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

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Daegondrake
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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Daegondrake »

How do the umiak point defense blasters compare to the lorois because it looks like they have very few, is it because the loroi don't field the amount of torpedoes to warrant such an investment.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Arioch »

Daegondrake wrote:How do the umiak point defense blasters compare to the lorois because it looks like they have very few, is it because the loroi don't field the amount of torpedoes to warrant such an investment.
By doctrine, the Umiak mostly engage enemy torpedoes and fighters with their main batteries. Because they outnumber the Loroi in most engagements, and the Loroi usually don't conduct massed torpedo attacks, the Umiak have mostly been able to get away with this, though individual ships can be overwhelmed by large numbers of torpedoes (hence the Loroi use of tolot blisters). Some of the larger Umiak vessels do mount additional dedicated point defense weaponry, but for the most part the Umiak counter is to simply build more vessels. If an Umiak commander is particularly concerned about Loroi torpedo attacks, it can reserve some of the unit's gunboats for defense.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by SaintofM »

On the odd chance one of the shells has to go into close combat or a firefight, say a boarding operation or a raid of a key location they want, would those bred for this task have their armor augmented (genetically to cybernetically) for blows to glans of of them like medieval plate armor or a shield? Would they also have many interwoven layers built in to act a as a natural bullet resistant vest (I say bullet resistant because bullet proof technically doesn't exist).

I am assuming energy based weapons, but also thinking of bullets as well.

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Ithekro
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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Ithekro »

Hopefully not bullets. Things that can make holes in a starship are not something you want to be using if you want to keep it. Energy weapons that won't put a hole in the bulkhead are ideal. Melee weapons maybe also be useful in such close quarters, though the Loroi ships appear to have large hallways and rooms.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Arioch »

An ordinary Umiak has only its own natural carapace for protection, which is reasonably tough (it's the consistency of bone with a slightly harder surface), but is not proof against high-tech weaponry.

Umiak dedicated to fighting are known as Hardtroops, and they are extensively modified for the job, usually having their carapaces replaced by armored exoskeletons. More on them here: https://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vi ... 315#p19315

Entity325
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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Entity325 »

I have a question. I apologize if it's been asked already, but given the nature, I'm fairly sure it hasn't. Also, in case my assumptions are right, I'll enclose it in spoiler tags.
SpoilerShow
How long have the Umiak had active human forces in their fleet?
I was catching up today, and a couple of the pages from mid-late last year almost have it in neon lights that they do. Honestly I'm mostly asking because it frustrates me to no end when characters in a work are required to not make jarringly obvious realizations just because it's convenient to the plot.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Arioch »

Entity325 wrote:How long have the Umiak had active human forces in their fleet?
If humanity had already made contact with the Umiak (which one supposes to be a requirement for the Umiak to have human forces in their fleet), why would they be sending out an alien contact expedition? Why put human scout crews in the path of an Umiak offensive if they're part of it?

I'm not a huge fan of the "everything you have been told is a lie" storytelling trick... it can work, but I think that story "twists" work best when they fit within the facts as they've been presented. Exposition in science fiction is difficult enough without making the reader wonder when he's being lied to, especially when it's by the narrator.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by SaintofM »

This is going to sound a little RoboTechy, but have anyone in the main story's conflict or soon to be a part of it have used music as psycological warfair?

Durring the Iraq Wars, soldiers would have speakers blasting Gangster Rap and Heavy Metal to demoralize the enemy. ANd I can only imagin having the Barny Song playing on max in an enemy ship could count as a war crime.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Entity325 »

Interesting. I assumed the profusion of cases where it's mentioned that the Farseers are having trouble detecting Umiak forces in the Steppes were building up to something in particular, but re-reading from the beginning again suggests that phenomenon is older than the Bellarmine's mission. I was considering that the Umiak may have been abducting humans unknown for some time.

That, plus the fact that really, the only thing Humanity have to offer the Loroi in the conflict is the critical objective of keeping Human operatives out of Umiak hands at any cost, but I believe that's a discussion for a different thread.

As for narrators, I strongly considered the possibility that Ensign Jardin can't tell the reader something he doesn't know himself. Honestly, he doesn't come off as very smart. I sincerely hope that's deliberate.

[edit]
Beryl being a researcher assigned to finding some way to defeat humans' telepathic "stealth" field also strikes me as somewhat more directed and viable a motivation than just being insatiably curious, but again, discussion for a different thread.

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Werra
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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Werra »

Are there enough Soia-Liron species to form a viable, diverse eco-system on their own? If not, what types are missing?

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Arioch »

Werra wrote:Are there enough Soia-Liron species to form a viable, diverse eco-system on their own? If not, what types are missing?
Viable, but not very diverse. To begin with, they seem to have represented a selection of terraforming and farming organisms -- kind of a subset of an ecosystem -- and so there are many niches that are not filled (notably pests and large-scale predators). The majority of these species did not survive the bombardments at the end of the Soia era, so there are definitely gaps. But most of the surviving organisms do not require symbiotic relationships to survive (for example, misesa and nagen and sibreg can acquire the nutrients they need without the help of soil symbionts (like endophytic fungi or bacteria, or earthworm-like creatures to enrich the soil).

