General Q and A

aethernavale wrote:

Perhaps I'll do some elaboration on this myself when I actually have the time to allow for distractions.

I would very much like that. It'd be much more constructive of you to elaborate on your "unique angle" rather than just bash my own thought-out idea.

I was operating under the impression that these are "hybrid" creatures. That implies to me both human and "other". Emphasizing on the "other" is just as silly as emphasizing the human. I've noticed this with nagas, too, where people emphasize the snake and forget there's a human half.

No imagination? Excuse me if my idea doesn't fit with yours, but that doesn't mean it isn't creative. Not to toot my own horn, but I just came up with an idea that incorporates both blood and sap systems, and then has them link up to allow for a plant-animal hybrid to metabolize the products of its photosynthesis in an animal-like manner, which allows them to have a human-like brain and conscious thought. I suppose that's pretty mundane.

Dryads don't have blood, muscles or organs. Their true form is that of an intelligent but hideous tentacle-plant that ensnares a large predator, eats their insides and wears the skin as a hat, moving it with their tentacles.

They do this for the sake of fitting in with everyone else, because it's hard to make friends when you're a hideous plant monster. You should go give them a hug, right now.

ZionAtriedes wrote:

I would very much like that. It'd be much more constructive of you to elaborate on your "unique angle" rather than just bash my own thought-out idea.

I was operating under the impression that these are "hybrid" creatures. That implies to me both human and "other". Emphasizing on the "other" is just as silly as emphasizing the human. I've noticed this with nagas, too, where people emphasize the snake and forget there's a human half.

No imagination? Excuse me if my idea doesn't fit with yours, but that doesn't mean it isn't creative. Not to toot my own horn, but I just came up with an idea that incorporates both blood and sap systems, and then has them link up to allow for a plant-animal hybrid to metabolize the products of its photosynthesis in an animal-like manner, which allows them to have a human-like brain and conscious thought. I suppose that's pretty mundane.

Defensive much? I recommend not taking things personally, it'll just cause problems where there need be none.

Now, to be blunt, your idea is not that original, nor would I call it thought-out. It's a kitbash, through and through. I haven't actually come up with an idea for dryad anatomy, seeing as I have no dryad characters that would necessitate me to do so. Yet, the issue of dryad reproduction in the past has shown that this is an opened topic, and many of us had our own ideas and layouts for such things. While I don't myself agree with Cliff and a few others, that doesn't mean I don't respect their thoughts on the subject. It is something worth thinking about, but I choose to prioritize my own story.

However, I have none of that for this. Your idea is essentially A + B = C. I see no research, no indepth thought, no real development here. It is a direct glue kitbash garage kit. That is undoubtedly harsh of me to say, but this is why I don't give critiques. Because I tend to be an ass.

My point stands: I don't see you doing any better.

Yes, it's a hybridization. Yes, it's two systems combined. That doesn't always mean kitbash. If anything, that system is superior. It allows for animal-like metabolism of photosynthesized food. Animals have superior circulation, but cannot synthesize food. Dryads, using my idea, have both.

Also, here's a little fact of life: everything in existence is a fucking glue-together garage kit. Life is a series of mish-mash put-together mutations that result in a greater whole. If you expect things to be clean and clear-cut, you need to actually study a little biology.

Aether, Zion, come on let's keep things friendly. This isn't really a debate thread anyways. If you guys want to open the topic to a true discussion, make a thread.

This is just a Q and A thread afterall.

This is just my own personal opinion on the matter now, but it seems like trying to completely define Dryad biology, other than their reproduction methods, seems like its a bit unnecissary. I mean, its neat to think about, but it doesn't really impact anything. Not to mention, as wierd as it is, and as many possibilities as there are, its going to be hard to reach any kind of group consensus on it.

Woa, a lot of ideas here xD
but yea, since this question became quite a discution thread, maybe we should open another thread about it

rcs619 wrote:

Aether, Zion, come on let's keep things friendly. This isn't really a debate thread anyways. If you guys want to open the topic to a true discussion, make a thread.

What debate? What discussion? If Aether proposed an IDEA, then maybe it would be those things.

rcs619 wrote:

Aether, Zion, come on let's keep things friendly. This isn't really a debate thread anyways. If you guys want to open the topic to a true discussion, make a thread.

This is just a Q and A thread afterall.

This is just my own personal opinion on the matter now, but it seems like trying to completely define Dryad biology, other than their reproduction methods, seems like its a bit unnecissary. I mean, its neat to think about, but it doesn't really impact anything. Not to mention, as wierd as it is, and as many possibilities as there are, its going to be hard to reach any kind of group consensus on it.

