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[Aria Jenneth]

... hound, of course.

So, Velarra, possibly with a certain small amount of malice aforethought, noticed Aria's worries about the "color" of her blood and has gifted her with a wiggly little quadrupedal blood-drawing mechanism. On springs.

Aria's raised a slaver dog before, but at the time I pretty much handwaved the details. I'd like to not do that so much this time, since I'm presently playing Aria in a very roleplay-intensive context. (The Amarr faction seems to be good for that.)

Having raised such a creature before, Aria knows what she's doing. I do not, and I'd like you all's advice on slaver personality and training techniques.

A few notes:

* slaver hound basic article

* physically, a slaver hound comes across as a mixed breed Afghan hound/hyena/velociraptor, and I think its personality is probably pretty hyena-like-- the same kind of casual, grinning malice towards most of creation.

* can form strong bonds of loyalty-- it's not clear how many, though. Its taste for leaping or vertical attacks strike me as more ambush predator than pack hunter. Pack hunter would imply more numerous bonds.

* doesn't really strike me as something that gets confused about its size (those of you who own large dogs you allowed to sit on your lap when they were puppies may know whereof I speak). For similar reasons, I'd be surprised if the bond of loyalty demanded any degree of fear or "alpha" respect-- it's hard to believe that the boy in "A Boy and His Slaver" commands that particular kind of control over Jecal, the slaver.

* Aria's is male, and as yet unnamed. That will be changing shortly.

* fingers covered in medical tape are already a quasi-canonical sign of slaver pup ownership. "Nippy" doesn't begin to cover it.

Thoughts?

[Anyanka Funk]

This is awesome! I'm going to use this for Anya's RP. 

[Aria Jenneth]

A few ideas/proposals/options:

* Not being actual mammals (rather an alien species), slavers are hatched from eggs and do not nurse their young.

* In the wild, slavers commonly live in small groups, but normally hunt alone or in pairs.

* Slavers are equally enthusiastic about wide-open spaces and forested ones. In a forested setting, they are essentially arboreal, using their jumping ability to move freely from tree to tree. (Imagine the world's deadliest squirrel.) On flat ground, they use speed and stealth to approach swiftly and silently, then spring at full speed.

* Though sharp, slaver claws are used for traction and grip, not for attack. They move with their claws; they kill with their teeth.

* Given time, slaver hounds' jaws and teeth are strong enough to chew through steel bars.

* Level of intelligence is similar to a smart canine (e.g., German shepherd), but more focused on spatial reasoning and navigation.

* Personality tends towards extreme loyalty to a few individuals, relative equanimity to other slavers, and malign indifference towards everybody and everything else. There's also a category for immediate threats and prey, which go straight to the top of the slaver's "to do" list.

* They do NOT get along with Terran canines. Dogs tend to recognize the slaver's profile as dog-like, but everything about it is wrong-- shape, smell, social mannerisms, everything. Slavers tend to look at dogs with that same malign indifference they show to most living things-- until the dog reacts in an aggressive or defensive manner, which shifts the dog into the "threat/prey" category.

* Slaver pups are self-sufficient from birth, and almost entirely arboreal. For this reason, slaver egg clutches are usually laid in or immediately adjacent to wooded areas. At this stage, they are social but independent. Nearby pups of similar age will tend to form strong attachments to each other over time, and will form one another's social group ("pack" being the commonly-used misnomer) once they reach adulthood.

* Slavers do not mate for life. Typically, mates are selected from outside the social group, not within it. Likewise, slaver parents do not care for their young.

* The primary purpose of a social group is defense and survival oriented. Slavers are not territorial, but conflicts occur during times of scarcity, and other members of the social group will share their kills with a sick, injured, or simply less-successful group member.

* Further possibility: slavers are not (at least originally) the apex predator of their ecosystem. Social groups cooperatively watch for and warn each other of danger. They sleep in shifts.

* In addition to well-developed senses of sight and smell, slaver hearing extends well into the ultrasonic, which is also where most of their vocal range lies. They judge distances and navigate arboreal environments using limited sonar.

(Yes, I'm having way too much fun with this. Argument or agreement welcome.)

[Mizhara]

Making them alien does majorly reduce their usefulness and practicality though.

An alien species from an alien ecosystem will have an alien biology, when it comes to everything from nutrition through immune systems, diseases, neurology, dependencies etc etc. It couldn't sustain itself on the same kind of protein/carbs combinations as terrestrial animals or humans, would likely be a perpetual source of (and victim of) nasty allergic reactions due to the alien biology clashing with each other and more.

Just the likelihood of an alien species evolving into a vaguely canine shape is impossible to calculate or know, really.

When I use any lifeforms in RP, I tend to make sure they originally hailed from Earth just like the humans. That ensures they actually have DNA etc, are probably capable of interacting with humans without too much biological hassle and it explains how our real life failures of fantasy always tend to resemble something from our own real life.

