important again here in a few years.
Or if you ever want to have a polite conversation with someone from Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland

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Jagged
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Jagged »

Apologies if this has been asked before but are the other races in the Loroi Empire similar in their gender roles?
I ask because Beryl seemed a little surprised by the idea of Humanity being 50/50 and the tradition of males as warriors.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by dragoongfa »

Jagged wrote:Apologies if this has been asked before but are the other races in the Loroi Empire similar in their gender roles?
I ask because Beryl seemed a little surprised by the idea of Humanity being 50/50 and the tradition of males as warriors.
It seems that Beryl's initial assessment of human males is that they are the same as their Loroi counterparts; i.e. their main societal role being to impregnate females.

Now as to the other races of the Union. It seems that each race is unique biologically and as such unique in their societal roles. I remember the Delrias females being more 'dominant' than their males due to their larger size and inherent aggression. The Barsam are 'monosexual', with each individual being able to both 'carry' the fetus to term and to 'impregnate' an other member of their kind. Iirc the Neridi are kinda interesting with three distinct 'genders roles'.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Daegondrake »

Will we see separate loroi factions/colonies in the future because we know the loroi union was made by splinter colonies could there be an undiscovered but separate loroi goverment.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Jagged wrote:Apologies if this has been asked before but are the other races in the Loroi Empire similar in their gender roles?
I ask because Beryl seemed a little surprised by the idea of Humanity being 50/50 and the tradition of males as warriors.
Beryl was surprised that humans could look nearly identical to Loroi but still have a very different reproductive strategy.

The other races in the Union have a variety of gender arrangements and ratios, as mentioned.
Daegondrake wrote:Will we see separate loroi factions/colonies in the future because we know the loroi union was made by splinter colonies could there be an undiscovered but separate loroi goverment.
All I can say is that the issue of Loroi ancestry will be addressed, at some point.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Quickdraw101 »

I wonder how the Loroi will feel when they learn just how sexually active humans really are. I mean we humans haven't done sex simply for procreation in a very long time, and is only done so in very specific religious sects. We do it out of lust, love, boredom, stress, and experimentation. Given how few Loroi men there are, I'd imagine they don't have to opportunities to do the same. Alex will need to clarify that at some point later, given how Beryl seems to think that our 50/50 gender split means humans only have one partner in their lifetimes.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Ithekro »

Beryl's reactio to Alex seems to indicate that Loroi males are very sexually active. Females...possible only as needed...but with such a large female to male ratio, the males will have to keep up.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Werra »

The numbers aren't that stark. It's 1:10, cutting out civilians brings this to 1:5.
Even if every Torrai had sex daily, ordinary warriors should still be getting regular encounters. Probably even if males want it only once a week.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by dragoongfa »

People seem to mistake one thing, the Loroi societal order with their warrior castes and access scheme is there to technically inflate the value of males and as thus the ability to have children.
It is extremely easy for a male to impregnate a female and since the Loroi don't have an estrus/menstruation cycle this means that there is no natural control to prevent all of the Loroi females to be impregnated at will.
For all intents and purposes the Loroi are able to experience a doubling of their population within a single year, with their population being 90% female and all females being able to remain reproductively viable for most of their extremely long lives this automatically leads to a population explosion which inevitably leads to a societal collapse due to a lack of food (hence the recession cycles of Deinar and the need of population controls due to the hostile natures of Perrein and Taben).
The Loroi were 'forced' into a population control scheme due to their very nature; if they all had children at will then their society would inevitably blow up and collapse. They could perhaps form a 'social contract' where the females all agreed to only have 1 child every X amount of years but that is unenforceable in low tech settings. What they needed was an authoritarian control scheme where only part of the population would be allowed to reproduce.
This control scheme ended up being the various warrior castes that agreed to segregate the males from the females and control access to them with lock and key.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by jterlecki »

Ithekro wrote:Beryl's reactio to Alex seems to indicate that Loroi males are very sexually active. Females...possible only as needed...but with such a large female to male ratio, the males will have to keep up.
My undestanding is males are very active due to reproductive needs. I believe Arioch specified Loroi only have sex for reproduction.

Now the question is would Loroi women consider sexual relations with humans for pleasure (assuming they ally with humanity). There is no doubt that many human males would consider it/agree, but might be a cultural shock to the reverse.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by GeoModder »

Werra wrote:The numbers aren't that stark. It's 1:10, cutting out civilians brings this to 1:5.
Even if every Torrai had sex daily, ordinary warriors should still be getting regular encounters. Probably even if males want it only once a week.
Even better. One out of five civilians is male. ;)
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by CF2 »

Have the Loroi encountered worlds as bio-diverse as Earth?
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

CF2 wrote:Have the Loroi encountered worlds as bio-diverse as Earth?
Yes and no. Each of the non-Soia-Liron races represents a separate, well-developed native planetary ecosystem (except for the Fenrias offshoots, who together represent a single native ecosystem). Except for a few cases, most of these planets have a wide variety of biomes for diverse species to occupy.

