Aslan

[Whipsnade]

Mea Culpa: It's IMTU, not OTU

I appreciate that. But several other posters were continuing the discussion here instead of in the original thread. As I said, the brownie came along for the move.

Hans,

That's my fault and my fault alone.

Ish wisely placed this thread in the IMTU but I failed to mention that when I put up the "signpost" in the old thread. I'll go back and correct that now.

Just a head's up to everyone: We're tackling ATU and MTU stuff here. The OTU is the starting point only. While it would be nice if whatever solution was crafted here could be grafted easily onto the the OTU, that is neither the sole purpose or among the many goals of this thread.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Darkhstarr]

Very fascinating. I like it.

My wife also made the connection after reading the Aslan info back in the 80's that females control the really important aspects in Aslan society. It also got her to play an alien for once.

A thought about the pride nature of Aslan society. While in theory all the females could conceive children, child raising could be handled by one or more females in the 'harem' (for lack of a better term) allowing the other females in the group to pursue the technical or economics goals of the pride.

IMTU, I had a sizable outcast population in the Beyond subsector, many who pursue goals of the mainstream cultural. In one case, I had an up and coming outcast Aslan male merc leader who as of attaining status surrounded himself with a harem of high-status females irregardless of the racial stock(though he had some Aslan fems)-their status & what power they commanded increased his status & what power he controlled.

I also had a situation where during an interclan battle, a ship to ship duel was fought between an Aslan captain's ship & my wife's character ship. The upshot was the Aslan was defeated-and then they found out Bette was female. To save face, they ignored her gendered, declared her a MALE, & treated her female crew as 'his' females. Every time she has dealing with that clan address & treat her a male, even the females of the clan.

here goes nothing.

I'm going to make a huge huge assumption here and say that Aslan sex is determined by genes much like humans/mammals. As aliens, this might not be the case, otherwise that would give a primary sex ratio of 1:1 barring any outside factors such as a heritable male-killing Wolbachia infection such as infects some forms of butterflies.

Therefore sex ratio at birth is 1:1 unless stillborn fetuses skew the secondary sex ratio consistently to one sex. Or if zygotes separate to increase the number of male fetuses. This may be the reason lion cubs skew heavily to male directly after a coalition of adult males take over a pride ( killing existing male cubs and killing any adults that don't run away ). This seems to be a mechanism to keep such male infanticides from skewing the overall sex ratio of lions away from 1:1, which appears to be the best Evolutionary maintainable strategy.

That leaves the tertiary ratio which is 3:1 in lion prides and in lions, all males within the pride have access to all females in the pride, so the operational sex ratio is slightly higher.
This is where all the mating occurs. In lion prides, the females are related and if the males can hold off any outside challengers, incest may occur and without the eventual rotation of males, in-breeding too. Once males reach mature age of 3 or so, they are driven out. They form coalitions with other males for better survival and to increase the chances of being able to take over other prides. Unattached females do likewise, although some may stay within the pride to keep the number of females constant within the pride. Sometimes the male and female coalitions meet and form all new prides of their own.

So where does that leave the Aslan?
By that point in life, fully 2/3's of the male population is unable to breed at any given time. That's not the same thing as dead, although I'd expect high mortality during all those wars and feuds and duels in spite of rituals and non-lethal endings.... situational honor may cause duels and feuds to be more lethal than advertised (?).
I'm also not sure how the relatively low birth rate ( compared to lions ) of Aslan will affect things...more study is needed. I should point out that 'violent male competition' is a cause of skewed ratios. But that can also lead to population drops if too many males become too injured to mate.

One explanation is that the 3:1 tertiary sex ratio occurs at higher social whereas lower to middle 'prides' have fewer females. Lowest class may simple not be part of any 'pride' at all. This should be balanced in small part to unattached females, which in the case of lions, form their own groups which are often taken over by groups of unattached males. If access to females is a function of social class, then there should be some form of social mobility. Perhaps using Soc as honor in a similar fashion to how Vargr use charisma.

