Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Svetlana Scarlet on 23 Feb 2013, 13:41
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I think pre-CDS the Caldari were likely still only an industrial-era culture with little in the way of advanced tech, so I doubt they were doing much offworld at that point (think 1800s Western Europe/US).
My personal thoughts on the differences between Caldari and Gallente colonization was that Gallente Prime was more habitable and therefore a more moderate terraforming project was put in place, and the initial colonists were able to move to the planet without too much in the way of extra preparation. On Caldari Prime, which was much more hostile, instead of simply terraforming the planet to make it more habitable, the initial colonists were also gene-modded (parahumans, in Transhuman Space parlance) to adapt better to Caldari Prime; the Civire and Deteis were actually competing lines of genemods which were developed for the colonists there (and perhaps the Men of the West were another). This allowed them to survive much easier than a "normal" human would have been able to. I would probably also guess that the vast majority of Caldari food plants and livestock are transgenic organisms of one type or another, imported to the planet with the ability to survive the harsh environment and provide the population with nutrients and resources that might not be provided by the local (very limited) ecosystem. The parahuman genemods of Caldari probably also gave them the ability to digest native amino acids and avoid severe allergic reactions to the native "wildlife" (which was, at least in my mind, limited to small oceanic life).
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They weren't on ships forever though, they had places to go.
But what were those places is an equally important question. Just because you have a place to go (secret colonies) does not mean those places can actually support an influx of people without imposing strict regulation and rationing on the resources available. Those fleeing conflict rarely bring with them all the resources necessary to establish immediate survival and local infrastructure is not going to be prepared to accept a rapid influx (without extensive pre-planning).
If the assumption is that the secret colonies were complete worlds, a discussion of individual liberty becomes an important one. A cultural predisposition on to deal with harsher environments and a need for collective survival may hasten a cultural elimination of the practice of individual liberty.
The argument for Caldari collective libertarianism is tied to the idea that to survive in truly harsh environment requires that the family/clan/ship/station/company not practice individual liberty or cease to exist.* I think it is not a stretch to argue that ante bellum Caldari culture had a predisposition to this due to arising on Caldari Prime, but this was then reinforced as a result of the Exodus and GCW.
*I would go as far as to argue that humanity's first space colonies will practice collective libertarianism, but that is a different discussion.
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That's a good point. Presumably there were habitable planets in the Caldari colonies (New Caldari Prime seems to be much more hospitable than Caldari Prime was, anyway), so you probably don't have a problem with people simply not being able to live there at all, but no doubt the flood of refugees stressed resources and infrastructure considerably for the first few years.
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I think pre-CDS the Caldari were likely still only an industrial-era culture with little in the way of advanced tech, so I doubt they were doing much offworld at that point (think 1800s Western Europe/US).
Oh, I agree. But, I also riff from this:
AD 22588 - The Gallente and the Caldari build their first stargate out of VH-451, sparking a period of expansion which mostly benefits the Gallente.
AD 22631 - The Cultural Deliverance Society arrives on Caldari Prime.
So, there were some Caldari involved in the stargate reconstruction project, if only a token effort in the 'interests of planetary brotherhood' (or however it would have been phrased). I've always assumed their work there may have been fascinating to folks back on Caldari Prime and the sociocultural/economic tipping point toward the Caldari wanting to develop a space program of their own.
Prior to then, space may primarily (or solely) have been the preoccupation of Caldari academics, hobbyists, dreamers, and -- post-Gallente contact -- the military.
Was the Caldari push to get into space abetted by some Gallente interests (even inadvertently: presumably the Caldari who were on the stargate project were some of Caldari Prime's best and brightest)? Discouraged by others? Sabotaged? Did it operate clandestinely because of fear of Gallente sabotage? Or did it operate openly, in defiance of Gallente criticism? Or openly, with full Gallente support?
I've made a lot of personal hay out of "how far along did the Caldari get before the Cultural Deliverance Society arrived? The U.S. got to the moon in ten years driven by competition with someone who had fewer material resources but rich intellectual capital. How far could the Caldari have gotten in forty-three while cribbing from someone who was capable of interplanetary travel and stargate construction?"
