The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)

[Khemehekis]

Love the wind fruit! Looks sort of like a starfruit.

[lurker]

Many offices in the Bright Way have a master-apprentice dynamic. Hearthkeepers have acolytes, Knights of the Sun have squires, Farspeaker anchorites have apprentices.

All of these have a similar tradition when showing a newbie the ropes. While demonstrating a routine task, the master will deliberately make a small but visible mistake. A senior squire may strip a screw head, a hearthkeeper may replace a fuse with one with a lower current rating causing it to blow, an anchorite may mistype a network address causing a loop in the network. The master will offhandedly comment on the error, almost as though talking to herself.

"Oops, I used the wrong fuse..." etc.

She will then correct the error. This is to teach the newbie a lesson.

- Even seasoned professionals make mistakes.
- You're new, so I expect you to make mistakes, too.
- I want you to feel comfortable asking me for help if you think you've made a mistake.
- Don't wallow in your failures, but rather learn from them and grow.

[Man in Space]

. . .these have a similar tradition when showing a newbie the ropes. While demonstrating a routine task, the master will deliberately make a small but visible mistake. A senior squire may strip a screw head, a hearthkeeper may replace a fuse with one with a lower current rating causing it to blow, an anchorite may mistype a network address causing a loop in the network. The master will offhandedly comment on the error, almost as though talking to herself.

"Oops, I used the wrong fuse..." etc.

She will then correct the error. This is to teach the newbie a lesson.

- Even seasoned professionals make mistakes.
- You're new, so I expect you to make mistakes, too.
- I want you to feel comfortable asking me for help if you think you've made a mistake.
- Don't wallow in your failures, but rather learn from them and grow.

That’s cool/nice/heartwarming.

[lurker]

That’s cool/nice/heartwarming.

I based this on an anecdote from a ham learning CW (Morse) from a class. The instructor made a small error when keying something (presumably not deliberately), acknowledged it, and continued. That small event helped give the student confidence since it showed that even someone good enough at CW to teach a class about it could make mistakes, and that he shouldn't feel pressured to be perfect.

[lurker]

After the War of Dissolution, the Partisans were still on the war path. The old Claravian hierarchy was laid low, but the Partisans wanted to make sure it could never rise again, and the only way to do that, at least if you asked the Partisans, was with the Partisans in charge of the whole system. The old secular governments of the inner planets weren't about to let themselves be subjugated again just after throwing off the hierarchy's yolk, and many policymakers felt the only way to keep the space tree doggo Commies Partisans at bay was to present a united front. So while some weren't too pleased with chaining themselves to Yih again, the inner planets save Hearthside formed an economic and military federation to counter the Partisan threat.

While most of the governments involved tolerated the now economically gelded Bright Way, they still wanted to keep them at tail's length, so the ecclesiocratic Hearthside was explicitly kept out of the alliance. This despite Hearthside being the stronghold for the Pious Dissolutionists, who were instrumental in turning the tide of the war.

It worked out well for Hearthside in the end, since they still had a hefty buffer between them and the Partisans. The subsequent cultural homogenization that among other things saw Commonthroat become the de facto standard language didn't affect them as much as it did the AW, and Hearthsider remains a living, albeit declining, language at the time of First Contact.

[HolyHandGrenade!]

What’s the yinrih equivalent to social media?

[lurker]

What’s the yinrih equivalent to social media?

With the exception of their lack of libido and their less private bathroom habits, yinrih have the same social impulses as humans, so they have similar social media... if your conception of social media were frozen in the late 90s.

The sort of rich multimedia experience we have with the modern internet is restricted to planet-wide internetworks. The ansible network is a purely text-based affair, meaning you're limited to bulletin boards and text chat if you want to reach a system-wide audience. Hearthside is aggressively anti-corporate, so their internetwork is much more "rural" for lack of a better term. there are many small niche communities operating independently rather than a handful of high-traffic platforms.

These small communities are usually members of any one of a number of larger fediverse-like systems that streamline identity management, allowing a single account to work across any site in that particular federation. These federations differentiate themselves by what content they permit, their community management style, what demographics they cater to, etc.

The Allied Worlds is much more business-friendly, so their social media landscape looks much closer to ours, with a few sites accounting for the lion's share of traffic.

The Spacer Confederacy is much too fragmented to make blanket statements, but the immense cultural gravity of the AW means that most city-states use services headquartered in the AW, much like how YouTube and Facebook have a global presence.

Partisan Territory has a tightly controlled internetwork similar to the PRC, with your online identity being tied to your government ID. They have a handful of social media planforms that uncannily mirror those of the AW, but they're all run by state-sanctioned companies with strong ties to the ruling party.

