Well of Souls Forums

orion1836 wrote:(core waste dump)

Kind of fanciful, like throwing your garbage into the Sun; I suppose it could be done, but it would be far more trouble than it would be worth. Even if you had the technology for it, it would take an enormous amount of energy to overcome the pressure in the core to inject stuff down there, and just as much to keep it from coming back up at you every second. The kinds of waste that you might not be able to reprocess into useful materials or fuel at this tech level, such as radioactive waste, won't be "destroyed" by the temperature and pressure near the core. It might be below the water table, but it won't be safe; the material in the core and mantle circulates, and some of it eventually comes out in volcanoes. I don't think you want plutonium seeping through black smokers at the bottom of the ocean someday, killing everything in the ocean.

Dump it into a Jupiter mass Gas Giant.

Let the Malon waste disposal experts handle the job...

@Arioch: I can think of a couple of other issues as well. The closer to the mantle, the layer of earth beneath the crust, you get the hotter it becomes, and humans and our tech, even in this web comic, can only handle so much of that. It can handle quite a bit, planetary reentry for excample, but that has limits.

The other is the mantle is not as rigid as the crust. Its been awhile since i took geology, but if I remember right the mantle is more like playdoh compared to the crust, so i would think keeping a rigid structure like this would need would be difficult at best.

Yeah, you don't want the geological movements to make the waste storage facility collapse, and the bore of it becoming the main chimney of a new super volcano....

Thermal exhaust port with multiple shield barriers as energy locks to keep it back combined with actual locks in case of power failure. (one torpedo should set off a chain reaction which will blow up the planet....no...that's not it)

I think I remember reading that the Russians tried it, but for energy, not waste disposal... couldn't even remotely get close.

The Russians also did not reach the mantle, but 12.200 meters (with only 22 cm / 9 inch diameter) is quite a feat nontheless.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithson ... 180954349/

A Neridi question.

In regard to them being a transgender race what usually sets the transition into motion.

Is is like with with the kobudai fish do they reach a certain age and beguine transitioning.

Or is it like with clownfish, or to use a Jurassic Park example, some frogs when there isn't enough of a good male/female ratio does this influence the change.

Or can they start the process at will.

SaintofM wrote:A Neridi question.

In regard to them being a transgender race what usually sets the transition into motion.

Is is like with with the kobudai fish do they reach a certain age and beguine transitioning.

Or is it like with clownfish, or to use a Jurassic Park example, some frogs when there isn't enough of a good male/female ratio does this influence the change.

Or can they start the process at will.

It's a combination of both life cycle and environmental factors. Most Neridi start (upon reaching sexual maturity) as female and then eventually transition to male as they age. The change most often happens after a female gives birth, and is more likely the older and the smaller she is (smaller females transition sooner), and is less likely if there aren't many other females in the local community. If a group finds itself completely without females, the largest of the resident males may transition back to female. These transitions aren't voluntary, but they can be artificially triggered with high-tech medical techniques.

To clarify, the Neridi are hermaphroditic, in that they all have both male and female sexual apparatus (so that anyone can have sex with anyone else... and they do), but the organs producing sex cells can only operate in one mode or the other at a time, so each individual does have an implicit male or female gender at any given moment.

There are actually two types of males: a minority of Neridi (usually the smallest individuals) start as males instead of females; these "itinerant males" are nomadic and travel from community to community, and it's these males who are responsible for most pregnancies. The "resident males" are usually older individuals who used to be female or who used to be itinerant males, but who have now settled down. Resident males represent the majority of the Neridi population.

Gender change does affect psychology and (to a certain extent) social roles; after transition an individual may change his or her name or even find he or she is no longer interested in his or her current profession, and may go back to school to pursue a different vocation. The behavioral differences between itinerant and resident males are actually more dramatic than between males and females, and so it might be argued that resident males represent a third gender, but they still produce male gametes, (if in lesser quantities, and rarely father offspring at this stage of life -- although they still have lots of sex, impregnation chance is based on female receptiveness, and they are almost exclusively receptive to the roguish itinerant males), and so are still technically male.

Sounds a little like Coming of Age in Karhide though with long-term shifts.

Arioch wrote:Gender change does affect psychology and (to a certain extent) social roles; after transition an individual may change his or her name [...]