There are many worlds with Soia-Liron organisms, and the situation on each one is different. Since the development of starflight, some of these gaps have been filled with imported organisms from other planets (some Soia-Liron, some not). Deinar, for example, was missing large herbivores and most of the small organisms that would help with decomposition of plant matter, so the dead plant matter was building up in a situation similar to Earth's Carboniferous era, in large-scale peat bogs.

Daegondrake
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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Daegondrake »

I've been rereading the insider page about the umiak hierarchy and it says the orgus, wanted to keep there contracts exclusive up arm. Does that mean there territory reaches up to and possibly through the Orion arm.I

That'd make there territory substantially bigger than the known players, it could explain there industrial/infrastructure advantages.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Arioch »

Daegondrake wrote:I've been rereading the insider page about the umiak hierarchy and it says the orgus, wanted to keep there contracts exclusive up arm. Does that mean there territory reaches up to and possibly through the Orion arm.I

That'd make there territory substantially bigger than the known players, it could explain there industrial/infrastructure advantages.
The contacts they're trading with up-arm are outside their own territory, which is relatively small.

"The Periphery" region, marked on the map below, is made up of a number of independent nations, of which the Orgus are just one. The "up arm" trading contacts refer to civilizations farther up the arm, outside the Local Bubble (in the direction indicated by the arrow labeled "Up Orion Arm").

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Daegondrake
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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Daegondrake »

My bad I must've been looking at an older version to that map.

RBA-Wintrow
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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by RBA-Wintrow »

Can we see a full body image of a Golim? I read one was planned to be shown as Alexander was brought to the bridge, but it was scrapped as distracting. It doesn't seem like we'll be seeing one anytime soon.

Edit: How have I not noticed you have a patreon? I've followed Outsider for almost two decades!

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by Arioch »

RBA-Wintrow wrote:Can we see a full body image of a Golim? I read one was planned to be shown as Alexander was brought to the bridge, but it was scrapped as distracting. It doesn't seem like we'll be seeing one anytime soon.
I don't have one currently. I imagine that they look something like sloths, and walk on their knuckles similar to chimpanzees.

I assume that we'll eventually see some in the comic, but not for a while.

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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thre

Post by SaintofM »

Arioch wrote:
RBA-Wintrow wrote:Can we see a full body image of a Golim? I read one was planned to be shown as Alexander was brought to the bridge, but it was scrapped as distracting. It doesn't seem like we'll be seeing one anytime soon.
I don't have one currently. I imagine that they look something like sloths, and walk on their knuckles similar to chimpanzees.

I assume that we'll eventually see some in the comic, but not for a while.
Do the Golims have a "Precious" they are over protective about.

Sorry, had to do it, we need a laugh considering what is going on in meatspace.

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Werra
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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Post by Werra »

This might be a bit of a broad question. But what do the other races know about the Historians?

Do they know basic biologic facts like diet, possible lifespan, etc?

How much do they know about the Historian government?

What -if anything- is known about Historian culture?

And has there ever been a Historian who migrated out of Historian space?

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

Post by Arioch »

Werra wrote:
Tue Jul 21, 2020 9:01 pm
This might be a bit of a broad question. But what do the other races know about the Historians?

Do they know basic biologic facts like diet, possible lifespan, etc?

How much do they know about the Historian government?

What -if anything- is known about Historian culture?

And has there ever been a Historian who migrated out of Historian space?
Well, the short answer is that not very much is known about the Historians as a species or culture, or about their forms of government. Access to Historian territory is strictly prohibited and it seems that living Historians rarely venture outside their own borders. There are no known cases of Historian emigres. The long answer is…

The Historians are known mainly through visits of their unmanned exploration/patrol vessels and examination of Historian technology, contact with the AI constructs (which are sometimes carried on their own ships, and sometimes others), visits of a few live Historians to a few interstellar treaty meetings which required their presence in the flesh, data gathered by the Loroi fleets when they were in Historian territory prior to the fall of Seren, and data gathered by the Umiak during their invasion and occupation of planets in Historian territory.

Unmanned Historian vessels are actually a fairly common sight in Union territory, and ships at dock have been extensively scanned and scrutinized. Their drives appear to be completely reactionless, and they generate very potent electromagnetic fields for defense. 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. The general impression that the Loroi formed was that as advanced as their ship technologies were, the Historian information processing technology was even more sophisticated and harder to duplicate.

The Historian constructs are somewhat diverse, having differing personalities and visual forms, though the forms seem to be abstractions on the same theme (that being of the biological Historian body), and most seem to be to different degrees sarcastic, aloof, and condescending. The constructs never give personal names, only titles, and they usually refer to themselves in the plural. They speak flawless Trade and easily learn any language that is required of them, but there has been no hint as to their native language.

