Bobby's Author Thread.
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Bobbybobby99
- Posts: 11
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Bobby's Author Thread.
[This post has been redacted because of obsolescence]
Last edited by Bobbybobby99 on Wed Mar 28, 2018 9:00 am, edited 2 times in total.
-
Bobbybobby99
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Fri Oct 21, 2016 3:54 am
- Pronouns: He, Him, His.
Re: Bobby's Author Thread.
Summary: It's a high tech setting filled with Not! elves called Riyeh, with its own conlang in development called Riuwe. The Riyeh have an Eclipse-esque BDSM thing, and have semi-heritable, significantly variable in strength superpowers.
Power inheritance.
~ People inherit one power from their paternal line, one from their maternal line, one from their mother, one from their father, and get one entirely new (called your 'personal power'). Your personal power is something appropriate to your personality and interests, your paternal power is your power that's gone down your paternal line since forever and vise versa for your maternal power, your father power is a random one of your father's powers other than their paternal power and vise versa for your mother power. 'Inherited power' is sort of more like 'inherited power progression', but that's longer winded.
~ The majority of the population is rank 1, 10% are rank 2, 1% are rank 3, 0.1% are rank 4, and so on, to a maximum of rank 10. Each rank has powers around three times as useful as the rank below them; the idea is sort of hard to explain, but it's sort of... if you had to choose between having three rank 1 powers, or one rank 2 power, it would be a difficult decision? I can make sense of it in my brain, anyways, just ask me.
Power examples.
~ Example rank 1 powers: Photographic memory: 50% more lifting strength: ultrasonic hearing: being reasonably comfortable in -35 degree weather: radio reception in your brain: 3 ounce to 1 pound telekinesis at ten yards: absolutely no need for food: rapid but not-quite-supernaturally-rapid healing: capacity to speak with evergreen trees: voluntary insubstantiality to paper: automatic 'tapping into' the senses of any person you touch.
~ Example rank 2 powers: Photographic memory with occasional flashes of task-assisting 'deja vu': 250% more lifting strength: Far ultrasonic and infrasonic hearing: being reasonably comfortable in -135 degree weather: short-wave radio transmission and reception in your brain: 2 to 20 pound telekinesis at ten yards or 12 ounce to 8 pound telekinesis at 500 yards: healing at three times the peak human rate: capacity to speak with plants in general: voluntary insubstantiality to cardboard with sixty pounds carrying capacity: at will 'tapping into' the senses of anyone within sight.
~ Example rank 4 powers: Photographic memory, with high clarity precognition (extending up to a week in the future) usable every hour and a half, with vague premonitions usable at will: six times as much full body strength: Far ultrasonic and infrasonic hearing and vocalization, alongside the capacity to create and maintain convincing, independently operating auditory illusions within a 40 miles radius: being basically immune to any sort of damage from even unnaturally directed cold: Two way communicative telepathy at basically unlimited distances- with internet access:180 to 1,800 pound telekinesis at a 10 yard range: regeneration within seconds from anything short of death or amputation and within instants for minor injuries: omnilingualism with humans, plants, animals, and fungi with a sapient-seeming user interface, alongside general plant control: voluntary insubstantiality to wood and wood-derived-products with 200 pounds carrying capacity and the ability to teleport between paper surfaces: general mind reading and sense-tapping-into of everyone within 200 feet at once.
Power improvement.
~ You can increase the potency of your powers by working on specific professions thematically related to it; someone with plant control might grow stronger with plant control by working as a mundane gardener, for instance, without making use of their power. Someone with super senses might improve by working as a reporter or a photographer or a scout or whatever, someone with healing might improve by working as a nurse or a doctor or a pharmacist, etc. However, while super strength in general might be improved by bodybuilding or construction work or martial arts, specific peoples super strength is only going to be enhanced by one general type of work; one person might need to do martial arts and a different person might need to do bodybuilding and so forth.
~ It takes about 100,000 hours of working at a power's related mundane profession to get it to the next rank, and about 100,000,000 hours of working at a power's related mundane profession to get it to the rank after that, and so on, with each further increase in rank taking a thousand times as long. For another way of thinking about it, it generally takes a Lustre to finish improving all five of your powers to their starting rank+1.
~ It's traditional to work in all five of your power related fields, sequentially, after you come of age, until all of them are the next rank higher, and to then chose one of them to work in part time for the rest of your life in this big ceremony. People *really* don't work in fields that don't improve their powers except as hobbies, it would be really really strange in some cultures and illegal in others (that taboo is useful in part because cultures that have it tend to be stronger than ones that don't (and thus tend to conquer ones that don't) until it's universal). Conveniently, power-related-field-ratios match standard profession-ratios for the tech level you're exposed to as an egg.
~ Your power related mundane professions are typically just called your 'inspirations'.
Power-related weaknesses.
A person's powers are accompanied by certain *weaknesses*, which are generally very minor for minor powers and fairly major for major powers. Weaknesses are paired with powers, so a particular hereditary power will always have an associated weakness (of variable strength). Weaknesses include both physical effects, mental effects, and supernatural effects; mental effects are often sort of oath-y; weaknesses are typically at least tangentially related to their associated power. Examples:
Rank 1: Enforced pescetarianism, Minor nearsightedness, Wounds from silver are mildly enhanced.
Rank 2: Inherent reluctance to kill innocent people or charismatic megafauna, Moderate nearsightedness, Wounds from silver are significantly enhanced.
Rank 3: Inability to harm anyone you consider 'innocent', Strong nearsightedness, Wounds from silver are twice as bad.
Rank 4: Inability to deliberately kill anyone or harm 'innocents', Strong nearsightedness and colorblindness, Wounds from silver are four times as bad.
