#lotorians

[markermage]

Lotorians in Warclema - After Defeat

So the lotorians end up in an interdimensional war with Warclema. I'm still working out how that plot will go, but I got a basic idea of what I want the aftermath to be.

The most immediate thing is that Trudy, the ship AI of the EDS Bandit, ends up in charge and puts a stop to the filtering and doctoring of her records. The common lotorian is able to get the truth of their origins.

Less immediate is the end of their production and use of dimen lords. Things are having to be done about the dimen lords still out there in the multiverse though. Perhaps a joint effort by lotorians and humanity to capture and rehabilitate them, or failing that, neutralize them. Exposing the protection racket they've been engaged in to the dimensions that they have outposts in might also be something that happens.

In their own dimension, the lotorians are allowed to continue to be mysterious merchants that sell ancient human technology and artifacts from across the multiverse. They even have a new product from Warclema, felf seeds, which they've begun using their genetic engineering on to make sure they can grow in a variety of locations, even other dimensions. They are even using genetically modified felves for scouting the multiverse in much the same way as they used dimen lords, though without the violent takeover.

I actually intend for the Xenos Café & Grill setting to take place after the defeat of the lotorians by the people of Warclema. The recent plant girl hire of it would actually be a felf that was sold by the lotorians.

Warclema Master Post

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[markermage]

Lotorians in Warclema - Relationship with Humanity

As previously established, lotorians are raccoon people that evolved aboard the EDS Bandit, an interdimensional ship whose human crew and passengers had died. So what do they think of the species whose shadow they have been living in?

Humanity as Precursors

The majority of lotorian culture is centered around the products of humanity's culture. Their language is that of humanity, and their use of it evolved as they did. To them, it was a language of magic that commanded the machines that surrounded them and a language of revelation that the machines would use to communicate with them through. Over time, it became a language that they could use to communicate with each other.

The ship's AI, Trudy, was a valuable tool that allowed them to deal with the various challenges they encountered. It seemed that whatever problem they encountered would have a solution that could be found by asking Trudy about what they could do. Her advise allowed banishment to transition from a way to deal with excess population to a divine mission to expand territory. As lower rank and less desirable lotorians were sent out, the higher rank lotorian nobility would monopolize living space aboard the EDS Bandit and interaction with Trudy. Information that left EDS Bandit to be received by other lotorian settlements would be filtered by that nobility.

The humans that appeared in archived information would be seen as gods, and some religion of emulating them would come up, but that would become twisted as the nobility began to manipulate depictions of humans that left the EDS Bandit. Some would have pictures of humans doctored to look like the lotorian nobility to further the idea of the nobility being divine. And so, the lotorians would worship humanity while being made ignorant about what humanity was.

Warclema's Humans

When the lotorians finally set foot in Warclema as part of extending their influence into yet another dimension, they found that the people of it were oddly capable of countering their standard procedures. The people of Warclema were able to communicate with the dimen lord they sent over from the start, and ended up making peace with him instead of being conquered or managing to kill him. They were in a position to learn lotorian secrets and spread them. The lotorians had to nip this problem in the bud.

What was worse though was that one of the species that lives in Warclema calls themselves "humans". As far as the non-nobility lotorians investigating Warclema know, these are pretenders that look nothing like the depictions of humanity that come from the EDS Bandit. Such pretenders are an insult to the humans they revere and should be punished for their insolence.

And so, actual humans become an enemy to the lotorians who seek their extermination for learning their secret and for calling themselves the gods of the lotorians.

Warclema Master Post

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[markermage]

Lotorians in Warclema - Monster Protection Racket

To the other inhabitants of their universe, lotorians are pretty much mysterious merchants that have all sorts of rare and exotic things. How do they get ahold of the things that aren't just the precursor tech they evolved around? Mainly though genetic modification and interdimensional travel.

Bioweapons/Dimen Lords

The lotorians found that interdimensional travel had some risks, so they had turned to a part of their human knowledge archives dedicated to genetic engineering. Using what they learned, they created sapient bioweapons that would develop a wide variety of defenses to help them survive dimensions with wildly different laws of physics and send back data about the conditions of the dimension they end up in. They also made these bioweapons with the intention of them taking over a dimension and eliminating threats. They would become lords of the dimensions they were sent to, dimen lords.

These dimen lords start out being grown in a vat and are then trained for their mission. This training mostly consists of torture to instill an abuse-or-be-abused outlook that will result in it taking over and ruling the dimension it is sent to with an iron fist. When it has been fully prepared, the lotorians simply setup an opportunity for the dimen lord to "escape" through a dimensional portal.

Once in another dimension, the dimen lord goes through a period of time where they will shed any adaptations that are immediately harmful to them before moving on to adjust to the conditions of their new home. They will metamorphosis into new forms that are more adapted to their environment and eventually start producing offspring called "dimens" that will serve them as a loyal dimen army. This army would be kept in line through an antidimen psychic signal whose form may be altered to better fit the current dimension's physical laws. Said signal causes pain to and greatly weakens the dimen that is targeted by it.

The dimen lord and its dimen army will take over the dimension, enslaving inhabitants and showing them the cruelty taught by the lotorians. During this time, they teach the inhabitants the lotorian language (which was the human language), kill off the more rebellious inhabitants, and... unknown to the dimen lord and dimen army, transmit data across dimensions to the lotorians about how their bodies have adapted to the new environment. This data transmission is hidden in their biology and done without their conscious knowledge.

