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Blog
The blog namespace is for catching stray ideas. These may be less polished than the stuff you see in the Lore namespace.
Stuff copied from the Commonthroat lexicon
Many of the entries in the Commonthroat lexicon, especially for words coined during Lexember, have overly verbose lore in the notes section. Notes are for in-universe word usage notes, not general lore, so they gotta go, but much of that lore may not be copied anywhere else, so here's me doing that.
Fabricators in zero G
Fabricators on orbital colonies form components by injecting molten material into a gel medium that keeps the material in place while it cools in order to compensate for the lack of gravity
Wormcows
Wormcows are livestock bred for their meat. However, the meat is obtained without slaughtering the animal. Wormcows are normally limbless, but after mating , the male grows several pairs of girthy vestigial limbs that the calf eats before transitioning to herbivorous grazing as it matures. Domestic wormcows have been bred to grow far more pairs of much larger trophic limbs than their wild cousins.
When the calf is born, the limbs are cut off from the nervous and circulatory systems, effectively dying to allow the calf to eat them without harming the father. The muscle tissue contains high levels of capsaicin to deter insectoid carrion eaters, making the meat inherently spicy.
Domestic wormcows regard their yinrih masters as their calves, and gladly give up their trophic limbs.
Breach Bunkers
These air chambers, also known in English as air closets, oxygen rooms, breach bunkers, and the like, are scattered at regular intervals throughout orbital colonies. Outside of their intended purpose as emergency shelters, they are usually used for other purposes. Washrooms and self-service kitchenettes are popular as public breach bunkers, and the modular capsules used as private residences are almost always also breach bunkers.
Most Focus governments, except *sigh*, say it with me now, the Spacer Confederacy, mandate a maximum legal population of an orbital colony based on the number of breach bunkers.
Atavists vs isolated human tribes
Yinrih ignorant of human history or politics often refer to members of Native peoples as smfcg. This is an unfortunate choice of words resulting from a misunderstanding of how human cultures developed. While the yinrih are not and have never been politically united as a species, they never sundered completely into isolated cultures, either. Groups such as the Atavists, Primitive Wayfarers, and other sundry self-isolated peoples resulted from a conscious decision to cut ties with the outside world at some point in the past.
It should be noted that the term smfcg is actually a self-designation, likely coined by groups of Atavists, reflecting their desire to return to being nonsapient animals. The word as applied to human groups is not usually intended to be derogatory, but yinrih have nothing else comparable to human first peoples. It's just really unfortunate when used this way, and vulpithecine anthropologists (yes they exist) consistently use more descriptive terms roughly equivalent to “founding people” or “original inhabitants”.
It should also be noted that humans likewise mislabel cynoid smfcg as “natives” even though Sweetwater, where most such groups can be found, is a terraformed planet and a member of the Allied Worlds.
Yellow Fruit
Before retooling the Commonthroat color system this word simply meant yellow. Commonthroat now no longer has simple color words beyond Broadly absorbent/dim/dark and diffusely reflective/white. Colors are now described using analogy, much like English's odor vocabulary, often using fruits, plants, or flowers that are similarly colored.
As for the fruit itself, it contains high levels of menthol, or analogous compounds, to deter insects from eating it. Vulpithecines, however, enjoy the cooling sensation and help spread the plant's seeds by consuming and passing the fruit.
Dogtor Octopus
An idea for a mobility system when in microgravity. A set of back-mounted robotic tentacle arms used for positioning and locomotion leaving the paws and tail free to manipulate things. Could be used by healers to avoid contamination.
I'm not sure how they'd be controlled without violating my no cybernetics rule. I already have remote olfaction using a small amount of neurogel as an interface. Perhaps the wearer has to coat the area between their back and the arms with neurogel to act in a similar way.
More thoughts on Urban Underlays
I imagine a typical underlay to be like a giant parking garage, with the ceiling being the floor of the buildings. You enter the building via a ladder leading through the ceiling into the building above. On low gravity worlds there may not even be a ladder, just an hole, and you have to jump up into it. You still have to walk from the train to the entrance to the building, and I think this is where the equivalent to dumpsters would be as well. The plumbing and electrical lines for each building are exposed on the ceiling of the underlay. So there's enough room to walk around, but it's clearly not meant to loiter in. When I said vehicles and pedestrians don't occupy the same space I was thinking more of how we're taught to treat train tracks vs how we often treat roads. Around where I live people often walk down the side or even middle of the road, even when the speed limit is 30 mph and the traffic isn't light. Sidewalks also butt right up against the road.
It may not be a contiguous ceiling blocking all sunlight. There are small gaps between buildings, not large, but enough so you register the first floor as being above the surface. There are also larger gaps for inner-city parks and such. I imagine pedestrian infrastructure existing between the “first floors” of buildings, like pedways.
More on Urban Planning
The greatest dogma of vulpithecine urban planning is vehicles and pedestrians must never share the same space. Vehicles use the underlay while pedestrians move around above. This, of course, doesn't stop large urban underlays from becoming a literal underworld of junkies, criminals, and the destitute.
