On Friday 21 March 2003 01:13 am, Nik Taylor wrote:
> Sorry for the delay. I'd sent this to the draft folder and then
forgot
> it.
>
> Elyse Grasso wrote:
> > Ok... some of this info is available on the cherani website,
>
> What's the site again?
>
The main portal is http://www.data-raptors.com/cherani/index.html.
The language home page is
http://www.data-raptors.com/cherani/tradespeech.html.
> > Cherani Station is the counterweight of a beanstalk that was built
in
> > patrnership by the Shayanans and the people whose planet the
beanstalk
> > is attached to.
>
> Beanstalk? Is that anything like a "space elevator"? That is, a long
> tube connecting a geosynchronous satellite with the surface?
Yes. There are actually two part of Cherani Station, thousands of miles
apart: one is at the free-fall (zero G) point: most cargo goes through
there. The section where most of the people live is the counterweight,
farther out, where centrifugal effects provide the equivalent of
gravity.
>
> > The people on the planet don't come up off it (part of why they
agreed to
> > the partnership, which lets them take advantage of their
economically
> > valuable location).
>
> I'm not sure I understand this. What's the advantage for the people
on
> the planet in agreeing not to come up off it?
If the people on the planet were willing/able to come off the planet,
they wouldn't need to contract with someone else to build and run the
station, so they could keep all the profits for themselves.
>
> > They do
> > have a word, "Lliassi", which means "a hedge or biological trap that
> > will take 64 years to ripen, or a plot or strategem that will take
that
> > long to mature". On the other hand, normal Imperial life expectancy
is
> > only about 64 Shayanan years.)
>
> Do they use base 8? And is that "64" literal, or just meaning "many
> years"?
It's literal. Shayanans have 4 limbs with 4 digits on each limb. They
use hexadecimal, but 64 is a nice round number because it is a hand of
16s.
>
> > In both Shayanans and Nedranetsta, once a hatchling is pouched by an
> > adult, it stays with that pouchparent, except in rare situations
> > usually involving death or the imminent threat of it. A mother has
the
> > option of pouching a hatchling herself, bestowing it on another (in
> > Shayanans usually the seed-father or a member of the mother's
> > household, sometimes a grandparent with a separate household) or
> > discarding it if it looks or tastes wrong.
>
> So, does the mother lay an egg, and then the hatchling enters
another's
> pouch? What criteria are used for "looks or tastes wrong"?
At some point I mentioned that there are froglike aspects to Shayanan
reproduction, and that the Imperials may have got it wrong when they
decided which Shayanan sex was male and which was female.
OK... when the Imperials arrived on Shayana, they found a species with
basically 2 sexes. Sex A has an intromittive organ and a somewhat more
itinerant lifestyle. Sex B has a more settled lifestyle and is
apparently viviparous in a marsupial sort of way. So the Imperials
decided Sex A were the males and Sex B were the females. However, the
intromittive organ is technically an ovipositor, and the 'females' are
the sperm producers. And the species is technically ovo-viviparous and
marsupial rather than viviparous and marsupial.
Shayanans are warm-blooded, etc. but in reproductive terms they are
amphibians who have solved the problem of living in sea water without
having their tadpoles pickled. Both the seed-pouch (where fertilization
and initial development takes place) and the milk-pouch (where
lactation takes place) are environments where the developing infant is
protected from external salt levels.
I don't know what the criteria are for deciding that a baby looks or
tastes too wrong to raise. Shayanans know what their babies are
supposed to look and taste like.
>
> > (The breeding season sort of starts in the center of a
> > community and ripples outward pheromonally.)
>
> Interesting. Center in the sense of geographic center?
More or less, since the highest status individuals usually have the
spots at the center of a community that are safest for raising the
babies. When things are right for reproducing, the highest status
non-lactating Sex B individuals in a settlement undergo a hormonal
shift that makes them ready to be impregnated and adds pheromones to
their grooming oils that tend to attract non-lactating Sex A
individuals (and induce the beginning of ovulation in them) and
catalyze the same hormonal shift in lower status Sex B individuals.
Gravid Sex A individuals put out pheromones that get peoples bodies
ready for lactaion.
(Grooming each other with the oil from their grooming-oil glands is a
major factor in Shayanan social interaction, and important to the
health of their skin.)
> > In both Shayanans and Nedranetsta the parent of an unweaned
pouchling
> > will not be involved in a breeding season.
>
> Do you mean seed-parent? In which case, why would unweaned make a
> difference?
No, not the seed-parent, the pouch-parent. The hormonal effects and
bioenergetic drain of lactation tend to suppress ovulation and rut.
Lactation is enormously expensive biologically (in Earthan mammals,
too).
> > Males compete to be the mate of an in-season female. If there were
less
> > than 4 competitors involved in producing a specific child it's very
> > scandalous.
>
> Do they know who actually fathered the child?
Yes. Because she only accepts the seed of one of them.
>
> > (Males only breed once per season
>
> Why only once? Is this a social restriction or biological? If
> biological, what would lead to it?
Because the 'males' are the ovulators: making eggs is biologically
expensive and takes time (a couple of weeks, at least, from the time
the pheromones hit). Two ovulation cycles puts you past the end of this
year's mating season.
>
> --
> "There's no such thing as 'cool'. Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
> you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
> overheard
> ICQ: 18656696
> AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42
>
>
--
Elyse Grasso