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

[Jagged]

Nice, I love a bit of world building/world background

[dragoongfa]

I have a feeling that I stumbled upon something when I wrote a certain fan-fic of mine.

There may be plenty of political reasons as to why the Loroi were excluded from the observatory team; ranging from a Historian dislike of the warlike Loroi to the Historians wanting to showcase that they are not in any way or form 'subservient' to the Loroi.

What If there are practical reasons for the Historians to ensure that no Loroi comes close to a 'Pol'?

What if the Pol are the real 'minds' behind the Historian technology?

I admit that I had come up with a pet theory of mine some years ago, that the Pol are an artificial race intended as extreme long term knowledge preservatories. Most probably sentient and sapient as having the 'brain matter' to perfectly preserve technological knowledge and concept would mandate that as a necessity. The Listel caste have the ability to perfectly recollect everything that they witnessed and received in the past but what if the Soians wanted something 'more' than a glorified cute secretary/scientist with a perfect memory?
My answer was for a race that would be capable to 'transfer' memories from the parent to a child while still in the womb. Then these perfectly preserved memories would be accessed telepathically; with new knowledge implanted telepathically as well. A perfect repository of knowledge. A race of perfect 'Historians' as they are all born with the knowledge and then pass on everything as well as their own experiences and knowledge to the next generation.
Why an aquatic race without fine motor skills (fingers, hands, thumbs, tentacles and etc)?
If the Pol do remember 'everything' then they also remember how to make highly dangerous and sensitive equipment. Would a highly authoritarian and domineering society as the Soians trust any sapient servile race with the knowledge of how to make the 'Ultimate Big Fucking Death Ray 20.000'?
No, make them unable to make the tech themselves; forever cursed to 'know' everything but largely unable to act upon it since they are the equivalent of dolphins in terms of fine motor skills.
The purely aquatic nature may also be a bonus; most garden worlds have to have large bodies of water in order to maintain the ecosystem. The Soians would be able to dump a few Pol in select worlds to act as backups, with genetic orders to lay low and maintain a small stable population until contacted. Then a million or so years later a Soian comes around to check if the backup vault is doing fine, compare notes with the current standards and deposit the necessary updates.

[Werra]

What a juicy answer.

The Loroi got a close-up look at this technology during the research exchange, even though the provided versions were clearly less capable than the ones the Historians use themselves.

Does this mean the technology exchange not only involved weapons, but also advanced shields and reactionless drives? That's quite a lot more help than I previously thought the Loroi did receive. That says something about the severity of the Umiaks invasion of Historian space.
How far along are the Loroi in replicating these technologies?

Loroi intelligence has only been able to pick up a few hints and fragments of information from prisoner interrogation. The main gist was that the Umiak seem to have been surprised at the relative lack of extensive ultra-tech development compared to what they expected to see on the Historian planets that they occupied. Participants in the invasion had dreaded the expected Historian superiority in weaponry, but in the event they encountered surprisingly little Historian resistance. The Historian civilians had all been completely evacuated beforehand, down to the last hamster (so to speak). The Umiak easily took any system they attacked. Umiak information regarding the eventual Historian counterattack is even more scarce, as it seems likely that few of the Umiak forces involved ever returned to friendly territory.

The Umiak must have been desperate to risk invading an enemy whose technology they dreaded.

@dragoongfa
I don't know. Creating a highly specialized species to store knowledge seems like a lot of effort to go through if writing it down in stone or metal somewhere would be sufficient.

Also:

The Listel caste have the ability to perfectly recollect everything that they witnessed and received in the past but what if the Soians wanted something 'more' than a glorified cute secretary/scientist with a perfect memory?

The purely aquatic nature may also be a bonus; most garden worlds have to have large bodies of water in order to maintain the ecosystem.

We don't have enough information about the Soia to make these claims. A Soia garden world might be arid, for example and Loroi could have been horrible monstrosities to the Soia.

[dragoongfa]

@dragoongfa
I don't know. Creating a highly specialized species to store knowledge seems like a lot of effort to go through if writing it down in stone or metal somewhere would be sufficient.