THANK YOU! It's neat to think about something, but making sure everything adheres to the laws of physics just kills the mood of fantasy. If you make up something, it's best that it sticks to the rules you made up.

Sean Okotami wrote:

rcs619 wrote:

Aether, Zion, come on let's keep things friendly. This isn't really a debate thread anyways. If you guys want to open the topic to a true discussion, make a thread.

This is just a Q and A thread afterall.

This is just my own personal opinion on the matter now, but it seems like trying to completely define Dryad biology, other than their reproduction methods, seems like its a bit unnecissary. I mean, its neat to think about, but it doesn't really impact anything. Not to mention, as wierd as it is, and as many possibilities as there are, its going to be hard to reach any kind of group consensus on it.

THANK YOU! It's neat to think about something, but making sure everything adheres to the laws of physics just kills the mood of fantasy. If you make up something, it's best that it sticks to the rules you made up.

Okay, here's the thing: some people ENJOY coming up with little explanations here and there. I, for one, do. I'm not asking that this be made canon or iron law; I'm simply proposing a suggestion because THAT IS WHAT I FUCKING LIKE TO DO.

Zion. Chill... It's not worth it.

I'm not actually all that angry. I mean, I was a little irked at first by that little bullshit Aether pulled, but I'm pretty sure getting angry and looking like a douche will hurt my case there. Fact is, he's bashing, I'm not.

The capitalization and cursing does, I admit, seem a little aggressive. I'm really trying to just get a point across, and it's a point that I've been trying to make people understand for a while.

to be frank, youre not right aisu. IT IS worth it. dont let people tell you how your imagination should be zion. i also think its a rather important question. what if a dryad gets hurt? what will come out? blood or wood?

but yeah, we gotta keep it civil, but its a very interesting question youre coming with zion

I thought it would be sap.

Yea, I think it would be more sap than wood xD
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Dont fight people, each one can have their opinions, and I'm also someone who likes to have some logics in fantasy discutions.
Your ideas may differ, but try to think of arguments to explain your points of view and eventually, mix the ideas if it's possible (nobody can be 100% right or 100% wrong)

Well anyways, i dont think we can say that dryads are really "completely made of wood/plant" l, after all, they have still an important thing that I've not seen anywhere so far in this thread; a nervous system and of course, a BRAIN.
The brain is characteristic of animals, so I'm quite sure that there must be something else, or a mix between animal and vegetal;
I dont think that a complete plant body would be able to keep a nervous system as complex as a dryad (cause they are indeed complex, dryads are inteligent beings, and have conections with each other).

Krisexy26 wrote:

to be frank, youre not right aisu. IT IS worth it. dont let people tell you how your imagination should be zion.

No, no, Aisu's right. It's not worth getting angry, because that won't win anyone over. That doesn't mean I'm backing down, Kris, it just means that I'm using more tact.

I don't think anyone's telling me how my imagination should be. Aether is simply trying to discern what belongs in a world that multiple people draw from and contribute to. I think his methods are a bit asinine, but I'm not going to accuse him of something he isn't doing. Felarya isn't subject to any one person's imagination, with the obvious exception of Karbo. It is a shared effort, and sometimes there has to be a little discussion on what's appropriate and what isn't.

Atlas wrote:

Well anyways, i dont think we can say that dryads are really "completely made of wood/plant" l, after all, they have still an important thing that I've not seen anywhere so far in this thread; a nervous system and of course, a BRAIN.
The brain is characteristic of animals, so I'm quite sure that there must be something else, or a mix between animal and vegetal;
I dont think that a complete plant body would be able to keep a nervous system as complex as a dryad (cause they are indeed complex, dryads are inteligent beings, and have conections with each other).

THANK YOU. That is exactly why I proposed what I did, and why I thought it made sense. It may not fit every single person's sense of aesthetics, but I found it to be sensible. Of course, that depends on what one's priorities are.

yeah, but it shouldnt be like "your ideas suck because mines better"

though im not saying anyone said it. the best way for me is like in a debate. you throw your arguments and the one that makes more sense wins :/ that is, karbo needs to approve after :/

and ehm...i more wanted to mean like..."downrating your ideas/views" something like that :/

Ah. Then in that case, Kris, I agree with you. To be honest, I may have been overly defensive in my interpretation, but it seemed to me that "downrating" is exactly what Aether was doing.

Anyways, I believe that's enough de-railing from me.

