gentle tuch alium

Anonymous 2023/03/16(Thu)10:52 No. 139282 ID: 99f29a
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>>139281
illustrate

>because you guys seem to need it ahead of schedule
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Always ready for an argument about fluffy people, that's us

I guess the ahead of schedule discussion is my fault. In my defense the comment I responded to did say to "do better" and I took that as a challenge.

SIDE NOTE since some people might have been confused:

I'm only doing the art! This quest is being run by Typo!

>>139286
I definitely want to encourage discussion! Just, when I saw people already having conversations in spoiler text, and also that I had close to fifty suggestions, I figured I should probably hurry up and toss up a thread.

I have a question that will be irrelevant with the next update: What is the scale we are dealing with?
The comments seem to assume the neumono is about five times the size of Kuvusha, but considering the room horizon lines he must be far away and therefor much larger. The problem is that such room doesn't fit with the garage doors that seem to be three times Kuvusha size in high and because of that the proportional length wouldn't allow for one of those rooms to be right next to each other the way the garage doors seem to be.
Maybe I'm overthinking things like the bed high commentary. To me it would make more sense for the neumono to be between three to five times Kuvusha size the way most comments seem to assume.

>>139290
I did my math wrong and had to get the model fixed for the latest update, so the art before that is misleading, particularly the size of the doors. The neumono is approximately five times Kuvusha's height.

>>139292
Interesting. So her entire living space must be proportionally smaller than a closet in relation to the corridor and cells.

>>139290

It's bigger on the inside

>>139292
Interesting now we just need to know if they're big or small by neumono standards to get an idea of overall scale.

>>139295
Based purely on coloring alone they're greenish which means forest neumono so probably on the smaller side.

>>139299
Good point but you also get all kinds of weird hybrids with them so ?

So! Discussion!! What exactly are the high priority supplies?

I think she needs a lab coat with LOTS OF POCKETS.

>>139304
Physiological necessities of the inhabitants. Does everyone have enough food and water? Access to functional toilets? Proper ventilation? Blankets? Those sound like the basics whoever set up those cells must have covered, but such things could easily be overlooked or underestimated because of the unusual scale. A snazzy lab coat and trash novels can wait, but if we don't check those someone could get sick.

>>139304
A chair, or rollable stool maybe. If we get one stool we can roll anywhere we won't need anymore chairs, that way we don't have to bring a chair or set one up in every chamber.
Also, an emergency radio. While I doubt they would want anything confidential on radio waves maybe we can set something up so we can send off a quick signal if we're in danger.
Lastly, after the necessities have been gotten, I recommend a chess board, as it's a game that can be played through the glass and will hopefully act as a stress reliever for both Kuvusha and the subjects.

>>139304
Given just how bug the size difference is a projector and laser pointer may come in handy

Side note: my current hypothesis is that the "translation" process is basically taking a creature from one universe and bringing it into another - but translating it in the process to be (somewhat) compatible. Like, moving the CONCEPT of the person more than their exact structure. So, they end up with a language and emotions you can understand (and maybe a biology compatible with local food?). Though clearly there are significant limits on what's translated vs transcribed, since it apparently doesn't just e.g. make the closest-approximation Tridenik. It is unclear yet whether the process is triggered intentionally for secret government motives, or just a Thing that Happens and this group is trying to deal with it. The translation process may (in lore) be involved in our own perception of events, given the language and emoting stuff, vs that written language remains untranslated. This is highly speculative, of course, but is my working theory.

So I'm noticing the neumono's room is rather bare, so does that mean
1) we need to request thing for them things to make them more comfortable
and
2) would we even have anything big enough for them?

I mean I think we could maybe find a comically large beanbag chair for them that would be big enough for them but I don't know if we could find anything more complicated for them. I mean if nothing else giving the guy a few books to help kill boredom I feel is the minimum effort we should put in to help the guy.

Silly Zealot 2023/03/17(Fri)21:02 No. 139312 ID: f69af6
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Very clever, Typo. You first make a character that has some crazy mind link to the suggesters.

And then you integrate it into the story as the reason why she is picked for the black site and why she can understand the aliens.

>>139312
Oh man Kuvu is going to freak out if this is the case. Can you imagine learning you got hired onto a blacksite because otherworldly beings already have access to your brain?

