That's actually a really clever idea. Wonder what the historians would say.
"We considered that, but no, the evidence doesn't support it." For starters, you can tell pretty well apart if somebody is missing a bit of head because it's been bashed in or because it's been carefully cut. And you don't torture people by removing parts of their skull, it's inefficient. The scraping off of the scalp hurts a lot, but after that, there are no nerves left that will cause pain.
Oh, and "just" religious purpose is a dismissive comment made by a 20th century vantage point. The idea that medicine, religion and magic are distinct is recent compared to this procedure, and magic thinking exists even today. If your doctor tells you to take some medicine, it's not that different from when a priest tells you to perform thirty Hail Marys. In both cases, you perform the task because a reasonable authority figure tells you it is effective, not because of any actual understanding of the processes involved.
It's not a quote, just a hypothetical answer from the hypothetical historian you could talk to. If you want to read more, I guess start with Wikipedia:Trepanning, which already has more info than I am bothered to learn, and then check out their sources.
Oh, and shame on you both. You can't deny that you've been active over the last few days, but you haven't written anything in the RP thread.
Aaand thus everyone fell silent. You don't have to make sure that your character appears hundred percent professional and competent. Roleplay is about the flaws of a person as well. I can totally picture Dhanyl making a weird comment because his mind went off on a total tangent.
No, I mean, I literally don't know what he could say. I didn't mean that he would say something stupid, but that the quality of my contribution would be insufficient.
Well, Valorum did basically say that 'Dhanyl might be able to back me up on this' before arguing that the search for Tor should gravitate towards colder stars and planets. Dhanyl could either confirm or refute that and cite an article or report he read.
I'm just spitballing, though. If you can't think of anything to say, don't force yourself.
In the best interests of staying in character, Decius has nothing to say yet. He really is quite silent, and I am waiting until he is interested in something for him to expunge information. He has no need for conversation as a bug. Provide an argument about astronomy or anything science related, and he is nearly silent. Give him something he is passionate about, like food or tactics, and he will attempt to make connections with others. I just didn't feel like writing a post in the RP explaining his silence.
While Dhanyl is right in the universe of Endless Space, just FYI: In reality, stars get hotter as they age. It's very unintuitive given the analogy to burning things, unfortunately that's nature for you. To make things even more confusing, if a star is more massive, it gets hotter (no problem with the analogy there), but also lives shorter, because the reaction speed rising with the internal pressure outgrows the larger reserves of fuel.
And to answer Zennock's question: We'll do planetside expeditions from time to time, yes. The Saviour has a small shuttle for that purpose.
...is it just me, or does anyone else imagine Valorum sounding like Artanis from Starcraft 2?
MY WIFE FOR HIRE
But in all of seriousness, I love Starcraft! It's actually one of my favourite game of all time and one of the few games that really made me love games.
Though, on the topic of Valorum sounding like Artanis, I heavily disagree. I can't picture clearly a creature without a face speaking english and the Vodyani feels much more evil than the Protoss.
I would imagine a merge of Artanis, Alarak, and religious chanting.
Well, Ylona's not wrong; Dhanyl did kind of attack Valorum personally in the end, though Valorum himself would probably never admit it.
And I just can't stop imagining Valorum speaking in the kind of reverberating voice that Protoss speak in. Maybe he doesn't sound exactly like Artanis, but for all his talk about staying united and true to a cause, that's who he's beginning to look and sound like in my mind's eye.
Also, bear in mind that the Vodyani aren't specifically 'evil'; it's all perspective. To them, their Laws are just a method to maintain order, same as any other race's laws. They're definitely more strict in comparison and the punishments are harsher too, but if it maintains order all the same, then it's not 'evil' or 'worse', per se. Besides, most of their punishments are 'you can't speak for X days' or 'no food for X days'; it's not like they flat-out execute every lawbreaker.
Obviously, Ylona is in the wrong here, it's an argument ad vodyanem :P.
More seriously, though, yes, she's slightly overreacting. Being in command got to her head.
Given that we more or less wrapped up the current scene, what would you all think of a time-jump forward to when the Saviour zooms past the mysterious cloud that Dhanyl wants to research?
Personally, I would prefer a fast and painless execution over a slow and steady psychological torture created to submit me into one specific way of thinking and destroying my free will.
And about the Insult, that was just a flat out insult, he didn't try to prove any point by it, thus it is no argument at all, especially no argumentum ad populum (Wich means people, so it is applicable to every species, yeah, that's why I am never invited to any parties I think...).
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