(Speaking of that, I've never been sure if CDS was a giant "U R DOIN IT WRONG SO JUST DON'T" or the effort of Gallente interests who genuinely wanted to help. It could have also been both.)
My personal thoughts on the differences between Caldari and Gallente colonization was that Gallente Prime was more habitable and therefore a more moderate terraforming project was put in place, and the initial colonists were able to move to the planet without too much in the way of extra preparation. On Caldari Prime, which was much more hostile, instead of simply terraforming the planet to make it more habitable, the initial colonists were also gene-modded (parahumans, in Transhuman Space parlance) to adapt better to Caldari Prime; the Civire and Deteis were actually competing lines of genemods which were developed for the colonists there (and perhaps the Men of the West were another). This allowed them to survive much easier than a "normal" human would have been able to. I would probably also guess that the vast majority of Caldari food plants and livestock are transgenic organisms of one type or another, imported to the planet with the ability to survive the harsh environment and provide the population with nutrients and resources that might not be provided by the local (very limited) ecosystem. The parahuman genemods of Caldari probably also gave them the ability to digest native amino acids and avoid severe allergic reactions to the native "wildlife" (which was, at least in my mind, limited to small oceanic life).
*facepalms* Thanks for this. I've been relying on the idea of post-Collapse microevolution between Gallente and Caldari for way too long without considering that there might have been Terran-colonization era genemods to the original stock.
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Well, appears I was too slow and a whole new set of posts have emerged. Good posts. I feel it highlights that the duality between the Gallente and Caldari is not a binary affair but something fluid. To me, this makes their interactions far more interesting than the Amarr and Minmatar conflict.
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(Speaking of that, I've never been sure if CDS was a giant "U R DOIN IT WRONG SO JUST DON'T" or the effort of Gallente interests who genuinely wanted to help. It could have also been both.)
Judging by the way CCP portrays the Gallente, I'd say likely both. The Gallente geniunely feel their way is the best way to do things. It is worth noting that Caldari society before the CDS was very unstable due to the sudden technological boom from contact with the Gallente, without the cultural maturity to go with it.
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I think pre-CDS the Caldari were likely still only an industrial-era culture with little in the way of advanced tech, so I doubt they were doing much offworld at that point (think 1800s Western Europe/US).
My personal thoughts on the differences between Caldari and Gallente colonization was that Gallente Prime was more habitable and therefore a more moderate terraforming project was put in place, and the initial colonists were able to move to the planet without too much in the way of extra preparation. On Caldari Prime, which was much more hostile, instead of simply terraforming the planet to make it more habitable, the initial colonists were also gene-modded (parahumans, in Transhuman Space parlance) to adapt better to Caldari Prime; the Civire and Deteis were actually competing lines of genemods which were developed for the colonists there (and perhaps the Men of the West were another). This allowed them to survive much easier than a "normal" human would have been able to. I would probably also guess that the vast majority of Caldari food plants and livestock are transgenic organisms of one type or another, imported to the planet with the ability to survive the harsh environment and provide the population with nutrients and resources that might not be provided by the local (very limited) ecosystem. The parahuman genemods of Caldari probably also gave them the ability to digest native amino acids and avoid severe allergic reactions to the native "wildlife" (which was, at least in my mind, limited to small oceanic life).
Some kind of Ubermensch ?
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Some kind of Ubermensch ?
Uh, no. I am not trying to say the Caldari were Space Marines, if you think that's what I mean. I am just saying that it's likely the corporations behind the initial colonization of Caldari Prime gave their colonists genemods to make the more suited to the environment they were being sent to. If we colonize Mars one day, and Martian colonists are given genemods to make them better able to breath the thin atmosphere of a terraformed Mars without artificial assistance, that doesn't make them "Ubermensch". Likewise, if you were to colonize an aquatic world, and you gave them some sort of genemod to give them gills, that doesn't make them supermen. The extent of Caldari "superpowers" probably consists of being better able to tolerate the cold one way or another (but likely less tolerant of hot climates) and able to process the local flora and fauna that might cause an allergic reaction or other ill effects without it.
Think of it as the mirror image of terraforming. With terraforming, you change the world to suit the new inhabitants. With genemodding, you change the inhabitants to suit the new world.