I was thinking about the comment:
>I’ll be honest, I’m getting sick of seeing these guys! I was hoping to see someone actually “Alien” in the literal sense of the word.
While I understand and agree that the concept of aliens usually invoke far stranger creatures than the furries with superpowers most of the spacefaring questden bestiary seem to consist of, I far prefer those to the majority of things from SCP. I'm relieved we are getting creatures that are kind of reasonable instead of the high power bullshit that misunderstand and abuse complicated concepts like pataphysics and cognitive hazards, or even worst, are based entirely on paradoxal or nonsensical definitions (like the patter screamers, fuck those in particular). The SCP resemblance was filling me with dread.

No, no, no. That person did not mean SCP creepypasta-style aliens, but rather creatures from more realistic, speculative works, like Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Larry Nivel, and others from the golden age of science fiction, where the aliens look and behave in a very inhuman manner, but are still mortal beings like any other, just having spawned in a completely different enviroment.

I myself like the neumonos, but I completely understand when people think they are hogging attention away from other already existing or potential stories. The only good idea I hav about is to make a mental list of the quests and tropes one likes and to come up with fun, easy to like ways to promote them to a wider audience.

As a fan of Cirr's work, I'm calling it now. The multi-eared low-temperature guy with multi-tails (003) is one of Cirr's Criai. Given the combative state, probably of the Bisushpi-kin faction, so good luck with that one.

>>139322
that can't be right, there's no fans of cirr's work left, they all died out in the great content drought of '22

>>139327
Bitch I’m still here.

Besides that’s how cirr quest work. You get a month or two of consistent updates. Then 6 to 8 months of radio silence, followed by him starting a new quest or occasionally going back to an old one.

I just want to say... please don't punish us for your quest being popular. Like doing the 'the person is overwhelmed with the number of comments every single time there are lots of in depth comments'. Like once, narratively is fine, but doing so many times simply due to the quest player's enthudiasm is really not fair.. some quest authors do that for some reason and I've never figured out why.

>>139331
It’s because it is overwhelming, every time. We aren’t owed a response to every point of every suggestion.

>>139331
Don't worry. I mean, obviously the quest isn't going to get anywhere if Kuvusha has a breakdown every update.

>>139334
(That said, I think Kuvusha is entitled to being overwhelmed by her situation from time to time. Just, it's more a function of that than "oh no so many suggestions". I certainly don't want to discourage people from suggesting in my quest...)

so how long until Kuvusha sees an Amtsvane? Seeing how big they are and how most of them tend to be nervous wrecks themselves I'm kind of curious would would drop their spaghetti more.

awwww I had high hopes for the psychic thing!!

>>139337
Sazgvao is not particularly representative of amtsvane demeanor.

https://questden.org/wiki/O/I/R As if by magic, a wiki article exists!

I wholeheartedly encourage someone who isn't me to improve it.

>>139330
Oh nooo, they've evolved sporulation! ;P

Also. The cube-square law seems like it might, in fact, be kindof important here. Like, a human can hold a gerbil carefully, even casually, without much fear of hurting it. The same isn't as true of a human being held by something proportionally larger - for instance, we die of fall damage a lot easier, we have a much harder time supporting something our own weight (like a giant finger or hand), and something like a pat becomes a heavy blow. The answer to the cube-square question may determine whether we will ever be able to safely, casually interact with these entities, or if we'll always need e.g. safety protocols. (Unless we can get something like e.g. bioarmor. :P )

Also, Typo and Slinko, you seem to have found an exceptionally successful combination of skills and story points; good job. :D

ALL THE TALKING

>>139318
1. I do agree that by and large most sci-fi aliens are basically humans in weird bodies, occasionally with small tweaks, and that it might be nice to see some aliens that are weird on the inside, too - but that's a problem really not specific to this quest, haha.
2. This quest is actually in a good position to still explore such possibilities.
3. Given Kuvusha is more-or-less human-on-the-inside, it makes sense to start her off with an alien that is, too, lest she REALLY flip her lid.

Also, you may be interested in Three Worlds Collide. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HawFh7RvDM4RyoJ2d/three-worlds-collide-0-8
I don't know if it's an EXCELLENT example of alien-on-the-inside aliens; I think there are a few things I would have changed, but I think it's a decent attempt, at least.

>>/quest/1059601
Not going to address this directly in the thread, but — what kind of author do you think I am, exactly??