The thing is, as stated, Dryads do have a complex nervous system capable of logical rational thought, a concept only possible by animals, not plants, so Dryad's do require some animal based genetics to exist. However Dryads are also capable of photosynthesis, which means they have to have some plant traits as well. Considering the these facts, if a Dryad is to exist, one can quickly discern 2 possible outcomes.

1. The Dryad is a hybridized being, as Zion said and has both plant and animal qualities, and can seemlessly intertwine the two together. This is the easiest way to explain it if you don't wish to go into explaining the genetic nightmare that is mixing Plant and Animals together, but really Felarya already has Humans mixed with Snakes/Cats/Birds/ect. As well as making them over 100 feet tall. So what harm can come in mixing humans with Plants I ask you?

2. The Dryad is in truth an ethereal being of some sort, merely possessing a tree and having it manipulate it into a form of its choosing. Since the thought processes are of a spirit, a nervous system is not required as it can manipulate the plant matter to create movement. However this has some complications in the fact that Dryads hate fire. If a nature spirit was possessing a plant, and the plant were destroyed, the spirit would simply inhabit another tree, yet dead dryads are gone forever, so therein lies the problem.

These are the two primary possibilities I've devulged, is one right? Maybe, maybe not. Are there other possibilities? Maybe. But this is the easiest way to explain it for now

Question: if bullets wouldnt bring much pain to giant preds, what about direct energy weapons like a plasma rifle or a energy sword or the partical beam rifle wouldnt any of those cause major harm to giant preds? or would some just out right kill them?( especaily the last one)

luke112 wrote:

Question: if bullets wouldnt bring much pain to giant preds, what about direct energy weapons like a plasma rifle or a energy sword or the partical beam rifle wouldnt any of those cause major harm to giant preds? or would some just out right kill them?( especaily the last one)

Bullets do bring pain though. Even something as small as a 7.62mm assault rifle round would feel like getting stabbed by a small needle or insect. With decent enough numbers, the pred would definately get the idea that they need to just move on and go bother someone else.

It isn't really about the type of weapon, its about the size. Weapons that can hurt preds tend to be anti-armor and anti-vehicle weapons. Like, an assault rifle will just hurt a pred, but an RPG will seriously maim or kill them. A .50cal rifle would draw blood and cause intense pain, but a 20mm cannon would outright kill them. The main issue is that most weapons that can kill a pred tend to be fairly clunky, heavy or otherwise unwieldy, not to mention almost impossible for anyone outside of the Isolon Fist, Vishmitals or an offworld military to obtain.

As for energy weapons, I imagine they follow similar rules. Small, anti-infantry weapons are just going to cause a bit of pain, while larger weapons designed to destroy vehicles, aircraft or armored vehicles would be able to cause serious injuries or death. The main issue with energy weapons is that they probably would be rare. The only way to get them would be to import them from offworld, and even then, I doubt that any civillian could just go somewhere and buy a plasma rifle.

I am not sure here cliff, I am talking about the type of energy weapons that can and will unleash bolts of 3000 degrees F or more, I am sure that would cause much more pian and harm then a bullet, even if the weapon was meant to take down infantry, but then agian the civization that would have that kind of weapons would also have energy shields and even power armour many more times advance then what is any known race in felarya currently has. and by that statement i would belive that weapons would have to be adjusted to compensate for the advance armor and/or energy sheilds. so i would belive that shot from a driect energy weapon would be many more times pianful than shot from a bullet, and something like a plasma sword (think of halo 1 and not star wars please) would inflict serious harm on a pred that is not fire alined beacuse the blade would acutly easily peirice the skin and possably go into the muscle and we must consider the fact that the heat from the blade being inside the flesh would cook a good deal around the inital stab. though then agian i am no expert here about the workings of felarya and so that is why i asked the community the question, so that i hope may get a wide varrity of repsoneses and thus draw a conclusion before resumeing and posting all of my stories, which is pracaticaly the sole reason why i asked question in the Q & A at all.

luke112 wrote:

I am not sure here cliff, I am talking about the type of energy weapons that can and will unleash bolts of 3000 degrees F or more, I am sure that would cause much more pian and harm then a bullet, even if the weapon was meant to take down infantry, but then agian the civization that would have that kind of weapons would also have energy shields and even power armour many more times advance then what is any known race in felarya currently has. and by that statement i would belive that weapons would have to be adjusted to compensate for the advance armor and/or energy sheilds. so i would belive that shot from a driect energy weapon would be many more times pianful than shot from a bullet, and something like a plasma sword (think of halo 1 and not star wars please) would inflict serious harm on a pred that is not fire alined beacuse the blade would acutly easily peirice the skin and possably go into the muscle and we must consider the fact that the heat from the blade being inside the flesh would cook a good deal around the inital stab. though then agian i am no expert here about the workings of felarya and so that is why i asked the community the question, so that i hope may get a wide varrity of repsoneses and thus draw a conclusion before resumeing and posting all of my stories, which is pracaticaly the sole reason why i asked question in the Q & A at all.

