my intro + discussion on orcish genetics

hey, whats up, all

i've been an on-and-off Arcanum player since it came off... i'm the sort of person who will play it a thousand hours a month, with twenty five different people, then lose interest for the rest of the year. too much travelling, schooling, work, etc.

lol, is it any suprise i've actually never finished even the original module. HAHA....
though in actuality, the reason for that is my lack of ability to play multiplayer. I have been unable to create an Arcanum account for the past two years (I found that out after a year long gap of game-play) and i only ever had one WAAY back at the beginning, but never built on it. I regret that now. IF ANYONE KNOWS A SOLUTION TO THIS PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!! the problem is that EVERY time i try to create an account, even with the wildest, most random name, it says it already exists.

still, after i read that troika games had shut down (i found this out less than an hour ago) i picked up my crusade to find other Troikians. We are now a dying race *tear*

Oh, and I know absolutely NOTHING about modding, but downloaded a couple for the sake of trying them out (lol, think i'll ever finish them?)
if anyone is interested in pointing me in the right direction, or teaching me a bit, I'm sure I could churn out something any mod-n00b could be proud of.

*edit* already, 5 views. if the viewers are in America, that means 5 insomniacs. up with insomnia.

 

ouch!!!

but thank you for the warning. it will be duly noted, and although i shall not cease my attempts to get it working, i shall surely not be dissapointed when you are absolutely right.

as far as the thread, i didn't pull it up in a few minutes of searching, i'll try later. THANK YOU for the response though.

i guess that if thats the general opinion, i'd have better luck with direct network connections with others abroad (most of whom i'd likely meet through here), or even better,
ON THE RP FORUM!!! look for me there

 

I think it'll work if you create your account with this program: http://www.won.net/accountwizardinstaller.exe

Also, Blinky you just got some spam from a online dating thingy on Wekend Warriors.

 

thanks math!!
will try


being such a tiny-ass thread, i figured i'd tack something else on to it, which is equally small.

If Gar did indeed inherit the traits of some Orc several generations previous on his family tree, and got the WHOLE package as he did, wouldn't that imply orcish genetics are recessive...
and yet, we know they're dominant, in the way in which they manifest over the general half-orc population.

?

 

Welcome to the forums.

What makes you say that orc genes are dominant? As far as I can see, half-orcs are halfway between humans and orcs. They may be *treated* the same as full orcs but physically and mentally they are halfway between humans and orcs.
Also, Gar did not receive the "whole package". He may appear to be an orc but he has the mental capacity of a human. His race is human so he has human modifiers e.g. heal rate. So basically he is human in everything but appearance.

 

manifestation of physical characteristics, such as hair in ears, greenish skin, upturned noses, large feet etc. in half-orcs would imply that the majority of those ar dominant... certainly all the ones listed in the racial description page on the character description.

and although gar's race is 'human,' the ONLY human features he maintains are cerebral. his voice bears that orcish tenor; his actions and physical bearing are entirely orcish.
he is considered a human because of his lineage, not because of himself. the human with the background 'raised by wolves' is not called a wolf, is s/he? that character is still called a human. so gar is orcish in all but name.

 

I'll have to agree with TONGS. What really bothers me though, is that the color of an orc's skin changes when he changes armor! :lol:

 

Shh... don't make fun of the smaller flaws in the game. I agree that orc is a dominant gene, and I took the time to lay out a gene-table mind you, I only did two-genes per person, instead of 14 or 16, still proves my point, just mildly less accurate (Ie: we can't tell exactly what traits he'd get from each) to show what his genes would be. I think that his father probably had some orcish traits, but due to the natural of your average male, it wasn't visible ie: he looks human, but is dumb as a rock. Please be kind about my diagram, I made it with paint. <br>

 

You have a human bias. A human looking at a half-orc may say "Look how greenish his skin his". Whereas an orc looking at the same half-orc would say "Look how pinkish his skin is". It's a matter of perspective.
Yes half-orcs have skin that is greener than a human but it is also pinker than an orc.
The same applies to the other features you mentioned: They may have hairier ears than a human, but they are less hairy than an orc, etc.
So they are halfway between orcs and humans but humans see them as orcs and orcs see them as humans. Poor half orcs.

As for Gar, saying that his brain is his only human feature is a pretty big "only". The human brain relies on more complicated genetics than most other organs because a human brain diverges more from a lesser primate brain than a human liver diverges from a lesser primate liver.

The difference between Gar and a wolf child is that Gar was produced when 2 humans mated. The wolf child was raised by wolves, not born from wolves. So if the wolf child is human, as you say, then Gar must also be human.

Darkfool, I can't see your diagram. Is it just me?

 

Actually, it's not so much that they change color, but rather that they turn purple! Purple?!