>>139377

Are the various musings about mass, density, strange forms of matter, the square cube law, etc. a relevant direction to take the quest or should we stop worrying about them?

>>139377
I'm not sure what that comment was trying to say, but maybe the worry was more about losing the vote to the hug people for lack of arguments.

>>139382

But this isn't a democracy!

I have no idea why anyone would expect opening the door to cause some kind of gravity well to appear from nowhere.

>>139385

It's more, I think, they expect the laws of physics to be dramatically different on the other side of the wall, due to the simple fact that the Neumono exists, and is at such a grand scale, AND there aren't the other secondary clues of the Tridenik's being tiny that one would expect. Such an abrupt transition of the laws of physics isn't often survivable.

>>139387
One POSSIBLE explanation is the usual one: the author hasn't really thought about it, and/or wasn't aware of the square/cube law. The resolution then just depends on whether they want their interactions to more resemble normal Tridenik and giant people-crushing Neumono, or tiny robust Tridenik and normal manageably-strong Neumono. Though, given the size ratio was written down in advance, this suggests more thought than ignorance or carelessness would generally engender, and given there's two people involved in the creation of the quest, it's more likely at least on of them's familiar with the square-cube law.

>>139395
I am aware of the square-cube law. :V

>>139396

Are you, uh, aware of how massively this matters and how big and insane and extreme an issue this is? And what weird second and third order effects the fact that an entity seems to be ignoring it implies? That sort of awareness is... not especially common in modern sci fi or fantasy popular culture. That's kinda why we've been focusing on it.

>>139399
What I'm going to say for the moment is that, while I welcome the speculation, maybe don't get too carried away with it. For example, the previous suggestion that Kuvusha should avoid opening the glass to avoid being instantly killed by gravitational effects is ... not a particularly relevant thing to be worrying about.

>>139400

How about exploded by the fact that matter in that area has different inherent forces and is more soread out and the radii of atoms is different and the like?

>>139401
From a storytelling perspective it's not meaningfully different why, specifically, Kuvusha is being killed in this scenario. It's not the right thing to be worrying about.

>>139402

From a storytelling perspective, the shown level of incompetence and lack of forthrightness and trustworthiness and lack of observed thoroughness of her employers means she should absolutely be terrified of various ways their fuckups could get her killed horribly.

Shh shh sometimes big.

Please refer to head pats at top of thread.

Leave highly analytical physics out of this, there's much more relevant dangers to worry about~

>>139399
Have you never seen a dinosaur. The square-cube law isn't a magic instadeath forcefield that converts you into a supernova if you get taller than 7 feet. It just means things get heavier faster than intuitively expected. The scale presented does not go beyond the point where biology has ways to deal with being heavier. Considering whether Orro might have health issues with joints or hearts from being larger is a reasonable point to investigate but suggesting that being 5 times taller than the protagonist means that you're made of antimatter is neither productive nor plausible.

>>139401
If the circumstances are realistic she have to be a small creature.
Changes to the side of atoms would affect their bounds breaking Orro into goo.
If the space between molecules change the state of matter would change as well, turning Orro into gas.
If he is composed of different matter the air, water and food he receive would have to be made of the same matter. There wouldn't be a reason to make a door to his cell because he would never be able to leave without perishing.

The explanation could be something absurd, it's fiction after all, but in this case we have to follow the rules established in the narrative. Things work the way they are show to work.

The major realistic concern should be what Kome brought up: microorganisms. It's, however, a gigantic problem in every fiction involving alien species interacting. Either we take this in consideration and there must always existe a barrier isolating the species, or we ignore this possibility to allow for more naturally interactions.
Since neumonos are already established as able to interact with aliens for many years it would be odd to get dissesses into consideration at this point.

>>139406

Dinosaurs were not shaped or proportioned like humans, and weren't hundreds of feet tall. That's why there's questions in the quest to determine if the protagonist is lilliputian in scale, and some ways to figure that out.

The upright bipedal form is REALLY bad at certain scales; see the issues with giant Mecha robots being unreasonable.

god damn, big dumb arguments over the physics of a setting, it's like the good parts of early 2010s questden I missed it so much

>>139408
are you going to write an essay about how neumono empathy is unrealistic next

I will start biting people. And I will enjoy it.

Don't make gulketi have to intervene or your particles will explode oogy boogy!!