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That would actually make sense of the Caldari ability to digest hak'len.
If Herko's story of the social and ritual uses of hak'len (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Four_questions) is accurate it'd also be a strong disincentive to breeding out.
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I do not know if I am going against the grain here, but the idea of non-Caldari getting poisoned by hak'len/kresh sounds like quackery, what with the amount of time the Caldari have been in space.
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(http://i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/006/441/627d9fee-2a2f-4eeb-9f93-f9ea323b61f9.jpg)
Presumably there would be pills or something one could take before hand.
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Is Hak'len part of PF ?
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As far as I know it was invented by Herko. Whether it, like Cold Wind (also a Herko invention), has since been 'made canon' by CCP I am not sure.
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Great. :/
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kresh appears in a number of things, though I don't know if that was CCP adopting things that people had written.
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I *think* that kresh is also a Herko invention that became canon when CCP published 'Cold Wind' as a chronicle.
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I do not know if I am going against the grain here, but the idea of non-Caldari getting poisoned by hak'len/kresh sounds like quackery, what with the amount of time the Caldari have been in space.
Well, kresh is a tree...so I don't think anyone was eating it (considering the climate, trees may even have been something imported from elsewhere). As far as the whole "non-Caldari being poisoned by XXX," why is that so hard to believe? There are certain populations in the world right now more prone to certain allergies or dietary problems, and why would you expect that you could transport humans halfway across the galaxy and have them be able to eat the local flora and fauna with no issue? There's nothing that says Earth amino acids, proteins, and other nutrients are the only ones out there. Besides, considering how long it has been since the original genemod and how long the Caldari have likely been interbreeding with non-Caldari, it's quite likely that ability is not restricted to Caldari anymore.
What does the amount of time Caldari have been in space have to do with that?
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There's nothing that says Earth amino acids (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid), proteins, and other nutrients are the only ones out there.
Added wikipedia link - 500 amino acids are known to exist. Terran, stock humans currently use 22 of these.
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The problem for me is not that it makes it hard to believe (maybe just confirms their status of special snowflakes I have always the feeling to read when it's about Caldari) but the fact that a lot of Caldari players made up stuff starts to be used by groups of people, which gets us back to the exact same thing we had to deal with the last Tovil-Toba character or Napanii, and which is enforcing your own RP inventions on others.
I am fine with made up stuff that does not concern a whole faction or bloodline, but remains merely local.
I am also fine with world building concerning a whole faction (as opposed to local) as long as it is to discuss and imagine things OOCly.
I, however, take issue when that kind of world building starts to get used as PF.
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I'm a little unsure of which things in the EVElopedia are canon and which aren't, but in addition to the brief article on Kresh trees (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Kresh_trees) there's also the clearly-canon article on Heart of the Forest (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Heart-of-the-Forest): "Heart-of-the-Forest is the spirit of the mighty kresh trees, of things that are green and growing".
Neither of these sources directly mentions the toxicity of the plant, but the section on Tea - Caldari (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Tea#Caldari) gives us:
Traditional Caldari tea is prepared from the leaves of the kresh trees that can be found in the Kaalakiota Peaks on Caldari Prime, the home of the precursors of the modern Caldari known as the Raata. It has a strong and very bitter taste, and is an integral part of traditional Caldari culture. Practices like the Tea Maker Ceremony, for example, are carried out by citizens and corporate heads alike, used as a form of divine judgement with potentially lethal consequences. Kresh tea is thus regarded as divine amongst the Caldari [....]
I read this as strongly suggestive of the toxicity of kresh, but not conclusive. The article on the Tea Maker Ceremony (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Tea_Maker_Ceremony) itself refers to "poisoned tea" rather than "poisonous tea", carrying the possible implication that poison has been added to the tea rather than that it's an inherent part of the tea.
Personally, I've been enjoying seeing the development of the Caldari relationship with kresh. Kresh is the protecting mother-figure which can also poison you if you're not Caldari enough. I'd previously found the assertions about how only Caldari could drink it to be a bit on the implausible side, but the idea of gene-modding the early colonists to make them more compatible with the biosphere of their harsh new planet makes an appealing kind of sense to me. I can see how the rituals around kresh could develop out of that -- Herko describes it as part of the coming-of-age ceremony -- and how they would in turn select for people who were better-able to tolerate kresh.