The social gender solution had been considered and mostly discarded as unable to cover 2/3's of the male pop, but is certainly part of Aslan society. They may or may not be low-social. There is a precedent in "rats'n'cats" for Aslan using job function to determine the sex of a human. There shouldn't be any great leap to assume the Aslan would do that within his own race too in social situations at least.
I'd think it'd mean a social castration of sorts as he'd be removing himself from the reproduction pool. I'm not 100% sure of this solution though..... it would possibly break the gender role aspects of the Aslan with the OTU material just being a matter of semantics. This requires more thought. In any case, once a male took on the female role, he'd be expected to remain in that role until death. It'd probably be chosen for the cub at a young age to give time to learn the female script, etc. Actual castration of youth so normal sex drive doesn't bollux it up? hmmm

if all males within the 'pride' have access to all females AND they practice some form of ancestor worship, I'd think heredity would be traced through the female side as there might be no guarantee which male caused fertilization. The lead male would be the defacto father, but family trees go through the mother.

In short, my own beliefs are that there is some social gender determination, perhaps with actual youth castration in some cases, but most of the unaccounted for males are just unattached perhaps forming coalitions serving one clan or another striving to improve their standing enough to enter a breeding family group. An example of this might be the mercenary group depicted in FASA's Aslan Mercenary deckplans.
These are the touchy ones eager for duels or other action to prove themselves.
These are also the ones who expand outward looking for their own holdings to form their own breeding group. Unattached females watch to see who succeeds before committing themselves to any coalition.
These are also the outcasts who do the dirty work of society that everyone pretends aren't there.

There's enough holes in all this to make my head hurt.
I still need to study more.

It just seems bad that most of the writing of Aslan concern male behavior despite the fact that taken literally, the stated 3:1 female:male ratio for the entire species would mean that the OTU focuses on only the 1/4 of Aslan population which does not handle money (economy/trade) and does not handle innovation/technology except as a black box.

We all know how human females act; we deal with them every day in real life. We don't have that luxury for Aslan and that leads to 'humanizing' them because there is so little information on them ( at least in the few materials I own ). More attention needs to be paid to the ordinary day-to-day life of the alien races. It would be nice if someone who is a good writer could author a piece from a female Aslan's point-of-view.... a female that players might commonly come across. We need more info on females here.

for what its worth, my 13 year old daughter read rats-n-cats because she thought the Aslan looked cool. She broke out laughing because it seemed to her that the females control everything and that males need assistance to even handle money.

also...get rid of 'marriage' ... it is unnecessary and leads to pre-conceived notions of how sexual relations and relations with females are.

There is no lesbianism, per se... just very affectionate females who show affection freely, but it has nothing to do with reproduction.... just sharing closeness with loved ones. Same with males although the actual sex act would be shameful except with a re-gendered male acting as female.
Coitus is for reproduction
other forms of touching are for showing affection ( privately, usually, but possibly more open for females and human observers put their own lewd thoughts in the reports ). Aslan don't share human attitudes towards sex. They're not stern and stoic all the time.

am I on the wrong track?
or in the right ballpark....

 

[aramis]

Implantation ratio is the ratio of males to females at the implantation stage, when the zygote actually becomes implanted in the uterine lining.

In fact, in humans, I have read that male conceptions are significantly higher, but reduce to about 13:12 at birth. (and about 4:5 at puberty in preindustrial societies, and almost 1:1 at puberty in modern societies.)

I can see pro-female selection pressures pushing that higher still.

 

[rancke]

What argument... it IS broken

Sez you.

but if its not broken, would you care to elaborate on the factors that caused it to be that way? On the factors that cause it to remain that way? Why such a factor is not present in the other races?

Certainly. Here? In this thread?


Hans

 

[Ishmael]

sure...why not?
discussion of aslan sex ratios and reproduction......
that's what this thread is for, isn't it?

From the papers I 've read so far ( assuming that I've understood them enough ), it comes down to gaming using simple assumptions;
Both sexes are required to produce offspring
both sexes pass on genetic information
offspring must be one sex or the other
The object is for each individual to pass his/her genetic information to as many grandchildren as possible.
It appears that leads to a best solution of ~1:1 ratios when using game theory, if I understand things right. that would eliminate the mechanics of biology as a consideration.
Personally, I'm beginning to feel that the birth ratio is whatever leads to the optimal ratio at reproduction age after taking various mortality factors into consideration.

sure, there are situations in known nature that show its possible to have hugely pro-female populations, by they also seem to require conditions that are explicitely contrary to what has already been written up for the Aslan. My goal is to come up with something that 'fixes' what I percieve to be a problem while changing as little as possible.
Its also the reason I've been posting links to papers in case someone picks out something I totaly missed that makes this whole exercise moot.

 

[rancke]

sure...why not?
discussion of aslan sex ratios and reproduction......
that's what this thread is for, isn't it?