Moonlitter, caught as it is between the AW and the Partisans, has a hodgepodge of cobbled-together systems reflecting the ever-shifting loyalties of its government over the centuries, with the state exerting more or less control over the internetwork depending on whose favor they want to curry.

[lurker]

The Eschaton, or Omega Point, is, according to Claravian doctrine, the ultimate end state of the universe. It is the point at which the epistemological Realm of the Known finally fills the Realm of the Knowable and breaches the hitherto impassable boundary obscuring the Realm of the Unknowable, bridging the gulf between natural and supernatural.

Obeying the Great Commandment and uniting the noospheres of other sapient races either hastens the Omega Point or makes it possible in the first place, depending on one's theological school. The Bright Way teaches that while they are sophonts with rational souls, yinrih are still animals whose intelligence is limited and bound by their neurology. There are likely concepts that yinrih simply cannot grasp, just as one cannot teach a dolphin or a chimpanzee to understand the causes of the war in the Middle East or particle physics. The Bright Way believes that other sophonts should be able to uncover things that the yinrih cannot, and that the yinrih can in turn make up for the shortfalls of their new sapient friends. Uniting the noospheres of all sapient races makes that interchange possible.

Put another way, yinrih don't prepare _for_ the End of Days, they are _preparing_ the End of Days.

[lurker]

The Light is the most common title given to the being worshiped by the Bright Way. It is a non-contingent incorporeal entity possessing a will and intellect that exists independent of the universe, outside of spacetime, and is said to have brought it into being.

It is neither male nor female. Possessing a gender would imply that there are others of its kind of the opposite gender with which it must beget young, and by extension age and die. Wayfarers consistently use the neuter it to refer to it when using English. The Light also has no name, as that would imply that there are others of its kind that must be distinguished with names. Indeed, it belongs to no broader category to which even a common noun can be applied. Very orthodox Wayfarers even hesitate to use words like God or Deity to describe it, though when pressed most will admit that those words fit well enough.

Wayfarers do recognize that monotheistic Terran faiths worship The Light as well, though they may disagree on its attributes. They regard assertions such as "Your God is not our God" as meaningless. If there's only one, then any disagreements ought to be over attributes rather than identity. Nobody would say you're looking at a different sun if you disagree on how much helium it produces per second.

Wayfarers reject Terran concepts such as Intelligent Design, at least in its most commonly presented form. By way of example, before embarking on the mission, Iris was given a relic of her namesake, Iris the Hearthsider, specifically her writing claw preserved in a small reliquary that the missionary leader keeps on her person. The claw itself is 33 millennia old, and even the reliquary that houses it predates the human invention of agriculture. Nothing is going to convince her that the universe is only six thousand years old. Wayfarers see The Light less as a watchmaker and more as a simulation programmer, setting up initial conditions so that things passively turn out a certain way rather than actively intervening.

The Light's purpose in creating the universe and granting sapience to living things is not known, though it does seem to regard its creatures with love, as it refers to them with endearing diminutives such as "dearest little ones".

Two major camps of Wayfarers emerge after First Contact: those who wish to preach to humanity, and those who want humanity to preach to them. Both sides are happy to have human religious institutions present on Hearthside, as they both regard friendship with humans as paramount and don't want to upset their new galactic neighbors by refusing to accommodate them. The preachers also specifically seek out fervent believers, since they figure he who is lukewarm in the faith he was born into will make a lukewarm Wayfarer. They are also wary of those who would convert too readily, as that usually means the convert is either converting to gain social standing or that he isn't taking his conversion seriously. They don't just expect pushback from prospective neophytes, they require it. Human Wayfarers, male or female, are barred from becoming hearthkeepers, mostly due to the ridiculous length of the training involved.

As for those seeking to join human faiths, Christianity and Islam see the lion's share of converts, as they won't turn down a potential catechumen no matter how many legs he has. (Synagogues have a fair few monkey foxes knocking on their doors, but the author isn't sure how Jews would respond, though he suspects there would be a range of opinions.)The subject of ordained yinrih is controversial, ironically for the opposite reason human hearthkeepers don't exist. Yinrihs' longer lifespan would allow them to accumulate power over time disproportionate to their numbers. Traditional Christian churches (Catholic and Orthodox) do not ordain aliens for christological reasons, but accommodations to vulpithecine psychology are made, such as allowing mixed-gender yinrih religious communities and blessing childermoots rather than requiring them to marry. One of the first yinrih religious orders to emerge after First Contact is a branch of the Dominicans.

[lurker]

It's been a bit since I updated the index in the OP. It is now current.