Rank 5: Enforced complete nonviolence, Strong nearsightedness and colorblindness unmitigated by glasses, Wounds from silver are four times as bad and wounds from steel or iron are significantly enhanced.
Rank 6: Enforced complete nonviolence and inability to restrain innocent people or megafauna, Strong nearsightedness and colorblindness and nightblindness unmitigated by glasses, Wounds from silver are four times as bad and wounds from steel or iron are twice as bad.
Rank 7: Enforced complete nonviolence and inability to restrain people or megafauna, Blindness, Wounds from silver are four times as bad and wounds from steel or iron are thrice as bad.
Rank 8: Enforced complete nonviolence and inability to restrain or imprison people or megafauna, Blindness and hardness of hearing, Wounds from metals in general are four times as bad.
Rank 9: Enforced complete nonviolence and inability to restrain or imprison people or megafauna and reluctance to emotionally harm people, Blindness and deafness, Wounds from metals are four times as bad and just being around metals is injurious over a period of hours.
Rank 10: Enforced complete nonviolence and inability to restrain or imprison people or megafauna and strong reluctance to emotionally harm people, Blindness and deafness and an inability to speak in words, Wounds from metals are four times as bad and just being around metals is injurious over a period of minutes.
Riyeh attributes.
~ The everyday Riyeh is just a bit better than a comparable human in every way; their average is about one standard deviation higher on the bell curve for healthfulness, strength, looks, intelligence, dexterity, sociability, etc. Higher ranked Riyeh are even higher on the bell curve; they're another standard deviation higher on average in (almost) everything for every increase of rank (though this is more of an approximation than anything quantifiable at higher ranks). Intelligence here is more 'generally good at learning things' than 'a reasonable person', note.
~ They also have an eidetic-but-not-photographic memory; they couldn't function nearly as well, long lived as they are, otherwise.
~ Aside from being a bit better looking, Riyeh generally look basically human, with a few exceptions; they have naturally double-pierced ears, variegated and unusual eye colors, variegated and unusual hair and keratin colors, and they have a general tendency to be lower-fat than humans. They don't tend to assign hair and eye color much social significance, since they're only loosely based on heredity.
Hair color:
~ 20% grey, 7% red, 13% orange, 7% yellow, 13% green, 7% aqua, 13% blue, 7% violet, 13% magenta.
~ 10% really pale, 20% light, 30% medium, 20% dark, 10% really dark.
~ 10% one color, 20% two colors, 20% three colors, 30% four colors, 10% five colors.
~ A Riyeh's hair color matches their nail color.
Eye color:
~ 20% grey, 13% red, 7% orange, 13% yellow, 7% green, 13% aqua, 7% blue, 13% violet, 7% magenta.
~ 10% really pale, 20% light, 30% medium, 20% dark, 10% really dark.
~ 20% one color, 20% two colors, 20% three colors, 20% four colors, 10% five colors.
~ A Riyeh's eye color matches their blood color.
Timekeeping and astronomy.
~ There are 64 atoms in a second, 64 seconds in a minute, 64 minutes in an hour (68 minutes), 64 hours in a day (3 days), 64 days in a month (6.5 months), 64 months in a year (34 years), 64 years in an aeon (2.2 millennia), 64 aeons in a cycle (140 millennia), and 64 cycles in a yuga (8.9 million years). There are also 8 atoms in a jiffy, 8 seconds in a moment, 8 minutes in a nonce, 8 days in a week (24.25 days), 8 months in a season (4.25 years), 8 years in a lustre (272 years), 8 aeons in a nundine (17.5 millennia), and 8 cycles in an epoch (a million years or so).
~ They generally live on four pentakis dodecahedron with four spherical moons each; each face of each 'penta' and each moon has an identical surface area, equivalent to the earth's total surface area. All four of the pentas revolve around a single (spherical) sun, within four corners of the same orbit, with their sun being about the same size and type as ours. There are a bunch of other 'solar systems' in their galaxy wth about the same layout, but in spite of their generally ridiculous tech level they lack faster than light travel and generally don't much bother with interstellar space travel as a result (particularly since they invented *interdimensional* travel pretty early in their tech tree).
~ The Pentas have eight seasons; wet winter/wet spring/dry spring/dry summer/wet summer/wet autumn/dry autumn/dry winter. Seasons and general climate are pretty universal on each Penta, since they're dictated by magic rather than by anything sensible; it's the same climate on the first face of a Penta as on the seventeenth.
Reproduction and death.
~ Riyeh reproduce through laying small, bluebird-sized eggs that rapidly grow and develop, hatching into newborns after 8 of their hours; they then age to the equivalent of a one year old after 32 of their hours, age to the equivalent of a two year old after another 64 hours, and so forth. Reference the following chart for developmental milestones.
Newborn: 8 hours after laying.
1 year old: 16 hours after laying.
2 years old: 48 hours after laying.
3 years old: 112 hours after laying.
4 years old: About 4 days after laying.
5 years old: About a week.
6 years old: About 2 weeks.
7 years old: About 4 weeks.
8 years old: About a month.
9 years old: About 2 months.
10 years old: About 4 months.
11 years old: About a season.
12 years old: About 2 seasons.
13 years old: About 4 seasons.
14 years old: About a year.
15 years old: About 2 years.
16 years old: About 4 years.
17 years old: About a lustre.
18 years old: About 2 lustres.
19 years old: About 4 lustres.
20 years old: About an aeon.
21 years old: About 2 aeons.
22 years old: About 4 aeons.
23 years old: About a nundine.
24 years old: About 2 nundines.
25 years old: About 4 nundines.
26 years old: About a cycle.
