Your opinions on some changes

AisuKaiko wrote:

Just to say, I do like immortality the way it is here. While yeah, it may come off as convenient, but honestly, I doubt any of us will seriously write so far into the future that it'll be a factor on the character. There's so much danger that there's really no danger of overpopulation by humans, since they die en masse to predators. Not to say that no one pulls it off, but a character who lives forever in Felarya is probably boring and doesn't deserve to be written about anyway.

I doubt they'd be boring if done right, but there is no character who has lived forever, since they had to be born, they're just older than most other people.

AisuKaiko wrote:

Overall, I don't think it's worth such a major change, no one would abuse it, I would hope...

Well they wouldn't be abusing it for long. People would just get annoyed and not read their stories.
Anyway it's not really that easy to abuse.

rcs619 wrote:

Huge-ass info dump.

This. Totally this.

Hey,

Regarding immortality I think I misunderstood somewhat. The discussion was... rather long, so I didn't read all of it in detail. I'd understood it to mean that death by ageing would not occur. I also agree with the point that having the 'wise old man' is a useful tool for the writers kit.

There are a variety of ways to hand-wave this, if it was so desired. E.g. already old and wise when entering Felarya and not de-aged; or the body trends towards the age the body feels. This adds the possibility for 'The Doctor' subversion where you're ancient but appear young. I don't have a clearly thought out position on this, anyway. So I'm fine with whatever change.

Yours,

Ambrose,

Few points on the immortality thing:
1) We now need a 'natural' lifespan of Felaryan Predators. Why? See #2.
2) How long do Giant Predators (and, by extension, regularly sized ones) now live to be with the Felarya healing effect? Please, please don't give me the answer "They're bigger so they live even longer" answer - I'm tired of the "They're bigger so they get more, but use just as much as a man-sized critter" answer. More efficiency, I can get. But that's super-conductivity efficiency.
3) Why can't humans learn any effective anti-Giant Predator measures without immortality? I'm seriously not understanding why they can't. If a Giant Predator can't be considered an adult mentally until they're some decades older than a human (at which point a human their age would be considered venerable if not old), odds are that they're not going to be going through ideas and the like as fast as humans. Being mostly isolationist too, ideas are going to spread around a lot less. I can understand that more age = more experience potential, but saying "Now they can't make tactics" is a bit overkill.
4) Furthermore, why can't humans and nekos and the like be nigh-immortal anyways? It's already a pretty common trope to have wizards living up to ten or more times as long as an average person. Is a 5,000+ year timespan really not enough to justify an ancient guy for you?

We all know retcons aren't good, but what rcs619 has written helps to not retcon, but clarify things and even expand the whole connections issue. I think the point stated there is great.

Also, when you hear 'long lifespan', you think it's merely 100 years for a human being in Felarya? How about hundreds, or even thousands? Immortality with healing factor is rather cheap, IMO, as it takes all the thrill away when surviving a dangerous jungle like Felarya. What, you think 400+ years old isn't enough for being experienced and wise? How long will it need then for being?

ZionAtriedes wrote:

It's also true that eliminating the "irreversible entry into Felarya" would invalidate a lot of stories, including mine. However, there were a lot of stories where people did come to Felarya willingly or semi-willingly (in my own story, they were investigating a dimensional rift that they knew could be dangerous, and the safety protocols failed), and I don't know of any stories where people were walking around nonchalantly and BAM! found themselves in the Miragia Forest. Of course, I haven't read many Felarya fics (something I need to rectify), so there very well could be a few.

I have the following:

- A character who came from an alternative Earth where the Soviet Union tried to replicate the Philadelphia Experiment and got some real rift instead of a cloaking device.
- A bunch of characters in a parody of sorts that ended up because some portal magic went wrong. They'll be back home by same means, but since it's a bit of a parody about Felarya, it hardly can be canon. :V
- One of my stories involves a character taken from her world due to the Miragia Forest's peculiar nature. Her fate? Dunno, I still have to write the second part of that story, but don't think of her as a main character of mine.

Of course, taking in account that I'm not abusing of this whole thing - you can't say 2-3 times is abusing -, no problem, since they're supposed to be RARE events. The thing is that people don't abuse of these things.