The Soians were telepathic, being able to immediately access all information via telepathy is a huge time saving bonus in and onto itself. Imagine being able to mentally access a huge hard drive from a distance. The problem with more traditional media on the other hand is that they aren't self replicating nor self protective; a sentient species able to avoid danger and self propagate is a far better 'knowledge repository' than a secure vault which is at the mercy of natural whims (earthquakes) or sapient interference (thieves). Furthermore the Pol would be useless to a 'non' telepathic race; only with full cooperation would someone else be able to slowly gleam knowledge from a highly intelligent creature that is unable to convey complex thought through a mouth or fine motor appendages.
With the Soia around it would be all but impossible for non telepaths to 'steal' advanced technology from a Pol repository. As they would immediately pursue any thieves/kidnappers/liberators that got their hands on even a single Pol individual.

Also:

The Listel caste have the ability to perfectly recollect everything that they witnessed and received in the past but what if the Soians wanted something 'more' than a glorified cute secretary/scientist with a perfect memory?

The purely aquatic nature may also be a bonus; most garden worlds have to have large bodies of water in order to maintain the ecosystem.

We don't have enough information about the Soia to make these claims. A Soia garden world might be arid, for example and Loroi could have been horrible monstrosities to the Soia.

I am more of the opinion that the Soians were fully space faring, electing to stay exclusively on their 'Dread Stars', huge pseudo planetoid spacecraft. Fully self sufficient without much need of a 'garden world', garden worlds would be for the 'lesser races'. The Barsam revere the 'Gatherers' who for all intent and purposes are the Soians; the creators of the Soia-Liron biochemical template. We don't know the full extent of the Soian 'great plan' but most of what we know about them reveal a 'top down' Empire where every 'lesser' race was isolated from one an other with only the Soians and their creations having FTL capable ships.
If the Pol were to be spread throughout all of the garden worlds or would be left in a handful 'virgin' worlds without other sapients is unknown. I only provide a 'plausible' theory as to why the 'Historians' are so protective of the Pol especially when it comes to a Loroi coming anywhere near one.

[spacewhale]

Maybe the Historian constructs are the only remnant of another extinct Soia-Liron race, perhaps another modified race that was extinguished in the chaos. They still have their 'template' race, but unfortunately their template race is stupid.

[Mr.Tucker]

@dragoongfa
I don't know. Creating a highly specialized species to store knowledge seems like a lot of effort to go through if writing it down in stone or metal somewhere would be sufficient.

The Soians were telepathic, being able to immediately access all information via telepathy is a huge time saving bonus in and onto itself. Imagine being able to mentally access a huge hard drive from a distance. The problem with more traditional media on the other hand is that they aren't self replicating nor self protective; a sentient species able to avoid danger and self propagate is a far better 'knowledge repository' than a secure vault which is at the mercy of natural whims (earthquakes) or sapient interference (thieves). Furthermore the Pol would be useless to a 'non' telepathic race; only with full cooperation would someone else be able to slowly gleam knowledge from a highly intelligent creature that is unable to convey complex thought through a mouth or fine motor appendages.
With the Soia around it would be all but impossible for non telepaths to 'steal' advanced technology from a Pol repository. As they would immediately pursue any thieves/kidnappers/liberators that got their hands on even a single Pol individual.

Also:

The Listel caste have the ability to perfectly recollect everything that they witnessed and received in the past but what if the Soians wanted something 'more' than a glorified cute secretary/scientist with a perfect memory?

The purely aquatic nature may also be a bonus; most garden worlds have to have large bodies of water in order to maintain the ecosystem.

We don't have enough information about the Soia to make these claims. A Soia garden world might be arid, for example and Loroi could have been horrible monstrosities to the Soia.

I am more of the opinion that the Soians were fully space faring, electing to stay exclusively on their 'Dread Stars', huge pseudo planetoid spacecraft. Fully self sufficient without much need of a 'garden world', garden worlds would be for the 'lesser races'. The Barsam revere the 'Gatherers' who for all intent and purposes are the Soians; the creators of the Soia-Liron biochemical template. We don't know the full extent of the Soian 'great plan' but most of what we know about them reveal a 'top down' Empire where every 'lesser' race was isolated from one an other with only the Soians and their creations having FTL capable ships.
If the Pol were to be spread throughout all of the garden worlds or would be left in a handful 'virgin' worlds without other sapients is unknown. I only provide a 'plausible' theory as to why the 'Historians' are so protective of the Pol especially when it comes to a Loroi coming anywhere near one.