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A lot of us have RPed that it's not that poison was added but that there is a method of preparing it known to the tea makers that makes it poison or not. Like blowfish.
I like Herko's works and will continue to use them in my RP, whether anyone takes issue or not. It's also been my experience that the special snowflakes pop up less often in the Caldari community than others.
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I will point out that I don't think it's particularly implausible that all of the Eve races are genemods in some way; the Caldari may have the most extensive ones owing to the relative inhospitability of their homeworld, but there's nothing out there to dispute the fact that part of the reason the races have differentiation is because they were made to be that way 30000 years ago. The Ni-Kunni, if I remember right, come from an extremely arid world; I would not be surprised if they were originally genemodded to retain water better or tolerate warmer climes. The only reason I have though about this more with regard to the Caldari is...well, they are my primary area of concern. Being able to tolerate colder weather, thinner air, or digest food that suits their particular niche is hardly a "superpower."
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I, however, take issue when that kind of world building starts to get used as PF.
Do you take issue with CCP taking those world building efforts and turning it into PF? Because it happens.
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I do not take issue anymore when it becomes official.
Hak'len stuff, however, is not.
As I said, world building is fine as long as you don't start to enforce it on others that do not share that view. The only reason that made me stop opposing to that kind of things ICly is that from my last experiences on the matter, I do not have a high enough ratio on the popularity contest anymore, so better to shut up ICly rather than being ostracized permanently.
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I would tend to consider the attributes of something player made also official when the thing itself is made PF, as with Kresh, unless there is reason not to. CCP looking at a player made idea and going 'Can we publish this?' is a pretty decent endorsement.
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Does it matter whether Hak'len is PF or just cycled into use through player created fiction?
It's a minor thing and the impact on someone elses rp is rather miniscule, unless you explicitly want to go against that player created fiction because... not being able to drink a certain tea and/or kresh derivated drink is severely limiting your playstyle?
I'm kind of puzzled how this story arc thread has devolved into a discussion about hak'len. ;)
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It stops being minor when you stumble across a RP involving something you disagree with. Be it napanii or hak'len.
I mentioned it especially because it already happened to me. Caldari characters speaking about hak'len and telling non caldari people "you won't survive it". So, what is my character reaction ? It can only be based on an OOC feeling since it does not exist in PF and yet, impacts the whole race. What do I do ? Shrug it off ? Yes, I could. That's what I did by the way. I stepped out of the discussion pretty quick and the character though "I don't know that drink, I should seek more info on it". Of course, since it is quite obvious that info on such a drink impacting the whole Caldari race (and even the rest of the cluster too since they die of it) would be easily accessible. So my character should know after looking for it. But I, the player, can not accept it exists.
See the annoyance ?
But yes, hak'len remains quite minor. Unlike Napanii. I am somehow fortunate that I do not mind Napanii too much as a player creation.
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With all the gene modding available, you're suggesting to me that you can't get Lyn at least some resistance? Various implants and pills and :nanites: exist. there are a metric ton of ways you can work around the toxicity to emulate natural Caldari resistance to it.
That said, if you do that, prepare to be regarded with disgust and offense by actual Caldari, for doing that.
Nobody is saying YOU CAN'T EVER DRINK KRESH STUFF EVER EVER EVER. We're saying it's normally a Caldari-only thing, generally accepted by the Caldari RP community (as far as I can tell), and partially backed by CCP with mentions in the wiki.
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This really does not read like sound science. I'm no immunologist, but what is being proposed is that the default human physiology does not agree with kresh. For some reason, the Caldari can consume it. This would infer they consumed it repeatedly, poisoned themselves repeatedly, killed themselves repeatedly, to gain an immunity to it? Why would they do that? How did they gain the immunity in the first place?
It seems very special snowflake-y for me to RP, but if other Caldari agree with it, it puts my own interactions in a difficult position, because I with a Caldari character do not agree with the idea.
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Human beings can easily form a RESISTANCE, not an immunity, to something that is toxic to humans who have not formed a resistance or compatibility.