Ah, I see where we talking past each other. I'm not going to argue about just how likely or unlikely it is that random chance would produce a birth ratio of 1:3, because I don't think it matters. Even if you could put an undisputable figure to just how unlikely it is, and even if it was a pretty damn small likelihood, it still wouldn't be impossible. And if it was so unlikely as to be for all practical purposes impossible, who's to say you've accounted for all the factors? For all we know, the Aslans genetically engineered themselves back in the days when their technology became advanced ehough to keep far too many males from dying a "natural" death.

Mostly, however, I think that an Alien race with that sort of gender imbalance is fun. It's certainly different from anything a human society has had to contend with, and the ramifications are more entertaining than a human-like population group practicing infanticide, war, or extreme sport. Even if it was demonstrably impossible, it's fun enough to ignore that little impediment.

In short, I think it's not broken because you can't prove it's impossible, and it's not broken because it wouldn't matter if it was impossible. I mean, it's not like it's 'a 1000 miles diameter world with a breathable atmosphere' impossible, is it?

Sure, there are situations in known nature that show its possible to have hugely pro-female populations, by they also seem to require conditions that are explicitely contrary to what has already been written up for the Aslan.

But I strongly suspect that any attempt to explain how to get rid of two thirds of all Aslan males will ALSO be contrary to what has already been written up for the Aslan (Or rather dreary. Or both). As I said in another post, if I'm wrong and you can come up with some brilliant twist that doesn't require messing with previously published information, that'd be fine by me.


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

I still don't see why the explanation 'it's the way Aslan evolution worked out' isn't the easiest.

The actual biology and evolutionary processes on the Aslan homeworld are alien to us.

How do you we that there aren't 4 sex determining chromosomes in the Aslan genome that favour the production of females?

What if the Aslan y chromosome sperm (human anology obviously) breaks down easily?

What if the Aslan ovum is more easily penetrated by X sperm cells.

 

[Gadrin]

if all males within the 'pride' have access to all females AND they practice some form of ancestor worship, I'd think heredity would be traced through the female side as there might be no guarantee which male caused fertilization. The lead male would be the defacto father, but family trees go through the mother.

Interesting. Unless the aslan have DNA markers that can link who
the actual parents are, I think that's a decent way of looking at
aslan "family".

for what its worth, my 13 year old daughter read rats-n-cats because she thought the Aslan looked cool. She broke out laughing because it seemed to her that the females control everything and that males need assistance to even handle money.

I rather liked the GURPS interpretation that Aslan resemble the Klingons
from Trek (not directly) but in that it helps me portray warriors more easily and can leave room for "feminine heroines" or at least rowdy
type aslan femmes.

As for money I tend to play it a bit loose, such that I had a scenario
running for an online game, where an outside group of Traders had
misjumped into Reaver's Deep. They were transporting LOTS of stolen
gold/platinum bars they'd obtained from LSP back in the Marches. This
was as good a place as any, far away and certain Aslan clans had
plenty of money. While running from a non-honorable Isliat group they
contacted a much larger aslan clan to see about selling the precious
metal for either Imperial Currency or gems, etc. With the travel
distances being what they are in Traveller their first encounter was
with a group of aslans led by a younger male in an Aslan Courier ship.

He was acquainted with the plan, his response was:

"Yes I'll speak on behalf of my clan and will help you dispose of your
gold and exchange it for money, but under no circumstances will we
discuss actual sums or deals..." he was there to conduct the merchant
to safety, and get him to the females who would hammer out the
actual deal. In other words he knew what was going on but it was
distasteful to carry out the details of the arrangement. So he knew
that getting a good deal would benefit the Clan in the long run.

As for the women controlling everything, I see it less as they know
everything and the males are dumb, rather the males furnish the
females with the ability to do what they do. The males conduct
themselves in a fashion that gains more honor/respect and combat
and the women assist them in doing so, with organization and form.

The same NPC above was in another scenario I had envisioned where
after having to serve in a femme position aboard a ship, he got drunk
and tried to think of a way to gain honor to overcome the shame of
it...and broke into the safe aboard the Aslan Courier and stole a few
handfuls of money (stacks of bills -- imperial currency) and then went
AWOL from the courier which ended up jumping out of the system. It
wasn't headed for action anyway. Just another dreary jump.