My own take on these things is to leave them as is - clarify where necessary, but leave the features intact.

Immortality being replaced by living a very, very long time doesn't seem like too much of an issue at first. Of course, this depends on how long "very, very long" is, doesn't it? Several hundred years? Thousands? If it's long enough, it won't matter for any stories except those set in the far future. Removing immortality means you're going to need to think about the longevity of various races. Do slug-girls live longer than nagas? How about dridders? Or mermaids? Nekos? Giant versions of all the previous races? Tinies?

I prefer the idea that people come to Felarya for the "eternal youth" aspect. The irony is that, in order to attain such a boon, they have to enter a very dangerous world where death is only a gulp away. If there's no more eternal youth, it somewhat lessens the appeal.

The idea of random connections is one of the things I like most about Felarya. I can see where clarification as to frequency, size, and duration of these connections might be desirable in some of the more well known / popular territories. But in the lesser used areas (i.e. most of the world)? Leave it undefined. A little mystery is like an open door for writers to step in. I don't like the idea of a blanket reduction across the world, or a blanket categorization of all connections in every zone. If I have to start looking up distribution charts to know if a connection can occur in a given place before putting it in a story, we've gone too far.

I also don't like the idea of removing the "unaware victim" from these occurrences. That should always be a possibility. Removing that would retcon how some of my own characters came into Felarya. And it would wreck havoc on the story I'm working on right now. So from me, at least, please don't change this aspect of the world.

As for predators eating children - leave that up to the individual artist/writer. I do not intend to ever do so myself, but if others wish to do so... There's no need to tame it down or to imply that, as a rule, predators don't eat children. Not all children in Felarya are human, or even humanoid; there are likely numerous baby/child predators running around as well. Are they off limits too? The idea that these children are not eaten because of their small size doesn't hold up if you consider that not all Felaryan predators are giant-sized. For example, if there are small nagas slithering around, you can well believe some of them will have no problem seeing human children as easy meals. And none of this considers how the fauna/flora would behave – the plants and kensha beasts don’t care if you’re small or big, as long as they can make you fit in their mouth, you’re food.

timing2 wrote:

I also don't like the idea of removing the "unaware victim" from these occurrences. That should always be a possibility. Removing that would retcon how some of my own characters came into Felarya. And it would wreck havoc on the story I'm working on right now. So from me, at least, please don't change this aspect of the world.

Agreed, exactly the reason I want it to stay.
Also, if you haven't read through everyone else opinions on connections, the real discussion on it starts on page 5.

I've had this thread on my forum for about a week now, so I know now I won't ever read all this. But you know what? I'm Silent Eric. Facts do what I tell them. So here I go,

Nothing to see here. Immortality isn't convienient. Especially in Felarya. It's one of Felarya's greatest ironies. People come to Felarya to live forever, only to have it cut short. That's great, and a foundation for one of Felarya's main themes.

As for the random connections, this is another theme and moral of Felarya. Just as greed (Ascarlin) and pride (Immortality) lead to being eaten, so does curiosity. The way the random connections work, a person would have to see a section of jungle on their own world and explore it, and then have it reconnect to Felarya. Most 'innocent' people wouldn't deviate from their commute to work or whatever to explore a giant jungle that has materialized nearby. The only people that would do that are children who find Felarya in their wardrobe or something. Speaking of which.

Children exist. Even in Felarya. No one wants to see or read about children being hurt, and luckily that doesn't have to happen. Look at Lord of the Rings for example. Children existed. Presumably they were killed by the encroaching evil forces of Sauron. But it wasn't a focus. Same with Felarya. Preds will eat children. Some won't, but many others will.

I'm sure there are other topics that are being discussed, but do to my aforementioned Silent Eric-ness, I'm not obligated to know about that before talking. XP

The whole "random connections" thing shouldn't be changed, IMO.

I think it's integral to many stories and characters. I personally have a recurring story idea where a guy enters a portal to Felarya to find his little sister who went in out of curiosity.

I love it all as-is... why does it really need to change...?