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/tolerance
It is called acquiring a tolerance. Tolerance can be acquired over the lifetime of an individual and a higher than average tolerance can be passed down - especially in a marginal ecosystem like Caldari Prime, where the toxic foodstuff might be an important subsistence crop during the hard times.
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Possibly, whatever is toxic in hak'len tea and liquor is found in much, much lower concentrations in other plant-and/or-animal-life on Caldari Prime and consuming these lower, non-toxic concentrations builds up an immunity that makes the concentrated version non-lethal.
Arsenic is an example of a real-life, earth substance than can work in this way (in fact arsenic was a component in many beauty products), a fact that has been exploited by numerous mystery writers ("He can't have been poisoned by the tea! They both drank it! Unless the unusually thick and glossy hair and clear complexion of the suspect means ... ")
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Well... many populations around the world can't digest milk properly after childhood. As far as I know, is has nothing to do with genes : just bacterias.
Oh, and there's mithridatisation, too : acquired tolerance to poisons. Nothing to do with genes, either.
Whatever culture one's from, there will be delicacies from other cultures that'll make him sick as hell, bowels on fire, etc. Europeans are not snowflaky because they can digest cheese that would make an asian sick. Africans aren't snowflaky because some of their food is spicey enough to make europeans' guts melt.
As for the "why would people poison themselves ?" : tobacco. Alcohol. Yage. Etc. Poisonous things various cultures poisons themselves with.
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I always took the minmatar voluval as a lelft over genemodding project (Jovians!) so it makes decent sense to me that the Caldari would also be modified slightly.
As for the resistance the caldari have to Kresh, that's actually fairly easy to swallow. For a real world example, just look at Gluten. To most of western society gluten is perfectly safe to eat and won't harm you unless your diet consists of nothing but it. However, in many tribal cultures, including ones from South America, Africa, and southeast Asia, do not have the ability to digest gluten at all, and will get horribly sick, bloaty feeling, and get no sustenance out of it. If fairly minor degree of population isolation can result in a trait like this becoming fixed in a population via genetic drift. Kresh isn't a big deal. My character has drank kresh before, she just had to take an enzyme pill with it to make sure she could digest it properly. Its entirely flavour RP and I don't see any reason why it shouldn't exist. I'm always a fan of worldbuilding and letting players make up things as opposed to sticking to canon. That said, I'd like to see more people who DO create stuff to link it up on evelopedia in an effort to expand what other people have to work with and make it easier to reference things.
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Two different approaches: genemodding or acquired resistance. I prefer genemodding, since to my mind it fits the described data points better. Tinker with the Caldari settler genomes just enough that they produce a certain amino acid that means they can digest organic but normally-toxic local plantlife. That would then most likely be heritable and for most of their cultural existence quite possibly distinctively Caldari.
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that of course assumes that the planet wasn't entirely barren or snowballed and actually had local plant life. For all we know, Kresh could have been imported from somewhere else in the milky way for some reason, perhaps its not even intended to be used as food. It could even be something that exists on earth today, we just don't eat it because toxic.
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The cool thing about humans is that we are so adaptable.
We can thrive in the arctic and we can thrive in the desert.
I would think that the people that colonized Caldari Prime had access to the technological advancements of wearing clothes and building houses, thus eliminating any need for genemodding for environmental reasons.
The golden rule about world building of the colonies pre-collapse is the fact that the colonies had no idea that the collapse would occur.
Therefore things like losing logistics for food, medicine, tech and other resources came as a surprise for the colonists.
Not as something that they planned for.
If you want to start thinking about the genetic drift between the different bloodlines and whatnot in EVE, it is pretty simple.
Since the collapse the population collapsed as well.
When the technological advances that would keep the population alive are taken out of the picture then Evolution raises its magnificent ugly head.
Killing off everybody that cannot survive in the harsh conditions after the collapse.
No need for genemodding.
Just pure Evolution.
Humans are among the few mammals that can generate blubber to fend off the cold, just like seals, polar bears and whales.
The magical mystical superpower of the Caldari people would be...
The slight tendency to be able to create blubber more easily than other human stock.
