Intergalactic Summit

I skimmed and saw nothing about Brutor (besides brief mention of some Nefantar-Brutor alliance EDIT: which you just changed to a Nefantar-Starkmanir alliance). I am disappointed.

You do seem quite obsessed with the Sebiestor blood-line, though.

-Eran

Is that little bump at the C2 an extraspinal neural ganglion? Is it functional?

[RUINED DINNING HALL.

Camera drones skitter between fallen columns and through the spaces of vacant rosary window casings. Diving back down through a roof no longer there, little eyes settle on a bewildering array of axes placed carefully on pitted stone tables.

The CRONE waves a drone over and rubs schmootz off its glass dome.]

Right then, soon we'll talk about axes. Terribly, no, vitally - is that more? - important things for early Sebiestor.

Before that, however, a few comments: a question about Brutor.

The Brutor first intermingled with and then separated from the giant Starkmanir tribe on the similarly giant if unpronounceable Eyniletti plains of Matar's massive central continent Cor... er... icia! That's it. An almost Amarrian name. Eventually, the Brutor migrated south and established an empire of mariners among the sprawling island paradise of More. Miore. Mioar. Southern Brutor only came into contact with my northern Sebbies after long boats had grown considerably longer.

And really, I've only fixated on Sebbies for the last three years or so. Prior to that, Brutor for everything. My Kameira Centurio is a Brutor!

[A little camera drone rotates quickly, and its field of vision fills with an armored chest. Pulling back, the stoic face of a cylindrical Brutor titan emerges into view and smiles, briefly.]

Schere, darling, of course that little detail wouldn't slip by your expert gaze! These are among my oldest and most advanced lycanthropic Sebiestor bunny boys. All primary stages of expression are complete. Why, one might as easily say they are lycanthropic slaver hounds expressing Sebiestor traits as lycanthropic Sebiestor expressing lupine feline traits.

The symbiotic trabecular fungus has worked its magic throughout the skeleton, elongating it beautifully as you can see - who is a good boy!? - while improving tensile characteristics and ameliorating tendencies toward painful fractures and dislocations caused by excessive sinew overreach. At first problematic, you'll notice that everywhere there should be one primary muscular assemblage there are now three. This placed enormous strain on bone. Furthermore, the poor creature's nervous system experienced great difficulty scaling in a non-linear fashion across four dimensions. Introduction of a piezoelectrotroph caused some additional nervous difficulties which have been managed through temporary introduction of micro-controller technologies, thank you, darling!

Yes, the swelling at the base of the neck - indeed, the sleek elongation of the parietal and occipitals - has accommodated expansion of the brain stem into this magnificent region here. It is quite functional. Nowhere has the impact of sinew division and nerve extension been more dramatic than in the cobra's hood. The creatures are, as you can see, quadrupedal now. Small lobes have begun forming under these bulbous spinal lumps to assist in muscular coordination. The adorable little puppies largely remastered use of their primary limbs, and fine motor skills are finally catching up!

Though less obvious against the mountainous curves of these magnificent buns of steel, the swollen sacrum serves a similar purpose. Further, when you scratch right here....

[The CRONE deftly tickles the left curve of a swollen lycanthropic Sebiestor sacrum. The creature's rear right limb rises and falls in a rapid uncontrolled motion, striking the floor with remarkable force.]

Excellent, then. Axes!

Here we have a dark olive jadeite head attached to a Nefantar femur. This ceremonial Krusual axe testifies to the stone and bone working skill of that ancient tribe. This femur was carefully split and kept pliable, allowing segments of the lower reaches to be inserted into the axe head in such a way as to form an internal interlocking tension. I should note that the owner of the femur was not completely deceased at the time of the weapon's creation.

Of course, this axe was not meant to hit anything. It is a scepter, the totem of a priest king among ancient men. Magnificent.