FalconJudge wrote:

I love it all as-is... why does it really need to change...?

It doesn't. But has been said so many times, the connections do have to be classified and defined.

To be honest most of the 'random connections' storylines I've read aren't particularly engaging. Some male author insert ends up in a strange world and befriends a giant naga chick. How interesting.

Still, obviously I haven't read all stories that used that as a plot device, and I'm sure there are plenty of good ones. I can understand people getting upset if their stories don't obey the rules of the world anymore, but I never thought Karbo wanted to stop ALL random portals, just lower the rate of them. So a predators diet of humans would be 90% explorers and 10% unlucky people, rather than the other way around. Suits me.

Jew wrote:

I can understand people getting upset if their stories don't obey the rules of the world anymore, but I never thought Karbo wanted to stop ALL random portals, just lower the rate of them. So a predators diet of humans would be 90% explorers and 10% unlucky people, rather than the other way around. Suits me.

Agreed.

well time for my reply...

1. I would say immortality is not an issue, like fish said, it's a dangerous world out there, and even if life was a "very very very long time" then there's still a 99.9% repeating chance that you won't live long enough for that "very very very long time" to take it's toll. It's a game of survival, they just have the luxury of time not limiting them, while Felarya's inherent danger fills the void created by the lack of age. And as a little bit of a scare tactic, if things just live "a very very very long time" then time will still take it's toll on the residents and they will age, and if they age, then that means...
CAUTION: spoiler tagged for your own safety, you will never unsee what is in it if you look.

Spoiler:

2. for connection frequency yeah cutting down the frequency a bit to rare but more common in dimensionally unstable areas is probably the best bet, or make it so people can tell something potentially bad is going on, like person walking down the street and a shimmery portal appears... this way it's not punished for being a human, it's being punished for being an idiot who just walked into a portal that you had no idea where it leads.

3. For child eating, that cannot relate to the world as it would relate more to the individual... A good way to discribe Felaryan viewpoint on this would be (appologies to Casey for doing his refer to TV tropes stchick) Blue and Orange Morality http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality in that like said, to the writer/artist the action may seem sick and wrong but to the predator, it's just the life they live. This subject is just in case one of those things you know, but would wish that you would never know (like the infamous for you to be born your parents had to do it).And though this is life for them, then the individual is the key, Just because they can eat a kid, doesn't mean they have to or want to, a Felaryan pred only lives by it's own moral code, so it becomes difficult to think about.

I'd honestly leave both of them alone.


Immortality, is as others have already mentioned, part of the boon of Felarya. Stay young forever, provided you survive. It also provides a unique viewpoint on the aging argument - where age and appearance have little to no correlation. Some would debate this adds no variety, but really, doesn't it? Think for a moment on the spread of 25 year olds you've seen. Most people still look fairly youthful at this age, able to pass for several years younger. However, in my line of work you typically see the exact opposite. The stress of the job and/or life have prematurely aged them to the point where a 29 year old male looks like he's in his late 40s. Most people think I'm still a high school student, yet my mother who is now in her 50s has been mistaken for a sister/girlfriend/wife. There are people with defects who don't age already, remaining child-like in appearance until their deaths - and the opposite is also of course true, where the rather young actually appear as though they're already well past retirement. Granted, these cases are extremely rare, but they do exist (and are often the cause of great sensationalism when the media get around to remembering them, usually in the bad-scientists-studying-humans-as-guinea-pigs-trying-to-play-God-and-unlock-the-fountain-of-youth kind of role).

If you want variety in character appearance, you can still have it, just because Felarya rejuvenates you physically doesn't mean it does so emotionally or genetically. Some people are better at stress management than others and what would greatly affect on person has little to no impact on another. Felarya is definitely not a 'safe' environment regardless of location, so the stressors are in place already. And of course you'll have some people that are just genetically predispositioned to look younger or older than they really are without outside intervention - be it natural or artificial. Besides, considering the advanced technologies/magiks some of the human societies have in Felarya, even if the soil weren't capable of doing it, the humans would have already figured out another way anyway.


