Racial Theorycrafting: Hoomiku
Years ago... sheesh, over a decade now, I think... an online friend shared this D&D-system world he used in some campaigns, Rym. He put up a web site with a lot of information, though there are still a lot of gaps, too. He also tied this in with Furryfaire MUCK. That had ups and downs, and there are still compatibility issues that we sort of skirt around, but I've always liked the magic/tech "vibe" of the setting even if I've interpreted it differently than others.
One of the races of this world is the hoomiku. Now, when it comes to roleplaying them, there really isn't all that much information set out by their creator. There's a race page with some basics and D&D 3E-ish stat modifiers, there is a glimpse at their technology on the weapons page, and then there are some scattered references in images and map sites such as Haizat and Southwind Cove. When you put it all together, you get a picture, but it's a bit sketchy in places.
To date, I've played two hoomiku characters on the MUCK. With the first, I wanted to do something a little different and make a crafting-based character. At the time, I don't believe there were any other hoomiku played on-grid. I used the artificing rules, designed for magically-imbued things, to emulate her more technological constructs like powered armor - the end result was the same, but with a slightly different flavor. But, I was also faced with rationalizing out a lot of things. Cyra might know a lot of scientific principle and mechanics, but in a world lacking in things like the "power cells" found on Rym, it's not a direct translation. So I did go a little bit more "magicky" with her creations, replacing the battery-like power cells with similar devices powered by the magical material escudo. I also looked at her more extreme artifice creations and envisioned them as enabled by magical runes - but rather than letters and symbols, I stylized those runes as sharply-bent, interlocking lines akin to circuitry.
It wasn't really until I started playing Jezra, that I began considering certain other aspects of their existence. Hoomiku are described as being able to break "down complex problems into dozens of smaller parts, solving each independently before putting the solution back together." That struck me as sort of like parallel processing. Given that, as well as the listed abilities to speed read, calculate rapidly, and actually converse in trinary (it seems to me that conveying anything meaningful with only three letters/sounds/symbols would require speaking and listening very, very quickly), I started to envision a slightly more alien mindset. If math and design problems could be broken down and worked on simultaneously, so could everything else. A hoomiku could apply this to the calculations in aiming a ranged weapon or in carrying on a conversation - taking all known variables into account to predict an outcome. Now, dealing with people is sometimes harder to predict than the effect of gravity, but still we're talking some serious mental multitasking whether looking at one problem/interaction or several at once. It's interesting to try to imagine where being able to think like that would lead. It doesn't always come out, but Jezra does feel sort of alienated by knowing most people around her don't actually see or process things the same way. And, at times, she's turned to alcohol simply to slow down those thought processes.
In dealing with Jezra, some other things solidified in my mind. Cyra was a crafter and engineer, and an amazing one by local standards, but the more I thought about it, the more that seemed a relative thing. In my mind now, Cyra may have been an awesome inventor by Kith Kanaan standards, but in hoomiku society, she was actually not good enough for engineering tasks. Instead, she was assigned as a scout/explorer/gatherer. It's not so much a retcon as retroactively filling in blanks, but it explains how she met Spiritstorm and why she was less xenophobic and sheltered than the norm. In her own society, she was closer to "worthless outcast," but among other races, she could shine.
Also, in thinking about that society, I came to a conclusion that Jezra voices - hoomiku are not great innovators. They have natural gifts that make them well-suited to problem solving, yes. They have more scientific and technical knowledge than almost any of their planetary peers, yes. But their society has been focused for "centuries" on reacquiring knowledge lost when their colony ship crashed on Rym. Even their fancy sonic weapons or railgun-like lodebows are essentially cobbled together imitations of what technology the race had at its pinnacle. Combine all that with a rigid social structure developed while on the ship and general xenophobic attitudes, and the result looks to me like a society that does not deal with new things all that well, much less actually come up with them. Of course, there would be some edge cases, and the potential is there. And in that sense, hoomiku like Cyra and Jezra could actually be better off, as they're exposed to more new ideas out of necessity.
Jezra herself is a slightly scary case, given some ways things could go with her. She's got the hoomiku mind, but she really hasn't been raised with any of the societal restrictions. Her father is a skole - though it remains sort of fuzzy on whether that's true in the normal way or whether she's some sort of modified clone-like offspring. While hoomiku in general are several worlds removed from any deities they may have had, she honors Kij and Nyx due ot Spiritstorm's influence. And she has fairly easy access to magic - which is a source of inspiration when one can look at a magical effect and say "okay, how can I replicate that?" I find myself wanting to do something to shake up her character status quo, but the problem is picking an idea of the many I could go with - ranging from minor inventions to potentially "very bad" things.