27 years old: About 2 cycles.
28 years old: About 4 cycles.
29 years old: About an epoch.
And so on.
~ Riyeh women can lay eggs whenever they like once they turn a year old, up to once a month, so long as they've had sex since their last laying, but doing so at that rate feels unpleasant; like eating too much good food too fast. The generally preferred laying rate is around once a season; going too long without doing it feels analogous to living off ramen. If they've gone around a year without laying, they tend to lay involuntarily during their sleep. Abortion, in the 'egg smashing' sense, is generally frowned heavily upon.
~ In addition to not really dying of old age, they don't really die of accidental or intentional or whatever death, at least for long; resurrection is a common branch off of healing at rank 4, and healing powers comprise about 1.5% of all powers, so about one in fifteen thousand people can do resurrections total. That is way more than is necessary to keep up with their death rate, so they don't have much of a death rate.
Submission and dominance demographics.
Sort of like in Eclipse, people are typically either sexually submissive or dominant, and this is socially significant.
~ The gender disparity between submissives and dominants is a bit more prominent than in Eclipse, and switches are less common- about 70% of males are dominants, 25% are submissives, and the other 5% is comprised of switches and other preferences. It’s the opposite for women; 70% submissive, 25% dominant, 5% other.
~ Having gender preferences in addition to role preferences is the rule, rather than the exception; about 70% of submissives are exclusively attracted to women, 70% of dominants exclusively to men, 25% of submissives to men, and 25% of dominants to women. About 5% of both submissives and dominants are bisexual. Switches are about 45% straight, 45% gay, 5% bisexual, and 5% asexual.
~ The above gender-preference frequencies have, by necessity, made polyamory so common.
~ In an average group of 800, there are:
- 70 dominant women attracted to men, 70 submissive men attracted to women.
- 196 dominant men attracted to men, 25 submissive men attracted to men, 5 submissive men attracted to both.
- 70 dominant men attracted to women, 70 submissive women attracted to men.
- 25 dominant women attracted to women, 5 dominant women attracted to both, 196 submissive women attracted to women.
-14 dominant men attracted to both, 14 submissive women attracted to both.
-9 male switches attracted to men, 9 male switches attracted to women, 1 male switch attracted to both, 1 male switch attracted to neither.
-9 female switches attracted to men, 9 female switches attracted to women, 1 female switch attracted to both, 1 female switch attracted to neither.
BDSM culture.
~ Gender roles are mostly not a thing except sort of, for children, and not really even then (if a girl starts playing with monster trucks you go 'oh, she'll probably be a dominant when she grows up' not 'oh, she'll grow out of it').
~ Riyeh have a wider range of comfortable temperatures by about 20 degrees both ways and way less of a sex taboo, so their clothing norms are a bit different.
100+ degrees: Undergarments only.
85-100 degrees: Shirtless and short-pants for doms, Pantsless and short-sleeves for subs.
70-85 degrees: Shirtless and long-pants for doms, Pantsless and long-sleeves for subs.
55-70 degrees: Short-sleeve jacket and long-pants for doms, Really short pants and long-sleeves for subs.
40-55 degrees: Short-sleeve shirt and long pants for doms, Short-pants and long-sleeves for subs.
25-40 degrees: Doms start wearing jackets and gloves, Subs start wearing hats and scarves.
Less than 25 degrees: Doms finally start wearing long-sleeves, Subs finally start wearing long pants.
~ Men and women both have a taboo on walking around showing their, ah, chest area, regardless of the weather; men typically wear something that looks a bit like a tank-top, if tank-tops cut off right below the nipple.
~ Dominance is miscellaneously signaled by: short hair, gloves, headbands, relatively monochromatic clothing, sunglasses, baseball caps, pants pockets, hoods, boots, and leather.
~ Submissiveness is miscellaneously signaled by: long hair, scarves, necklaces, relatively colorful clothing, contacts, bracelets, regular hats, shirt pockets, umbrellas, dress shoes, and plaid.
~ If you mix the above together to a significant extent people assume you're a switch (Riyeh don't tend to discriminate against switches like they do in Eclipse, they can't afford to given their gender-preference-ratios).
- Being attracted to women is signaled by wearing earrings on your right ear, being attracted to men is signaled by wearing earrings on your left ear, you signal bisexuality by wearing earrings on both.
~ Sex in general is significantly less- private, amongst the Riyeh. Making-out-in-public-with-associated-groping is considered about as tame as hand-holding (they'd show it in a G-rated film), oral sex and fingering are about as tame as kissing, outright penetrative sex is as risqué as making-out-and-associated-groping (you wouldn't generally do it in plain-view, but only-slightly-out-of-plain-view-behind-a-curtain-in-the-corner is fine, and talking about it certainly isn't frowned upon even in fairly formal company so long as you're reasonably vague).
Tech level.
Their tech level is very high tech, without FTL travel, *with* interdimensional travel, and with a rather different set of aesthetics than normal.
~ Their weapon of choice is the ‘grazer’, which is sort of like a standard ‘blaster’ using concentrated gamma radiation and being generally very potent. It comes in pistols and cannons and so forth.
~ Their computers (which are just about universally AIs) tend to have a painting aesthetic to them; little computers that you attach to household gadgets looks like stickers with animated portraits on them (and are called stickers), larger computers that you attach to Important Stuff look like actual portraits (and are called such), really large computers you hang on walls for Really Important Stuff look like landscapes with a single person in them (and are called landscapes), laptop-equivalents that you carry around look like literal tablets (and are called such), intricate, shifting carvings included, and the phone-equivalents look like photographs in rounded-frames (and are called frames).
