Modding Discussion Avali 1.0 Reboot Discussion

I've always wondered how they reproduce, I know they have a cloaca and all that antanomy, but like... HOW?!
Do they scissor or something?

 

Let's not go there right now.

 

Short answer: Waiting on RyuujinZERO to answer that, though I don't think I personally need to know.

 

I can't imagine it would be much different to how some earth animals do it. I mean, they do have a similar structure as it sounds.

 

Stop being chickens, guys.

Whoops, I just realized that refers to all the avali here, including myself. *derp*

Anyways, it's done very similarly to how terrestrial birds go about it, if you're familiar with that. Just crouch as needed and rub the holes together until the stuff comes out. Unlike mammals, literally the only difference between the two sexes are the reproductive internals, aside from feather pattern of course.

As for after pleasure time, avali produce offspring within eggs initially, since they are reptiles albeit with some birdlike traits. These eggs are laid one at a time, equivalent to human offspring production capacity, and are soft and leathery to compensate for the difficulty of producing an egg so large relative to the parent's size.

 

Thank you for that image, Retribution. Please excuse me while I go get the brain bleach.

 

If I could make up an ENTIRE dictionary of my scrapped fictional language... We could possibly have an entire Avali language that is mostly phonetic. I already drew up the symbols and wrote down what English characters they represent.
So far I have symbols for the following sounds, please note that a single i is more of an long E sound while a ii is a long i sound, x has a "sk" sound to it, e has a short "eh" sound to it, B and Q is replaced by "puh" which sounds like 'puu' and Z replaces any S sounds.

These are the sounds each symbol would make, comma symbols would be a double ' with a line through them while a period would just be a normal '
a, ah, c, ce, d, de, di, e, ei, el, ell, f, fi, g, h, i, ii, ie, io, iu, il, ir, j, ji, je, k, ki, ke, l, m, mi, n, no, nu, o, ou, p, r, ri, t, u, ue, us, ui, w, v, vi, x, xi, xii, y, z, zi, zii, zo, ze, zl, zu, za, puh.

 

You may find this site useful.

 

This would work well as an alternative Avali dialect or language perhaps, as the standard Avalonian dialect has already been hinted at through names of NPC's and randomly-generated names for the player character. It sounds a noticeable bit different too.

 

Here is a recently scanned image of the book page I've written all the symbols in. Please excuse my horrible handwriting, and my apologies for the bottom of the page being too bright, scanner kinda doesn't like be shoving a big book in it xD

 

How much genetic variation would be present across Illuminate avali? On the Triage Discord I keep hearing that this would be kept to a minimum, perhaps even forcefully by the government. I'd rather hear that this isn't the case, since it kind of reduces the canonicity of my character Jiroku (4' is quite tall for any avali, let alone a kit), but ultimately the most logical answer is the best.

 

Well wouldn't that be an interesting story? Being hunted by the Illuminate because you're a freak?
Also,
Zii' zi iuzii, iu uiiu iuzii.

 

Jiro's fears in a nutshell.

 

My sense (no hard evidence for this) is that nobody's going to be terminated by the government, but reproduction will be controlled. You have to apply to have a child, and potential parents are judged on genetic fitness. After all, why should reproduction be a right in a society where families don't exist?

Under this scheme, a 4-foot tall avali is not likely to be terminated, but his parents would probably undergo some kind of genetic evaluation and likely be barred from having another child (at least with one another). And he's likely to have some unique health issues (rather like Andre the Giant) that may or may not be correctable by augments.

There are other deviations that I expect would be viewed more harshly, however. Those who watch my machinima will know what I mean, but for those that don't, I'm referring to sociopathy (or more properly, the inability to feel empathy).

 

I would like to mention, for the sake of playing devil's advocate, that the Avali have the technological understanding to deal with genetic modification instead. Unlike humanity, they don't (so far as we know) have any major religions that would forbid it either. It seems to me that an intensive program of genetic modification would be much quicker and significantly more effective than a eugenics program. Disguise it as testing and correction for genetically-transmitted diseases if you need to keep it a secret. Make the variation in genome minor enough that changes are faster than evolution, but invisible on the scale of living generations.