[lurker]

On the terrestrial planets and some of the larger moons closer to Focus, the most abundant livestock animal raised for its meat is the wormcow.

As their name implies, wormcows are long tubular creatures. They're about the length of a school bus and are as big around as a yinrih's height at the withers. They posses a lamprey-like mouth ringed by grinding teeth located on the ventral side of the head designed to grind tough ground-covering vegetation. They have side-facing eyes and a few breathing holes (the number varies by species) on the dorsal side of the head.

Unlike yinrih, wormcows give live birth, and fathers have a vary unusual way of feeding their young. While adults are herbivorous, juveniles are meat-eaters. After mating, while the mother is gestating the calf, the father grows several pairs of legs known as "trophic limbs". They don't help the wormcow to walk, but serve as a source of food for the calf. The limbs emerge and grow during the female's pregnancy. Right before the calf is born, the limbs stop receiving blood from the body and the nerve endings atrophy, allowing the limbs to be eaten without causing injury to the father.

Domestic wormcows are bred to have far more pairs of much girthier trophic limbs than their wild progenitors, and those limbs not eaten by the calf are harvested for their meat by yinrih. A male can produce several sets of trophic limbs throughout its life. Both males and females are slaughtered once they stop being able to breed, and the rest of their bodies are processed into meat and other products.

Wormcow leg meat is the most common and cheapest natural meat around most parts of the Allied Worlds and Hearthside, with other parts of the animal being rarer and more expensive. Like most other vulpithecine foods, wormcow is prized more for its mouth feel than its taste, though many breeds are designed to produce a large quantity of capsaicin-like compounds in their muscles, making the meat inherently spicy. Humans compare it to beef, though it keeps better, not acquiring that rancid taste so quickly after cooking. The spicier varieties can be dehydrated into very tasty jerky with only a bit of salt added to accommodate the human palate.

[WeepingElf]

Now that's an interesting critter. Thank you!

[Glenn]

Now that's an interesting critter. Thank you!

Indeed! An interesting and creative (if slightly disturbing) alternative form of parental feeding of their young.

[lurker]

Indeed! An interesting and creative (if slightly disturbing) alternative form of parental feeding of their young.

An addendum:

Wormcows are regarded much like Terran cattle--placid, slow-moving herd animals that aren't too bright. Their sheer girth is both a blessing and a curse, as it attracts predators but also serves as their best means of defense. Wormcows rear up and slam back down on whatever is trying to nom on them, or try to roll over and crush the attacker under their weight. Predators that target wormcows tend to go for the dads' trophic legs, so encounters with carnivores don't typically result in the wormcow's death. Presapient yinrih shires living on the boundary between the jungle and southern steppes preyed on wormcows, and the animals became one of the first (after forest flyers) to be domesticated upon the yinrih's ascent to sapience.

Domestic wormcows were selectively bred to regard their yinrih masters as calves, so they'll happily relinquish their trophic limbs. After First Contact, Christian missionaries at Focus adapt the wormcow as a rough equivalent to both the sheep and the pelican, as symbol of self-sacrifice.

[lurker]

A bit of Claravian popular piety says that right before a martyr dies, The Light grants them a vision of how their sacrifice will benefit the Bright Way's progress toward obeying the Great Commandment.

[lurker]

Oviposition in yinrih is a voluntary process. In tree dwellers and presapient yinrih it's triggered by geophagy (eating soil) which sets of a cascade of metabolic processes that results in egg formation. In modern yinrih, eating dirt is replaced by clean sanitary over the counter pills.

Yinrih egg-laying is a much more arduous process compared to oviparous Earth animals. Both males and females lay very large eggs, since the yolk needs to help grow not only the kits, but also the womb nest that forms around them. The laying process looks much more like a human giving live birth. It's painful and may last for hours. The ovary is destroyed in the process of oviposition and does not regrow. Yinrih musk (both ambient and ink) changes noticeably after the egg is laid, and different terms of address are used for pre- and post-egg males and females.

Modern yinrih place their eggs in an incubator. Incubators are famously sturdy. They're connected to a uninterruptable power supply, provide clean and filtered air to the womb nest within, contain a suite of sensors and monitors, are fireproof and submersible in up to 12 tailslengths of water, and can even withstand small arms fire. Overkill? Almost certainly. But that's what happens when you have two to six anxious fathers in charge of protecting the nest. Traditional yinrih gender roles put the sires on point for making sure the kits are yeaned healthy, and the modern incubator is the result of dozens of millennia of paternal instinct-driven technological advancement.