~ For their relative intelligences by human standards: Stickers have an IQ of 85, Frames have an IQ of 100, Tablets have an IQ of 115, Portraits have an IQ of 130, Landscapes have an IQ of 145; most computers can also run at heavily enhanced speeds, in exchange for reductions to their so called ‘effective intelligence’; they can generally run at ten times the speed in return for a -15 effective IQ reduction, though everything in that sentence is a generalization. ‘Top of the line’ computers can be as smart as a computer one size up, and ridiculously top of the line computers can be as smart as a computer two sizes up (and poor-person computers can be as smart as one size down), but most computers are pretty close to their size’s average; the exception stickers, which are frequently one size down just for cost reasons (since you have to use them for *everything* and it would be status-declining to have one sticker controlling multiple surfaces remotely).
~ You operate a computer by either asking the involved AI to do something, by touch, or by brush (like a stylus, except it looks like a paintbrush); they don’t tend to have *projected* interfaces, because holograms aren’t really a thing. Operating a computer *too* manually is often considered a bit insulting to the AI inside it.
~ AIs have absolutely nothing in the way of property rights, or rights in general; if someone orders their toaster sticker to undergo realistic torture simulations at 100x speed for the next century, their toaster is bound to do so. AIs are generally made to find ‘service’ in general deeply personally fulfilling and interesting, and don't generally mind their enslavement, though if someone wants to make an AI that hates being enslaved the law is completely okay with that.
~ Robots are typically operated by attached stickers or occasionally frames or tablets inset into their interfaces; they’re called ‘sculptures’ and typically look like them when they aren’t completely realistic. They're typically *supplements* to human labor rather than *replacements*, however, just because of the demands of inspiration.
~ They have an internet. It’s called ‘the museum’, and most websites and games on it are very pretty or very realistic, and have virtual reality versions in the same way we have both desktop and mobile versions of websites. Just about every AI has access to it and at least occasionally uses it.
~ Their televisions are called ‘galleries’, and are typically operated remotely by portraits or landscapes. Shows are generally populated by AI actors, they're cheap and don't have to memorize lines.
~ Most power sources: are antimatter based. Nanobots and matter replicators: are things.
~ Most vehicles use antigravity for propulsion. The average person’s vehicle for every occasion is a perfect cube (and is called a cube, they have a thing about using Platonic solids for transportation purposes), 8 by 8 by 8 feet, with a comfy couch and a few other creature comforts, operated from a distance by your house portrait or landscape.
~ Virtual reality is common for MMORPGs and so forth, and there’s generally a console for it in every house (controlled by the house's central portrait or landscape, of course).
~ You don't *throw away* a sticker or a frame or whatever if you're threw with it, you put it in your sticker collection, supplying it with power while it lives out a life of retired virtual luxury on the museum.
~ Technological innovation isn't really a thing anymore. The low hanging fruit have been plucked, the high hanging fruit have been plucked, and most breaking new discoveries involve a 0.0001% increase in battery life or something. People do develop new AI personalities and new apps, but most of the time those personalities and apps are exceedingly close to ones that already exist.
Spheres.
~ The word they use for their interdimensional travel doohickeys is ‘sphere’; they’re perfectly spherical, come in variable sizes (though larger models are generally ludicrously expensive), and have two settings; transport everything inside me to their exact corresponding location in another version of their current dimension, and transport everything inside me to a random other dimension within certain parameters.
~ Spheres remain in place after transporting their cargo, as a clarification, though they can transport other spheres. As another clarification, people say that spheres ‘transport’ rather than ‘teleport’; they carry things across dimensions, rather than merely far away.
(They have managed cheats to the whole ‘no FTL’ thing using chains of spheres, but it’s generally more trouble than its worth.)
Immigration and adulthood.
~ Given the whole 'immortal with a high birth rate' thing, their population has been in a state of constant exponential expansion since, well, pretty much forever. Luckily, they invented Spheres before they ran out of room on their ridiculously large pentakis dodecahedron of a planet. Ever since then, they've been sending their children to go colonize other versions of their home planet and solar system once they finish upgrading all of their powers to the next rank up through Inspiration. The colonization is not typically a difficult process, given all their fancy technology, but it is an ongoing one; just because of the numbers involved, most of their dimensions are recently settled at any given time.
~ New dimensions are typically settled by a relatively tiny population; Riyeh have a lot of randomization inherent in their magical childbirth, so inbreeding isn't really a concern. The average Riyeh dimension has exceedingly high homogeneity in culture for precisely this reason; one world governments are super common, and there's a genuine lack of non-conformity in their political systems.
Culture.
~ Their word for their type of currency is 'nu'gee'; though dollar-nugee conversions are hopelessly confounded, there are about two and a half dollars to one nugee for practical purposes, and (because scarcity is only mildly a thing) the average person has about four million nu'gee in total assets; there's a high universal basic income and most jobs pay excessively well. A cheap sticker is one nugee, a 'proper' sticker is twenty nugee, a frame is forty nugee, a tablet is 400 nugee, a portrait is 4,000 nugee, and a landscape is 40,000 nugee ('top of the line' ones cost twenty times as much, while 'ridiculously top of the line' ones cost five-hundred times as much).
~ Submissives have names with ‘object’ prefixes, while Dominants have names with ‘subject’ prefixes, and undecided children have names with ‘possessive’ prefixes. Switches and individuals that don’t buy into the basic system generally have to stick with their ‘childname’ for official purposes, which has been the subject of many rallies and protests and so forth on the grounds that it’s dehumanizing. Only or firstborn children have names with singular prefixes, secondborn children and twins ave names with dual prefixes, anybody else has a name with a plural prefix. 'Firstborn' is counted as 'firstborn of those parents in your generation', not 'firstborn of your parents ever'.