This lets you stay within what you can conceivably come up with, while letting your imagination run wild as whatever it is you're describing can have spent a long time since the original settling of New Eden adapting and evolving in new and interesting places, creating something truly alien yet something that can be realistically interacted with.

[Aria Jenneth]

That's one of those areas where Eve's always been a little vague.

New Eden's got life all over the damn place. You can harvest microbes off just about any barren planet you like, for that matter. Ocean worlds are apparently replete with macrofauna.

Either the Ancients had a hell of a lot of seeding and terraforming going on (including in Anoikis), or New Eden really does live up to its name-- there's life freakin' everywhere, and at least some of it, such as long-limbs, is compatible with human biology.

"The slaver hound is a native animal of Syrikos V" is an awfully specific statement for a creature brought in by the Ancients and that would be a highly useful terror on any planet it reached.

Unless you can find something to say otherwise, canon strongly implies extraterrestrial origins, biological weirdness notwithstanding.

Edit:

Also, I don't try too hard to turn Eve into hard sci-fi. It's an exercise in frustration.

[Mizhara]

I suspect that refers to "native" in the same way that Matari aren't native to Amarr, etc. I've honestly seen very little to suggest there's much in the way of complex alien life in New Eden.

[Aria Jenneth]

That's what I meant by "vague."

There's also no explanation of why certain species are associated (at least originally) only with certain planets. It's not like something like the slaver hound couldn't have thrived on a wide variety of terrestrial worlds.

I've always taken the slaver hound as a specific example of indigenous life, since it's implied that it's associated with a specific world and ecosystem but has been adopted by humanity and shipped to many others.

[Mizhara]

Eh, I'd be rather surprised to see much in the way of animals thriving on a wide variety of worlds. Different variants, perhaps. Natural selection and adaptation can work surprisingly quickly (faster still with human selection) and there'd always be some sort of difference between the planets. Different prey animals, different topography, climate, flora, air pressure and density, gravity, and countless other variables.

Animals on different planets remaining close enough to be considered the same species over the course of thousands of years? Would require an astonishingly identical set of planets.

What'd need explanation would be if you found the same species on multiple planets, besides humans who adapt through technology more than biology (and honestly, we'd have drifted apart physically in that timeframe as well, since our "host" planets have such differing levels of radiation, gravity, climates and more).

It's implied to come from a specific world indeed, because that's the only logical way for it to happen after that long without stellar travel. Any animal from the same ancestors pre-collapse looking and being the same would strain credulity past the breaking point.

[Aria Jenneth]

Eh, I'd be rather surprised to see much in the way of animals thriving on a wide variety of worlds. Different variants, perhaps. Natural selection and adaptation can work surprisingly quickly (faster still with human selection) and there'd always be some sort of difference between the planets. Different prey animals, different topography, climate, flora, air pressure and density, gravity, and countless other variables.

Animals on different planets remaining close enough to be considered the same species over the course of thousands of years? Would require an astonishingly identical set of planets.

What'd need explanation would be if you found the same species on multiple planets, besides humans who adapt through technology more than biology (and honestly, we'd have drifted apart physically in that timeframe as well, since our "host" planets have such differing levels of radiation, gravity, climates and more).

It's implied to come from a specific world indeed, because that's the only logical way for it to happen after that long without stellar travel. Any animal from the same ancestors pre-collapse looking and being the same would strain credulity past the breaking point.

After only about fifteen thousand years? These are large vertebrates, not viruses or even rodents. Fifteen thousand years is plenty enough time to see some variation in the "beak of the finch," but ... large-scale speciation via random mutation and natural selection? That's a pretty short time scale for widespread change.

For reference, the "homo" genus is estimated to have existed for about two million years, "homo sapiens" for about 500,000, and "homo sapiens sapiens" for about 200,000 years.

We're talking about roughly 15,000.

[Mizhara]

Move one species of fish from one riverbed to another a stone's throw away and watch how they adapt. It took just a few generations for them to develop a significantly different coloration and even behaviour patterns. Look at our very own dogs, over the course of a similarly small amount of generations and how they'll start differing from each other.

You'll see little species differentiation when there's few new things to adapt to or if there's little to improve on in the species' circumstances, but we're not just talking different environments on the same planet, we're talking entirely different planets here.

Elephants are being born with smaller or even without tusks to deter poachers, and we haven't been hunting them for their ivory for that long. Breeding foxes for their behaviour completely changed their coloration (and disposition) within just a very few generations.

Basically, there's a whole lot of change that can happen in extraordinarily short timespans, right here on earth, both through natural and artificial selection. Now, let's put these species on different planets and see what'll happen. Fifteen thousand years? Remember, this is quite a bit longer than written human history and recorded evolutionary changes and we've witnessed major changes in quite a few species just in the timespan we've actually studied these things in.

