Talk:House Aramin

Clampet Deal

The Clampet Clan owns a rank-1 Unsorted Crystals mine. They've agreed to give us their output on odd-numbered turns as a tax payment and their output on turns 10, 12 and 14 as loan repayment. After that, we've agreed to purchase their output on even-numbered turns for 1Mc per unit.

Topni Deal

Starting in Turn 10, Topni will buy up to twelve units of stuff from us at a multiplier of 1.3, provided that every unit is a different type of stuff and we sell it all to them within ten turns (not counting turns 13-17 when the wormhole was closed). So far, we have sold them (or plan to sell them) these things:

• Turn 10: Ndoggahyde, Energy Weapons
• Turn 11: [Nothing]
• Turn 12: Superconductive Crystal Cryptography Circuits, SAVAGE CORN 3D!, Flame Jewels
• Turns 13-19: [Nothing]
• Turn 20: Max-EnerG HyperJuice, Ice Sculptures, Freeze-Dried Magic Meals
• Turn 21: [Nothing]
• Turn 22: Power Cells, InterGalaktic(tm) Self-Seeding Garden, Holophonics, Tactical MRE's

Messages from the GM

Hello House Aramin! You should double-check your entry on the planets page to make sure it's right, but I just copied it from your main page. Otherwise I think you're ready to go (I guess if you want to switch to three resources like the other colonies, feel free). Stay tuned for more stuff later this week.