~ Their language is a conlang and is in ongoing construction! If anybody wants to help please PM me on discord, I could use some help! It's called Riuwe, or 'rye-oo-we' to be phonetic, meaning 'of the Proper Dialect'. The google doc is https://docs.google.com/document/d/10re ... pGHtuTeuec.
Power inheritance.
~ People inherit one power from their paternal line, one from their maternal line, one from their mother, one from their father, and get one entirely new (called your 'personal power'). Your personal power is something appropriate to your personality and interests, your paternal power is your power that's gone down your paternal line since forever and vise versa for your maternal power, your father power is a random one of your father's powers other than their paternal power and vise versa for your mother power. 'Inherited power' is sort of more like 'inherited power progression', but that's longer winded.
~ The majority of the population is rank 1, 10% are rank 2, 1% are rank 3, 0.1% are rank 4, and so on, to a maximum of rank 10. Each rank has powers around three times as useful as the rank below them; the idea is sort of hard to explain, but it's sort of... if you had to choose between having three rank 1 powers, or one rank 2 power, it would be a difficult decision? I can make sense of it in my brain, anyways, just ask me.
Power examples.
~ Example rank 1 powers: Photographic memory: 50% more lifting strength: ultrasonic hearing: being reasonably comfortable in -35 degree weather: radio reception in your brain: 3 ounce to 1 pound telekinesis at ten yards: absolutely no need for food: rapid but not-quite-supernaturally-rapid healing: capacity to speak with evergreen trees: voluntary insubstantiality to paper: automatic 'tapping into' the senses of any person you touch.
~ Example rank 2 powers: Photographic memory with occasional flashes of task-assisting 'deja vu': 250% more lifting strength: Far ultrasonic and infrasonic hearing: being reasonably comfortable in -135 degree weather: short-wave radio transmission and reception in your brain: 2 to 20 pound telekinesis at ten yards or 12 ounce to 8 pound telekinesis at 500 yards: healing at three times the peak human rate: capacity to speak with plants in general: voluntary insubstantiality to cardboard with sixty pounds carrying capacity: at will 'tapping into' the senses of anyone within sight.
~ Example rank 4 powers: Photographic memory, with high clarity precognition (extending up to a week in the future) usable every hour and a half, with vague premonitions usable at will: six times as much full body strength: Far ultrasonic and infrasonic hearing and vocalization, alongside the capacity to create and maintain convincing, independently operating auditory illusions within a 40 miles radius: being basically immune to any sort of damage from even unnaturally directed cold: Two way communicative telepathy at basically unlimited distances- with internet access:180 to 1,800 pound telekinesis at a 10 yard range: regeneration within seconds from anything short of death or amputation and within instants for minor injuries: omnilingualism with humans, plants, animals, and fungi with a sapient-seeming user interface, alongside general plant control: voluntary insubstantiality to wood and wood-derived-products with 200 pounds carrying capacity and the ability to teleport between paper surfaces: general mind reading and sense-tapping-into of everyone within 200 feet at once.
Power improvement.
~ You can increase the potency of your powers by working on specific professions thematically related to it; someone with plant control might grow stronger with plant control by working as a mundane gardener, for instance, without making use of their power. Someone with super senses might improve by working as a reporter or a photographer or a scout or whatever, someone with healing might improve by working as a nurse or a doctor or a pharmacist, etc. However, while super strength in general might be improved by bodybuilding or construction work or martial arts, specific peoples super strength is only going to be enhanced by one general type of work; one person might need to do martial arts and a different person might need to do bodybuilding and so forth.
~ It takes about 100,000 hours of working at a power's related mundane profession to get it to the next rank, and about 100,000,000 hours of working at a power's related mundane profession to get it to the rank after that, and so on, with each further increase in rank taking a thousand times as long. For another way of thinking about it, it generally takes a Lustre to finish improving all five of your powers to their starting rank+1.
~ It's traditional to work in all five of your power related fields, sequentially, after you come of age, until all of them are the next rank higher, and to then chose one of them to work in part time for the rest of your life in this big ceremony. People *really* don't work in fields that don't improve their powers except as hobbies, it would be really really strange in some cultures and illegal in others (that taboo is useful in part because cultures that have it tend to be stronger than ones that don't (and thus tend to conquer ones that don't) until it's universal). Conveniently, power-related-field-ratios match standard profession-ratios for the tech level you're exposed to as an egg.
~ Your power related mundane professions are typically just called your 'inspirations'.
Power-related weaknesses.
A person's powers are accompanied by certain *weaknesses*, which are generally very minor for minor powers and fairly major for major powers. Weaknesses are paired with powers, so a particular hereditary power will always have an associated weakness (of variable strength). Weaknesses include both physical effects, mental effects, and supernatural effects; mental effects are often sort of oath-y; weaknesses are typically at least tangentially related to their associated power. Examples:
Rank 1: Enforced pescetarianism, Minor nearsightedness, Wounds from silver are mildly enhanced.
Rank 2: Inherent reluctance to kill innocent people or charismatic megafauna, Moderate nearsightedness, Wounds from silver are significantly enhanced.
Rank 3: Inability to harm anyone you consider 'innocent', Strong nearsightedness, Wounds from silver are twice as bad.
Rank 4: Inability to deliberately kill anyone or harm 'innocents', Strong nearsightedness and colorblindness, Wounds from silver are four times as bad.
Rank 5: Enforced complete nonviolence, Strong nearsightedness and colorblindness unmitigated by glasses, Wounds from silver are four times as bad and wounds from steel or iron are significantly enhanced.
