I think therefore I am food

Ewin wrote:

Well that was a fascinating 7 pages to read in one go

I would presume that most prey (whether they be Human, Neko, Elven et al) DO NOT label themselves as food at all, most probably each considers themselves as somewhat the dominant species in Felarya, when safe in thier cities behind the walls and magical barriers.
The moment when you realise you took a wrong turning on the way back home and are now lost in a part of the forest you dont recognise facing a 90 foot tall Naga, all pre-thoughts quickly vanish. Much like sailing your Yatch happily off the south coast of Australia, content that you are the master of the waves shortly before hitting a rock, sinking and finding yourself swimming in shark infested waters.

I dont think Humans will ever become the dominant species in Felarya though, the natives are simply to big, too numerous and too lethal to ever let that happen. But I dont see any reason why Humans cant flourish there either, Im sure species like the Elves have existed in Felarya far longer than Humans have been around, they seem to be doing alrite.

Someone mentioned about what it would be like for a person who has lived in Felarya to return to a normal world. I would imagine they would find it difficult and be something like soldiers that have spent extended periods of time in a hostile war zone returning home. Wary of any corner, choke point, eyeballing upstair windows for signs of a sniper, sleeping with one eye open cradling your rifle and waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat hearing the screams of your lost pals who never made it back...

You tell a great verity
To inform you there is Eves in Felarya they can be both preys and predators

This way of thinking is similar of the people of Ur-Sagol, Atlantis and Babel, humans always think they have right on everything but it's wrong. When humans think they was superior to the nature the nature always remember them their place, we thing we are on the top of the food chain but there is alittle details the food chain is not a pyramid but a circle. the herbs are eaten by the herbivore which are eaten by the predator. But when the predator die he is eaten by the smaller predator and the rest of his corpse rot and slowly turn into herbs.

When a naga eats a human is like when we kill a cow and eat its flesh, it's something natural.

The guardians are just a kind of representation of the force of the nature if you wan to try to change the law too much they will interfere. Why they don't act against predator you think it's unfair but not really because the predators are just follow the rules.

When you play in a match there is always arbitrator to judge if the situation is fair or unfair. And don't hesitate to punish the cheater.

I will conclude by this sentence it's natural a predator eat its prey but its natural too the prey defend itself against the predator. So human to Felarya has the right to defend themselves against predator but only in a way of survive.

We have the right to do what we want until we are undone. Period.

Lets look historically at humans on earth shall we. You have the strong nations and the weak nations. The strong rule over the weak, regardless of justice in it all. The strong will continue to take as much control and power as they can from the world, until some other force as great or greater constrains them(rome ruled for centuries over its neighbors until it finally collapsed from civil war and barbarian invasion). I never said it wasn't natural for humans to be prey, what I was pointing out is that humans do not deal with predation like normal creatures. We don't run. We don't accept the hunting of our species. We do what humans always do, and that is change the rules of the game.

We are the destroyers of the natural order. Its what we do, its in our nature. We rape the land, and subjugate nature itself to do our bidding. We make the environment suit us, if it is not suitable enough. Predators and other Human nations either bow down to us, fight it out, or leave us alone. Humans have no aversion to hunting and killing our own kind over petty differences, so what makes you think humans would hesitate to destroy things that are actually a natural threat to us?

What I'm thinking is that the true limiter of human might and power is that humans are divided and war amongst ourselves. I don't think it would be any diferent on Felarya. The human nations would inevitably do the same thing. That is what would keep people in check. I would go so far as to say that if human civilizations got rolling on Felarya, a human would be 10x more likely to die by the hand of another human than to be eaten by a predator.

Don't forget a detail, the predator are mostly part humans and creature. You forget the reason why humans developp like that it's just because none of creature are specialyzed to eat humans in Felarya it's the case

When you deal with a naga it's when you deal with another humans, all you can do they can do it better. They can developp as you poison to kill you developp many way to trap you. You know even the strong nation today can become the weak nations tomorrow, nothing is engraved in iron

In reality we are not the nature destroyer but our own destoyer when we won't have any food to feed all our population we will gonna die naturally and after nature will continue as if nothing happen. In reality we are slowly to kill us

In Felarya humans are not the one creature who possess the knowledge, they are the dominant species in earth, they are many other force in this world so they need to be calm down themselves.

Never forget, it's only because the dinosaures disappeared we humans were able to developp that's all. So in earth we can think everything but the reign of the humanity will end one day and another like form will take our place.

All time humans think they were gods and powerfull beings the nature remember them what is the place of the humanity.