>>139410

No? Suspension of disbelief is easier because the rules for that in setting are clear. But if matter isn't matter, geometry isn't geometry, and mass isn't mass, and that's not described in the setting, than you can't really assume anything about the reality of the setting at all. Psychic powers are more believable than something ignoring the square cube law.

> Psychic powers are more believable than something ignoring the square cube law.

dear mods, please change the /meep/ tagline to this, TIA

>>139412
the point i was leading into is that the psychic powers get handwaved as part of the genre/setting conventions because that's how speculative fiction do, the point is speculating on how things would be if something weird happened and often the weird thing is not physically plausible. in this case sometimes aliens are large and the focus is more on the interpersonal stuff than the nonexistent possibility that tall people might explode due to tallness.

>>139412


What description are you even after? You want an essay on comparative physics to a universe she doesn't know exists? Is "sometimes big" too complicated of a thesis?

>>139413
Ye okay it's been the same for too long.

Oh my god, things can be big and not require hard sci-fi levels of justification, this is fiction. Thus if there was some spooky reality-destroying anomaly needed to justify big neumono, there'd be signs, likewise for microbiological threats. We know Kuvusha isn't the first one to interact with test subjects anyway.

Why is everyone arguing over a Neumono being "unrealistic" when it's big? The Neumono itself doesn't exist in real life, so being "too big" is not a valid argument.

I mean, we've also got Amtsvane as a species, but I don't see anyone calling them unrealistically big when they show up in a quest! And they're even bigger than Neumono!

Can we please stop arguing about how big the Neumono is and just accept it as one of those "sometimes big" situations?

I mean, if Tridenik's all had the superpowers that they should have if they were 5" tall, that'd be fine.

But that has implications! Ones which should be shown, perhaps.

Stuff like being able to, well jump or climb or fall safely like a chipmunk, squirrel, or mouse, in relation to their body length. Basically, they should be able to do some pretty major force exertion because their muscles are powerful for their mass. Also, they should be familiar with the idea of much MUCH bigger creatures and plant life, and also the theoretical maximum size for an upright biped made of the same stuff with the same body proportions should be expected to be at roughly the size of the largest humans, so things like that wouldn't be too surprising, even if there was no life like that on their planet. Also, their heartrates, breathing rates, and the like should be higher, their lifespan should be lower, their metabolism higher, the rate at which they shake to fling water off of their fur should be different from, say, a large dog, and allllll the things that show up when you're roughly the size and shape of a mouse.

>>139406
The fun things to discuss would be whether neumonos’ distributed biology makes them better suited to being big. Giant was pretty dang tall already!

>>139421
So, we haven't gotten Kuvusha to directly comment on whether or not her species is small, but there's some circumstantial evidence that they're not, and we haven't really seen any of the things you mention. What might that imply?

>>139423

Then, they're normal sized. Or normal massed but tiny somehow. And that means the Neumono is like 100' tall and then things just break down horribly!

>>139424
Do they, actually?

>>139425

YES THEY ABSOLUTELY DO, my point earlier that actual mental psychic powers are significantly more believable than biped human shaped 100' tall giants made of meat and walking around doing human things in a world with physics otherwise like ours!

>>139426
My dude, this is not hard sci-fi, things can be that big without being broken over the wheel of physics and biomechanics. If you can't suspend your disbelief for that I'm not sure what else to say.

>>139424
Did you forget that someone 50ft tall will kinda think they're normal-sized, and YOU the 5ft man is weird and tiny? And vice versa for a 5 inch man vs a 5ft man :V

Like, of COURSE she's going to think she's normal-sized, especially if most other things on her planet are similar...

>>139426
Stop trying to bring real world logic into this work of fiction. You're sucking the fun out of it by constantly trying to tell the author that they can't have giant aliens in their own quest.

If you don't like how the author wants to do things in the quest, then the simplest solution is for you to stop looking at the quest since you don't like it that much.

>>139428

Hence the explicit asking about, you know, specific feats using body length as a metric to get her sense of 'normal'. How many times their body length can a person longjump from a standstill? How many times up in a high jump? How many times can they fall before they expect to break a bone, or die? Etc. etc.

>>139430

To add to this, the predicted answers for a 6" person and a 6' person should be vaaaaastly different, is the point I'm making.

it's👏not👏hard👏sci-fi

Yeah, this argument is kinda getting annoying to keep hearing

Oh here's a good one: how big is an average raindrop in comparison to the protagonist's head?