That implies are clear male/female name attribution, which I cannot think to be true for a society based on hermaphrodites and sex changes.
I would think their names to be more along "Child of...", and the name itself alwayss being gender-neutral.
May be you add a suffix to indicate the current gender (e.g. Michael/Michaela; Andreas/Andrea; Martin/Martina; ...; possibly the roman way of Julius/Julia; Aelinius/Aelinia; Caelius/Caelia; Quintinus/Quintina; Septimus/Septima; ... [link]).
But I would think their whole language is pretty genderless ("its parent's sibling", instead of "his/her aunt/uncle"), except when it revolves around mating and carrying offspring (where language can get *explicit*).

Krulle wrote:

Arioch wrote:Gender change does affect psychology and (to a certain extent) social roles; after transition an individual may change his or her name [...]

That implies are clear male/female name attribution, which I cannot think to be true for a society based on hermaphrodites and sex changes.

A species in which almost all individuals experience being both sexes the need for clear sexed name attribution might be even more critical.

Krulle wrote:That implies are clear male/female name attribution, which I cannot think to be true for a society based on hermaphrodites and sex changes.

The names are not gender-specific. They sometimes (but not always) change their names because their personalities changed, and the new name represents a new persona. The most common case of name (and vocation) change is when an itinerant male becomes a resident male. It's a little like if Sting decided to stop being a rock star and settle down, and changed his name back to Gordon Sumner. Now that I think about it, it's kind of like a male menopause.

There is an element of the full extended name that includes a gender-specific title (analogous to Mister, Miss, etc.).

Though Neridi may change genders multiple times during their long lives (and they can live even longer than Loroi), this doesn't mean that they're genderless or that gender is "fluid"; a Neridi's current gender is just as important to him or her as it is to a human in terms of behavior and social role.

guess it would make sense they wouldn't have any gender norms to naming given how fluid it is.

WHen you say they change personas, is it like with the Dr. In Doctor Who in a bit?

While in that example the body the regeneration changes the Doctor into a completely difference person both body and mind but in this case would it just Change the mind? Like Goofball previous life to ultra serious the next?

SaintofM wrote:WHen you say they change personas, is it like with the Dr. In Doctor Who in a bit?

While in that example the body the regeneration changes the Doctor into a completely difference person both body and mind but in this case would it just Change the mind? Like Goofball previous life to ultra serious the next?

I'm not up to date on the latest, but I never got the impression that the Doctor's personality changed much, aside from being played by a different actor.

It's kind of like a mid-life crisis, except in reverse. Instead of selling his station wagon to buy a corvette, and changing his name from Ed to Wildfire and moving to Los Angeles to start a film acting career, a Neridi male might wake up one morning after a lengthy career as a traveling performer, and suddenly feel that all that sex and wild living amounted to nothing... and change his name from Cousin Wildfire to Brother Copperfinder, quit his job and enroll in school to study geology.

Do any of the races/factions use "cone art."

for those that do not know what the term is, painting designs or pictures on a military vehicle, most notably airplanes such as the shark's mouth on warthog airplane.

Or the pinups and cartoons on the liberty bell bombers.

Or even kill counts on the side of dog fighters


If so are there any regulations to this like nothing too scandalous or sexual on modern vehicles.

Some examples past and present.

SaintofM wrote:Do any of the races/factions use "cone art."

I thought I had answered this, but I suppose I must have started and then got distracted. It was a busy holiday season. The family has multiple birthdays in December.

Anyway, Loroi have rules about customized vehicle markings: they are normally allowed only as a sort of unit citation (such as the special markings on Tsunami or Black Razor). But I think as you get down to the level of individual fighters or tanks, there is probably a lot more leeway for customization (especially as combat situations get more dire and troops care less about arbitrary rules.)

I can easily imagine Loroi painting custom designs on munitions. No one's going to complain about that.

Umiak paint jobs are all custom (though most follow a theme), and frequently feature written slogans or messages. A common one (as seen on the missile cruiser in the third panel of page 75) is "k-k-k-z" which means "do!" Another is a double- or triple-downward-pointing chevron ("cht-cht-cht"), which is an expression of bemusement, sort of the Umiak equivalent of painting a yellow smiley face on your ship.

I imagine Umiak art (at least as regards ship decoration) as being analogous to Arabesque art: it features abstract patterns and stylized lettering, but generally not pictoral representations of people or most real-world objects.

Fenrias/Delrias/Morat culture seems like it might go into something like "Flying Tiger" adornments, and maybe we'll see something like this on Morat ships. These designs are still in flux; I think I know what they look like, but I haven't yet drawn a satisfactory representation of it.

orion1836 wrote:Hopefully none of the Outsider races take after humanity when it comes to wartime art.

Considering the fighter jocks,