Also, the random portals helps to keep things realistic in Felarya. A lot of predators like to eat humans as it stands now. If we go off of Negav being the only remaining megalopolis for humans, with all other population spread throughout the land in small tribes/villages/towns, we will not have enough food to go around. Especially when you consider the appetite of some predators. Unless the humans are just baby-making machines, we're not going to have enough. The effects of reducing the portals from Felarya would be akin to removing subcritical multiplication from a shutdown reactor - you're just breaking helpful stats. If you want to make the numbers more of a gray area, then sure... but a drastic reduction takes away a great deal from the supposed nature of Felarya as a dimensional hurricane.


Getting right down to morals, I find it interesting that there aren't human farms already. A lot of the predators are rather intelligent and can follow a cognitive process to invent/make things, and necessity is the mother of invention. Need more humans for food, grow them. Raise them as cattle for later. The Bugs from David Weber's The Stars at War series followed this mindset, of reducing once intelligent, sapient alien races into nothing more than food, where adults are kept as breeders and children are eaten as they're just right. Let some children grow up to replace older breeders (after all, even if humans are immortal unless someone gets around to changing the general nature of female reproduction we'd have to assume all human females are barren past a certain age as their bodies don't regenerate eggs - though perhaps science and/or magiks will have allowed for them to use more of the ~400,000 eggs they're born with compared to the few thousand they might actually expend during their current reproductive timeframe), and of course eat any of the barren breeders. Sure, the humans find this to be absolutely horrible and completely debased, but to the Bugs its just how they've developed and survive. Humans far to often fail to contemplate what the world would be like if they weren't the top of the food chain, and Felarya offers this perspective in mass quantity. At its most simplest form, this is the spider vs butterfly argument. Butterfly is trapped in the spiders web, do you free the butterfly or simply watch as the spider prepares its meal? You can add whatever extensions you like to help justify your side of the argument or to temper another's opinion, but realistically, we're all just animals, and carnivorous means eating fauna not flora. No doubt in the words of a predator just before eating a psychoanalyst, your opinion is noted.

@ above post

Remember, humans are only a small part of a predator's diet anyway. The jungle isnt exactly swarming with humans to gobble up. The majority of a predator's diet is made up of smaller wild animals, fish, fruit and such. Humans are a less common snack that they snatch up if they happen to come across them...kind of like the Felaryan equivalent of a cookie or twinkie.

Most preds have specific territories they live in, and are just going to eat what is around them. They aren't going to wander for miles and miles looking for humans to eat. Crisis is kind of an exception, since she was fed humans all her life. She never had to go through the phase all preds have to go through where they're too big to eat tinies, and too small to eat humans. She always had her food shrunken down for her.

rcs619 wrote:

@ above post

Remember, humans are only a small part of a predator's diet anyway. The jungle isnt exactly swarming with humans to gobble up. The majority of a predator's diet is made up of smaller wild animals, fish, fruit and such. Humans are a less common snack that they snatch up if they happen to come across them...kind of like the Felaryan equivalent of a cookie or twinkie.

Most preds have specific territories they live in, and are just going to eat what is around them. They aren't going to wander for miles and miles looking for humans to eat. Crisis is kind of an exception, since she was fed humans all her life. She never had to go through the phase all preds have to go through where they're too big to eat tinies, and too small to eat humans. She always had her food shrunken down for her.

Hmm.... Does that imply that most fairies are an exception, like Crisis is?

Anyway, most preds wander for miles and miles looking for anything to eat, humans if possible. Their territories are about that big after all. The main other difference with Crisis is that she is near a section of the forest that is particularly unstable, so she has a more or less reliable flow of humans and prey creatures coming from there. And she's between Negav and the Mysterious Temple, which gives her a more or less reliable flow of humans and other adventuring races from there. That's what makes her an exception in my opinion. Location location location. ^^

rcs619 wrote:

@ above post

Remember, humans are only a small part of a predator's diet anyway. The jungle isnt exactly swarming with humans to gobble up. The majority of a predator's diet is made up of smaller wild animals, fish, fruit and such. Humans are a less common snack that they snatch up if they happen to come across them...kind of like the Felaryan equivalent of a cookie or twinkie.