I wouldn't say ANYTHING a Prey can do a Predator can do better. Humans have a technological edge over the Predators in Felarya, mainly because Humans will pool ideas, work with literature, etc. Are there really much instances of Felaryan Predator history keeping beyond verbal passings and ancient prophecies?

Malahite wrote:

I wouldn't say ANYTHING a Prey can do a Predator can do better. Humans have a technological edge over the Predators in Felarya, mainly because Humans will pool ideas, work with literature, etc. Are there really much instances of Felaryan Predator history keeping beyond verbal passings and ancient prophecies?

The knowledges is just a question of your surroundings nothing more. Magic, technology, science for me are just different ways but with the same objectives give an explanation on what people don't know but none of them are superior because they don't take the same path.

In Felarya the creature are the natural counterpart than us humans need to developp them without destroying ourself

Malahite wrote:

I wouldn't say ANYTHING a Prey can do a Predator can do better. Humans have a technological edge over the Predators in Felarya, mainly because Humans will pool ideas, work with literature, etc. Are there really much instances of Felaryan Predator history keeping beyond verbal passings and ancient prophecies?

Among fairies yes

Dommo : Your take on humanity is interesting bu I think you are reasonning on the basis of a world like Earth that is infinitely less hostile and more previsible than Felarya. Also I think you tend to take predators like beasts where they are more like humans, with an intelligence and a possibility of evolving as well.
As for guardians, they don't "protect" predators from humans, they just protect the land against whatever could possibly pose a threath. Once, it was the humans of Ur-Sagol, once it was the dridders of Sineria, once it was ( maybe ) the elemental Déméchrelle etc...

Also don't forget there is at least one guardian that is human and very discrete at that ^^

Ugh, what a read, all 8 pages.
I hate to be a downer but most of my post is dedicated to the realistic and unfun parts of vore and felraya, don't read if it may spoil your enjoyment.

First I really think the worst part of living in Felraya would not just the vast amounts of ways to die, but the actual cause of death. It seems like if it eats you, it eats you whole and alive. I havn't really seen much detail about the digestive systems of preds but... I think personally think that any humans living there would soon realize that an easy way to commit suicide would be in their best interest if the worst should happen. If I was there and caught by a sapient pred I feel like I would be able to accept my fate and choose to beg for a mercy chomp instead of freedom.
That also sort of brings me to a logic conflict, some of the preds like to tease and taunt their prey, give them a hope for survival even if there is none. I just sort of think that it seems to conflict with their "to little to be people" mentality, but that might just be a human morality thing.

As for humans surviving, It could be done but as long as the guardians are there they would never really thrive. One part that never really plays a part in my thinking is magic and how humans could harness it if at all. I could more see us evolving a resistance to magic rather then any of our own.

Someone mentioned about how humans could / would kill off other prey creatures to kill off the preds. But because of the nature of the world, and again the guardians, I actually think we would eventually learn to shed some of our morals and do the opposite, encouraging the growth of a more desirable prey assuming there is any. And seeing as how many of the predators are intelligent and human like they would soon enough figure it out, and would perhaps accept it as sort of a trade.
Another possible but dangerous means of survival could be to encourage raising sapient predators, giving them human morals, if that could work

This, my friend, is the reason why this world is like that.

Pendragon wrote:

In such a world, where humans are disregarded as mere toys or snacks, I find it rather disturbing that humans must undergo such.

Don't get me wrong. I love Felarya. It's a great place filled with diverse creatures. However, humans realize that ants help their world. Felaryan creatures, on the other hand, often laugh about us and eat us by the thousands. To them, we serve little purpose; just as a food source, whereas humans understand how important each creature is and they attempt to leave them be. Although this may not be true for some people, it is true for most.

Eventually, like how people mine for gold, predators will begin mining underground for large caches of humans who have been hiding.

Will that be the end of Felaryan humanity? NO! I say not.

No matter what the world is, no matter what dimension you may find yourself, impossibility is just an illusion, created by laziness. Sure you are labeled as food. So what? You must fight till the end.

Who says you can't win against a predator anyway? Don't forget that, even if humans are not special anymore, they still have the capacity to do great good, or great evil. They are a forgery of the greatest goods and greatest evils naturally found on Earth.

As with all creatures, humans can be a passive source of nourishment, or a plague upon the unsuspecting. It is all how you interpret it.

Yeah, let's put it all on the table. Humans STILL are part of a grand scheme of things - they just have to reach for it. Humans have to learn how to adapt - I mean, we adapted to lions and tigers and bears, which are stronger than us.

