Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Metabolic rate scales as mass to the power of 3/4, for reasons not quite understood.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Yes, it does. But within a humanoid size range, the error in using ST^2 is small enough to be disregarded, I think.

Bill Stoddard

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

For mammals, the constant varies between 0.51 and 0.91. Humans scale as mass to the power of 0.6, so the difference would be small.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Some nuts are a source for beverages now; the most common, from what I can tell, is the cashew. Urrac ("oorak", apparently) and feni are distillations of the cashew apple; single-distilled urrac is about 15%, and double-distilled feni is about 40%. In South America, they make soft drinks from the cashew fruit. The cashew apple travels really poorly, so such drinks tend to be limited to places that grow cashews.

Other tree-borne sources for beverages are maple sap (the last sap of the spring is quite dark and not usually used commercially; but it can make a really rich ale); birchbark (either alcoholic or not); spruce buds (spruce tea is an excellent cure for scurvy, as it contains up to 50mg of vitamin C per 100g). And, of course, coffee and chocolate.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Apples and pears are made into cider and perry, then Calvados. Plums are made into jerkum then slivovitz. There are 'wines' made of elderflowers and elderberries, also sloes and mulberries, dates and plum-dates, peaches, cherries and lychees. (Some of them commercially). Toddy is made from palm sap and I think coconut water. I mentioned tuak and arrack before.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Depends on the type of boat. I'm envisioning your halflings living much like Kenneth Grahame's Ratty & Mole; as such, I see the boats they use being less ship-like and more punt-like (itself a good A/S word). "Flýte" or "fleóte" could be an appropriate name-root, as it's literal meaning is "something that floats" and is used as a kenning for the more prosaic "punt".

Of course, if you're using the idea of halflings using dams, etc. to create lakes, lagoons, etc., then you have "díc". But that might create a misunderstanding...

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

After thinking about dæl, mere, sœ, ēa, strēam, and riþ, I settled on brōc above.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Mature polar bears do much the same as Kodiak bears, but with seals rather than salmon. The young bears eat the meat; the adults eat seal blubber.

Polar bears hunt in 3 patterns: staking out a seal's breathing hole and blitz attacking it; stalking a seal on the ice and, when close, blitz attacking it; and raiding a seal's birth lair & eating the offspring.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Babycham!!!

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Is this any carbon? Living of cellulose requires a specialized digestive system.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Working (as opposed to resting) metabolic rate is heavily influenced by the actual amount of work done, which means that the metabolic multiplier for a given critter is rather similar to the productivity multiplier for the critter. Due to the metabolic costs of sapience the work/metabolism ratio for intelligent creatures probably favors larger lifeforms, but it may not vary by a lot.

Significantly more important here is the cost of food. A meat-eater can generally maintain a higher metabolism (and work rate) than a plant-eater, and a plant-eater eating high value foods such as seeds does better than one eating low value foods such as grasses, but that tends to be compensated for by the much higher availability of the less concentrated foods. The big advantage of grains is that grasses produce large amounts of concentrated food (seeds) relative to their overall production. This makes desert and tundra even lower value than their gross primary production implies, as concentrated food sources are generally meats, and also produces problems for forests, which put a great deal of energy into production of relatively indigestible twigs and leaves.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

This is all carbon incorporated into living tissue. It's not all utilizable by humans, and how much is utilizable varies from habitat to habitat.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Selkies
 

Balinese kecak singing (which featured in the Akira movie soundtrack) and Inuit throat singing (which Bjork used on her album Medulla) are good examples of breath control singing (well, apart from every other type of singing.)

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

So I was thinking about the selkies. When compared to a humanoid a seal or whale have really short limbs and subsequently much more of their mass in the body, making them easier to insulate. Is it possible to insulate a humanoid to the degree of a seal and retain mobility of the limbs? Would the super thick fur of a sea otter do any better?

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

For something that retains its insulation value when wet and actually occurs in nature, probably not, at least not for typical seal terrain (which moderately cold; averaging low 50s water temperature); for a human, appropriate insulation is a quite thick wetsuit or a drysuit, and I'm pretty sure neoprene outperforms blubber.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

This may seem somewhat from left field, but, stylistically, if you're going with something as traditional as terrain based demihumans, I'd give a new weird or postmodern slant to the sexuality. I'd say that as female dwarves age, they are more likely to have homosexual sons who then have a shamanistic role and run the racial creche. It's much more along existing homanid patterns than sterile workers. I'd then have a group with more bonobo sexuality, probably Elves, that are frugivores. For group I'd use forced copulation. Perhaps with vagina dentata. Another should have seasonal oestrus like P. troglodytes. And the scavengers have hyena sexuality, which is it's own bag of boo.

I can't believe you have Odum's book. I spent several weekends at his cabin in the woods here, sadly after his death. If you know that much ecology, you can work out how different terrain types result in different mating systems - there are plenty of papers about. You can even do the equations for different strategies, via something like the hawk dove game, etc. At one point I was planning on running something like that as an agent based model through Rouge, but then I went to prison so that didn't happen.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

In the sentence "For group I'd use forced copulation," I'm not sure what species "group" refers to.

In going for a eusocial species I'm already going outside of normal hominid or even primate patterns. And I'm not sure why it would be advantageous for an older female dwarf with a big family to have homosexual sons, but not for a younger female dwarf with a small family. Clarify?

I'm wanting not to have to derive the mathematical population genetics myself. I've been exposed to it, but the last class I took in it was in 1971. That's why I've been picking you guys' brains and especially Brett's.

I don't actually own Odum. I have a university library that has his book. It's a splendid resource and I'd like to have the spare money to buy a copy someday.