There are a few problems that come into play when thinking about the survival of the Caldari after the collapse.
The colonists probably had rudimentary means of creating food within the colonies, hydroponics an such, but even that technology would deteriorate quite fast. The problem of course is the plant life, plants do grow during the winter, but they grow a lot slower than they do during the summer. Depending on any kind of farming pretty much useless, even genetically modified plant stock cannot escape the laws of physics. There just isn't enough energy to go around during a cold period to grow.
If we use Earth as an example, then on Caldari Prime there was a short summer and during that time pretty much everything started growing at insane speeds.
Get the pollen out, get the seeds grown and get the seeds into the ground.
Why seeds?
Because the seeds are protected against the cold.
Also during this time all the animal life kicked the summer off with an orgy followed by a feeding frenzy to get as much fat as possible to survive the cold and harsh winter.
The humans during this time did pretty much the same, but on top of that they gathered shitload of food for the winter.
Then spent the winter killing everything with fat on it and eating it.
Which pretty much explains why there is nothing but birds left on Caldari Prime.
Everything else was eaten by the Caldari.
Slowly the summers got longer, there was more plant stock in the larders, there was less need for hunting which was good because the prey got more scarce.
Those that could not stomach the vegetarian diet died off.
Kresh?
A spicy tea that makes you feel warm.
Perhaps with a little bit of hallucinogen or any compound that has trippy effect on people.
Hak'len?
When Caldari got into the farming stages of development they started putting Kresh into beer to make it more trippy.
When they hit industrial age they started sticking it into booze.
'Surviving' Hak'len might be just not getting freaked out by a bad trip you get from that shit.
Sci-fi explanations are cool and all that, but Evolution is much cooler.
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So, two options: Either there is some sort of ritualistic "coming of age" thing, which means that the entire population or nearly the entire population has acquired tolerance to the toxic compounds in kresh. Or then there has been a chance mutation in the population, resulting in a subpopulation that is naturally tolerant of the compound. Since the population levels assumably collapsed during the fall, it may be simple chance that the tolerant population was left.
And notably, the Caldari are not immune to the poison, only tolerant. Now, if including player fiction, Caldari can drink hak'len and live where Gallente will have death due to suffocation. An alcoholic drink is notable, since alcohol is also having a mild depressive effect (to the point that mixing alcohol and morphine may be fatal due to depressing the central nervous system).
Then, there is the kress tea, which reminds me of pufferfish/fugu: A kind of a delicacy (well, Caldari use it ritualistically) which, when correctly prepared, is safe. When incorrectly prepared, it is fatal. I would therefore assume that the Tea Makers know how to make kresh tea without extracting the toxin or, alternatively, in such a way that the toxin is extracted. It may be even as simple as a combination of solvent (water) temperature, duration of brewing the infusion, or a combination. Of course, a catalyst may be involved, as well, or the toxic compound may even break up at high enough temperatures. This would allow the tea maker to prepare seemingly similar cups of tea, possibly even from the same pot (if the ritual involves intermediate heating or cooling of the tea), some of the cups which are safe to drink and others fatal. If the water is changed, then there's one more parameter, as the tea maker can select the initial temperature of the water used, further obfuscating the water temperature from the participants. (Otherwise a knowledgeable drinker might be able to deduce water temperature from the duration and intensity of the heating, specially with a less experienced tea maker.)
Of course, at times the fate of the drinker may still be up to chance, depending on the exact concentration of the poison in the tea and the tolerance of the individual. If we assume that the Tea Maker ceremony was developed in the Raata period, then a tolerance to the poison would be a very desirable property with possibly considerable evolutionary pressure to develop. Culturally, it might be seen as the spirits favouring a specific noble who had been able to drink the tea several times (in a ceremony, not the "safe" tea served in funerals and similar rituals) without dying. Of course, assuming the Tea Maker is not impartial, this could be manipulated to make someone seem to be able to drink the Tea without dying, while it was actually safe - which could then make them more eager to use the method for solving disputes, making the person - or in case of inheritable property, his children - easier to get rid of. If noble houses select marriages based on the property, this could be one way of sabotaging their genome, depending on how the genotype manifests. Make a deal with a minor noble family with weak tolerance to suddenly appear to have caught the beneficial mutation, have one of them married off to a competitor (and thus elevating them in status) and then make a blow against your intended target generation later.
