Category talk:Morrigi
From SOTS
Progress
Pages 3 and 4 of Morrigi thread.
Plumage in Morrigi, as in humans, is variable between population groups. The general rule between males and females of the same population group will stand; human sexual dimorphism is the same.
For example: human males, within any given population group, will generally be a few centimeters taller and a few skin tones darker than the females from their own population group. But the fact that a Nordic man will be a few skin hues darker than a Nordic woman on average, does NOT mean that a woman from a different population will not be darker than he is--if she's an African woman.
Similarly, a female from Denmark or Sweden may be a few centimeters shorter than her brother, but she might be much taller than a man from Thailand.
How Morrigi treat civilizations of pre-starfaring stages?
As curiosities, trading partners, and possible victims of their colonialism, depending on how lush and comfy their planets happen to be.
Is there some trade goods they prefer?
Morrigi trade breaks down along two lines: there are exchanges of raw materials for finished goods, which move at great volumes and fuel the industrial economy, and there are luxury/prestige goods which have a powerful impact on their status system.
Have they developed tastes for any specific art (having millennia of starfaring and trade experience) ?
Morrigi have a broad aesthetic sense and a powerful sense of curiosity. The things they like to collect are those which represent a narrative of some sort; sometimes the prize will be a particularly fascinating and beautiful set of fossilized remains from a distant world, other times it will be the tomb furnishings and the mummified remains of an ancient and glorious Queen, the arms and armor of a celebrated hero, or a basket of clay tablets from a city many thousand years gone, each tablet accompanied by a wafer of pressed gold neatly inscribed with the Morrigi's phonetic and semantic translation.
How Morrigi youth develops and what it dreams about?
Morrigi youth develops very differently based on biological sex. Males are raised in an environment that combines elements of the military cadet and the medieval squire: they learn many things in a classroom setting, are expected to study history, literature and various sciences, but they also serve older warriors who are actively engaged in their duties. Females are raised in an environment that combines elements of home life, academy training and apprenticeship; they live within their mother's holdings, receive a general education intended to help them find their talents, but they are also expected to work from an early age and contribute to the household as needed.
All Morrigi youngsters in a given group tend to live and work in close quarters, and are often given tasks which require cooperation. Older youngsters supervise younger fellows, just as their own elders oversee and direct their own lives and work.
As to what youth dreams about--this obviously varies with the individual. There is a cultural tendency to yearn for individual achievement and independence. The stereotypical Morrigi female would want her own Hold and to be a clan matriarch, either by right of inheritance or by splitting off with a few sisters and daughters to start a new clan; the stereotypical male would yearn for glory and acclaim, to be the father of a hundred sons and lead a great fleet of warriors to never-ending victory.
These are stereotypes, of course, and not all Morrigi conform to them. But these are what Morrigi youth are expected to dream about--whether they do or not is anyone's guess.
- Oh gods...where am I going to put this? Probably needs to be strained and edited heavily and then put on two or three seperate pages. Blast. (This is me thinking aloud.) --The Writer2 00:50, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
Orbital Stations and Female Space-farers
To clarify: orbital installations of any kind are a divided realm, and one where male and female Morrigi encounter each other much more freely than is normal in traditional Morrigi society. As some of you have anticipated, labor and maintenance on any station is largely performed by females, especially if it involves industrial production or scientific research. Trade and intelligence stations are more heavily populated by males, but the core maintenance and control staff are still female.
Female Morrigi are more than capable of space-faring for short bursts, and they provide the vast majority of the labor to build Morrigi colonies. In many respects, the difference between civilian and imperial Morrigi is the difference between female clan-groups with a direct relationship to the Morru Qu'aan and his conjoined clans, and those unaligned females to whom the Qu'aan has no direct marital and industrial ties.
Morrigi as "Manipulators"
The Morrigi had nothing to do with the Human/Hiver first contact; they have not been active in the Human sector of space for centuries, and have not been active in Hiver space for even longer.
The Morrigi reputation as "manipulators" largely comes from their history of somewhat disingenuous contact with pre-industrial societies on the Human, Hiver, Tarka and Liir homeworlds. Many contemporary historians in the SoTS-verse have begun to comb the historical record carefully for stories which have a "Morrigi" flavor. A number of mythological/legendary figures are suspect in human history, including the aforementioned Quetzalcoatl and the founding dragons of ancient China. Even such peculiar personages as Abaris the Hyperborean, a sage and healer reputed to have "traveled around the world riding on the golden arrow of Apollo" in ancient Greece, putting an end to plagues, are suspicious in light of the mounting evidence that the Morrigi were a lively presence in Sol's sector from the Neolithic until roughly the 16th century CE.
Proof of long-term and repeated Morrigi visitation of the Earth has been a crisis for the Human academic community, in other words. As the first Morrigi trophy houses are discovered and looted, this collective soul-searching will increase. The same impact is felt among the Tarka and Hivers, both of whom have strongly entrenched and powerful academic communities with a vested interest in restoration of cultural material to the homeworld for study and curation.
The Morrigi, when challenged about such matters, often point out that their own history of curation and preservation of artifacts is second to none, and far outstrips the longest-lived museums of any other race. Only the Tarka are able to challenge this claim with any authority, and even then only in isolated areas. The disruption and chaos caused by the end of the first space age among their people resulted in widespread destruction, and the loss of many great cities. Libraries and museums burned along with all the rest of that civilization's great works.
Feathered Serpents, Hivers
You mentioned feathered-serpent legends on the Hiver homeworld: how old are these, and do they even have snakes or birds there to compare the Morrigi to?
Calling these "feathered serpent" legends for the Hiver is a bit of a poetic stretch; the Hiver mothersphere does have reptile-type organisms and various lineages that have developed flight, but the Hiver tend to conceive of Morrigi more as celestial lizard princes and giant she-lizard queens. They are far less susceptible to glamour than many other species, so seeing Morrigi as fellow Hivers or as androgynous is very rare. Hivers receive too much information from scent.
Morrigi Liirian Artifact Retrieval
How did that Morrigi male retrieve those Liir artifacts... from underwater? In a spaceship? Some sort of deep-diving apparatus?
Yes, although Liir are as capable of navigating land as humans are of navigating the water.
Morrigi have very impressive environment suits and battle armor, and as space farers they have had this technology at their disposal for thousands of years.
- Seems that this is best suited to Technology -- Morrigi. --The Writer2 00:50, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
Cryo Comment from Morrigi History Page
It is a possibility that they are "species X" from the ruins of Irridia V, since they are bent on revenge toward the zuul.
Hekademi info
"hekademi" – Sites of Descent for those males who bring treasure in the form of ideas, revelations, arguments and evidence of interest to scholars. They are essentially large educational centers, and some hekademi specialize in certain areas. Males are esteemed visitors and guests, but the bulk of the resident students, teachers and scholars will be female; it is rare for any male to visit and remain for longer than a year. The female groups owning and operating these institutions gain a great deal of influence and power; weaker groups without a hekademos of their own must send their more intelligent daughters to such places to be educated, and they are required to pay for room and board, as well as offering tribute to attend the symposium, lectures, and exams. The Hekademi would welcome alien visitors for guest lectures with great glee, and might even accept visitation from scholars who were NOT on good terms with the Morru Qu'aan, if they felt they could reasonably assure their safety. But alien visitors would depend on what the administrators felt was best. Some hekademi would be more open to alien students than others, and the Morru Qu'aan might move to block entry to students of material sciences and galactic history.