The Historian Jars are actually things manufactured by the Loroi to Historian specifications (as no self-respecting Loroi captain would ever allow a Historian-made device on board her own vessel), and the Loroi sometimes deliberately under-spec them just to be disagreeable. However, once allocated, these jars are technically Historian sovereign territory, like an embassy, and may not be further tampered with. The jar in Highland-7 is the same one that was on the Tempest bridge; Stillstorm ordered that it be taken off her ship with the other “alien artifacts.”

While Historian constructs do not have a telepathic signature that can be detected by the Loroi, the living Historians do, though it is comparatively faint and difficult to perceive at greater distances.

During the Historian attendance at treaty conferences, only a small number of live delegates arrived on the station and only for the minimum amount of time that was required by rule, and the living Historians that were in attendance at meetings spoke hardly at all, and AI constructs conducted all of the business. What few words were spoken by the live Historians were in heavily accented Trade. Loroi seers were able to detect that their ship did have a small crew in addition to the delegates, though the former never left the ship. The live Historian delegates were tall, spindly hairless and pale and roughly humanoid, bipedal with four manipulatory limbs, and didn’t require any special life support. Whenever the delegates were not required for specific tasks aboard the meeting station, they returned to their ship; and so no one observed them eating or performing any other bodily function. While they were on the station, they were extensively scanned both by physical sensors and a suite of Loroi telepaths. It was determined that they had a fairly ordinary metabolism, which was not Soia-Liron. One notable exception was that their teeth seemed unusually large and savage for an otherwise seemingly highly evolved and physically unimpressive social organism. The Historians actively avoided physical proximity to the Loroi present, and so none were able to get a clear reading, but the delegates seemed disinterested in and not very knowledgeable about the diplomacy in progress; their main concern was looking forward to their next meal upon returning to the ship. The Loroi conclusion was that the Historians had chosen these individuals specifically because they didn’t know anything useful, aware that they would be scanned, instead allowing the constructs to conduct all the business. Perhaps the only significant thing that was learned about their culture through this interaction was that “Historian” is actually a rank or class within their society, rather than their internal name for the race or species, and the live delegates were not of this class.

Very little is known about what the Umiak found during their invasion. 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.

One of the few times when Loroi were allowed into Historian territory was in 2139 when Loroi fleets were permitted to try to help prevent the isolation of Seren by the Umiak incursion into Historian space. This mission failed in its strategic goal, but it offered a rare opportunity to survey of a number of Historian planets, for close-range scan of Historian territory by Farseers, and for a close-up look of at least part of the Historian military fleet.

The Historian warships were substantially larger and more powerful than the automated vessels that commonly left Historian territory, though few were much larger than a cruiser. Seers were able to confirm that the vessels did have living crews, though these were small for the vessels’ size. There were only a few glimpses of the ships in action against the enemy; the Historian fleets mostly retreated as the Umiak advanced into the interior of their territory. The weapon most observed in use was a powerful tight-beam, long-range, continuous-firing version of the plasma focus.

The few inhabited planets observed appeared to be little more than resource-gathering colonies. The majority of the population had been efficiently evacuated ahead of the enemy advance, with only minimal staff remaining behind to operate the machinery, but the scans of planetwide infrastructure and living facilities suggested that the pre-evacuation population was not very much larger. Like the Umiak, the Loroi were disappointed not to see the expected precursor-scale ultra-tech artifacts of which the Historians’ technology was surely capable.

In addition to surveying the immediate systems, Farseers were able to peer slightly deeper into Historian territory. They did find larger concentrations of Historian population farther spinward of the border, but not in the concentrations that would be expected of other Union races. However, still limited by range and sensitivities, the Farseers were not able to be very specific about the numbers detected, nor rule out larger populations that were still beyond resolvable range. What they did detect, however, was a small population of sentient minds that were clearly different from the Historians.

When asked about this later, the Historian ambassadors explained that this group was known as the Pol, an alien species that was under Historian protection. They refused to answer further questions about this, and the Loroi had more pressing matters to attend to at that time (as they were busy trying to hold the Golim-Tinza Line), but various members of the Union Assembly committee on social and humanitarian issues continued to pester the Historians on this issue, expressing concerns of possible mistreatment. After the end of the Semoset campaign, the Historians finally agreed to allow a small team of Barsam and Pipolsid xenologists and diplomats into Historian territory to observe the Pol for themselves (Loroi were conspicuously not permitted on the team). The researchers were allowed to make no records during the visit, and their official report was subsequently sealed, but they reported to the committee that they saw no evidence of mistreatment. Subsequent rumors indicated that the organisms studied were some kind of intelligent aquatic species, which might or might not be of Soia-Liron biology, and that there were no live Historians present during the interaction.

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SVlad
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Re: Miscellaneous Umiak/misc. races question-and-answer thread

Post by SVlad »

Uh, it deserves own insider entry.

Historians looks like some kind of servitor / Enigmatic Observers fallen empire from Stellaris.
Outsider in Russian
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