Daevinity Worldbuilding Info

[DanielH]

Given that they can make non-demonic kittens by making a demonic female cat in early pregnancy, I assume so.

I assume medical technology keeps advancing. Would Cam notice when it got good enough to reliably keep completely braindead pregnant humans alive for nine months?

[Moriwen]

Oh, I had forgotten that was a thing they could do. I was extrapolating from the humans case and assuming demonic mammals in general could not manage to complete a gestation.

A few questions about language acquisition in summoned daeva:

What counts as a language? I assume they get ASL if summoned by someone who speaks it? If a telegraph operator summons a daeva, does the daeva become fluent in morse code? What about not-quite-languages like Polari or Plains Indian trade sign?

Presumably they get the dialect of a language the summoner speaks? For instance, Mexican vs. European Spanish, American vs. British English? Does this include regional vocabulary differences -- e.g., a British summoner giving the daemon 'perambulator' as a vocabulary word where an American summoner might not -- even though the daemon's acquired vocabulary doesn't usually correspond exactly to the summoner's? What about finer-grained regional vocabulary -- e.g., I call an easy university class a "blow-off class," but people outside of Texas generally don't -- would a daeva I summoned pick that usage up?

If I'm recalling correctly, daeva get about the same amount of vocabulary/fluency as their summoner, but not a particularly exact correspondence to the summoner's. How well does it correspond? If I picked up enough Spanish to say "where is the bathroom" and "thank you" and "is the airport right or left" and other useful-for-travelers things like that, will a daeva I summon get words like "hotel" and "sorry" as well, or could they end up with a little Spanish vocabulary all of which is suitable for discussing home repair? If I speak German, and so can understand some Dutch where it's similar enough, will a daeva I summon also understand Dutch words that haven't diverged too far from their German cognates, or will they understand a random assortment of Dutch words?

[Alicorn]

I'm not sure what you mean by "would Cam notice".

ASL counts. Morse code counts. Polari or Plains expand the pool of vocabulary available. Dialect matches, yes, including in vocabulary pools. A daeva you summoned might get that idiom.

You recall correctly. The correspondence is basically "imagine you and this daeva learned this language the same way at the same speed but paid attention to your own interests in so doing" - which funnily enough means a daeva is less likely to know how to ask where the bathroom is because they don't need it.

I think the daeva would have to learn that Dutch/German cognates are trustworthy as a separate fact.

[DanielH]

I mean, would Cam realize that demons could now get human children into Hell before anybody produced one? What would he do about this?

[Alicorn]

...depends on whether I let it come to his attention? Depends on resources and plot.

[DanielH]

So he doesn’t keep up with medical news enough that it’s overdetermined or anything. I thought he might.

So if I were to summon Amriac, after taking a semester of Spanish, she wouldn’t know how to specify time of day or as much about the grammar, but she’d know all the musical instruments I forgot and probably a few the class didn’t mention?

[Alicorn]

Not during sandboxes he doesn't. During his downtime, maybe.

Yes.

[DanielH]

It’s a bit late now, but if he’d thought of it Cam should have put on a T-shirt saying “Hi Timothy!” or something, and then he could only take the right circle back.

If you are ineligible for a summons because of binding, can you still tell it’s there?

How distinguishable are individual summonses? If you have multiple summonses open, and you put on a shirt and one disappears, can you take off the shirt and grab specifically the one that doesn’t allow your shirt?

[pedromvilar]

Can you make a binding that requires a specific shirt?

[DanielH]

I think I asked that and the answer was no: bindings forbid actions but do not require them.