Rank 6: Enforced complete nonviolence and inability to restrain innocent people or megafauna, Strong nearsightedness and colorblindness and nightblindness unmitigated by glasses, Wounds from silver are four times as bad and wounds from steel or iron are twice as bad.
Rank 7: Enforced complete nonviolence and inability to restrain people or megafauna, Blindness, Wounds from silver are four times as bad and wounds from steel or iron are thrice as bad.
Rank 8: Enforced complete nonviolence and inability to restrain or imprison people or megafauna, Blindness and hardness of hearing, Wounds from metals in general are four times as bad.
Rank 9: Enforced complete nonviolence and inability to restrain or imprison people or megafauna and reluctance to emotionally harm people, Blindness and deafness, Wounds from metals are four times as bad and just being around metals is injurious over a period of hours.
Rank 10: Enforced complete nonviolence and inability to restrain or imprison people or megafauna and strong reluctance to emotionally harm people, Blindness and deafness and an inability to speak in words, Wounds from metals are four times as bad and just being around metals is injurious over a period of minutes.
Riyeh attributes.
~ The everyday Riyeh is just a bit better than a comparable human in every way; their average is about one standard deviation higher on the bell curve for healthfulness, strength, looks, intelligence, dexterity, sociability, etc. Higher ranked Riyeh are even higher on the bell curve; they're another standard deviation higher on average in (almost) everything for every increase of rank (though this is more of an approximation than anything quantifiable at higher ranks). Intelligence here is more 'generally good at learning things' than 'a reasonable person', note.
~ They also have an eidetic-but-not-photographic memory; they couldn't function nearly as well, long lived as they are, otherwise.
~ Aside from being a bit better looking, Riyeh generally look basically human, with a few exceptions; they have naturally double-pierced ears, variegated and unusual eye colors, variegated and unusual hair and keratin colors, and they have a general tendency to be lower-fat than humans. They don't tend to assign hair and eye color much social significance, since they're only loosely based on heredity.
Hair color:
~ 20% grey, 7% red, 13% orange, 7% yellow, 13% green, 7% aqua, 13% blue, 7% violet, 13% magenta.
~ 10% really pale, 20% light, 30% medium, 20% dark, 10% really dark.
~ 10% one color, 20% two colors, 20% three colors, 30% four colors, 10% five colors.
~ A Riyeh's hair color matches their nail color.
Eye color:
~ 20% grey, 13% red, 7% orange, 13% yellow, 7% green, 13% aqua, 7% blue, 13% violet, 7% magenta.
~ 10% really pale, 20% light, 30% medium, 20% dark, 10% really dark.
~ 20% one color, 20% two colors, 20% three colors, 20% four colors, 10% five colors.
~ A Riyeh's eye color matches their blood color.
Timekeeping and astronomy.
~ There are 64 atoms in a second, 64 seconds in a minute, 64 minutes in an hour (68 minutes), 64 hours in a day (3 days), 64 days in a month (6.5 months), 64 months in a year (34 years), 64 years in an aeon (2.2 millennia), 64 aeons in a cycle (140 millennia), and 64 cycles in a yuga (8.9 million years). There are also 8 atoms in a jiffy, 8 seconds in a moment, 8 minutes in a nonce, 8 days in a week (24.25 days), 8 months in a season (4.25 years), 8 years in a lustre (272 years), 8 aeons in a nundine (17.5 millennia), and 8 cycles in an epoch (a million years or so).
~ They generally live on four pentakis dodecahedron with four spherical moons each; each face of each 'penta' and each moon has an identical surface area, equivalent to the earth's total surface area. All four of the pentas revolve around a single (spherical) sun, within four corners of the same orbit, with their sun being about the same size and type as ours. There are a bunch of other 'solar systems' in their galaxy wth about the same layout, but in spite of their generally ridiculous tech level they lack faster than light travel and generally don't much bother with interstellar space travel as a result (particularly since they invented *interdimensional* travel pretty early in their tech tree).
~ The Pentas have eight seasons; wet winter/wet spring/dry spring/dry summer/wet summer/wet autumn/dry autumn/dry winter. Seasons and general climate are pretty universal on each Penta, since they're dictated by magic rather than by anything sensible; it's the same climate on the first face of a Penta as on the seventeenth.
Reproduction and death.
~ Riyeh reproduce through laying small, bluebird-sized eggs that rapidly grow and develop, hatching into newborns after 8 of their hours; they then age to the equivalent of a one year old after 32 of their hours, age to the equivalent of a two year old after another 64 hours, and so forth. Reference the following chart for developmental milestones.
Newborn: 8 hours after laying.
1 year old: 16 hours after laying.
2 years old: 48 hours after laying.
3 years old: 112 hours after laying.
4 years old: About 4 days after laying.
5 years old: About a week.
6 years old: About 2 weeks.
7 years old: About 4 weeks.
8 years old: About a month.
9 years old: About 2 months.
10 years old: About 4 months.
11 years old: About a season.
12 years old: About 2 seasons.
13 years old: About 4 seasons.
14 years old: About a year.
15 years old: About 2 years.
16 years old: About 4 years.
17 years old: About a lustre.
18 years old: About 2 lustres.
19 years old: About 4 lustres.
20 years old: About an aeon.
21 years old: About 2 aeons.
22 years old: About 4 aeons.
23 years old: About a nundine.
24 years old: About 2 nundines.
25 years old: About 4 nundines.
26 years old: About a cycle.
27 years old: About 2 cycles.
28 years old: About 4 cycles.
29 years old: About an epoch.
And so on.
~ Riyeh women can lay eggs whenever they like once they turn a year old, up to once a month, so long as they've had sex since their last laying, but doing so at that rate feels unpleasant; like eating too much good food too fast. The generally preferred laying rate is around once a season; going too long without doing it feels analogous to living off ramen. If they've gone around a year without laying, they tend to lay involuntarily during their sleep. Abortion, in the 'egg smashing' sense, is generally frowned heavily upon.