Most preds have specific territories they live in, and are just going to eat what is around them. They aren't going to wander for miles and miles looking for humans to eat. Crisis is kind of an exception, since she was fed humans all her life. She never had to go through the phase all preds have to go through where they're too big to eat tinies, and too small to eat humans. She always had her food shrunken down for her.

I've already posted on this in another thread. The response is quoted below for the lazy.

aethernavale wrote:

If you start viewing it from a purely scientific point of view I think you'll probably wind up disappointed. A great deal of the creatures in Felarya based on actual creatures go the mass reproduction method. Mainly because most of those children will never reach adulthood. In the case of spiders and mantids, they typically devour each other when they're fresh from the egg - especially if food is not otherwise readily abundant. I think we can hold some concept of Darwinian Evolution up here, and just believe that its more likely the giant predators don't have swarms of children the way their smaller, distant, Earth cousins do. I could still believe that they have more than a couple however - after all, something has to be keeping all the other preds fed, and humans/elves/nekos alone aren't going to cut it, even if they are in a near infinite tasty supply due to the environment. We already know that nagas like Jissy will eat other smaller nagas, and there are certainly plenty of others who would do the same. Not to even go into discussing the habits of the Kensha beasts and Hydra trees.

However, humans are still a fairly staple diet for several of the predator species. Crisis is an exception amoungst the nagas, but you have fairies damn near everywhere. Many of the giantess' diets consists of humans. When you also combine the hunting grounds of several predators on mutual hunts (ie Milly, Jissy, and co) where they stalk large areas for human prey, particularly the well known fast food, that sentiment of 'predatory zoning' loses a good deal of its weight. Granted - I agree insomuch that the majority of predators living in Felarya aren't getting by solely on a diet of human. Especially the ones that don't see them often, like a lot of the mermaids who view humans as a wonderful distraction from their staple diets. But Negav alone is not going to be able to keep the human supply chain up, a great deal of humans in Felarya have to come there, and while most are by choice through the portals, you're still going to need a good supply of random events, otherwise the farther reaches that are sometimes discussed/written of really aren't going to have any contact with humans. And as stated before as well, at least from my viewpoint Felarya is a dimensional hurricane and a crossroads of worlds - remember its not just humans coming to Felarya, predators also wind up in Felarya the same way.

aethernavale wrote:

Immortality, is as others have already mentioned, part of the boon of Felarya. Stay young forever, provided you survive. It also provides a unique viewpoint on the aging argument - where age and appearance have little to no correlation. Some would debate this adds no variety, but really, doesn't it? Think for a moment on the spread of 25 year olds you've seen. Most people still look fairly youthful at this age, able to pass for several years younger. However, in my line of work you typically see the exact opposite. The stress of the job and/or life have prematurely aged them to the point where a 29 year old male looks like he's in his late 40s. Most people think I'm still a high school student, yet my mother who is now in her 50s has been mistaken for a sister/girlfriend/wife. There are people with defects who don't age already, remaining child-like in appearance until their deaths - and the opposite is also of course true, where the rather young actually appear as though they're already well past retirement. Granted, these cases are extremely rare, but they do exist (and are often the cause of great sensationalism when the media get around to remembering them, usually in the bad-scientists-studying-humans-as-guinea-pigs-trying-to-play-God-and-unlock-the-fountain-of-youth kind of role).

If you want variety in character appearance, you can still have it, just because Felarya rejuvenates you physically doesn't mean it does so emotionally or genetically. Some people are better at stress management than others and what would greatly affect on person has little to no impact on another. Felarya is definitely not a 'safe' environment regardless of location, so the stressors are in place already. And of course you'll have some people that are just genetically predispositioned to look younger or older than they really are without outside intervention - be it natural or artificial. Besides, considering the advanced technologies/magiks some of the human societies have in Felarya, even if the soil weren't capable of doing it, the humans would have already figured out another way anyway.

So we'd still have white or grey haired humans (and nekos?) in Felarya because of the stress of a long life in the dangers of the jungle or even cities.
So for anybody wanting the wise old men, you can still have them, they just won't be that wrinkly.