Although Krusual could not completely deny the Nefantar those emeralds that Tronhadar washed down from icy heights, they retained a lock on jadeite until the Starkmanir dug it up by accident in central Cormanir. Sometime later, the Brutor discovered a beautiful pale green variety in their heavily eroded island paradise.

Brutor jadeite became one of the most precious commodities of the ancient Matari world.

Mummy adores jadeite. I dug up a spectacular boulder in Araz, once, and an Amarrian sculptor - something of a young prodigy - carved it into a magnificent abstract representation of the first lupus Sebiestor I was able to isolate from the general population: the Jade Muninn. Muninn being the boy's name, also a little imp who served an ancient one eyed god.

Yes, that is your one eyed god. Good boy!

Sebiestor axes, as you can see, were more practical. They used wood for the shafts, not the living bone of their enemies. The heads are primarily basalts, granites, and obsidians. Sebiestor only used axes for combat as a last resort. The entire culture revolved around wood - cutting, splitting, shaping, growing, stroking. For war, the Sebiestor favored spears and later bows. Extracting metal in the north required digging through ice, best done with metal, and so the Sebiestor largely went without. Although they could trade the Nefantar for it, that marine merchant empire charged monopoly rents for access to anything that couldn't be transported easily by anyone else.

Brutor learned metalworking from Starkmanir, and took the skills to their eroded island paradise and its plentiful, exposed ores. When the two scrappy maritime civilizations finally met on the outskirts of Nefantar hegemony, they became buddy buddy.

Hello Schere darling! White papers, oh Heavens no, not even murky grey papers, really, Mummy's lycanthropic Sebiestor are a bit, you know, "naughty." I wouldn't want to be compared to, you know, certain piratical factions, or anything.

With respect to human cognitive isomorphism, the answer is "no." There is a cloud of amorphous terminology that my dizzy brain is not quite capable of penetrating...

Let us say there is:

a set of human cognitive functions, and

a set of human stimulating events, and

a set of human reactions such that: "stimulating event" => "human cognitive function" = "human reaction."

Let us further say that there are similar structures, albeit with different values, for a lycanthropic base which, purely for the sake of argument, might resemble a slaver hound.

Then, I would say that the set of LSBB cognitive functions includes a subset of the set of human cognitive functions and a subset of the lycanthropic base cognitive functions, and a set of functions which are neither human nor lycanthropic base.

I would further say that the set of LSBB stimulating events is likewise two subsets plus a unique set. Although "stimulating events" are largely external, making this less intuitive, I'll expand further below.

From the above, I would imagine that the set of reactions would only contain elements common to the human or lycanthropic base reactions by remarkable coincidence. I was trying to identify a formulation of the Turing degrees separating the LSBB, human, and lycanthropic base, but failed to do so. Furthermore, I tried to formulate an expression of the Turing test scenarios, but failed there too.

None of the creatures above are capable of fooling a knowledgeable remote observer into believing that they are one of the other creatures.

I suspect that you do in fact know why the set of LSBB stimulating events is not equivalent to the human, but it is a good transition into some of your other questions.

The LSBB central nervous system is larger than the human and possesses different membrane potential characteristics. More zap - even without the complication introduced by the trabecular piezozap fungus. However, I do not use a mycelium branching habit for the base lycanthropic transformation. I apologize for any confusion. "Lycanthropy" is primarily a metaplasia provoked by a viral agent which commandeers the immune system. On a crude level, the additional ligament, sinew, and nervous growths are "benign tumors" whose spread is controlled - after much trial and error - by cell cycles in the immune responders.

With respect to the trabecular fungus (introduced because "lycanthropy" alone was not adequately mutating the skeleton, and in fact made the problem worse), it propagates primarily through... apex? branching, I believe yes, and is also regulated by cell cycles in the the probing tip. Lateral branching is suppressed. Of course a fungus spreading through the skeletal system also raises the issue of immune response, and that was a bit of a mess. The hyphae casing is as sterile a protein as I could manage under the circumstances, and is largely capable of almost chameleon like response when interacting with immune protein receptors.