However, they are only a few hundred thousand years the other side of a major extinction event that struck almost all of the inhabited worlds of the Local Bubble. The surviving species have radiated to fill most of the vacant niches, but that's a blink of the eye on geologic time scales, and most worlds are not as biodiverse as they might otherwise have been.

Perrein is pretty biodiverse considering the limited variety of biomes (essentially megaforest, forest floor shadowlands/wetlands, highlands, and polar regions). Billions of years ago, Perrein would have been more Earthlike, with larger oceans and active plate tectonics. However, as the star aged and increased in brightness and the planet's molten core depleted its radioactives and gradually froze (without a large moon's tides to add to internal heating). The temperature rose, place tectonics ceased, and the rise of the scale forests silted up much of the ocean and turned most of the land into an unchanging shadowland. The planet's magnetic field is now induced by the solar wind (as on Venus), and it is biological processes rather than geologic ones that keep the atmosphere replenished. So, without regular environmental change to drive adaptation, organisms instead iterated on hypercompetitiveness within unchanging biomes.

There is some conflicting evidence as to whether Perrein was bombarded during the Soia catastrophe (there is no sign of civilized habitation prior to the appearance of Loroi survivors there, and suspected craters have been filled in by the silting effect of the scale forests), but if it was, the impact seems to have been negligible. The geography and lack of large oceans localizes the effect of impacts, and temporary blockage of the sun is barely noticeable to organisms evolved to live in darkness.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Mr.Tucker »

Arioch wrote:
CF2 wrote:Have the Loroi encountered worlds as bio-diverse as Earth?
Yes and no. Each of the non-Soia-Liron races represents a separate, well-developed native planetary ecosystem (except for the Fenrias offshoots, who together represent a single native ecosystem). Except for a few cases, most of these planets have a wide variety of biomes for diverse species to occupy.

However, they are only a few hundred thousand years the other side of a major extinction event that struck almost all of the inhabited worlds of the Local Bubble. The surviving species have radiated to fill most of the vacant niches, but that's a blink of the eye on geologic time scales, and most worlds are not as biodiverse as they might otherwise have been.

Perrein is pretty biodiverse considering the limited variety of biomes (essentially megaforest, forest floor shadowlands/wetlands, highlands, and polar regions). Billions of years ago, Perrein would have been more Earthlike, with larger oceans and active plate tectonics. However, as the star aged and increased in brightness and the planet's molten core depleted its radioactives and gradually froze (without a large moon's tides to add to internal heating). The temperature rose, place tectonics ceased, and the rise of the scale forests silted up much of the ocean and turned most of the land into an unchanging shadowland. The planet's magnetic field is now induced by the solar wind (as on Venus), and it is biological processes rather than geologic ones that keep the atmosphere replenished. So, without regular environmental change to drive adaptation, organisms instead iterated on hypercompetitiveness within unchanging biomes.

There is some conflicting evidence as to whether Perrein was bombarded during the Soia catastrophe (there is no sign of civilized habitation prior to the appearance of Loroi survivors there, and suspected craters have been filled in by the silting effect of the scale forests), but if it was, the impact seems to have been negligible. The geography and lack of large oceans localizes the effect of impacts, and temporary blockage of the sun is barely noticeable to organisms evolved to live in darkness.
Is.... Perrein a dying world? How do it's plants replenish the atmosphere? It's not like they make oxygen out of silica... It means that lighter gasses are being trapped EXTREMELY efficiently by the plants. It must mean their carbon and hydrogen cycles are fully biological.
Is it bigger than Earth, with a higher gravity?

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Mr.Tucker wrote:Is.... Perrein a dying world? How do it's plants replenish the atmosphere? It's not like they make oxygen out of silica... It means that lighter gasses are being trapped EXTREMELY efficiently by the plants. It must mean their carbon and hydrogen cycles are fully biological.
Is it bigger than Earth, with a higher gravity?
You can have an Earth-like carbon cycle, but with biochemical activity replacing vulcanism as a mechanism of CO2 replenishment. The concept is that the scale forest ecosystem produces a steady carbonaceous detritus, which accumulates into layers of porous sedimentary rock (which has been building up for billions of years), and there are lots of subterranean chemical and biochemical reactions that give off CO2 and return it to the atmosphere.

Perrein is slightly smaller than Earth, with a size and mass similar to Venus.

Venus is somehow able to maintain a very dense atmosphere without its own magnetic field or any active vulcanism we can detect (the volcanoes on the surface seem to be hundreds of millions of years old, from a period before the core froze). So it's possible. I'm guessing that the extreme heat has something to do with it.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Cthulhu »

Arioch wrote:Venus is somehow able to maintain a very dense atmosphere without its own magnetic field or any active vulcanism we can detect (the volcanoes on the surface seem to be hundreds of millions of years old, from a period before the core froze). So it's possible. I'm guessing that the extreme heat has something to do with it.
Yes, Venus is able to maintain an atmosphere, but it's mostly CO2. The problem is that a magnetic field will protect the atmosphere from losing its lighter gasses. The solar wind will gradually "erode" water vapour and "burn up" the oxygen. Therefore, Perrein would end up as a dead world quite similar to Mars, albeit at a much slower pace.