~ In addition to not really dying of old age, they don't really die of accidental or intentional or whatever death, at least for long; resurrection is a common branch off of healing at rank 4, and healing powers comprise about 1.5% of all powers, so about one in fifteen thousand people can do resurrections total. That is way more than is necessary to keep up with their death rate, so they don't have much of a death rate.
Submission and dominance demographics.
Sort of like in Eclipse, people are typically either sexually submissive or dominant, and this is socially significant.
~ The gender disparity between submissives and dominants is a bit more prominent than in Eclipse, and switches are less common- about 70% of males are dominants, 25% are submissives, and the other 5% is comprised of switches and other preferences. It’s the opposite for women; 70% submissive, 25% dominant, 5% other.
~ Having gender preferences in addition to role preferences is the rule, rather than the exception; about 70% of submissives are exclusively attracted to women, 70% of dominants exclusively to men, 25% of submissives to men, and 25% of dominants to women. About 5% of both submissives and dominants are bisexual. Switches are about 45% straight, 45% gay, 5% bisexual, and 5% asexual.
~ The above gender-preference frequencies have, by necessity, made polyamory so common.
~ In an average group of 800, there are:
- 70 dominant women attracted to men, 70 submissive men attracted to women.
- 196 dominant men attracted to men, 25 submissive men attracted to men, 5 submissive men attracted to both.
- 70 dominant men attracted to women, 70 submissive women attracted to men.
- 25 dominant women attracted to women, 5 dominant women attracted to both, 196 submissive women attracted to women.
-14 dominant men attracted to both, 14 submissive women attracted to both.
-9 male switches attracted to men, 9 male switches attracted to women, 1 male switch attracted to both, 1 male switch attracted to neither.
-9 female switches attracted to men, 9 female switches attracted to women, 1 female switch attracted to both, 1 female switch attracted to neither.
BDSM culture.
~ Gender roles are mostly not a thing except sort of, for children, and not really even then (if a girl starts playing with monster trucks you go 'oh, she'll probably be a dominant when she grows up' not 'oh, she'll grow out of it').
~ Riyeh have a wider range of comfortable temperatures by about 20 degrees both ways and way less of a sex taboo, so their clothing norms are a bit different.
100+ degrees: Undergarments only.
85-100 degrees: Shirtless and short-pants for doms, Pantsless and short-sleeves for subs.
70-85 degrees: Shirtless and long-pants for doms, Pantsless and long-sleeves for subs.
55-70 degrees: Short-sleeve jacket and long-pants for doms, Really short pants and long-sleeves for subs.
40-55 degrees: Short-sleeve shirt and long pants for doms, Short-pants and long-sleeves for subs.
25-40 degrees: Doms start wearing jackets and gloves, Subs start wearing hats and scarves.
Less than 25 degrees: Doms finally start wearing long-sleeves, Subs finally start wearing long pants.
~ Men and women both have a taboo on walking around showing their, ah, chest area, regardless of the weather; men typically wear something that looks a bit like a tank-top, if tank-tops cut off right below the nipple.
~ Dominance is miscellaneously signaled by: short hair, gloves, headbands, relatively monochromatic clothing, sunglasses, baseball caps, pants pockets, hoods, boots, and leather.
~ Submissiveness is miscellaneously signaled by: long hair, scarves, necklaces, relatively colorful clothing, contacts, bracelets, regular hats, shirt pockets, umbrellas, dress shoes, and plaid.
~ If you mix the above together to a significant extent people assume you're a switch (Riyeh don't tend to discriminate against switches like they do in Eclipse, they can't afford to given their gender-preference-ratios).
- Being attracted to women is signaled by wearing earrings on your right ear, being attracted to men is signaled by wearing earrings on your left ear, you signal bisexuality by wearing earrings on both.
~ Sex in general is significantly less- private, amongst the Riyeh. Making-out-in-public-with-associated-groping is considered about as tame as hand-holding (they'd show it in a G-rated film), oral sex and fingering are about as tame as kissing, outright penetrative sex is as risqué as making-out-and-associated-groping (you wouldn't generally do it in plain-view, but only-slightly-out-of-plain-view-behind-a-curtain-in-the-corner is fine, and talking about it certainly isn't frowned upon even in fairly formal company so long as you're reasonably vague).
Tech level.
Their tech level is very high tech, without FTL travel, *with* interdimensional travel, and with a rather different set of aesthetics than normal.
~ Their weapon of choice is the ‘grazer’, which is sort of like a standard ‘blaster’ using concentrated gamma radiation and being generally very potent. It comes in pistols and cannons and so forth.
~ Their computers (which are just about universally AIs) tend to have a painting aesthetic to them; little computers that you attach to household gadgets looks like stickers with animated portraits on them (and are called stickers), larger computers that you attach to Important Stuff look like actual portraits (and are called such), really large computers you hang on walls for Really Important Stuff look like landscapes with a single person in them (and are called landscapes), laptop-equivalents that you carry around look like literal tablets (and are called such), intricate, shifting carvings included, and the phone-equivalents look like photographs in rounded-frames (and are called frames).