Consequently, if I understand your question correctly, dendrite budding is not directly an issue (apart from the risks that the meta..plasia evolves into a more hostile... um... neoplasia? - though I don't believe I've seen that with dendritical squiggles, but rather primarily with ligamentary blocks).

My goodness, where was I?

Right! Stimulating events. The LSBB central nervous system receives more information than the human. This is not only due to increased throughput from traditional sense organs. The nervous system itself has become a sensory organ. Consequently, there are more stimulating events and they are of a different character.

This does not come for free, of course. More of the LSBB neural network must devote itself to sense processing. Much more. Memory, not counting so-called "muscle memory" (which is in fact significantly improved in the LSBB) takes quite a hit. LSBB language skills are very weak, indeed.

In fact, the sensory and muscular demands of the LSBB are so great, the increased chemical and electrical energy moving through the nervous system has interacted with the lycanthropic viral metaplasia to stimulate formation of these new lobes at prominent spinal nexus points.

Mummy is so proud of her boys! At this point, I have not used female subjects. I am concerned that the female hip structure would be unable to retain viability against the lycanthropic muscular paradigm, even with the trabecular fungus.

Whew!

Regarding history, Schere sweetie, I've noticed Great Frozen Tekojarvi preserves wood exceptionally well. My next examination of ancient Matari history will involve half of a magnificent long ship, the Isengardorommuhlgir. I'm thinking that I would like to restore it, with as authentic wood as possible. The temperature characteristics of northern Matar are very similar to those of Caldari Prime, but of course, it would be a marine environment. Does salt matter, or is the preservation of wood primarily a function of oxygen and micro-organisms? I'm exploring relationships with parties on Matar who might be capable of salvaging wrecks off the coast of Mirkwood or whatever, but would hate to go to that expense just for muck.

In any event, hugs! Kisses!

This is my hand waving buh-bye in the dark, sugartits.

Um, no, Ms Rella. Pre-industrial Matari history and genetic engineering.

Astonishingly well-supported assertions for the latter.

I wish at times I was half the scientist that Lady Noh or Scherezad are. I am not understanding everything being discussed here. But enough to know that this is far better then the traditional arguments on this forum. Wonderful. Please never stop your scientific persuits.

"Fairly neutral" is not how I'd describe it but it's entertaining, nevertheless.

-Eran

[AMARR PRIME.

A camera drone cautiously examines the gap between two flying buttresses. For the moment, they have been reinforced with steel columns and wire. The little drone follows a column up... and over a cavernous dormitory. More wires descend from ribs of a fallen ceiling. The drone follows one wire down to...

The ISENGARDOROMMUHLGIR.

The forty meter skeid hangs several feet above ancient stone. Its dark woods shimmer in sections where the light of Amarr's sun chases off shadows. The boat has been reduced to its right side, the left having been lost to some violent, ancient process. Its powerful keel still stretches the full length intact, however, and much of the interior framing retains intricate details crafted by ancient mariners. The prow is a (partially) gilded iron murre with beak pointed toward sky.

The CRONE reaches up and pats the bird's belly.]

Hello sweeties! Everyone is too kind, too kind. I would be remiss not to give credit where due: many details of my lycanthropic processes have been worked out by Other Rabbit and his reunited Achuran nanny, Caldari Graduate Assistant. Or Student. I'm really "vision." IT LIVES! Make it so. That sort of thing. But as a tangent, Schere darling, distributed! Distributed, crumpled sheets of decision switch fabric pressed together and yet separated by a region subject both to capricious uncertainty and the throbbing hum of cosmological capital lambda (though Caldari Graduate Student Assistant refuses to accept my vision on capital lambda).

But here! Here we have the jewel of Great Auntie's collection! The Isengardorommuhlgir!