Also I think that looking young wouldn't be such of a huge matter like it is here on earth, since everyone lives forever on Felarya.

aethernavale wrote:

If we go off of Negav being the only remaining megalopolis for humans, with all other population spread throughout the land in small tribes/villages/towns, we will not have enough food to go around.

It's not the only remaining human hold, it's just the only one shown on the map. There is another to the far west (left) of the Felarya map.

Quote :

The effects of reducing the portals from Felarya would be akin to removing subcritical multiplication from a shutdown reactor - you're just breaking helpful stats. If you want to make the numbers more of a gray area, then sure... but a drastic reduction takes away a great deal from the supposed nature of Felarya as a dimensional hurricane.

I'm not sure. It's a bit more then helpful stats.
That's why we've got almost everyone going for classification and definement, rather than reduction.

aethernavale wrote:

However, humans are still a fairly staple diet for several of the predator species. Crisis is an exception amoungst the nagas, but you have fairies damn near everywhere.

They don't eat solely humans

aethernavale wrote:

Many of the giantess' diets consists of humans.

And nothing but? No, we're not going back to that.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

So for anybody wanting the wise old men, you can still have them, they just won't be that wrinkly.

Also I think that looking young wouldn't be such of a huge matter like it is here on earth, since everyone lives forever on Felarya.

Stress is just one way. Genetic predispositioning is another way that could be considered common.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

It's not the only remaining human hold, it's just the only one shown on the map. There is another to the far west (left) of the Felarya map.

I didn't say it was the only human hold, after all we have the Delurans as well as Mirata City or the village of Ellis as well as others - for instance I would go so far as to include the Jungle Bowl as a city. I said it was the only remaining megalopolis, which as far as I can tell is true. No other information has been stated regarding a city as massive as Negav with exception to Ur-Sagol, and there are a lot of correlations between the doomed city's (supposed) expansionistic ways and Negav.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

They don't eat solely humans

Nor did I say they did. Reading comprehension is important - I stated staple diet, not exclusive diet. For many preds, humans are a staple diet, and they complain when they have to eat other things. That isn't to say they can't do so, we have Jade and Ceri and Rin for examples. But they choose to do so.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

And nothing but? No, we're not going back to that.

See above.

aethernavale wrote:

Anime-Junkie wrote:

So for anybody wanting the wise old men, you can still have them, they just won't be that wrinkly.

Also I think that looking young wouldn't be such of a huge matter like it is here on earth, since everyone lives forever on Felarya.

Stress is just one way. Genetic predispositioning is another way that could be considered common.

True.

aethernavale wrote:

Anime-Junkie wrote:

It's not the only remaining human hold, it's just the only one shown on the map. There is another to the far west (left) of the Felarya map.

I didn't say it was the only human hold, after all we have the Delurans as well as Mirata City or the village of Ellis as well as others - for instance I would go so far as to include the Jungle Bowl as a city. I said it was the only remaining megalopolis, which as far as I can tell is true. No other information has been stated regarding a city as massive as Negav with exception to Ur-Sagol, and there are a lot of correlations between the doomed city's (supposed) expansionistic ways and Negav.

Yes, I should have made myself clear, I meant city or megalopolis. But I couldn't be bothered to type it at 2:30am. There is another city on the other side of the Akaptor desert. It's called 'Kelerm' or something like that.

aethernavale wrote:

Anime-Junkie wrote:

They don't eat solely humans

Nor did I say they did. Reading comprehension is important - I stated staple diet, not exclusive diet. For many preds, humans are a staple diet, and they complain when they have to eat other things. That isn't to say they can't do so, we have Jade and Ceri and Rin for examples. But they choose to do so.

To me, staple diet means that's what they eat the most of. I thought it we had established that humans were more like treats or sweets for predators.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

Yes, I should have made myself clear, I meant city or megalopolis. But I couldn't be bothered to type it at 2:30am. There is another city on the other side of the Akaptor desert. It's called 'Kelerm' or something like that.

