Modding Discussion Avali 1.0 Reboot Discussion

The most important of questions can be answered. Not even including independent worlds, the Avali's culture is incredibly diverse, especially with regards to music. So at least one pack would have made heavy metal music, or at least something similar to it, at some point in recent history.

 

*falls back into the thread*

Sorry. Breath of the Wild happened. Ate me for about a week or two there. Back to your regularly scheduled Avali description writing/plodding along.

 

So I finished writing a story for school today, and it has 'vali in it, so I thought I might post a link to the thread where I uploaded it. http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/bright-dull-bittersweet.131510/

I'm just a high-school student working under a time limit, so it probably isn't any good, but I'd appreciate it if any of you took the the time to read some. It's 4,271 words long and split into two parts, so just read what you can. Unless you have no life.

 

And it seems Jiro fulfills his title of necromancer.

What exactly is the mating procedure in avali society? Due to lack of importance and acknowledgement of family, is there any room for marriage or do mates just return back to their respective packs and go separate ways?

From the little knowledge I can recall, I don't believe mating happens within a pack, but rather is more like mating in human society, aka partners are sought out. As for an analysis of the feelings between partners, obviously attraction/love will be present in some form as with all mating of sentient beings; but how strong are these feelings? It's especially hard to answer when you take into account whether it's treated as a permanent, "perfect" affair as it often is in human society.

 

I'd imagine that, as with humans, it runs the full gamut from "no love or attraction, reproduction only for the sake of wanting a child" to "extremely lustful, so in love that it makes you physically nauseous to be near them", depending on the avali in question and the relationship.

 

I guess it's also dependent on pack longevity, which also might differ among avali cultures and tribes, or could just depend on preference. Would an avali individual be able to stop living with their pack in exchange for settling down with a mate, though?

 

I think the answer to that is 'no'; since the packs are usually inexorably linked. Having packs separate has been compared to dismemberment.

This is once more a job for the wiki: Here's the source page: http://avali.wikia.com/wiki/Biology
Under "Reproduction, Sexuality & Growth"
"Physiologically, both sexes of Avali are extremely similar; both possess a cloacal vent, and males lack the genitalia seen in terrestrial mammals. Instead, genetic material is passed the same way as seen in terrestrial birds.

After fertilization and a short internal gestation period, the female will lay a single large, soft, leathery egg. The amount of nutrients required for the production of an egg and eventually a baby makes large clutches impossible. Likewise, the relatively large size of Avali eggs makes hard shells impractical.

Eggs are left in the care of a communal hatchery, where the young kits are then raised and educated by the tribe rather than their natural parents."

Also to be considered relevant from the culture page under "packs"
"Pack members are rarely genetically relatives, but nonetheless those raised together form extremely close bonds; most packs then go on to form their own internal memetic cues which, in tandem with their incredible auditory processing, enables them to process information and exchange ideas extremely quickly.

The loss of a long-term pack member is extremely crippling to a group's performance; as is isolation from their pack. Replacement of pack members is possible, but unusual, given that surrogate packs lack the initial bonds and memetics of the previous group, and pack fragments of correct age and temperament to fill the gap are rare."

With this in mind, it is likely that sexual relationships happen within the pack. With offspring handled by these 'communal hatcheries', families as we understand them simply do not happen in Avali society.

 

Probably the one gripe I have with the avali as a race is their RPing difficulty, that is if you seek to adhere to canon. You can't just make a single, lone character: you have to create an entire pack, and they have to do practically everything together unless you separate them forcefully through circumstance, which will obviously have negative effects. Guess that just comes with dedicated canon RPing for any race as fleshed out as the Avali, though.

 

The good news is that there's actually a roleplaying guide on the wiki: http://avali.wikia.com/wiki/Character_Creation_Tips
The other option is to not let yourself be tied to cannon; though I understand that's not a satisfactory answer.

 

Or just do what I do and come up with like sixty separate characters at various points in time. Then, once you make an avali character, just choose some of your characters to be their pack, and have fun exploring how their pack dynamics would work, the various difficulties non-avali would have empathizing with the social needs of an avali, stuff like that.

 

I wonder how important it is for avali the psyche to have the pack all in the same place at the same time. Would they be okay if they were physically separated but still in contact digitally? What if you split them into groups?

 

The packs are only 4-6 members on average. So is it really necessary to have them separated? What's the context of that separation? They're almost natural squads at any rate.
I imagine short-term separation isn't too much of a problem, the issue is the deaths of pack members.

 

Because groups of 5-6 can be cumbersome to write and keep track of. You don't want your readers going "which person is this again?"

But I'm thinking some sort of long-term assignment. Say you have two small outposts that you need to man, you split the pack in two and send half to each outpost for weeks or months at a time.

 

If you have difficulty writing five compelling characters, that just shows the limits of your writing ability, kappa.
All joking aside, the packs are 4-6 not 5-6; just make it a four member pack then. And once more, I'd imagine each of those outposts would have a full pack manning them. When I thought short term separation, what came to mind was a pair of them heading out to buy groceries, not a long-term deployment.

 

It might also be useful to have half of a pack in one outpost and half in another if you really need those two to be synchronized but don't want to use automated systems for some reason. I mean, if you have incredibly advanced VR/AR technology, you'll probably want to be using that technology anyway. The social needs of avali just turn "useful" into "necessary" here.

Besides, if you really can't come up with four avali characters that would make sense as a pack, might as well try and explore neurodiversity. I doubt the psychological needs of Avali are noticeably more uniform than those of humans. Although making solitary avali is kind of getting to lone wolf cliche levels of common, as far as I can tell.

 

Coming up with them is easy. Balancing writing them all is hard, which is why the lone wolf is so common. Works with large casts generally focus on just a couple of them at a time and switch between them, but that gets difficult with an avali pack because they're always together doing the same thing, and in fact are meant to function as one unit.

 

Or you could take advantage of the fact that Avali packs are supposed to work as a unit, and write the whole pack as if they're only one character, with individual character traits being facets of the pack's collective personality.

 

I haven't read that book, so I couldn't say.

 

I thought of that, but I've read some of ryuujin's writing sketches and they don't work like that. They're definitely individual characters (see "The Pack"). Doesn't jive with the in-game dialogue either.

 

Now here's a question, would the packs have alphas? Or any similar group hierarchy? Perhaps with one of the more 'assertive' members taking the lead.