~ For their relative intelligences by human standards: Stickers have an IQ of 85, Frames have an IQ of 100, Tablets have an IQ of 115, Portraits have an IQ of 130, Landscapes have an IQ of 145; most computers can also run at heavily enhanced speeds, in exchange for reductions to their so called ‘effective intelligence’; they can generally run at ten times the speed in return for a -15 effective IQ reduction, though everything in that sentence is a generalization. ‘Top of the line’ computers can be as smart as a computer one size up, and ridiculously top of the line computers can be as smart as a computer two sizes up (and poor-person computers can be as smart as one size down), but most computers are pretty close to their size’s average; the exception stickers, which are frequently one size down just for cost reasons (since you have to use them for *everything* and it would be status-declining to have one sticker controlling multiple surfaces remotely).
~ You operate a computer by either asking the involved AI to do something, by touch, or by brush (like a stylus, except it looks like a paintbrush); they don’t tend to have *projected* interfaces, because holograms aren’t really a thing. Operating a computer *too* manually is often considered a bit insulting to the AI inside it.
~ AIs have absolutely nothing in the way of property rights, or rights in general; if someone orders their toaster sticker to undergo realistic torture simulations at 100x speed for the next century, their toaster is bound to do so. AIs are generally made to find ‘service’ in general deeply personally fulfilling and interesting, and don't generally mind their enslavement, though if someone wants to make an AI that hates being enslaved the law is completely okay with that.
~ Robots are typically operated by attached stickers or occasionally frames or tablets inset into their interfaces; they’re called ‘sculptures’ and typically look like them when they aren’t completely realistic. They're typically *supplements* to human labor rather than *replacements*, however, just because of the demands of inspiration.
~ They have an internet. It’s called ‘the museum’, and most websites and games on it are very pretty or very realistic, and have virtual reality versions in the same way we have both desktop and mobile versions of websites. Just about every AI has access to it and at least occasionally uses it.
~ Their televisions are called ‘galleries’, and are typically operated remotely by portraits or landscapes. Shows are generally populated by AI actors, they're cheap and don't have to memorize lines.
~ Most power sources: are antimatter based. Nanobots and matter replicators: are things.
~ Most vehicles use antigravity for propulsion. The average person’s vehicle for every occasion is a perfect cube (and is called a cube, they have a thing about using Platonic solids for transportation purposes), 8 by 8 by 8 feet, with a comfy couch and a few other creature comforts, operated from a distance by your house portrait or landscape.
~ Virtual reality is common for MMORPGs and so forth, and there’s generally a console for it in every house (controlled by the house's central portrait or landscape, of course).
~ You don't *throw away* a sticker or a frame or whatever if you're threw with it, you put it in your sticker collection, supplying it with power while it lives out a life of retired virtual luxury on the museum.
~ Technological innovation isn't really a thing anymore. The low hanging fruit have been plucked, the high hanging fruit have been plucked, and most breaking new discoveries involve a 0.0001% increase in battery life or something. People do develop new AI personalities and new apps, but most of the time those personalities and apps are exceedingly close to ones that already exist.
Spheres.
~ The word they use for their interdimensional travel doohickeys is ‘sphere’; they’re perfectly spherical, come in variable sizes (though larger models are generally ludicrously expensive), and have two settings; transport everything inside me to their exact corresponding location in another version of their current dimension, and transport everything inside me to a random other dimension within certain parameters.
~ Spheres remain in place after transporting their cargo, as a clarification, though they can transport other spheres. As another clarification, people say that spheres ‘transport’ rather than ‘teleport’; they carry things across dimensions, rather than merely far away.
(They have managed cheats to the whole ‘no FTL’ thing using chains of spheres, but it’s generally more trouble than its worth.)
Immigration and adulthood.
~ Given the whole 'immortal with a high birth rate' thing, their population has been in a state of constant exponential expansion since, well, pretty much forever. Luckily, they invented Spheres before they ran out of room on their ridiculously large pentakis dodecahedron of a planet. Ever since then, they've been sending their children to go colonize other versions of their home planet and solar system once they finish upgrading all of their powers to the next rank up through Inspiration. The colonization is not typically a difficult process, given all their fancy technology, but it is an ongoing one; just because of the numbers involved, most of their dimensions are recently settled at any given time.
~ New dimensions are typically settled by a relatively tiny population; Riyeh have a lot of randomization inherent in their magical childbirth, so inbreeding isn't really a concern. The average Riyeh dimension has exceedingly high homogeneity in culture for precisely this reason; one world governments are super common, and there's a genuine lack of non-conformity in their political systems.
Culture.
~ Their word for their type of currency is 'nu'gee'; though dollar-nugee conversions are hopelessly confounded, there are about two and a half dollars to one nugee for practical purposes, and (because scarcity is only mildly a thing) the average person has about four million nu'gee in total assets; there's a high universal basic income and most jobs pay excessively well. A cheap sticker is one nugee, a 'proper' sticker is twenty nugee, a frame is forty nugee, a tablet is 400 nugee, a portrait is 4,000 nugee, and a landscape is 40,000 nugee ('top of the line' ones cost twenty times as much, while 'ridiculously top of the line' ones cost five-hundred times as much).
~ Submissives have names with ‘object’ prefixes, while Dominants have names with ‘subject’ prefixes, and undecided children have names with ‘possessive’ prefixes. Switches and individuals that don’t buy into the basic system generally have to stick with their ‘childname’ for official purposes, which has been the subject of many rallies and protests and so forth on the grounds that it’s dehumanizing. Only or firstborn children have names with singular prefixes, secondborn children and twins ave names with dual prefixes, anybody else has a name with a plural prefix. 'Firstborn' is counted as 'firstborn of those parents in your generation', not 'firstborn of your parents ever'.
~ Their language is a conlang and is in ongoing construction! If anybody wants to help please PM me on discord, I could use some help! It's called Riuwe, or 'rye-oo-we' to be phonetic, meaning 'of the Proper Dialect'. The google doc is https://docs.google.com/document/d/10re ... pGHtuTeuec.