So-called "natural brooders" think incubation is excessive to the point of being harmful to the kits, and choose instead to keep the womb nest exposed to air in a cool dry place. Natural brooding is a very controversial movement akin to Terran antivaxxers. (The two ideas overlap significantly, as many cynoid vaccines are delivered in utero by the incubator automatically at specific points in the kits' development.)

The womb nest itself contains a simple heart and circulatory system, with a heavily vascularized dermal layer for gas exchange. A fair bit of kits' weight actually comes from absorbed gasses and not just the yolk.

The heart is located at the posterior end of the womb nest, and a large umbilical cord runs along the ventral interior carrying blood from the heart, with smaller cords branching off of it in a bus configuration to supply each kit individually. Each kit is incapsulated in an amniotic sac, with these sacs lining the walls on either side of the umbilical cord. This arrangement, with amnions along the walls and the "plumbing" running down the center, is what gives missionary womb ships their name.

In very large litters, the kit furthest from the heart receives fewer nutrients than closer kits, and becomes a runt. The kit closest to the heart gets well-fed, and grows very large. This is what happened to Iris and Lodestar. Iris was the furthest kit in the nest, while Lodestar was closest to the heart.

It takes about 144 Yih days for kits to fully develop. The process of emerging from the womb nest is called "yeaning" in English. The word is also used for missionaries (or gel-heads) coming out of metabolic suspension.

The kits come out of the womb nest blind and immobile. Their eyes open and they start moving on their own after a few weeks. The dams take over once the kits emerge. Each dam carries a kit or two on her back, and lets them lap milk from her paws when they get hungry. Kits start eating solid food after about two years, at which point they are called "pups". Dams will continue carrying younger pups on their backs for a year or two longer.

Once the pups are weaned, parental responsibility becomes much more evenly divided between the two genders, with both sires and dams taking turns looking after pups. The exact form this takes can vary widely by culture and time period. Some communities have childermoot and litter living under one roof, while others have parents living singly, with pups rotating between households.

Both speaking and writing develop in tandem, with language progressing much like it does in humans. Kits start "scribbling" with their writing claw on any available surface, mimicking written marks made by their parents.

[lurker]

Here's a typical drinking bowl design. A flat bottom to allow it to rest on a tabletop, a flange around the rim and a smaller ridge around the middle to help the tail wrap around the bowl for easy carrying, and a broad bottom to allow the muzzle to comfortably reach all the way to the bottom.

Yinrih cut their food into bite sized pieces before eating it. A simple meal is usually presented as a sort of meat salad, with chunks of meat mixed in with leafy greens and diced veggies. Liquid dressings also feature, and there's a smooth gradient between a completely dry "salad" and a "soup" that's mostly liquid.

Cuisine varies by region, but some common threads are an emphasis on temperature and texture--mouth feel--over flavor, and presenting the food in a way that it can be eaten without the palms of the paws contacting the food directly. Cultures vary on whether the bowl stays stationary while the diner brings his or her snout to the food, or whether the diner brings the bowl up to the mouth.

Capsaicin and menthol (or rather analogous compounds) feature quite heavily, often in the same dish. By "heavily" I don't just mean one encounters spicy or minty foods often, but that "hot" or "cold" is the only thing a human is likely to taste because those sensations overpower any other flavors. If other flavors are meant to be present in a dish, humans find them overpowering because yinrih need to use more of a particular flavor to make up for their poorer sense of taste compared to humans.

Where hygiene isn't as much of a concern, there is so-called "tail food", which is meant to be eaten while standing, with the food held in the tail. Snacks and junk food often take this form. Other snacks, such as marshmallow-like cubes of congealed cream, are meant to be pierced by a claw as one would use a fork and popped into the mouth.

[lurker]

Here's a typical mech used by the Knights of the Sun.

[HolyHandGrenade!]

Oh my. That’s very big.

[lurker]

Oh my. That’s very big.

Yup. I love me some big ol' stompy humongous mechs.

This is one of the reasons I refer to this setting as speculative fiction rather than science fiction. I think most people know by now that mechs aren't possible from an engineering perspective and wouldn't be feasible from a military perspective even if they were physically possible, but dang if they aren't awesome.

I do make some tiny justifications, like the fact they have force projectors on their paws to keep their legs from sinking into the earth under their weight, the fact that mechs work for the yinrih's 4-legged body plan but not so much for bipedal humans, and the fact that yinrih arrived at the idea of anthropomorphic (or cynoidomorphic in their case) vehicles slowly as regular powered armor got made bigger and bigger until you weren't wearing it so much as piloting it.

I'm THIS close to putting transforming mechs in as well, specifically that the Knights on Welkinstead have somewhat more svelt mechs to compensate for the urban environment of the planet's sky cities, and they can transform into a aircraft alt mode to fly between cities.