Basically, the best way to play the manipulative mastermind is so that nobody even realizes you are one, let alone has a reason to want you thrown out. Genetic modification is much less restrictive than population control, and the only reason people might have any reason to get upset is because you're introducing it slowly. Slowly is necessary though, because you want to give the modifications time to mix into the population to avoid creating an unaugmented underclass. In fact, the only way people would notice the augmentation process this way would be through accessing information that you presumably control, or by encountering unaugmented Avali from a non-Illuminate faction.

 

Now all that is required is a motive, which I guess I should have specified in my original post. Most likely it's just a product of xenophobic Illuminate tendency more than anything, but even for that these genetic modifications seem too minor to be worth the trouble.

 

Could be that Jiro's height is due to genetic modification, whether by the Illuminate itself or an unaffiliated scientist. If the former, something likely would have gone wrong in the process and they want to hide evidence of their tampering--whether they want to 'disappear' him or just correct the error isn't really clear, but if I were the target of their attentions I wouldn't take the risk. Alternately, Jiro could be evidence of a rogue scientist the Illuminate is interested in taking down due to his unsanctioned research into genetic modification. If they can prove that Jiro's genome was actually engineered with this scientist's research, they'll be able to pin it on him. Of course, that requires finding Jiro first...

 

I don't feel that the eugenics program would be motivated by a desire for genetic purity, but rather a facet of population control. Avali are predators--even if they can eat plant-based foods, they have a strong desire not just to eat meat but to hunt. They also like to wander around and be nomads. Both of these are inefficient compared to a plant-based diet or even a diet of farm-raised meat, so it puts a lower cap on their population than they would have otherwise. They have to have a method of population control so they don't suffer starvation (and I'm not particularly convinced by ryuujjin's explanation that they go around uncolonized planets looking for animal species entering the bust phase of a boom and bust population cycle). The solution that I feel that they would enact is to restrict breeding, which is very common in animal predators. In fact, they would view their eugenics-based approach to deciding who gets to breed as more enlightened and compassionate than the system ancient avali would have had, which would likely be based on social rank and involve infanticide and other violent methods.

 

You make a good argument, but I'm not sure this picture fits the casual sexuality Ryuujin has confirmed the Avali to have. Having to sign forms and submit applications before doing anything too lewd seems a bit out of character in that regard. Further--and forgive me, my memory of it is fuzzy, so I may be incorrect--I was under the impression the Avali were very much intended to be very close to a post-scarcity society. While it's great to emphasize the nomadic inclinations of the Avali, going so far as to say they couldn't have farms as a result is patently untrue. They very evidently have an industrial base capable of metallurgy and advanced research, none of which is very portable either. If you can run a steel foundry, why not an algal bioreactor?

Ultimately I don't think there's enough evidence to weigh in on one case or the other being true or false. Though personally I'm inclined to think population controls seem uncharacteristic for the Avali, there isn't any evidence that directly contradicts the possibility--thus my position as devil's advocate.

 

I draw a distinction between sexuality and breeding. Avali get to have all the sex they want, but if they want to have a child, they have to be chosen. And if you mess up and have a child when you're not supposed to, there's probably a penalty involved akin to a fine.

I was also somewhat unclear. I'm sure they do have farms (otherwise a technological society would be impossible), but in order to justify their (perhaps unrealistic) status as a post-scarcity society with the tendency toward lots of meat and a nomadic lifestyle takes some somewhat twisty thinking. Nomadism and meat-heavy diets both lower the number of people you can support, so in order for such a society to be post-scarcity, the population has to be below carrying capacity. Our population got bigger by eating more plants and less meat, and by staying in one place instead of wandering across the landscape. I suppose it's possible that the demographic shift has taken hold and reproductive rates have dropped naturally to match (or be less than) replacement rate, but given the highly centralized, controlling nature of the Illuminate, I don't feel like they'd leave that to chance.