But hoomiku in general? Interesting to think about, and they really should be one of the more "alien" races around on the MUCK, in my opinion. Just another feline race that happens to be tech-savvy, they are not.
One of the races of this world is the hoomiku. Now, when it comes to roleplaying them, there really isn't all that much information set out by their creator. There's a race page with some basics and D&D 3E-ish stat modifiers, there is a glimpse at their technology on the weapons page, and then there are some scattered references in images and map sites such as Haizat and Southwind Cove. When you put it all together, you get a picture, but it's a bit sketchy in places.
To date, I've played two hoomiku characters on the MUCK. With the first, I wanted to do something a little different and make a crafting-based character. At the time, I don't believe there were any other hoomiku played on-grid. I used the artificing rules, designed for magically-imbued things, to emulate her more technological constructs like powered armor - the end result was the same, but with a slightly different flavor. But, I was also faced with rationalizing out a lot of things. Cyra might know a lot of scientific principle and mechanics, but in a world lacking in things like the "power cells" found on Rym, it's not a direct translation. So I did go a little bit more "magicky" with her creations, replacing the battery-like power cells with similar devices powered by the magical material escudo. I also looked at her more extreme artifice creations and envisioned them as enabled by magical runes - but rather than letters and symbols, I stylized those runes as sharply-bent, interlocking lines akin to circuitry.
It wasn't really until I started playing Jezra, that I began considering certain other aspects of their existence. Hoomiku are described as being able to break "down complex problems into dozens of smaller parts, solving each independently before putting the solution back together." That struck me as sort of like parallel processing. Given that, as well as the listed abilities to speed read, calculate rapidly, and actually converse in trinary (it seems to me that conveying anything meaningful with only three letters/sounds/symbols would require speaking and listening very, very quickly), I started to envision a slightly more alien mindset. If math and design problems could be broken down and worked on simultaneously, so could everything else. A hoomiku could apply this to the calculations in aiming a ranged weapon or in carrying on a conversation - taking all known variables into account to predict an outcome. Now, dealing with people is sometimes harder to predict than the effect of gravity, but still we're talking some serious mental multitasking whether looking at one problem/interaction or several at once. It's interesting to try to imagine where being able to think like that would lead. It doesn't always come out, but Jezra does feel sort of alienated by knowing most people around her don't actually see or process things the same way. And, at times, she's turned to alcohol simply to slow down those thought processes.
In dealing with Jezra, some other things solidified in my mind. Cyra was a crafter and engineer, and an amazing one by local standards, but the more I thought about it, the more that seemed a relative thing. In my mind now, Cyra may have been an awesome inventor by Kith Kanaan standards, but in hoomiku society, she was actually not good enough for engineering tasks. Instead, she was assigned as a scout/explorer/gatherer. It's not so much a retcon as retroactively filling in blanks, but it explains how she met Spiritstorm and why she was less xenophobic and sheltered than the norm. In her own society, she was closer to "worthless outcast," but among other races, she could shine.
Also, in thinking about that society, I came to a conclusion that Jezra voices - hoomiku are not great innovators. They have natural gifts that make them well-suited to problem solving, yes. They have more scientific and technical knowledge than almost any of their planetary peers, yes. But their society has been focused for "centuries" on reacquiring knowledge lost when their colony ship crashed on Rym. Even their fancy sonic weapons or railgun-like lodebows are essentially cobbled together imitations of what technology the race had at its pinnacle. Combine all that with a rigid social structure developed while on the ship and general xenophobic attitudes, and the result looks to me like a society that does not deal with new things all that well, much less actually come up with them. Of course, there would be some edge cases, and the potential is there. And in that sense, hoomiku like Cyra and Jezra could actually be better off, as they're exposed to more new ideas out of necessity.
Jezra herself is a slightly scary case, given some ways things could go with her. She's got the hoomiku mind, but she really hasn't been raised with any of the societal restrictions. Her father is a skole - though it remains sort of fuzzy on whether that's true in the normal way or whether she's some sort of modified clone-like offspring. While hoomiku in general are several worlds removed from any deities they may have had, she honors Kij and Nyx due ot Spiritstorm's influence. And she has fairly easy access to magic - which is a source of inspiration when one can look at a magical effect and say "okay, how can I replicate that?" I find myself wanting to do something to shake up her character status quo, but the problem is picking an idea of the many I could go with - ranging from minor inventions to potentially "very bad" things.
But hoomiku in general? Interesting to think about, and they really should be one of the more "alien" races around on the MUCK, in my opinion. Just another feline race that happens to be tech-savvy, they are not.
Admittedly, I like it. :)
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