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Regardless of the origins:
Workaround:
a) Take an antidot, risk being frowned at by other Caldari.
or
b) Order another caldari tea and accept it.
Additional PF bits on tea (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Tea#Caldari):
Traditional Caldari tea is prepared from the leaves of the kresh trees that can be found in the Kaalakiota Peaks on Caldari Prime, the home of the precursors of the modern Caldari known as the Raata. It has a strong and very bitter taste, and is an integral part of traditional Caldari culture. Practices like the Tea Maker Ceremony, for example, are carried out by citizens and corporate heads alike, used as a form of divine judgement with potentially lethal consequences. Kresh tea is thus regarded as divine amongst the Caldari, with other styles of tea from abroad being given alternative names within State borders.
As the Caldari have not had easy access to the Kaalakiotas in recent times, they instead cultivate the kresh leaves on New Caldari Prime and in specially-designed greenhouse modules in space. These leaves are regarded as not any less divine than the ones found on the original homeworld, justified by the significance that the exodus had on Caldari culture. That said, tea made from original kresh leaves from Caldari Prime is treasured highly, and is not to be drunk lightly. Imitations of kresh tea exist outside of the State, often sitting alongside other commercialized recipes.
Regarding origins:
A tolerance could be aquired simply by the fact that either Kresh leaves - or other parts from the tree, like the bark or sap - have been used as spices or directly as food from the beginning. Maybe the small dosage if used as a spice, or lower concentrations in parts of the plant lead to the aquired tolerance. Maybe it is the process of preparing the tea that makes it (more or less - Hamish's explanation is a possibility, too) toxic. Maybe it's not the tree itself that is toxic but a parasitic/symbiotic relationship with single cell organisms in the roots of the tree that produce a metabolite that's concentrated in the leaves. Certainly a lot food for thought. ;)
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This really does not read like sound science. I'm no immunologist, but what is being proposed is that the default human physiology does not agree with kresh. For some reason, the Caldari can consume it. This would infer they consumed it repeatedly, poisoned themselves repeatedly, killed themselves repeatedly, to gain an immunity to it? Why would they do that? How did they gain the immunity in the first place?
It seems very special snowflake-y for me to RP, but if other Caldari agree with it, it puts my own interactions in a difficult position, because I with a Caldari character do not agree with the idea.
No, it infers that at some point during the initial colonization of Caldari Prime, the colonizing corporation came up with a gene therapy that changed the DNA of Caldari colonists to be able to digest life native to the planet they were colonizing. A "genemod" is not a natural process.
And Lallara, just because they can build shelters and wear clothes does not mean there's no need for genemodding. Being able to breath natively in a previously hostile atmosphere or integrate new organisms into an already-present biosphere has significant payoff in terms of reducing the costs of building shelter and feeding the population.
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4) The Caldari are extremely cliquey. Yes they are, it's more or less canon and it reminds a little of the japanese culture as well. We all know that some bits of Caldari remind the japanese extremely insular culture that even today sees strangers as mere "gaijin", like some bits of Amarr remind that culture as well on different points. Or like the Amarr borrow a lot of persian terminology, or the Minmatar a lot of Norse mythology, etc. That is, also, part of their flavor and I approve the cliquey bit.
This is the reason I like that the Napanii word for foreigner, jaijin sounds a lot like the Japanese word for the same.
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there's another, more sinister, possibility regarding Kresh and such.
With Caldari Prime originally being a corporate purchased asset, there is the possibility that the original colonists had some kind of genetic tweaking to be dependent on a substance grown on the planet by the ancestors of the kresh trees.
Stops the colonist employees from doing a runner and setting up their own settlement.
And, over the ~15,000 years since, mutation has changed it all.
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Like the lysine deficiency in Jurassic Park?
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Like the lysine deficiency in Jurassic Park?
There was more than just a lysine deficiency in play, in the novels anyway - they also used frog DNA to fill in the holes, and apparently frogs can change their sex if needed. :lol:
So their breeding of only female dinosaurs backfired there too. :welp: