Overkill Engine wrote:Do they utilize telepathy to domesticate animals (and/or does it even work on/detect sub-sentient life?)?
Telepathy can interact with any mind, and there is no clear dividing line between sapient and sub-sapient, though the more primitive the mind, the fainter the telepathic signature, and susceptibility to telepathy varies even among very intelligent animals (as with "sapient" aliens). Signature detection of animals is very useful in hunting, but most other telepathic abilities require extreme proximity or physical contact, which is not easy to achieve when dealing with wild animals.
A few exotic animals have extreme susceptibility to telepathy similar to the Golim (and some of them come from the Golim homeworld), but none of these are large enough to be domestically very useful, so they are mainly seen as shoulder-sitting exotic pets such as a pirate's parrot or an organ-grinder's monkey.
Loroi with Mizol-class telepathic abilities can interact with or even control wild animals, but this control is temporary and is lost the moment the animal leaves effective telepathic range (which in this case is usually very short). The dangerous
sori fauna of Perrein are quite alien and not very intelligent, which makes them difficult to interact with telepathically, but there were skilled and specialized Perrein Loroi who acted as sori-handlers and used them for all sorts of nefarious purposes. This kind of interaction could make domestication easier, but sori resisted domestication and still had to be kept in cages when not being actively controlled, and the most common way for a sori-handler to be killed was by her own creatures.
Telepathy potentially allows sophisticated interaction with animals that are already domesticated, but unfortunately the domestic animals traditionally available to the Loroi don't make for great pals. Some of the clans of southwestern Mestirot on Deinar bred
miros for size and ferocity; though they weren't large enough to ride, they could accompany Loroi into battle and were as dangerous as wild boars. In some cases, fighting miros developed unique telepathic bonds with their masters.