Your opinions on some changes

The reason there needs to be "gaps" is that, even assuming a bountiful food supply, Humans are confirmed to be a semi-rare treat. You can't have a half-dozen Giant Predators living in a nine miles square area: They'd exhaust the food supplies within a few months / years, even with their reduced metabolism! You need some barriers between the Giant Predators, especially with how numerous some people want them to be, for any chance of a sustainable ecosystem. Fairies, for example, can at least make their size human-ish for most of the time and have human-ish (if slightly raised / lowered) diet sizes. Four eighty foot tall, hundred-plus foot long Giant Predators can't.

Even assuming they scaled like a human, who at about 5'10" is around .075m^3, and are 80', their new volume is about x2,579 the original amount. Assuming energy would normally scale equally, but the Giant Predator has a x10 efficiency over a regular human, they still have some 257 times the amount of food they need daily: What would be a feast that could last a village of fifty for almost a week could last a Giant Predator a single day. Even boosting it to a x100 efficiency, we're looking at what amounts to a daily diet that almost matches what Michael Phelps (who eats some 10K calories a day) in a week, or what four regular people might eat in that time.

Essentially, Giant Predators need territorial boundaries. Even assuming a small Duiker can, if eaten whole, provide some half of that energy, that's still some 60 of them in a month's time, and an average of 730 each breeding system (assuming they were the only food source, but also that only two 3' Duikers needed to be eaten by a 80' predator to survive - essentially us eating two thumb-by-thumb sized for a day's meal). Without those territorial boundaries, and having them mingle in numbers, they either need to have some sort of breeding / animal farming system in order (breeding what I don't know: Korazons?), the native fauna needs to reproduce almost seasonally (an accelerated growth rate would require even more energy as the environment has to provide enough energy to make at least one new of an animal each season), or some Guardian Hand-waving that they provide ample enough food for everything and are constantly fixing the environment to make up for the constant loss it takes.

In a normal world, yes, you would need gaps to balance out the system. Felarya is far from normal. Either way, my point is that not every place is going to have gaps for people to slip through. Some places are overflowing with predators. And even if there were significant gaps, would a hungry predator who runs across the trail of a group of humanoids just give up if they cross a certain line on the map? Especially if those humanoids are a "rare treat"?

What is a normal giant predator density in Felarya? We can't take the Giant Tree or Bulvon Wood as an example - that place has to be off-scale high when it comes to overlapping predator hunting grounds. I would hate to try to count the sheer number of predators who inhabit that area of the map.

Maybe, in addition to supreme energy efficiency on the predator side of things, Felaryan wildlife is incredibly nourishing - far more so than animals from our own world.

timing2 wrote:

In a normal world, yes, you would need gaps to balance out the system. Felarya is far from normal. Either way, my point is that not every place is going to have gaps for people to slip through.

It depends on what you're saying here. Reliably? I agree with you: Predators (especially Giant Ones) move, no path is safe forever - only longer. If you're saying that Giant Predators can police an area well enough that it's never safe to pass through, than the territory must be very small and heavily trafficked indeed (either by man-things or other edible beings) for it to remain such a way. It's a simple matter of ratios: Say a Predator had only a one mile radius area. In human terms, give a person a 132 yard diameter sphere and tell them "Don't let anyone pass." Of dense forest. Where movement, vision, and so on is impaired. The "anyone" in question are guinea pigs and medium / small-sized rats. About how much success would you give them? If you added a second Human? A third?

timing2 wrote:

What is a normal giant predator density in Felarya? We can't take the Giant Tree or Bulvon Wood as an example - that place has to be off-scale high when it comes to overlapping predator hunting grounds. I would hate to try to count the sheer number of predators who inhabit that area of the map.

The density, I'd say wait on Karbo for an answer. Some people have it as literal communities, with ten or more Giant Predators living in under a square mile (1mi x 1mi block) and not being bothered at all by the population density. Others almost reverse it to one Giant Predator per ten Square Miles, with even Anna & Crisis living together being seen as an exhaustive consumption for the area. It, frankly, depends on the person. Hence why I say wait for Karbo.

timing2 wrote:

Maybe, in addition to supreme energy efficiency on the predator side of things, Felaryan wildlife is incredibly nourishing - far more so than animals from our own world.

How much better do you want to get? If you make the Predator's diet any more efficient, a Giant Predator seen eating a pair of Humans would be a glutton as they're eating what amounts to several days (if not weeks) worth of energy in a single sitting. The example I provided was already stretching it, as a x100 energy efficiency would comparatively allow a man-sized Dridder to survive with a daily diet of about three cheeto's (when it comes to energy, this is discounting the vitamin requirements). Crisis - when young - eating just a single Human would at that time be akin to one of us eating like Fred Phelps for a day (assuming a Shrunk human would only be worth around 50 Calories).

about the density... well I'm not very good at representing myself the situation in precise metrics measurements, but as I see it the density of giant predators is relatively low, given the fact that the distance on the map are huge. Predators disputing themselves over prey definitely happens but I don't imagine it being a thing occuring too often. Not in most zones anyway ^^

Yeah, the map is huge. The reason a place like Bulvon Wood has so many preds living in it is because its a massive area.