Colony discussion log

[Aramin]|17:21 lpsmith asks, "What do we want our colony to be like?"
[Aramin]|17:23 Jota says, "Its plants bear fruit whose seeds are industrial-quality crystals."
[Aramin]|17:23 Jota says, "Its birds chirp in binary."
[Aramin]|17:23 Jota says, "And it once had an ancient native civilization, apparently now gone."
[Aramin]|17:24 vimes says, "Some chick in powr armor comes through and blows up our doors on a semi-regular basis."
[Aramin]|17:24 vimes says, "er, power."
[Aramin]|17:24 lpsmith says (to vimes), "ha ha what"
[Aramin]|17:24 vimes says, "I presumed Jota was describing a Metroid world."
[Aramin]|17:25 Jota says, "Ha."
[Aramin]|17:25 Jota says, "Not intentionally."
[Aramin]|17:25 lpsmith says, "Ah, I don't know Metroid."
[Aramin]|17:28 Jota says, "The only one of those that I feel strongly about is that it'd be cool if there were traces of an ancient, now apparently absent alien civilization."
[Aramin]|17:36 lpsmith says, "I can definitely get behind the ancient civilization; I am as happy with the crystals as anything else (is this our main export?); if we had the birds, I would feel compelled to come up with a vaguely plausible biological reason behind the phenomenon."
[Aramin]|17:39 Jota says, "I am not even sure what it would *mean* for a bird to chip in binary."
[Aramin]|17:39 lpsmith says, "(actually, I'm interested in a biological explanation behind the fruit, too, but it's easier to imagine 'cultivation' or 'genetic engineering' as the reason behind that.  Or, hey, maybe the Ancients cultivated them to do that, and nobody today has that tech."
[Aramin]|17:40 lpsmith says, "Heh."
[Aramin]|17:40 lpsmith asks, "Two tones, with different sequences meaning different messages?"
[Aramin]|17:40 lpsmith says, "(I'm envisioning a sort of morse code for birds here)"
[Aramin]|17:41 lpsmith says, "squak cheep cheep squak cheep squak squak"
[Aramin]|17:41 vimes says, "PEEP PEEP PEEP CHIRP PEEP CHIRP CHIRP PEEP PEEP"
[Aramin]|17:41 vimes says, "so basically what birds to anyway"
[Aramin]|17:42 Jota says, "Perhaps the soil that the plants grow in contains some kind of nitrogen/silicon compound. The plant needs the nitrogen to grow, and the silicon is formed into crystals as a waste product."
[Aramin]|17:42 lpsmith says, "Trained birds which are suitable for internet-over-canary-protocol."
[Aramin]|17:42 vimes says, "TCP/CP"
[Aramin]|17:43 vimes says, "(TCP over CHIRP PEEP)"
[Aramin]|17:43 Jota says, "Hee."
[Aramin]|17:43 lpsmith says, "Yay"
[Aramin]|17:43 vimes asks, "hm, how about binary-paired birds?"
[Aramin]|17:43 Jota says, "Hmm. Perhaps the binary birdsong is similar to bee dancing."
[Aramin]|17:43 lpsmith asks (of vimes), "Like males and females?"
[Aramin]|17:44 vimes says, "right, with some sort of link between the two"
[Aramin]|17:44 lpsmith asks, "Like sex?"
[Aramin]|17:45 vimes says, "which is why they're valued for communication, because you get (short-range) instantaneous and untappable communication without needing to depend on a possibly tratorous psychic"
[Aramin]|17:45 vimes says, "since the birds just peep and cheep when the other one does in the instantaneous-echo style"
[Aramin]|17:45 lpsmith says, "Oho."
[Aramin]|17:45 Jota says, "Ooh."
[Aramin]|17:46 lpsmith says, "OK, I am getting a picture of the Ancients as super-advanced genetic engineers."
[Aramin]|17:46 vimes says, "I like it."
[Aramin]|17:46 lpsmith says, "And a lot of their legacy is in these odd creatures whose abilities we have yet to fully tap."
[Aramin]|17:46 Jota asks, "Assuming they cheep and peep what they wish to cheep and peep, how can it be used for communication? By tying their beaks shut?"
[Aramin]|17:46 Jota says (to lps), "That sounds good to me."
[Aramin]|17:46 vimes says (to Jota), "ha ha"
[Aramin]|17:47 vimes says, "I was thinking they could be trained to some degree"
[Aramin]|17:47 lpsmith asks, "Or they repeat what they hear?"
[Aramin]|17:47 vimes says, "Yeah, that works.  Certain sequences of cheep-and-peep trigger a relay reflex."
[Aramin]|17:47 lpsmith says, "So you can play a birdsong one place, your bird hears it and repeats it, its mate senses it and repeats it too."
[Aramin]|17:47 Jota says, "That makes sense."
[Aramin]|17:48 lpsmith says, "At other times, they just sing what they want to sing, so a listener wouldn't know what's a message and what's random."
[Aramin]|17:48 Jota asks, "Do you need to make your playback sound like the mate's voice?"
[Aramin]|17:48 vimes says, "So in fact much like bee flights, but over long distances."
[Aramin]|17:49 Jota says, "(I am imagining entire forests repeating the same sequence over and over again, overlapping and unsynchronized...)"
[Aramin]|17:49 vimes says (to Jota), "I'd say it's more that a given flock or nesting of birds has a trigger sequence shared among them."
[Aramin]|17:49 Jota says, "(This seems like it would be a flaw in the design if it did occur.)"
[Aramin]|17:49 lpsmith says, "I assume they are designed to not repeat anything they've already sung."
[Aramin]|17:50 vimes says, "well, they might need some sort of SING/ACK handshaking (wingshaking?)"
[Aramin]|17:52 Jota asks, "So is the planet mostly full of dense jungles?"
[Aramin]|17:52 Jota says, "(Where the crystal plants grow and the birds live.)"
[Aramin]|17:52 vimes says, "i don't see how it could be anything but, at this point"
[Aramin]|17:54 Jota nominates someone else to type it up.
[Aramin]|17:56 vimes says, "Not it!"
[Aramin]|17:56 lpsmith says, "crap"
[Aramin]|17:56 vimes says, "ha ha"
[Aramin]|17:56 lpsmith says, "Actually, I'd be happy to do so; just can't right now."
[Aramin]|17:57 vimes says, "yeah, likewise"
[Aramin]|17:57 vimes says, "at work, busybusy"
[Aramin]|17:57 vimes says, "here, i'll just stick the recap on the talk page, we'll write it up later"

Vimes 14:58, 10 May 2011 (PDT)