Also, back to the previous question. Did the Loroi encounter any planet that is both as biodiverse as Earth and untouched by the extinction events.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Cthulhu wrote:
Arioch wrote:Venus is somehow able to maintain a very dense atmosphere without its own magnetic field or any active vulcanism we can detect (the volcanoes on the surface seem to be hundreds of millions of years old, from a period before the core froze). So it's possible. I'm guessing that the extreme heat has something to do with it.
Yes, Venus is able to maintain an atmosphere, but it's mostly CO2. The problem is that a magnetic field will protect the atmosphere from losing its lighter gasses. The solar wind will gradually "erode" water vapour and "burn up" the oxygen. Therefore, Perrein would end up as a dead world quite similar to Mars, albeit at a much slower pace.
Well, oxygen is very reactive and so it needs to be constantly replenished anyway, but with a planetwide forest of monster trees, that's not a problem as long as there is a steady CO2 supply. Water vapor is more of a problem, but we can suppose that the composition of Perrein's ionosphere gives the planet an induced magnetosphere that is more effective at shielding the planet than the one around Venus.
Cthulhu wrote:Also, back to the previous question. Did the Loroi encounter any planet that is both as biodiverse as Earth and untouched by the extinction events.
Yes. Earth is not unique in that sense.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Cthulhu »

Arioch wrote:Well, oxygen is very reactive and so it needs to be constantly replenished anyway, but with a planetwide forest of monster trees, that's not a problem as long as there is a steady CO2 supply. Water vapor is more of a problem, but we can suppose that the composition of Perrein's ionosphere gives the planet an induced magnetosphere that is more effective at shielding the planet than the one around Venus.
That's exactly the problem. Without the shielding from the magnetic field the solar wind will blow off the ionosphere, then wreak havoc on the lower levels as well as on all life. The ionosphere cannot induce its own magnetic field to hold itself in place. Basically, in order to maintain "air" a planet needs to be at the right distance from the sun, have enough gravity and a strong enough magnetic field. If even one factor is off, then we'll end up with inert gases or nothing at all.

In science fiction, however, you can circumvent certain limitations by introducing plausible (-sounding) solutions. Let's see:
1. Perreins aged star produces little solar wind and radiation. Therefore, the erosion is very slow and the ecosystem may last for a couple of years (or millions). Normally this would freeze the planet, but let's assume that the planet adapted (or was adapted?) by means of a powerful greenhouse effect.
2. There is an unnatural magnetic field shielding the planet.
3. Something is replentishing the lost gasses from within the planet.


P.S.: Sorry to be a bit nitpicky :geek:

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Cthulhu wrote:That's exactly the problem. Without the shielding from the magnetic field the solar wind will blow off the ionosphere, then wreak havoc on the lower levels as well as on all life. The ionosphere cannot induce its own magnetic field to hold itself in place.
Except that Venus' ionosphere does exactly that. Venus has roughly similar size, mass, and distance from its primary to Perrein, and also has no magnetic field... yet it retains an atmosphere 90 times more dense than Earth's.

Titan also has no (known) magnetic field, and yet manages to retain an atmosphere more dense than Earth's.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Cthulhu »

Arioch wrote:
Cthulhu wrote:That's exactly the problem. Without the shielding from the magnetic field the solar wind will blow off the ionosphere, then wreak havoc on the lower levels as well as on all life. The ionosphere cannot induce its own magnetic field to hold itself in place.
Except that Venus' ionosphere does exactly that. Venus has roughly similar size, mass, and distance from its primary to Perrein, and also has no magnetic field... yet it retains an atmosphere 90 times more dense than Earth's.

Titan also has no (known) magnetic field, and yet manages to retain an atmosphere more dense than Earth's.
That's what I'm talking about.

Venus has an atmosphere due to its sufficiently powerful gravitational force (unlike Mars), but because it has no magnetic field, this atmosphere consists mostly of CO2. Venus' ionosphere is, unlike Earths, not able to withstand the solar wind and all light gases are blown away. An induced magnetosphere is not powerful enough to contain it. By this point, only trace amounts of hydrogen and oxygen remain, but those can still be found in Venus' trail, which confirms the still ongoing erosion.

Titan is far enough from the Sun and it's protected by another, considerably powerful magnetic field, that of Saturn.


Anyway, in order not to get too much off-topic, here's a question on Loroi philosophy.
As how I understand it, the current Loroi social and political structure is rooted in the old warrior caste and clan structures. In ancient times it was necessary in order to maintain population control. It was the only way to maintain order and advance as a society. Or was it? Were or are there any other schools of thought on how Loroi civilization should be organized? How are such ideas received?

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