I wasn't aware of that. Still, back to the portal debate as well - a lot of these cities have portals. The Miratans have access to their own worlds, Negav has one of the two 'major' dimensional portals. A lot of worlds also use Felarya as their dumping ground or 'ultimate prison'. When we take further into account that there are several classes of creature that also exist off of the dimensional stability (or lack thereof) in Felarya, I find that random events would need to be often in nature, in order to make the magiks as seeded as they are. That's just personal opinion though, and I would agree that some greater clarity could be invoked here.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

To me, staple diet means that's what they eat the most of. I thought it we had established that humans were more like treats or sweets for predators.

Taken directly from M-W (which btw I find to be more and more disagreeable to these days with the 'words' they adopt, but nevertheless)

Quote :

Main Entry: staple
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French estaple, from Middle Dutch stapel emporium
Date: 15th century

1 : a town used as a center for the sale or exportation of commodities in bulk
2 : a place of supply : source
3 : a chief commodity or production of a place
4 a : a commodity for which the demand is constant b : something having widespread and constant use or appeal c : the sustaining or principal element : substance
5 : raw material
6 a : textile fiber (as wool and rayon) of relatively short length that when spun and twisted forms a yarn rather than a filament b : the length of a piece of such textile fiber

I view it mostly in the form of definition 4 as far as Felarya's predators are concerned. They consistently desire said foods, and the populace of Felarya can generally support their apatite provided they are not in some completely obscure region or with bad luck/hunting (looking at you Jora).

Don't forget about Chiotia City either, off in the Topazial Sea at the far Eastern edge of the map. Its home to just under 10,000 people, and is an important port for that region's human population.

We also need to keep in mind that this is just one small section of Felarya that we see. From the looks of it, it seems to be just a chunk of a much larger continent, and we know there is at least one other continent on the other side of the Topazial Sea.

The way I see it, human civilization around Felarya is organized like this..
- Large cities (~10,000 people or more): These dot the world, offering safe-havens from the wilderness.
- Small settlements: these are places like The Jungle Bowl or Safe Harbor. They have a decent population, but are not large enough to be considered a city. Due to their size, they usually require natural barriers or a friendly pred to keep safe.
- Villages: small groups of humans that live in the wilderness. They use knowledge of the environment and local preds, along with caution and stealth to try and keep from being noticed.
- Outposts: Set up by visitors from off-world, these small outposts often make use of advanced technologies and weaponry to keep local threats away. Usually serve as hubs for scientific research.

Between all of these types of settlments is the wilderness...a no-man's land, home to dangerous creatures and giant predators.

Also, its stated in the wiki that different preds have preferred territories. Knowing them is given as one of the ways to survive. Some pred's boundries would cross, but there would be gaps where you could likely keep unnoticed.

Hey,

I'm not sure that predator territories actually leave gaps, although I can't find any documentation. Certain species - such as otters - only hold their territories against members of their own sex. So even in the case where single-sex territories don't overlap, the other gender would probably fill that space. Anyway, we can easily see that nagas and giantesses are quite comfortable with each other, so the concept of 'holding' territory doesn't exactly hold. Though naga's and dridder's certainly hold territory against each other.

Separately, I'd always imagined intelligent Felaryian prey-species might adopt a quasi-nomadic lifestyle - a predator can't come calling at your address if you don't have one, after all - and imagined that this might be responsible for quite a significant portion of the human/elf/neko population.

Yours,

Ambrose,

There wouldn't be gaps around every territory, but there would be some in certain circumstances. That's where knowing what predators can be found in each area is vital to survival.

The problem would be predators that don't abide by territories, and there will be some like this. Even animals don't always abide by their territories, thus we see conflicts between different groups. Most stories have giant predators in fixed places. Most of them get along with their neighbors. There's no predator/predator conflict. That might work where there's plentiful prey. But what happens when prey isn't so plentiful? Are those predators going to get along well when their stomachs are hungry because their sneaky neighbor gobbled up the entire group of adventurers who came into the area? Chances are, those predators are either going to fight, or move outside their normal territory to find prey. There go your gaps.

I'm also not sure moving around would necessarily make a group of humanoids any safer. It depends on where they are and what they're trying to avoid. Moving around and making their footprint larger (no pun intended) might actually increase their chances of accidental discovery by predators.