He then took the money, running into a pair of humans (pcs of course)
that he knew ran weapons/guns and "hired them" to assist him in a
small mercenary operation -- to win back his honor. He had to know
how much money would work to lure in the humans. So he's not
clueless.

To him he wasn't stealing money, since it's worthless/useless to the
males (who wouldn't brand him a thief) and he could overcome any
lapse of duty by having a glorious battle tale to spin afterwards.

Of course in the long run, you can't have your warriors going AWOL
all the time, the clan would react to that, but as long as he hadn't
disobeyed a clan male superior directly and his actions led to helping
the clan ( all part of the adventure plan ) then he was fine.

>

 

[Whipsnade]

I still don't see why the explanation 'it's the way Aslan evolution worked out' isn't the easiest. The actual biology and evolutionary processes on the Aslan homeworld are alien to us.

Mike,

Once again, it's not the results of evolution which have me questioning the 1:3 ratio. As Gould's book Wonderful Life and the Burgess Shale fossils readily illustrate, evolution can produce wildly different results from a single starting point.

It's the mathematics which underlie evolutionary processes that have me questioning the 1:3 ratio because math is universal. Two plus two will always equal four.

How do you we that there aren't 4 sex determining chromosomes in the Aslan genome that favour the production of females? What if the Aslan y chromosome sperm (human anology obviously) breaks down easily? What if the Aslan ovum is more easily penetrated by X sperm cells.

Because a species without those attributes would have a marked evolutionary advantage over the species with those attributes.


Regards,
Bill

 

[rancke]

Because a species without those attributes would have a marked evolutionary advantage over the species with those attributes.

Sez you.

Maybe the proto-Aslan had two chromosones that influenced sex: A and B. A/B produced a male, A(x)/B(x) produced a female. A/B(x) And A(x)/B produced a male or a female depending on factors that I don't know enough genetics to provide you with. Then there was a mutation which caused A/B(x) And A(x)/B to produce females every time. This happened just about the time Aslan were becoming smarter. Maybe the mutation was even linked to becoming smarter.



Hans

 

[AndrewR]

Biologically speaking all you need is more than one chromosome determining sex (do the alien races of Traveller have chromosomes?) and the male to be recessive.

Just throwing my two credits into the discussion.

Don't forget that many animal species birth litters. If Aslan females always birth litters of four, then the 3:1 ratio can be biologically explained as an aspect of the egg fertilization process. This also means each Male will usually have four litter-sisters.

 

[mike wightman]

It's the mathematics which underlie evolutionary processes that have me questioning the 1:3 ratio because math is universal. Two plus two will always equal four.

But not in the math of genetics where dominant and recessive genes must be considered.

Aa + Aa => AA, Aa, A,a, aa

A = female aslan
a = male aslan

Since A is dominant you only get a male with a ratio of 1:3

The science fiction bit is explaining how an AA female produces an Aa ovum, and how an aa male produces Aa sperm.

Because a species without those attributes would have a marked evolutionary advantage over the species with those attributes.

But we don't know that such creatures existed on Kusyu, the rise to dominance of the Aslan suggests they didn't.

 

[Whipsnade]

Sez you.

Hans,

Sez statistics.

It's simply a matter of numbers. IF you need two sexes to produce offspring and IF both sexes provide genetic material to those offspring, then having more of both sexes provides more chance for mutations, more chances for beneficial mutations, more chances for beneficial mutations to affect survival, and more chances for those beneficial mutations to propagate through a species or lead to another species entirely.

That's evolution, that's mathematics.

Then there was a mutation which caused A/B(x) And A(x)/B to produce females every time. This happened just about the time Aslan were becoming smarter. Maybe the mutation was even linked to becoming smarter.

Actually that was going to be one of my biological suggestions. I was going to link the Aslan 1:3 gender disparity to the ability to speak however.

The mutation that led to a change in the proto-Aslan larynx or the Aslan analog to FoxP2 also led to the 1:3 birth gender ratio. This new ability to communicate more effectively gave the Aslan in question an evolutionary advantage that greatly outweighed the evolutionary disadvantage of the 1:3 birth gender ratio.

A biological explanation is a nice option, but this is the IMTU forum and I'd like to explore more outre explanations. Like Ish, I'm very interested in making the Aslan more alien.

That's why I'm intriuged with the berdache ideas. Assuming a roughly 1:1 birth gender ratio, you'd need only 50% of males to become "berdaches" to produce the canonical 1:3 social ratio. (Please remember, canon never mentions "birth" specifically, just "society" or "culture".)