It really depends on the weapons. Energy weapons, in general, tend to have poor penetrating power. They have no mass behind their projectiles and rely on the heat to cause damage instead of kinetic energy.

It really depends on the type of weapon, since the biggest limiting factor on an energy weapon is it's power source. That's the reason that laser weapons for infantry is largely impactical. There is no way to stick a powerful enough energy source on them to give them significantly more power than an solid-shell weapon. That's the reason energy weapons are much better on vehciles and starships, you can actually attatch them to a powerful enough energy source to make them worth it.

Plasma swords, and lightsabers (which are plasma swords), are impossible for the above reason. There is just no way to create such a small, yet powerful, energy source. Its a weapon that looks cool, and would be powerful, but is just impossible to actually make.

Also, wounds from energy weapons tend to be much cleaner and much less painful than wounds from a solid-shell weapon. Energy weapons tend to cauderize wounds, and sear nerves. There is almost no bleeding afterwards, and all the nerves are burned away so you'd feel much less pain. There is also no shrapnel or tiny pieces of the bullet breaking off and scattering in the wound. I mean, look what happens when someone gets their arm cut off by a lightsaber? There's no blood, and they only feel pain for a second...and then they're fine. If that same arm got blown off by a cannon round, or cut off by a bladed weapon, the pain would be much more intense and they would quickly bleed to death.

Energy weapons, on an infantry level, are just not worth it. They are inferior to solid-shell projectiles in every way because of how clean their wounds are, and because of their power-source limitations. Vehicle and ship-mounted energy weapons are a different story though. Energy swords suffer from the same problem as real swords though. They're melee weapons. Good against humans with other melee weapons, but useless against a pred because of their range and how easily a pred could disarm you.

Plasma will do what it will to any other substance: burn and melt. If you brought a plasma rifle (at least the one I think you're talking about) those are tiny little blobs of energy, and they'd create a burn in the predator's skin, but it wouldn't melt through it enough to do real damage. It would do either one of two things: make the predator reel back in pain, or make them angrier, and start throwing boulders and large objects, or just raging in general out of pain.

The reason why plasma weapons work so well in Halo, is because humans are small enough so that the weapons outright kill them if they land in most any spot. Since realistically, that ballistic plating the marines and odst get don't do much good. Their arms will still be melted off or something. Very very different than the way it works here in Felarya.

Remember: mass matters

True, Bael. I was mainly tailking about laser/energy beam weapons in my post. Plasma weaponry has its own issues.

The main problem with all kinds of energy weapons is that they tend to lack penetrating power and maiming power, which is what you really need to bring down a large animal.

An energy weapon of a type that you describe would require massive amounts of fuel/energy to run, it would potentially melt after one shot, and is not very feasible as the amount of input would not be worth the destructive output when compared to other less powerful, more "normal" weaponry.

No real need for a weapon, designed to fight other humans, to produce bolts of 3000 degrees F when less advanced ways would be more effective.

Your assuming that advancement in the field of energy weapons automatically means that a civilization has spent equal amounts of time in researching such things as energy shields/power suits. And no, they wouldn't be "thousands" of times more advanced.

As for the plasma sword, it really wouldn't be very effective against giant predators. First off you would need to learn how to contain the plasma so that it actually be used as a blade, and second, at most you would only be able to slash and stab away at a giant's feet or tail, which are already immense compared to a normal sized human. As there are not vital organs within easy reach, the owners of them will likely squash you flat before you could hit them more than once. That or they would eat you. And they would be smart enough to realize eating the sword as well wouldn't be a smart idea.

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How come Gypsas, who are based upon wasps, are said to die after delivering a sting like their cousins the Miaxi? This seems unlikely, as their description mentions them being able to sting with a secondary shrinking poison multiple times.

As far as I know, only bees die after delivering one due to the shape of the stinger causing them to be stuck to the point where the attached internal organs are pulled out as the bee tugs itself free. Wasps don't suffer from this as they have a differently shaped stinger, which is why they are capable of stinging someone/something multiple times.