03-16-2016, 09:52 PM
(03-16-2016, 01:48 AM)YDH Wrote: That's an interesting perspective re: frozen liquids, but what frozen liquids conduct electricity? Water ice doesn't--the freezing process gets rid of the free ions that allow conduction through water (which is, by itself, a poor conductor).Saline solutions do, especially when frozen. The only issue is it increases the temperature, which makes the liquid moving and chaotic again (thus less effective). However, when things are "so cold" they don't risk melting, plus with a simple plastic of some sort, or a rubber. They could make tubes that ran liquid as wires, which could safely transmit electricity without risking anything, as it still conducts as a liquid. Same effect of our computers overheating, slower transition of electricity and inefficiency. Remember the term "Electrolytes"? Stands for water-soluble salts.
Also, I don't know if you could substitute frozen liquids or gases for metals as a building material--metals are cool and useful because they're hard, but they can also bend, and they can be deformed by partially melting them. You can combine different metals to create substances with specific combinations of conductivity/malleability/hardness, but as far as I know this isn't something you can do with, say, dry ice.
As for metals with a low melting point, that still leaves the question of how you melt it. Fire is out of the question because there's no oxygen in the atmosphere, so the only way I can think of would be to use volcanically active regions, which I assume are very rare on Avalon.
The bulletproof cloth is made from carbon nanofibers--a high-level technology we're still trying to master, and not something stone-age nomads could come up with.
Oral recall of your entire knowledge base is a problem--you can't sing someone a sophisticated and precise diagram or code it into strings. It would be possible to work around these shortcomings, but it makes practically everything much harder. A braille-like language would be more efficient, though still not as compact and portable as graphical symbols. I actually like that idea, so maybe I'll throw out the record harps and use a tactile language instead (even though I think the "musical books" are canon).
The lack of farming is a huge, huge problem. To do things like run a centralized government or invent an internal combustion engine (another thing the low temperature and atmospheric composition of Avalon would render problematic), you need people who have time to devote to such things instead of going out hunting. If everybody's putting all their energy into getting food (and they would be if all their food comes from hunting), no-one will have time to sit down and tinker until they invent algebra. No farming probably means no civilization.
Yes it IS a problem that knowledge is hard to store. That's why their social advancement is slow despite how social they are to each other within their packs. Ours is because we're self warring shitheads who hold worthless grudges like imbeciles.
They pass skills between individuals like mother teaches daughter father teaches son or whatnot, they pass important knowledge on in music and song. Some info is lost from this process up to the point they finally invent their first recording devices. But it IS the most efficient method of recording up to that point by such a race. Their first recording devices would likely basic masonic structures amounting to wind chimes until they miniaturize it, and eventually this would allow advancement beyond the medieval stage. Within their own personal set of how things would advance. They would try to avoid non ice worlds as it would outright break a lot of their technology. Just to survive on a volcanic world they'd have to run around in three layer powered armor. (Cooling layer, insulation layer, layer that won't melt because of the temperature) True metal use wouldn't really exist by them until they managed to get to space, (discover vacuum, use it to heat metal without destroying their other tech). Which would be weird to see if they even managed it. Due to atmospheric friction and use of materials that melt at a MUCH lower temperature.
They would be able to use sharpened ice as a VERY effective blade by simply "Casting" it over a porous material, as I said, like cloth/hide.
So in general. There ARE issues with them. And their choice of advancement changes what develops first and in what order. However they aren't distinctly "non human" As every single custom they have has been used by us at least at one point in history. The reason they can't adapt beyond their pack mentality is the bad eyesight coupled with inability to farm normally. It is surprising how much those two things limit their social structure. Their eyesight never allowed early things like cave drawing, and things such as that, forcing them to use ONLY music, whereas humans used music and pictures, those pictures eventually getting more intricate with our hearing being not sensitive enough past a cdertain point to distinguish.
Whereas the Avali adapted music to clicks so subtle that they could increase the efficiency of their music and audio method a lot farther, enabled by their sensitive hearing, far beyond what we can do. If you want to legitimately torture an Avali. Play a high pitched binaural tune that is still audible to humans.