Topic Actions

Topic Search

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 47 guests

NdEBELE N THANDI

Join us in talking discussing all things Honor, including (but not limited to) tactics, favorite characters, and book discussions.
NdEBELE N THANDI
Post by cthia   » Thu Jun 15, 2017 1:15 pm

cthia
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 14951
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 1:10 pm

T
H
A
N d E B E L E
D
I

Thandi Palane amuses me. She's not a naturally aspirated human. She's a naturally aspirated High G African female. Talk about taking the strong black woman concept to heart. A startling :o strong white black woman. What another gobsmacking mInD bOgGLInG concept.

When I'm thinking of her kicking ass.

Are the G ratings given anywhere for the Mfecane Worlds?

An aside:
I wonder if the portable grav units can be used in a fight. If wrestling with someone, it seems you would be subject to their grav field.

Although wresting with a San Martin would simply be hazardous under any gravity.

Mostly though, what would be the comparison and difference, advantages or disadvantages of Thandi's natural high g selection in hand to hand combat.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
Top
Re: NdEBELE N THANDI
Post by cthia   » Thu Jun 15, 2017 9:25 pm

cthia
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 14951
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 1:10 pm

Cachat's Nubian Queen

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
Top
Re: NdEBELE N THANDI
Post by cthia   » Thu Jun 15, 2017 9:28 pm

cthia
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 14951
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 1:10 pm

How easy is it to swim if you're from a heavy world?

Can Ndebeles swim? Will a San Martin sink like a rock?

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
Top
Re: NdEBELE N THANDI
Post by JohnRoth   » Fri Jun 16, 2017 12:05 am

JohnRoth
Admiral

Posts: 2438
Joined: Sat Jun 25, 2011 6:54 am
Location: Centreville, VA, USA

cthia wrote:How easy is it to swim if you're from a heavy world?

Can Ndebeles swim? Will a San Martin sink like a rock?


Whether or not you can float depends on Archemides' principle, that is, are you heavier or lighter than an equivalent volume of water? It has nothing to do with the gravitational attraction.

A human being is mostly water, with the exception of the lungs and the bones. As long as the bones don't contribute more to the mass than the lungs subtract, then yes, the person will float and be able to swim.

Given that the heavy-world adaptations were designed, I'd expect that the designers took that into consideration. It's not a real good idea to design a body that will drown if it trips and falls into a deep body of water - like a water storage tank. That kind of adaptation would be selected against and removed from the gene pool in a relatively few number of generations.
Top
Re: NdEBELE N THANDI
Post by Weird Harold   » Fri Jun 16, 2017 12:42 am

Weird Harold
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 4478
Joined: Thu Apr 24, 2014 10:25 pm
Location: "Lost Wages", NV

cthia wrote:How easy is it to swim if you're from a heavy world?

Can Ndebeles swim? Will a San Martin sink like a rock?


No data on San Martinos, but this from Crown of Slaves:

Crown of Slaves
Chapter 26 wrote:"But Thandi's ancestral environment's taken it quite a bit further. For instance, her bones are much denser than those of most people's. Harrington apparently really enjoys swimming, but someone like Thandi Palane would have a hard time doing that without artificial aids, because her body won't float. For any distance, that is, although she could certainly sprint faster than most people. But, per unit volume, even with her lungs full of air, she's heavier than water. ...


Still looking for a Gravity reference.
.
.
.
Answers! I got lots of answers!

(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
Top
Re: NdEBELE N THANDI
Post by Fireflair   » Fri Jun 16, 2017 1:25 am

Fireflair
Captain of the List

Posts: 591
Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2012 6:23 pm

I was going to say that Thandi doesn't float has been mentioned in the books before. But I would also point out that most of the adaptions for heavy world environments are likely to be on a sliding scale. The more adaption that has been made for heavier worlds, the denser the person's body is likely to be. Not just bones, though that is an obvious one, but muscles and almost all other tissues would have to be denser. If you had the same muscle density as an Earth native you'd bulk up just from moving around. Equally so if you have more dense muscles but the same ligaments you'd have a real possibility of destroying your connective tissues when you lifted something.

So the heavier a world you've been modified for, it follows that you're going to be denser till you reach the point of being unable to float. Honor is designed for heavy world, but that essentially means anything more than 1g. 1.3g is fine for Honor, but Thandi would probably think it was pretty whimpy. Honor, however, can swim and Thandi sinks like a brick.

Even unmodified people have this problem. A friend of mine when I was a kid was into weight lifting. She, note that female density tends to be lower than male, couldn't float either. She had a very low body fat percentage and high muscle mass. A very trim and ripped young woman. Her boyfriend was also a body builder and sank due to the muscle mass, even with his lungs full of air.
Top
Re: NdEBELE N THANDI
Post by Garth 2   » Fri Jun 16, 2017 4:23 pm

Garth 2
Captain of the List

Posts: 426
Joined: Tue Nov 15, 2011 7:04 am

To be honest the more interesting bit is the off handed comment by Victor Cachat, about if another couple of generations had occurred before there rediscover that they wouldn't have been able to interbreed with other strains of humans.
Makes you wonder that soon there will be hundreds (if not thousands) of different species of "humans" in the galaxy

Makes the Alignments plans seem a bit... redundant
Top
Re: NdEBELE N THANDI
Post by BrightSoul   » Mon Jun 19, 2017 1:05 am

BrightSoul
Rear Admiral

Posts: 1368
Joined: Sat Aug 22, 2009 10:51 am

I'd have to hunt for it but IIRC Thandie's home planet had a 2.5G rating, slightly lighter than the heaviest colonized world San Martin at 2.75G.
Top
Re: NdEBELE N THANDI
Post by aairfccha   » Mon Jun 19, 2017 11:52 am

aairfccha
Commander

Posts: 207
Joined: Tue Apr 08, 2014 4:03 pm

Garth 2 wrote:To be honest the more interesting bit is the off handed comment by Victor Cachat, about if another couple of generations had occurred before there rediscover that they wouldn't have been able to interbreed with other strains of humans.
Makes you wonder that soon there will be hundreds (if not thousands) of different species of "humans" in the galaxy

Makes the Alignments plans seem a bit... redundant


Not really. It also was mentioned that those worlds were among the most extreme environments settled by humans and that the starter population was heavily genetically modified, so branching off into a new species anywhere else would be (much) slower.
Top
Re: NdEBELE N THANDI
Post by cthia   » Mon Jun 19, 2017 2:52 pm

cthia
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 14951
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 1:10 pm

I wonder how much more Thandi could develop her body if she were to begin weightlifting? Aren't her people basically natural weight lifters anyways? As opposed to a San Martino lifting to bulk up even more? Would a Ndebeles' muscle mass already be at its limit?

At 2.5 g, holy gee force Batman, she could compete with a San Martino. "Though she be but little, she is fierce."

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
Top

Return to Honorverse