A long name for a long boat, and also the name of the Sebiestor chieftain to whom it belonged. The longer your name was back then the more important you were - clever, yes? Let's call him Mulgie. Mulgie had one of those important face tattoos. Face ink plus a long name meant Mulgie was destined for greatness. And he was... the greatest victim of the Krusual, ever.

By the time this boat was built, the Sebiestor enjoyed well-established trading relations with the Brutor far to the south. Most significantly, that gave them access to iron. As you can see, although Sebiestor wood workers continued to avoid penetrating the wood directly, they made ample use of fastening loops. Here, these large rivets have not been embedded into the beams, but are instead clenched between them to serve as a form of armor, decoration, and also an expression of wealth. In addition to inspiring wonder, this beautiful murre - almost necessarily fashioned by Brutor - says "so great is my glory, I can use this much iron for a big bird on my boat."

The Sebiestor of this time had begun expanding beyond Mirkramurkulakawaka, establishing posts on the Krusu north slope - a temperate redwood rain forest that, if secured, would expand Sebiestor wood and game stocks, while also providing more accessible mineral wealth. The stubbornly hunter-gatherer Krusual tribe was increasingly ill-suited to resist any specific act of expansion by its increasingly agrarian, and consequently feudal, specialized neighbors.

While the Nefantar had learned not to underestimate the Krusual capacity for stealth, infiltration, and theft of trade secrets, the Sebiestor had not.

Yet.

Mulgie was quite sure of himself: having partaken in tropical trysts with a Brutor prince or two way down south, having brought unity to Sebiestor scattered across the north's vast ice, having some special schmootz on his face, he would surely be the one to claim the Krusu north slope, and possibly even the one to drive the bloodthirsty sadistic savages out of the Tronhadar Valley once and for all (despite many centuries of Nefantar failure to do so). He assembled a great big fleet, and one fine endless twilight, threw a great big party in the harbor of Helasbodice in his great big honor. To Mulgie's credit, Helasbodice was a small island in an inhospitable part of the ocean nobody but the Sebiestor knew about.

True, the Krusual hadn't been there in forever. But they remembered, even if the Sebiestor had forgotten. And the Krusual knew what Mulgie was up to, because the Krusual had learned how to walk openly among their rivals while remaining out of sight. Hundreds of lone Krusual jaguars with iron fangs and ancient kayaks waited in the valleys between waves far offshore when Mulgie started his big bash.

When the bonfires flickered in a particular way, that meant it was time.

Silent and invisible against the dark sea, Krusual slipped up to Mulgie's boat, scaled it with iron claws, killed everyone on board in a silently lethal manner, and split open the hull. Here... here... and a few more back there. Older, much smaller Sebbie long boats could not really sink. Not so the Mulgie. As bonfires burned and revelers reveled, Mulgie tipped. Chief Mulgie rushed to his stricken boat, addled by the grog. His men were butchered by Krusual; Mulgie was weighted down and tossed into the freezing drink. Mast hit water, the Mulgie followed her chief.

Kind of like that fairy tale about the rock, really.

With no intention of escape, the Krusual attacked the beach and slaughtered until they themselves had been cut down to the last (not counting, of course, the Krusual who continued to walk openly among their foes). Helasbodice acquired a somewhat sinister reputation at that point. The secretive Cult of the Wendigo resurfaced.

Meanwhile, Sebiestor abandoned plans to settle the Krusu north slope and invade Tronhadar. They opted instead to enjoy the ice up north and lives of increasing yo-ho-ho with swarthy Brutor down south.

As for the Mulgie, I do believe that she and many a bone should receive proper burials at sea. I've begun making discrete inquiries on Matar with respect to marine salvage operations to acquire wood. Stay tuned, sweeties!

Lady Noh,

Your generosity precedes you. I am in reception of all goods and personnel, and will be in contact with you regarding the our findings when they are available. Please consider all debts paid in full.

I may also owe you a debt of my own, if my guess is right.

- S