Lotorians Playing Heroes

Once the lotorians have analyzed the data received, figured out the preparations needed to survive in the dimension, and determined that the dimen lord has had enough time to take over, they will head out with weapons that recreate the antidimen psychic signal. They will use these weapons to exterminate the dimen lord and the dimen army, liberating the inhabitants of the dimension. They will claim to be an interdimensional force dedicated to extermination of this threat, and offer to setup a base of operations to use for defending from further invasions. They will gladly accept any payment or donations offered by the people they "saved", and pass some of it along to their home dimension which sees the lotorians not as saviors, but as merchants. If people start asking why the invaders and heroes speak the same language, they are told that it's a sort of interdimensional common language.

Why Doesn't the Same Thing Happen to Warclema?

Where things start to go wrong with this plan is when a dimen lord ends up in Warclema, where there are people that already speak the language used by the lotorians and the dimen lord. Where things go even more off script is when a hero of Warclema decides to try talking to and rehabilitating the members of the dimen army and eventually the dimen lord.

The lotorians arrive to find their monsters living in harmony with the people that are supposed to have been conquered. They find the demons they made to menace people getting therapy. They find people that are learning their secrets and working on advancing their interdimensional travel tech to spread to other dimensions, where they could expose the whole scheme to the multiverse.

So they do their own invasion of Warclema with extermination in mind.

Warclema Master Post

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[markermage]

Lotorians in Warclema - Lotorians in the Xenos Café & Grill Setting

About a week ago, I had posted an idea for a story setting consisting of an eating establishment in space. I had come up with it mostly as a way to expand on the dimension that the Lotorians call home. It may not be where they originally evolved, but it is the place that they primarily reside and where they do their legitimate business.

Overall, it's a space opera type of universe with seemingly as many spacefaring alien species as there are stars (possibly more). The lotorians are just one civilization among many. Unlike Warclema, this universe's physical laws lined up well enough with those of the original universe of the humans and lotorians that all of the tech aboard the EDS Bandit could be used there.

After the EDS Bandit arrived in this universe, it managed to stay unnoticed until the raccoons aboard had evolved in lotorians and started understanding the technology around them enough to start following archived instructions for how to build space ships, clone creatures, and other things. The galactic community was surprised when an unknown species managed to produce such amazing ships and other wonders. The lotorians began to start selling the products of the human knowledge they evolved around. They kept the interdimensional travel to themselves though, and use it to acquire things from other dimensions, which they will then sell in this one.

To the universe at large, the lotorians are mysterious merchants that seem to alternate between selling advanced tech and exotic creatures and artifacts. Their use of interdimensional travel has resulted in a couple of shops of theirs showing up at and disappearing from locations rather suddenly. If there is a little shop that wasn't there yesterday selling unusual and powerful things, it's probably a lotorian running it.

Warclema Master Post

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[markermage]

Lotorians in Warclema - Introductory Lore

It looks like Lotorians have won the poll with one vote (actually, it was technically the "I want to see the results" option with two votes, but I can't really count that, can I?). One of the previous polls had described them as "A villainous race inspired by Cat from Red Dwarf.", and they basically are, but with raccoons instead of cats.

Physical Description

The basics of how they look are that they're raccoons that have undergone some evolution to be more human-like. I haven't come up with an exact look for them yet, but there are some details that I want them to have.

They are below average human height.

They have the darkened area around the eyes that raccoons have.

They still have the fluffy tail and ears.

Their fur may have gotten a lot shorter, with much of the facial fur now being more like peach fuzz.

Besides the ears and darkened area around the eyes, their faces seem very human.

Hands have ended up being closest to human, having handprints almost indistinguishable from a human's.

Eyes are also another thing that closely resemble those of a human.

Origin

If you've read about the humans of Warclema, then you might remember me mentioning that they had arrived in Warclema through interdimensional travel through the use of the Earth Dimensional Ships (EDS). Well, not all of them made it to Warclema.

EDS Bandit (whose slogan was "Make out like a bandit") had been infiltrated by a doomsday cultist that sought to prevent people from escaping the inevitable end of their universe. The cultist had killed the humans aboard, messed with the navigation, and since the EDS had already taken off and there was no way to turn it around, committed suicide to prevent his soul from leaving his home dimension.

Unknown to this cultist, a couple of raccoons had managed to stow away on the EDS (or maybe they were pets or mascots for the EDS). The raccoons would manage to survive aboard the ship, and evolve to be more human-like in order to better operate the technology around them. Those that could operate the food replicators never went hungry. Those that could acquire and use firearms could… secure the cooperation of other raccoons with valuable skills.

Their evolution to mimic humans focused mostly on hands, eyes, and voice, and the face to a lesser extent. These allowed them to operate things that used hand/finger print scanners, retinal scanners, facial recognition, and voice commands. The raccoons would come to understand the language that the computers around them used.

They would eventually find Warclema and the humans that inhabit it, but not with any noble intentions.

Abilities

I'm pretty much going with them having much of the same capabilities as humans with maybe a specialty in figuring out scavenged tech.

Role

When they would be introduced to the plot, it would be as a group in charge of what is basically an interdimensional monster protection racket. They create bioweapons that they send out to other dimensions to terrorize the populace while transmitting back details about the dimension. After they've figured out how to have themselves survive in the dimension, they arrive in the dimension as heroes that are here to save the populace from the monsters/demons through special weapons that take advantage of weaknesses built into the bioweapons. The rescued people are thankful of course and offer rewards. The lotorians then take anything that looks like it could work in the dimension they made themselves home in, wash it of anything that would identify it as not their own creation, and then sell it to others in their dimension.

When they try it with Warclema, they arrive to find that their bioweapons have failed to take over. That happens sometimes. Some dimensions are able to fight off the demons the lotorians create. They still end up being interested in the weapons to defeat stragglers more easily What the lotorians were not prepared for was for the people of this dimension to rehabilitate their bioweapons and to be able to communicate with them. Now Warclema is a dimension whose people are learning the dark secret of the lotorians, and the lotorians are going to try and make sure that secret never gets out.

Warclema Master Post

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