Bill Stoddard

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

For one* group, typo. By which I would guess one of the more robust species, trolls or ghouls, or add something else, like on a different continent or minor biome. I believe that orangutans use forced copulation, but this may be due to their near extinction. That's pretty distasteful, thus the vagina dentata. But then you're wondering off a cliff with weird sexuality, which can be squicky, a la Wreaththu.

On thinking about it, it makes more sense for the first born sons to be nonreproductive, if they are to care for their nieces and nephews. Or be mates to the mountain kami. IMHO, gay dwarves lack the squick factor.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

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Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

I think dolphins are very big on forced copulations. And blowhole sex.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

That makes me feel better about eating them.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

These Indonesian folks might serve as a model. They are famous both as pirates and traders and their women survive just fine.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Grind acorns into mash, add honey. The mixture would ferment.

Certain wild fruits are easy to ferment. There's a fruit that Elephants are known to eat, and then drink lots of water. This causes symtoms that look like intoxication, and the elephants seem to like it. At other times the elephants eat the fruit and avoid drinking for an hour or so, and they don't get drunk.

Yes. I'm saying some elephants know how to get drunk and can choose to avoid getting drunk when they don't want to be drunk.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

The poster did not say women cannot survive in such a society did he?

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Fly agaric mushrooms. Magic Mushrooms traditionally. The Elves would love them. The Hobbits smoke weed.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Ursula Le guin's mom wrote this book. It might give you ideas for your Elves.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Still, the folks in question live like the Selkies in this discussion. That gives precident.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

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Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Technically you are using malt, not barley as such; by allowing the barley to start sprouting you get it to produce an amylase to convert its internal starches to sugars, and once it has done so the ground or crushed malt will apply its amylases to other starches in the wort. In theory you could I think use any grain to make malt, but barley is the most efficient.

It occurs to me that when acorns and beechnuts spout they too might start converting their starches to sugars, which suggests that spouting acorns and nuts might contain amylases of their own, and that it might be possible to brew booze our of acorns without grain if you sprouted them, dried them, and then crushed or ground them.

Is there a plant physiologist in the house?

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

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Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

What limits the total action of amylase? It is an enzyme, which is to say a catalyst, and not consumed in the reaction it catalyses. But a given amount of amylase can't gluco-convert an arbitrary amount of starch, so I gather that some process degrades it over time or as it acts. Do you happen to know what?

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Enzymes are slowly hydrolyzed by water, so their activity will decrease over time. But I don't know how slowly.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

It's highly likely that a sympathetic mold could be used to crack those carbs in the Acorns into sugars.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Don't most enzymes have to get refueled, so to speak, with phosphates via ATP?

Do the mold.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

That must have been a misinterpretation then. The phrase "the women survive just fine" seemed to imply that you thought it sexist to point out that such a society would have to adapt security considerations to make up for the fact that many of the same personal which would be otherwise assigned to defensive needs would in this society be busy fishing and trading to far away to defend against a surprise attack.

Now in fact the lifestyle described by Whhs is analogical to that of a number of littoral societies and so can be made to work. Some of these were protected by a strong and reasonably competent state, but not all. The Norse, and the Hanse come to mind. Much of the security needs can be provided by fortifications; there are seldom enough men at sea to make a fortified harbor easy prey if the inhabitants are determined to resist, and even in times when female warriors were extremely rare exceptions in most cultures and therefore would not be trained in arms, manning a wall could be done especially against mere marauders. Furthermore, societies like that, if they have a reasonably fearsome reputation can convince predators that the voyagers will be rather put out on their return.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

I don't think so.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Most Enzymes are activated or deactivated by either phosphorylating or de-phosphorylating them. Which is what kinases do. This tends to either a)change the shape of the enzyme so it can interact with the substrate or b) allow a dimer to form by "glueing" the pieces together.
I'm fairly sure amylase is limited by pH. It deactivates once protonated.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Well, there's two separate issues going on here. There are enzymes that are switched on by being phosphorylated and switched off by being dephosphorylated. This is a way to control their activity - not all enzymes should be on all the time. Frequently these are key enzymes that can activate an entire metabolic pathway by feeding it material.

Then there are enzymes that work as ATPases. They hydrolyze ATP and use the energy released to push the equilibrium of a reaction in a certain direction. They are quite common - life is a constant fight against the tendency to reach chemical equilibrium with the environment.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Given that Elves know magic (this is a Fantasy campaign) maybe a minor charm kickstarts the process.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

I wish I had a quiet house so I could read this whole thread. I don't know if this was mentioned or not, but I imagine there are secret societies within secret societies in the world of magic. SOME group must be dedicated to "maintaining the balance". The world NEEDS trolls for some reason we don't understand. Maybe they keep some destructive and prodigious animal in check by eating most of them. Mages may work for a given kingdom and they may even engage in warfare with mages of other kingdoms. But they first and foremost treat each other with professional respect. They are likely to buy spell components from the same traveling merchants. And they could work together in secret to maintain the balance of life and magic. They screen their acolyte wizards to make sure that they are NOT unstable and 'just in it' to learn demon summoning so they can summon a demon in a misguided attempt to acquire power and glory. Even the necromancy working for the oppressive tyrannical kingdom has enough sense NOT to summon a demon lord just because his King tells him to.

I was thinking specifically of the 'order of the white lotus' in the "Avatar: the Last Airbender" TV series.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

I actually am not envisioning that. The world is not guaranteed to be kept in balance; any one of the races could take it out of balance, each in a different way. And the force that keeps it in balance is going to be the ability of the different races—including perhaps the group of player characters—to cooperate and engage in joint ventures.

Bill Stoddard