One problem, though: in time, the information passed on from generation to generation of Pol would get corrupted. Or at least, become very sterile. At first, it might be first-hand knowledge, with a telepathic vision of what happened, but over time, as recipients die and pass on their info, what you would get is the memory of being told what happened, rather than any accompanying sensations permitted by telepathic bandwidth. A decent repository, but life is very fluid and evolution does not like to be contained. I mean... the Bandersnatch had to be engineered in such a way as to not change over eons.
We also don't know if the Soians were telepathic. Hell, at their tech level, we have no idea what they were.

[Krulle]

The Soians were telepaths, and because the Loroi are the only known telepahs around, they claim to be the descendants of the Soians. It' the basis of their claim.

[Dorfington]

I don't recall the Soians being described as telepaths. When was this?

[Werra]

The Soia had working amplifiers. So the assumption is that they were also telepaths. However, I believe Arioch left the information and phrasing vague on purpose. It seems possible that the Soia had the know-how, but not the actual telepathy.

[boldilocks]

Could be the soia considered telepathy to be too risky to have themselves. Or the benefits not outweighing the cost, if for example they had not been natural telepaths but had a way to induce it in themselves, and yet refrained because they were a private society.

[Dorfington]

I see. I thought those amplifiers were made by the Soians for Loroi use, seeing as they were made with the Loroi skull structure in mind.

[Werra]

The first and possibly only amplifiers that have been found were on the remains of Loroi on that desert moon. The Lorois line of thinking that they are Soia was not unreasonable. At least not until the discovery of humanity.

[Krulle]

I remember having read it as word-of-God, but can't remember where or when.
Let's see what I can collect as circumstantial evidence:

A few species -- notably the Loroi and their apparent relatives, the Barsam and Neridi -- claimed direct descent from these ancient civilizations.

Only about half of these known Soia-Liron races appear to have survived the fall: the Loroi, Barsam and Neridi civilizations that exist today are directly descended from their Soia-era counterparts.

Two of the sentient Soia-Liron species require special note: the Barsam are unusual in that they very closely resemble a natively-evolved local species, the Nibiren. The Loroi are unusual in that they are the only known organisms to possess psionic capabilities.

Same page, third to last paragraph:

Official Loroi doctrine agrees with this theory in basic principle, but the Loroi maintain that their own ancestors (the "true" Soia) were clearly the masters of this coalition, pointing to their unique psionic abilities and the fact that Loroi planetary settlements did not appear until the time of the Fall (tradition asserts that the true Soia lived in space aboard their wandering dread-stars and not in dirt-bound planetside settlements). Some versions of the Loroi history go so far as to infer that the other Soia-Liron sentients were nothing more than servants created at the whim of the Loroi ancestors, though these views are seldom discussed outside Loroi nationalist circles.

[highlights by me]

So, found the "word-of-God".

[Dorfington]

That's not proof that the Soians themselves were telepaths though.

[dragoongfa]

Taking into account everything that we know then we should consider telepathy an extremely high tear technology. A telepath can do a great deal of things naturally while we have to rely on technology that barely imitates telepathy. All things considered if the Soians were capable of creating a telepathic race like the Loroi then they should be equally capable of implanting telepathy on their own forms. There is no reason as to why they shouldn't and plenty of reasons as to why they should.

[Krulle]

That's not proof that the Soians themselves were telepaths though.

Nope, indeed it is not. It may well be the Soians achieved technology through technical means, and then found a way to make it into their biological machines (Soia-Liron).
But it proves my statement the Loroi consider themselves to be the heirs of the Soia, which is the basis of their claims on this part of the Galaxy. But it seems I've been trying to prove the wrong thesis I spouted up there.

Loroi vs. Aliens

The Loroi are, as far as they are aware, the only telepathic species since the fall of the Soia (who had psionic devices and so were presumably also telepathic). In addition to being seen as proof of Loroi descent from the Soia, many Loroi consider their telepathic nature as being a higher and superior form of life as compared with other alien species, collectively referred to as binzer ("mutes"). The subconscious Loroi association between the spoken word and hostility also increases the perception of other races that the Loroi are arrogant and belligerent (and is why the Loroi have developed a dedicated diplomatic caste for dealing verbally with outsiders).

It seems these machines the Soia left behind do not create telepathy for the user, but strengthens existing telepathy.
Which is a clear indication that someone back then must've had talapathic abilitites. Wether genetically engineered, or naturally evolved we don't know. And likely won't get toknow.