Maybe everyone should be made to learn magic, for instance.

The issue is the Guardians - they keep interfering when someone gets too strong. Yet in any environment, someone always gets too strong. Some predator is the apex predator, and there's really no reason why humans can't be allowed to replace the giants as apex predators. We sure as heck are more compassionate. 98% species kill rate? Unthinkable. We know better than that. If anything we'd remember the lessons of Earth and maintain a balance. Of course if you eat a human we're gonna gitcha but still, we're not going to kill every Naga that comes into town hawking some wares or EMP a storm sprite who has chosen work an electrician rather than a people eater. Well there is the odd speciest who will, but there's a thing called public hangings.

Raveolution wrote:

Yeah, let's put it all on the table. Humans STILL are part of a grand scheme of things - they just have to reach for it. Humans have to learn how to adapt - I mean, we adapted to lions and tigers and bears, which are stronger than us.

Maybe everyone should be made to learn magic, for instance.

The issue is the Guardians - they keep interfering when someone gets too strong. Yet in any environment, someone always gets too strong. Some predator is the apex predator, and there's really no reason why humans can't be allowed to replace the giants as apex predators. We sure as heck are more compassionate. 98% species kill rate? Unthinkable. We know better than that. If anything we'd remember the lessons of Earth and maintain a balance. Of course if you eat a human we're gonna gitcha but still, we're not going to kill every Naga that comes into town hawking some wares or EMP a storm sprite who has chosen work an electrician rather than a people eater. Well there is the odd speciest who will, but there's a thing called public hangings.

You don't know the human nature

I will answer you by this quote

Karbo wrote:

Your take on humanity is interesting bu I think you are reasonning on the basis of a world like Earth that is infinitely less hostile and more previsible than Felarya. Also I think you tend to take predators like beasts where they are more like humans, with an intelligence and a possibility of evolving as well.
As for guardians, they don't "protect" predators from humans, they just protect the land against whatever could possibly pose a threath. Once, it was the humans of Ur-Sagol, once it was the dridders of Sineria, once it was ( maybe ) the elemental Déméchrelle etc...

Contrary to Earth humans on Felarya have a natural predators. None of the predators on Earth are developped to eat humans. It's rare a lion attack a humans, excepts when it hunts but there are always potential prey so the humans have nothing to fear.

The role of Predator is to control the progression of the preys, if the predators stop to eat humans all the ressource of Felarya would be depleted therewould be many conflicts between the different humans' factions and most of the creature livings in Felarya would become a devasted land

gwadahunter2222 wrote:

Raveolution wrote:

Yeah, let's put it all on the table. Humans STILL are part of a grand scheme of things - they just have to reach for it. Humans have to learn how to adapt - I mean, we adapted to lions and tigers and bears, which are stronger than us.

Maybe everyone should be made to learn magic, for instance.

The issue is the Guardians - they keep interfering when someone gets too strong. Yet in any environment, someone always gets too strong. Some predator is the apex predator, and there's really no reason why humans can't be allowed to replace the giants as apex predators. We sure as heck are more compassionate. 98% species kill rate? Unthinkable. We know better than that. If anything we'd remember the lessons of Earth and maintain a balance. Of course if you eat a human we're gonna gitcha but still, we're not going to kill every Naga that comes into town hawking some wares or EMP a storm sprite who has chosen work an electrician rather than a people eater. Well there is the odd speciest who will, but there's a thing called public hangings.

You don't know the human nature

I will answer you by this quote

Karbo wrote:

Your take on humanity is interesting bu I think you are reasonning on the basis of a world like Earth that is infinitely less hostile and more previsible than Felarya. Also I think you tend to take predators like beasts where they are more like humans, with an intelligence and a possibility of evolving as well.
As for guardians, they don't "protect" predators from humans, they just protect the land against whatever could possibly pose a threath. Once, it was the humans of Ur-Sagol, once it was the dridders of Sineria, once it was ( maybe ) the elemental Déméchrelle etc...

Contrary to Earth humans on Felarya have a natural predators. None of the predators on Earth are developped to eat humans. It's rare a lion attack a humans, excepts when it hunts but there are always potential prey so the humans have nothing to fear.

The role of Predator is to control the progression of the preys, if the predators stop to eat humans all the ressource of Felarya would be depleted therewould be many conflicts between the different humans' factions and most of the creature livings in Felarya would become a devasted land

And what's to stop the Nagas from devastating the land?

And who's going to control the progression of the predators?

Raveolution wrote:

And what's to stop the Nagas from devastating the land?