Another thing AM:1 canon mentions is the fact that "lower class" males make do with one female. It's only the upper classes that get the 1:3 harems. I seriously doubt there are as many upper class males as lower class males, so the number of females needed shrinks a bit. If the upper class is 33% of the overall population, the male-female ratio drops to 3:5. If the upper class is 25% of the population, the ratio becomes 2:3. If the upper class is 10%, something more plausible IMHO, the ratio becomes 5:6.

Interesting, no?


Regards,
Bill

 

[aramis]

Nice idea, hans, but...
if a=male...

Aa +aa => Aa, Aa, aa, aa
aA + aa => aa, aa, Aa, Aa
AA+ aa => Null.*
aa +aa => null.
AA +Aa => null
AA + AA => null
Aa + Aa => null


Thus a pure female and a male produces nothing but girls. But the pure female only occurs from a doubled sex characteristic. EG a Aaa male.
two males don't breed.
Two females don't breed.

Still a 1:1 genetic ratio.

No, the only viable answers are:
gestational selection for extra females via mechanics of reproduction
beardache
culling

Beardache is not consistent with the CT/MT sources.
Culling is pretty drastic. it's hard to explain, and harder still to get player buy in.

Both beardache and culling are offensive as well; so for sociological reasons, they are a poor choice for gaming.

Which leaves birth rate discrepancy.

if the y' is slightly less likely to penetrate due to lower motility and/or weaker enzymes, then x conceptions would be more likely.

Now, genetics is not the only way to impose gender selection; Crocodilians do so by temperature variation.

 

[mike wightman]

AM:1 tells us of the 1:3 ratio in the physiology section - this suggests birth ratios rather than cultural perception of sex.

 

[Whipsnade]

AM:1 tells us of the 1:3 ratio in the physiology section - this suggests birth ratios rather than cultural perception of sex.

Mike,

Suggests, not explicitly states.

And this topic is being discussed in the IMTU forum. Here, canon like AM:1 and S&A are a starting point and not a straightjacket.


Regards,
Bill

 

[far-trader]

AM:1 tells us of the 1:3 ratio in the physiology section - this suggests birth ratios rather than cultural perception of sex.

It may suggest but it doesn't state, what it says is "Females outnumber males by a ratio of 3:1."

To me that suggests the whole of the population, not the birth statistic.

Further AM1 goes on to state it again in the Society section: Gender in Aslan Society (pg5, paragraph 4), and goes further than the one sentence in the physiology section with a full paragraph. This further reinforces the suggestion to me that it is more (or entirely) social and not physiology that shapes the number.

But as noted, this is ATU so alternate methods of arriving at the numbers are encouraged. I just wanted to clarify the background for some of the ideas.

 

[Whipsnade]

Both beardache and culling are offensive as well; so for sociological reasons, they are a poor choice for gaming.

Aramis,

I find culling offensive and find bardache intriguing.

Yes, the original European term was offensive but that term was misapplied by trappers to the people they encountered among Native American tribes. The term originally referred to, and there's no way to put this delicately, young male sex slaves.

This doesn't mean the people living as "bardache" among the Souix were sex slaves. Far from it as a matter of fact. Native American bardaches lived that way by choice and were treated with the same respect afforded all other members of the group.

So what happened was that French trappers used a term from home to describe a sociological phenomena they'd could scarcely conceive of and that term stuck. Remember, we're dealing with the same group of men who named a Wyoming mountain range "Big B**bs"...

(The "two souls" term Dan found doesn't have the baggage bardache does, but it's also clumsy.)

I'm intrigued by bardache among the Alsan because it's so wonderfully "alien". Having nearly 50% of biologically male Aslan choose to live as cultural females also fits neatly into the Aslan's gender perception issues, IMHO.

It would be a superb curveball to throw at your players because, while their perception has been changed, nothing else has actually changed at all. It's a sociological equivalent to the Pathfinder story.


Regards,
Bill

 

[mike wightman]

Isn't it just another human cultural extreme grafted onto an alien race?

Don't get me wrong I like the idea - I just prefer to find an alien biological explanation for the 1:3 difference. That to me is more alien.

 

[mike wightman]

Ehem:

Gender: Aslan may be either male or female. Aslan biology dictates
that there are approximately three females born for every male.
As a result, males are in the distinct minority.

AM:1 page 9 character generation section.