[gaerzi]

I admit that I had come up with a pet theory of mine some years ago, that the Pol are an artificial race intended as extreme long term knowledge preservatories. Most probably sentient and sapient as having the 'brain matter' to perfectly preserve technological knowledge and concept would mandate that as a necessity. The Listel caste have the ability to perfectly recollect everything that they witnessed and received in the past but what if the Soians wanted something 'more' than a glorified cute secretary/scientist with a perfect memory?
My answer was for a race that would be capable to 'transfer' memories from the parent to a child while still in the womb. Then these perfectly preserved memories would be accessed telepathically; with new knowledge implanted telepathically as well. A perfect repository of knowledge. A race of perfect 'Historians' as they are all born with the knowledge and then pass on everything as well as their own experiences and knowledge to the next generation.

Why not but there is the problem of information density. A Listel may be able to perfectly remember every moment of their lives, but they have only one lifespan to store. Even a genetically-engineered superbrain may have trouble maintaining a perfect record of a thousand generations' knowledge, at some point you'll just run out of space. So there would still be a way for memories to be "overwritten" by others, especially given that 99.999999999% of this stored knowledge will be about the experience of swimming in the ocean, in other words something that the creators of the dolphin harddrive would presumably not really care about.

[dragoongfa]

I admit that I had come up with a pet theory of mine some years ago, that the Pol are an artificial race intended as extreme long term knowledge preservatories. Most probably sentient and sapient as having the 'brain matter' to perfectly preserve technological knowledge and concept would mandate that as a necessity. The Listel caste have the ability to perfectly recollect everything that they witnessed and received in the past but what if the Soians wanted something 'more' than a glorified cute secretary/scientist with a perfect memory?
My answer was for a race that would be capable to 'transfer' memories from the parent to a child while still in the womb. Then these perfectly preserved memories would be accessed telepathically; with new knowledge implanted telepathically as well. A perfect repository of knowledge. A race of perfect 'Historians' as they are all born with the knowledge and then pass on everything as well as their own experiences and knowledge to the next generation.

Why not but there is the problem of information density. A Listel may be able to perfectly remember every moment of their lives, but they have only one lifespan to store. Even a genetically-engineered superbrain may have trouble maintaining a perfect record of a thousand generations' knowledge, at some point you'll just run out of space. So there would still be a way for memories to be "overwritten" by others, especially given that 99.999999999% of this stored knowledge will be about the experience of swimming in the ocean, in other words something that the creators of the dolphin harddrive would presumably not really care about.

Depends on how the nervous system would work; we are talking about ultra high tech genetic and molecular manipulation here, we have no way of knowing how information is stored in such a brain, how dense it is or how it is overwritten/deleted. There are more than a few plausible ways to 'handwave' this away; first that came in mind was that certain parts of the 'stored' information have telepathic overrides on them that transfer from generation to generation. Another would be that only the 'long term' memories are there to be 'manipulated' and 'saved' while the short terms memories are automatically forgotten; everything else would be handled with pre-programmed herd instincts with an 'Alpha' rising up to be able and aware enough to guide the aquatic herd.

Thinking about it some more the later 'handwave' is far more probable if someone wants to ensure that no information loss happens. This would also make the Historians the good guys in the whole setting, protecting the Pol from all those who would use and abuse them is the right thing to do; a sapient race who was created to be the equivalent of a hard drive, without any agency and without the ability to fix their lot in life.

[Werra]

That seems like far too much effort for a longterm data storage that appears to be inherently inferior than a more simpler storage form. A biological race as data storage has to contend with the limitations of flesh, such as succession of generations and the need for food. That means the design will need a lot of extra capabilities to deal with those. It also requires a near constant exchange of information to keep the species wide memory up to date and whole. The more often your archive needs to be copied for maintenance, the more chances for mistakes there are.
A sapient or semi-sapient species also has the chance to develop agency of its own. Which increases any possible security concerns. It is more difficult to steal a physical hard copy of data than it is to find a defector or operator who gets lazy with security. The high amount of information exchange for simple maintenance also offers more opportunity for data theft of third parties.
Lastly, an archive needs to be accessible. Having the knowledge spread over an entire species, that doesn't even breathe the same medium as yours, seems really impractical. How would a specific search work? If you have telepaths that can remotely search and shift through this many minds, then warding a physical archive is also easily in your power.

[Krulle]

May be the Historians are the physical hard drive, and the Pol the biological last fail-safe...