And who's going to control the progression of the predators?

Here on Earth apex predator's populations are typically controlled by starvation and reduced breeding when food is scarce. Those of you who know about partial differential equations have probably seen the classic "rabbit vs wolf" population graph that cyclical in nature. So if the apex predators of Felarya were not intelligent, then their populations would also likely be limited by food availability.

However, the apex predators ARE intelligent, and that opens up a whole new can of worms. On Earth, us humans are (mostly) intelligent apex predators, and we avoid being limited by food by growing it on farms, such that our food population grows as quickly as we do. Farms do not seem to be practical on Felarya, especially farms of people, but there are alternate methods that accomplish the same goal (getting lots of food without depletion of the food stocks) that we humans use here on Earth in places where farming isn't practical.

In particular, we use several of these methods when dealing with fish stocks that live in ocean, as it isn't practical to create fish farms of the size needed to meet our fish demand. One method (which works best on fast reproducing species with a short turn around time between birth and reproduction) is the limited catch model, where the allowed haul per year is equal to or less than the birthrate (as a percentage) minus any natural losses. For example, if you have a fish population A that grows at 15% a year, and natural losses (to marine predators, sickness, etc.) is 10% a year, then the maximum sustainable harvest is 5% of the fish population a year. In practice it will be less than that, in order to grow the population up to it's natural limit (in oder to maximize the number of fish in that 5%), and as a safety margin to prevent population decrease.

Another method used is the creation of "no fishing" zones around a chunk of that species natural habitat. The population in that area will never be harvested and will grow to it's natural limit, at which point the excess fish will "spill over" outside of the no fishing zone, all of which can be sustainably harvested.

After I wrote my last post I became a little curious about the relationship between predators and their food, and some of the implications of that relationship. One of the things I was curious about was the ratio of predators to prey, because it would seem to me that if prey outnumbered the predators by a tremendous amount then they would simply overwhelm the predators, magic or no magic. To simplify things I assume a "mythical predator" that eats one prey a day every single day of the year on average. This mythical predator is sort of the average of the predators, some of which eat prey frequently (nagas, fairies, etc.) and the others that eat less frequently (most plant predators excluding dryads, probably most sea mermaids). I also assume that "prey" do not die except from being eaten, and since this is Felarya that's probably pretty close to the truth. I assume that "prey" can also all breed with itself and will do so, this is just to make things simpler to calculate. The simplest model for exponential population growth is N = N0 * e^(r * t), where N is the population afterwards, N0 is the population before, r is the growth as a percentage per unit time, t is the number of units of time, and e is that special value 2.7182...

According to a website on human population growth, the birthrate in the U.S. is 14 per thousand per year, or 0.014. A graph of the human population of the world since 0 A.D. shows that the human population around 1500 A.D. (I chose that time because I feel it represents the approximate population density of Felarya) is about 100,000,000 people. So at that growth rate and population there are 1,409,845 new prey born each year, and if we assume that the "mythical predator" eats prey at exactly their growth rate there are 3,862 such mythical predators in existence in all of Felarya! Worse yet, for every single mythical predator there are 25,893 prey, and that many prey could easily take on such a predator through simple "zerg rush" tactics. Obviously this is bad from the point of view that Felarya has many big predators that are not really being threatened by prey. To fix this something must change, and adjusting the starting prey population at the same growth rate doesn't alter the equation much (at 6,000,000,000 prey reproducing at the same rate there ends up being 25,889 prey per predator, an improvement of only 4!!)

The maximum population growth that a "largish" group of humans can have is about 1 child per woman per year. Since women make up 50% of the population, that's a growth of 500 per 1000 per year, or 50%, equal to 0.50. Plugging that number into the growth formula leads to 64,872,127 new prey per, and that means about 177,731 mythical predators. Not as many as I think most people would want, but a lot better than only 3,862! Better yet, that means only 562 prey per predator, an amount small enough that they couldn't easily "zerg rush" a predator, even if they were very organized. Adjusting the starting population upwards to 1 billion simply multiplies everything by 10, and gives us 1.77 million "mythical predators", which is even better, at the cost of increasing prey density (but not prey per predator).

A prey society under this sort of massive predation and tremendous growth rate would be very weird looking. Women would be perpetually pregnant, and (assuming women first got pregnant at 15 years of age) there'd be few people older than 20 (a perpetually pregnant woman can produce a baby every 9 months, the same as 1.33333... babies per year. For her to average one baby per year of her life she has to produce a baby a year once she can become pregnant, plus additional babies to cover the years she was growing up. At 1/3 an extra baby per year and first pregnancy at 15, that's 5 years.) Families would be an insane string of children 9 months apart (a family with a 20 year old mom would have about 20 children, with the oldest being 5!!)