Evolutionary change only stops when a species is so well adapted (in our case through technology and societal constructs, or in the case of say the crocodiles or sharks through being damn near perfectly adapted to their environment as it is) to their environment that there's little to improve on, and the notion of multiple planets being so identical in terms of environment, fauna, flora, gravity, air pressure/density, atmospheric conditions, climate, topology etc etc that we'd see little to no change in the species is too far fetched to me.

For that matter, just the introduction of the species would likely change the conditions of the planet sufficiently that it'd be an ecological disaster until everything, including the introduced species adapted accordingly.

Fifteen thousand years is a whole lot of generations, on different planets. I really can't imagine a species being readily identified as the same other than through DNA analysis.

[Aria Jenneth]

Either way, I'd like a LOT more voices in here before I'm willing to buy that the slaver dog is a critter that just plain evolved jumping capabilities that contemporary canines don't even hint at.

I could see it if someone pre-collapse had been messing with chimeric gene splicing and produced a viable critter, but that seems like something that would be quite plain by now. This is something it would be helpful if CCP could clarify, but I'm not prepared to buy outright that all or even most of New Eden's life originates with us.

(Among other things, that would have serious implications for the EoM, who might have to start scrubbing barren planets to get rid of all those Terran bacteria.)

So far, to the degree it's been addressed, it seems as though life in the Eve universe tends heavily to convergent evolution, and what it converges towards is essentially compatible with human life. I agree it's an issue, but I do not think the answer is as clear as you want to make it.

[Mizhara]

Either way, I'd like a LOT more voices in here before I'm willing to buy that the slaver dog is a critter that just plain evolved jumping capabilities that contemporary canines don't even hint at.

Jumping behaviour and capability.

I could see it if someone pre-collapse had been messing with chimeric gene splicing and produced a viable critter, but that seems like something that would be quite plain by now. This is something it would be helpful if CCP could clarify, but I'm not prepared to buy outright that all or even most of New Eden's life originates with us.

Honestly, I'm not prepared to buy that New Eden has a lot of alien life that would be "compatible" with humans like a slaver hound would, simply due to what that would require, as in multitudes of planets having so similar conditions to earth that there'd be convergent evolution. In one little star cluster? I don't know the odds of that happening, but I frankly question them. Severely.

(Among other things, that would have serious implications for the EoM, who might have to start scrubbing barren planets to get rid of all those Terran bacteria.)

Religious lunatics not really being entirely logical about their insanity? Who'dhavethunkit?

So far, to the degree it's been addressed, it seems as though life in the Eve universe tends heavily to convergent evolution, and what it converges towards is essentially compatible with human life. I agree it's an issue, but I do not think the answer is as clear as you want to make it.

I'm curious what you source that on. We have so very little mention of native terrestrial life in New Eden that I honestly don't think we -can- really make any assumptions on the subject, and thus I personally lean towards being more careful and staying within reasonably realistic predictions rather than going for the long shot.

Especially since that still leaves you with some truly incredible options and imaginative critters. Look at the insane diversity and jaw-dropping creatures here on earth, then go nuts with what they could become in different ecosystems and conditions, and you'll find the potential for some batfuck insane "alien" life originating right here on earth. All without straining credulity with alien life evolving to be dogs with kangaroo legs and necks.

My two cents at any rate, since it's the "safe" way that would let it be played out in public without treading on others science/nerdery sensibilities.

[Louella Dougans]

slaver hounds are allergic to caffeine. (from a minor comment on the article about Omir Sarikusa)

https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Slaver_hound_(lore) has some more info than the basic article. They're about a metre tall at the shoulder. Genetically engineered slaver hounds also exist.

https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Slavery#Methods_of_Control describes the hound as "a large canid"
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Unchallenged_Era_of_the_Amarr_Empire#Slaver_Hounds.5B7.5D says so as well.

https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Laser_pointers#Annoying_Animals mentions slaver hounds chasing red laser pointers.

https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Radonis#Flora_and_Fauna There are feral slaver hounds in the woods on Ardishapur Prime.



Evolution-wise. It could be, that slaver hounds are descended from something Terran, or Terran-derived, that was left to its own devices following the collapse of the EVE Gate.

Terran being Earth species that would exist currently - dogs, wolves, hyenas, bears, whatever.
Terran-derived being species that were engineered from existing ones, either before going through the EVE Gate, or afterwards.

An unknown number of worlds were terraformed by pre-Gate collapse groups.

Maybe some rich Terran bought Syrikos as a hunting preserve planet ? Maybe a conservation group bought it as a nature reserve ? Maybe a biotech megacorporation bought it as a test environment ?

[Mizhara]

All potentially possible options, indeed. I'd buy any of those before them being actually alien.

[Morwen Lagann]

I vaguely recall some comment in a chronicle somewhere about Slaver Hounds actually being more feline than canine in nature, but can't quite remember where.