 

You know when a human wears cheap jewellery and their skin turns green? Well since orcs are already green, they turn purple. It's a simple metal allergy, depending on what type of metal they are wearing.

 

Maybe diagram is just too big and the forum ignores it? Here is straight link: http://ic1.deviantart.com/fs8/i/2005/36 ... rjunza.jpg

 

Darkfool, i don't have 'permission' to access that page you lead a link to... do you have to be a member or someting?

damn, i didn't know gar changed color... for some reason, he's never been able to wear armor wen i played. how odd... ?

this is the bias on which the game is presented. humans have 'no' inherent adjustments, whereas elves, dwarves, gnomes, and every other race DO. so, i'm simply following the theme of the game, which presents the idea that humans are 'norm' and all else is variable. this shouldn't be so, as the oldest race should be norm and all others variable ... but oh well.
oh, and you're right about the feral child thing... not a good comparison on my part.
however, i never said the 'only' human features he maintained were his brain. i said the only human feattures he maintained were CEREBRAL. big difference. for example; his voice makes it immediately apparent tat at least his upper-torso organs are orc in form, otherwise vocal cords and organs that might deliver direct pressure (thereby changing the voice pattern) are orcish.
now, the likelyhood of some organs being orcish, some being human, is extremely low... so, the assumption must be made that the only humanely distinguishable features are cerebral/neurologcal. it is NOT that unlikely that he might maintain the basic neurologic structure of a human (spinal form and use, brain stem, et cetera) while recieving the internal organs suc as eart, lungs, and vocal cords from orcs.
what would be REALLY interesting to find out would be about the offspring of half orcs. this is not referred to in the game, and if anyone had expressed enough interest in my RP thread for me to continue it, they would have discovered that my main character would have been the offspring of a half-orc, among other traits.

 

Humans are the oldest of the median races. Check out the races of Arcanum on Sierra's site.

I'd have to disagree with that. In its strictest sense cerebral means to do with the cerebrum. In its looser sense it means to do with rational thought.
Cerebrum = part of brain.
Thought = processes of the brain.
Therefore "cerebral" relates to the brain and the brain only.

I don't think you have followed what I was trying to say in previous posts. The point I was making was that a half-orc is mixture of human and orc NOT a chimera of orc parts and human parts. e.g. its organs are halfway between human and orc. It does not have a 100% human liver and a 100% orc pancreas. Think about a mule. Does it have horse parts and donkey parts? No, not really. All of its parts are a mixture of horse and donkey.

 

No, that link didn't work... it's here: http://silvio-arjunza.deviantart.com/scraps/ I think that what happened was a freak accident inspired my magic, and therefore unexplainable by science.

 

I haven't decided if genetics don't exist in arcanum or if they simply haven't been discovered yet. Regardless, in the case of orcs (and elves) I think we can conclude that "a wizard did it".

 

Yea, I'll go clear that out, I hate fucking advertising. I don't want to read, you figure out won.net yet KNJoe?

Can someone sum up what the fuck you're all rambling about for me?

 

1) TONG, you're right. because of that, it should be distinguished from a the perspective of the human species.
2) I see. I had thought 'cerebral' also implied the neurological connections thereof. I alot that to my limited knowledge of english (it's not my first language).
3) your reference to a mule is fallible. mules cannot breed, and therefore are not considered (biologically) to be viable interspecies breeding. after all, many define differentiation in species as the inability to interbreed fertile offspring. come to think of it, wouldn't this make all ogres, orcs, humans, and elves the same species? one could extend it to the minute races, but i don't recall any crossbreeds. as well, since i can't remember what crossbreeding leads to a halfling, i'll skip that for now.

4) darkfool, your diagram is fallible. keep in mind that gar's parents and grandparents were HUMAN, not orc. he explicitely stated this. hence, it must have been his great-grandparents, or even further back.

5) TONG quoted the words 'therefore unexplainable by science' ... who said this (not, me, i HOPE)? I have not yet encountereda reason why the magic featured in Arcanum does NOT have a scientific explanation. consider the fact that there are recorded studies of the interaction between technology and magic; knowing that it has an effect, it is only a matter of time before somone isolates and duplicates it. it's far more likely the people of Arcanum have simply not DISCOVERED the explanation yet.
ie, they know the effect, not the cause.

 

The fundamental principle of magic in Arcanum is that it creates disturbances in what should be simple scientific operations. Therefore any attempt to explain genetical properties in races is fraught with uncertainty when one of those races is magically aligned.

This would obviously include elves and, if you read the manual and are familiar with their origins as magical experiments, orcs. However, it also includes ogres, as you can find out, again by reading the manual, that ogres are descended from highly magical giants from the last era. While ogres are no longer innately magical, they still may possess latent energies related to the arcane.

As such, all three of those species cannot be expected to follow genetics by any determinable degree.