This is not quite the Felarya we know, but there are still a few adjustments we can make to lessen the pressures. One of the biggest changes that can be made is the lowering of the "mythical predators" prey intake. Halving it to 182 prey a year per predator leads us to 886,762 predators at a less insane prey growth rate of 15%, which is about 1 child per woman every 3 years. Another adjustment that can be made is to increase the influx of migrants. I assumed above that the amount coming and going were about equal, but by adjusting the number of immigrants you can make the growth rate of prey to be essentially whatever number you want, because you're siphoning off population from worlds under no threat of predation. This also has the advantage of increasing the prey to predator ratio without increasing the risk of "zerg tactics", as the majority of the prey are living off world and thus less likely to group together.

Finally, we can always hand wave the problem away ("A wizard did it!") if it comes between us and a story because it is, after all, fantasy.

(Now on to another question I had: "What's the birth rate difference between prey and predators? Would a 120 year old first time mother naga be considered unusually young? All that and more, later! )

Raveolution wrote:

And what's to stop the Nagas from devastating the land?

And who's going to control the progression of the predators?

The fact there is not one type of Predators, the concurrence between the preators limit the progression of the other predators.

In clear a predator can't progress without risking to be in conflict with another predators.

A young naga can be eaten or attacked by another predators, like it was the case of Crisis when she was attacked by a Tonorion

And I agree with Oldman40k2003 the relation between the predator and the prey limit the progression of both

Oldman40k2003 wrote:

Insert major amount of words here

Just by reading that entire post, I think I've gained a better understanding of Earth. It makes me wonder if farms could ever be cultivated on Felarya. Sure, it'd be a longshot, but as you've seen, nothing is impossible.

Being food makes no diffarence in my little semi corrupted world,going outside (and being inside) would just be deadlire. that would in no way stop me from living out a normal life.In fact being food to me would be prefered over being a pred.Id go to felarya at first chance.

Pendragon wrote:

It makes me wonder if farms could ever be cultivated on Felarya. Sure, it'd be a longshot, but as you've seen, nothing is impossible.

I bet potatoes would be fairly easy to farm on Felarya, as they don't require constant tending and they are nearly invulnerable to being crushed. Even if a Naga decided to roll around on your field and killed every single plant, the partially grown spuds underground would be mostly untouched and you could harvest at least a partial crop. Worms of some sort might be a problem, and of course there'd be losses to other critters, but it'd be hard to lose all of your potatoes that way.

Oldman40k2003 wrote:

However, the apex predators ARE intelligent, and that opens up a whole new can of worms. On Earth, us humans are (mostly) intelligent apex predators, and we avoid being limited by food by growing it on farms, such that our food population grows as quickly as we do. Farms do not seem to be practical on Felarya, especially farms of people, but there are alternate methods that accomplish the same goal (getting lots of food without depletion of the food stocks) that we humans use here on Earth in places where farming isn't practical.

I wasn't using my Wiki knowledge when I posted this. My question would be better aimed at the Naxyla Dridders, who do farm humans on their homeworld, than Nagas, who POTENTIALLY could get ground under by, say, the Miratans (a huge potential limiter of predator populations once they cut loose).

Oldman40k2003 wrote:

In particular, we use several of these methods when dealing with fish stocks that live in ocean, as it isn't practical to create fish farms of the size needed to meet our fish demand. One method (which works best on fast reproducing species with a short turn around time between birth and reproduction) is the limited catch model, where the allowed haul per year is equal to or less than the birthrate (as a percentage) minus any natural losses. For example, if you have a fish population A that grows at 15% a year, and natural losses (to marine predators, sickness, etc.) is 10% a year, then the maximum sustainable harvest is 5% of the fish population a year. In practice it will be less than that, in order to grow the population up to it's natural limit (in oder to maximize the number of fish in that 5%), and as a safety margin to prevent population decrease.

Another method used is the creation of "no fishing" zones around a chunk of that species natural habitat. The population in that area will never be harvested and will grow to it's natural limit, at which point the excess fish will "spill over" outside of the no fishing zone, all of which can be sustainably harvested.

Well said, there actually are sections of the planet where there are no fishing zone-equivalents, such as The Jungle Bowl, Negav City, and the Miratan Base. The population inevitably produces outcasts and explorers and colonists who leave these super-safe "no fishing zone" sectors, and dinner is served.