You went into a story about giant aliens to complain about giant aliens being unrealistic, ignored the translation process providing a possible handwave plus people pointing out genre conventions, and now you're keeping the argument going by yourself sans any outside input. Can you get over yourself and stop insisting on realism for this specific aspect or at least go someplace the stuff you're interested in isn't specifically opposed to the direction the author and the rest of the suggestions are trying to go?

Look. It's not that I'm complaining or won't accept an explanation. I would love an explanation! I would love the author or our protagonist to actively respond to these things as their brought up in their respective threads. I'd be happy with a hand wave of, 'there's something weird going on, and all the money in the facility is getting funneled to this project which is rewriting everything known about math, biology, physics, engineering, basically everything, and that's why this area is underfunded!' or something, ANYTHING. I do actually want to know if the protagonist is actually small. I want to know how the water behaves. I want to know if she would be more like a mouse interacting with a human (she's the mouse here), or a human that gets a car or a house flung at them (she's the human here) if one of these beings touches her. I feel these things are interesting, fascinating questions that I would love to be addressed, and think there's probably a lot of super interesting potential story to be had in the addressing of them. I'm not unhappy! I'm curious and hopeful!

Man I just wanna jerk off to cartoon animals.

is this the same guy that tried and ruin down up north by basically bitching about everything that Roaway did and saying it was bad and than when people said shut up and let those who enjoy the quest enjoy it tried to hide it behind a flimsy "it's just criticism" excuse when it was at best trolling, and worst just an excuse to bash a quest that a lot of people liked in the hopes that they could scare off the QM and kill it?

See this is why all my quests have magic.

> I would love the author or our protagonist to actively respond to these things as their brought up in their respective threads.

>>139439

Uhm. No?

>>139437
how much of your life expressed as a percentage have you spent following people to continue a conversation

Okay, no, but really, like, while I appreciate the enthusiasm and the desire to want to know things, this is kinda taking over my discussion thread. The last fifty or so posts have been either arguing about how the physics work in the quest or arguing about the argument about how physics work in the quest. I'm just going to say that some questions will be answered in due time, and some might not get answered at all, and in any case the quest is intended to be a bit more character-focused so maybe don't sweat the physics details quite so much.

To attempt to somewhat forcibly redirect the conversation, does anyone care to speculate on what the other subjects might be? Quite a few people correctly guessed that Orro would be a neumono ahead of time, and in theory there's enough information in the notes that I think someone could deduce the identities of subjects 2-4.

Alternately you can just discuss the current situation or something that's fine too. Just, please, let up on the physics stuff a little...

So, Kuvusha seem sure that she is allowed to let Orro out and that eventually she will do so. What was her though process to reach this conclusion?

>>139444
I guess Subject 004 is a rogue Sect. I'm not sure about the others...

I hope one is an Amtsvane. I don’t actually think any of them are, but I like those big green therapods. So I hope we see one. As a treat.

>>139447
I too would like to see an Amtsvane just to see how much MC freaks out when she sees something that is ACTUALLY big instead of just being big relative to herself.

>>139448
You've seen the cells' size, I don't think the amtsvane are going to be much different thanks to translation.

>>139445

Other than the fact that suggestors have been leaning in that direction and expecting that to be the case (Typo is the quest author...), Her stated job priorities are to "Aid in recovery from the translation process" for "long-term stability", as well as a secondary priority to document behaviors. There is a logical thruway that integration and interaction are intended as part of the organization's goals, so it makes sense that these would be options available. Kuvusha isn't necessarily sure she can do it, but the infrastructure seems to be there for that purpose.

There are several issues standing in the way even if that were true, such as her initially under-assigned security clearance. It's not unlikely that key resources tied to her position are just not available to her security level and we will need to wait for it to be corrected a bit before some things are accessible. This doesn't mean that suggestors don't want to at least try to cuddle. Cuddling is good.

Honestly, I'm mostly unsure whether things are set up in such a way to lead to a slow burn or not. Kuvusha's intense reluctance implies that we'll be waiting quite a while before things settle but Orro asking right away to open the glass is quite the acceleration. It's maybe just there to create conflict though, from a narrative perspective.

>>139449
The cells are not big enough to house an Amtsvane.