I think we all need to keep in mind that the "named preds", the ones we make, only represent a tiny portion of the preds out there. There's going to be many more "unnamed" ones out there as well.

Keep in mind, Bulvon Wood is actually one of the "safer" stretches of forest out there. There's a couple nagas that live in or around it (one of which is nearly harmless to humans anyway =P), but nearly all of the other preds are slow, semi-stationary or ambush preds by nature (slug girls, trapdoor dridders and Bolas Dridders). There isn't even that much giant wildlife that poses a serious threat. The manga prooves that a small group of humans, with a little experiance surviving in the jungle, can navigate their way through Bulvon Wood relatively safely.

I think its important that the pred densitiy is low. Felarya SHOULD seem like a vast world, even to the giant predators. They shouldn't all be living bunched in close together like some kind of community. There should be a since of vastness even to them.

For humans, Felarya should feel utterly massive and all-encompassing. A seemingly infinate world full of a simply inconcievable amount of life. They should be able to travel around some without even running into the giant hybrids. I think that is something that people have forgotten. Most stories have become "human lands in Felarya and runs into a pred in 5 minutes"....instead of "human lands in Felarya and slowly makes his way through the jungle...perhaps dodging some of the wildlife...and possibly wanders into a giant pred's area along the way".

Just as the jungle is not crawling with humans every couple feet (even Karbo HAS confirmed that humans are a less common snack, and not a dietary staple ...see also: Twinkie theory), it shouldn't be crawling with giant preds every couple miles. The giant hybrids are just one more type of wildlife....not the single most common group of creatures in Felarya.

I think a lot of people have forgetten that there's more to Felarya than the giant hybrids. Its a vast alien world full of all kinds of natural wonders. Its a total waste if people just keep running into nagas and fairies every 5 minutes. There are not nearly enough stories of people just exploring the world itself, and dealing with things besides giant preds.

Just saying, it ruins some of Felarya's untamed nature if every single square mile of it is claimed by some pred.

rcs619 wrote:

I think a lot of people have forgetten that there's more to Felarya than the giant hybrids. Its a vast alien world full of all kinds of natural wonders. Its a total waste if people just keep running into nagas and fairies every 5 minutes. There are not nearly enough stories of people just exploring the world itself, and dealing with things besides giant preds.

Just saying, it ruins some of Felarya's untamed nature if every single square mile of it is claimed by some pred.

^This.
We have a whole lot of fauna ideas in the wiki that are never used. Same with plants and areas that aren't the jungle.

Exactly what rcs619 says. We've focused too much on the giant thingies that normal-sized people (human or not) deserve some more attention.

Feadraug wrote:

Exactly what rcs619 says. We've focused too much on the giant thingies that normal-sized people (human or not) deserve some more attention.

As well as things like anti-Spine Beetle measures. For something that can be rated just as high as a Giant Predator to a human, there seems to be very little acknowledgement of such creatures unless someone needs to either:
A) Show off that their party is some seasoned adventurers.
B) Is about to help [x] Giant Predator against a pack / swarm of such.

BUT WE NEED RANDOM CONNECTIONS TO HELP FEED THE POPULATION, DON'T WE?!?

Grave, you did read all of the thread so far and not just read the original post by Karbo, maybe glance at the rest of the first page and then post a reply. Right?

Grave wrote:

BUT WE NEED RANDOM CONNECTIONS TO HELP FEED THE POPULATION, DON'T WE?!?

Eight nice pages are good for reading. Then you'll see how the whole connection discussion has gone...

Oh, wait, maybe you were just kidding.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

Grave, you did read all of the thread so far and not just read the original post by Karbo, maybe glance at the rest of the first page and then post a reply. Right?

Me thinks you take a reply written in all-caps too seriously.

Yeah, looks like that. I was about to fall for it, myself. xD Anyway, let's see how things keep going and how changes will finally be.

k on these

1.immortality(act of not aging/lasting forever) ok as we know felarya being as it is the lasting forever part is mostly negated since most eventually end as food... so i'd say most would already agree that the immortality for this world mainly means you dont age but i'll throw in my comment i guess

i think since felarya main draw is it's non-aging aspect caused by it's soil so removing it's negating age effect/healing would heavily effect it's appeal to even come to the world. Also most fanfic use the healing aspect for their characters when they get injured and many characters have lived for like 70-90 years with gaurdians living for 100-1000's of years. Basically i'd just change the wording from just immortality to Physical and/ or biological immortality as your can check in the wiki( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality) cover's mainly rejuvenation, stasis and similar existence of not aging yet not being the broad term most think of as the inability to die / be destroyed

2. think just saying the portals are random but tend to happen in certain unstable areas more often as it basically does already in the wiki is fine it leaves room for others to tweak areas to their fanfics without having to worry about localized hunting being interfered with much like how tuboman's Malika stays near a certain warp point in her hunting grounds in his fanfics

3.on the children thing you can go with however your character would generally view the situation since only the creator of said character would know their thought process it's going to be heavily influenced via their moral view being inferred into their character so the just being you can't really make a rule since it's creator/character specific and being human everyone has their own moral codes

Dracosa wrote:

k on these

These have pretty much all been decided already, the issues aren't really relevant any more.