Whirligig 2023/03/30(Thu)10:08 No. 139452 ID: 668d30
File 168019609256.png - (268.15KB , 900x600 , 52C8E65A-C234-4A49-A331-45E6C172EEE3.png )

Assuming that this is an 'Orro is huge and Kuvusha is normal human sized' situation, then it unfortunately looks like an amtsvane might indeed be too big ::(

if it's an 'orro is normal and kuvusha is tiiiiiny' situation then an amtsvane is DEFINITELY too big

>>139452

There is absolutely no way that all the other subjects aren't also upscaled like Orro. It would be incredibly surprising if they weren't all scaled by roughly the same amount.

>>139453

Orro is easily ~40' if kuvusha is ~5 feet in this image.

We're probably looking at a roughly 10:1 upscale in size for each species.

A 450' amtsvane is a little less than 1.5 Ekwi Irrepaumals.

Anonymous 2023/03/30(Thu)14:54 No. 139455 ID: e770db
File 168021324736.png - (298.94KB , 1598x600 , kuvusmol.png )

I forgot to post the bad mspaint measuring

Ohh, a 450’ Amtsvane… I suppose we can only dream…

>>139454
As mentioned here >>139292 Orro is about five times Kuvusha's height, give or take inevitable art variance.

Amtsvane has become the final boss of this quest.

>>139444
>figure out what the aliens are?
Ok, I'll give it a shot.

We know what 001 is so I'll skip that.
002
Can control fire(temperature?) and electricity somehow, and the species doesn't have divergent forms. Improper diet can disable those abilities. Tech level is indeterminate but generally less than whatever tech level the facility has. Easily persuaded. Biology is "normal" but slightly abnormal.

I was stumped for a bit, then looked around in the Races section on the wiki and landed on Scellor... who require psykonium to harness their powers effectively! It sounds like they've only observed Scellor using Psychokinesis, as that can control all types of energy, and most of the other powers don't have easily visible effects. Their tech is pretty high level in WOTU but perhaps the same is true in the facility; we don't have a good knowledge of the setting. We also don't know what time period they're being nabbed from, maybe it just happens to be one where they aren't super advanced yet.


003
Cold temperature required. Confusion about body types, possibly differences too subtle to detect, or it's a UV/IR difference that the researchers are missing. Body types are hostile vs eachother. Bad eyesight. Can walk on tails. Very good hearing. Generally hostile temperament.

Okay obviously this is Avali. The cold temperature requirement is a dead giveaway. They're a feathered species so having UV markings makes sense. Hearing is indeed an Avali's primary sense. I didn't know Avali can use their tails to move around... maybe that's some sort of common cybernetic augmentation; they have those. The hostility is I think because they started out as a video game enemy.


004
Mute, difficulty healing, behavior change after capture.

Ah, these are Sect, from Tobak Quest. Not sure why they'd be so rare. This specific subject might be a Sect queen! In that case it's odd that they managed to capture her without her drones interfering. Maybe the place they took her from is in ruin...


005
Weird body shape, extremely adaptive biology in the long term.

Could be a Salazzarine, since one of their hallmarks is a high mutation rate. Or maybe a slime, but those are usually not very communicative. I think there's some other species that adapts to their environment but I can't remember what it was. Maybe I was thinking of an SCP.

006?
No information, I doubt I'm expected to guess for this one. Tozols can't be teleported so it crossing dimensions should be impossible to begin with, and there's no way they have the tech level to keep one held captive anyway, so I'm crossing that one out. Also of note is that there are Additional Notes, which means this is not the first subject of that species. Since the subject was initially assigned to Kuvusha but restricted and redacted before we got the notes, that implies something new was discovered that made it an infohazard. Mind control? Or did someone try to help them escape due to whatever abilities it has? I'd expect a mind control hazard from a Scellor, but that's number 002.

I guess it could be Siphon in there, and it's a metaphysical hazard they're trying to contain-- oh. This is going to be Siphon's missing friend, isn't it? And the redaction is to keep Siphon from finding out?

>>139459
Oh, subject 004 might be a different bee species being confused for a Sect. There's the bees in King of Pentacles, for instance.

Oh right I forgot Cirr's version of Avali are called Criai, and... have different cultural aspects as well as different tails. Maybe that would explain the unexplained abnomalies in the subject compared to regular Avali.