1. [3:50 AM] Hālian:
  2. [3:48 AM] Sabrina: it also doesn't fit with Loroi inheriting human vocalization and facial expression tendencies
  3. [3:48 AM] Sabrina: Which evolved specifically for communication purposes
  4. [3:49 AM] Sabrina: And would be wholly redundant in a naturally telepathic species
  5. @Sabrina splitting off a side conversation over here: I'm presently having much the same problem with my own psychic blue elf conspecies, the safir. I've gone to the trouble of specifically describing them as having syrinxes (the same vocal organ as birds) instead of larynxes, and am devising a complex conlang for them, as well as stating that they have several others, both conventionally vocalized (by human standards) and some more akin to birdsong… but they're naturally telepathic, so why? —and I can't satisfactorily answer that question.
  6. [3:51 AM] Sabrina: Option 1) Telepathy evolved after verbal communication
  7. [3:52 AM] Sabrina: Option 2) Telepathy is "expensive" for an organism to rely upon for daily communicaiton, and is used solely for "extreme case" communication, possibly spurred on by being a sexually selected trait.
  8. [3:52 AM] Sabrina: Option 3) Telepathy and verbal communication are co-evolutionary traits.
  9. [3:52 AM] Hālian: Hmm… :thinking_loroi:
  10. [3:53 AM] Sabrina: Option 4) Telepathy was less common in the past for the species, due to the existence of telepathic predators. Verbal communication evolved after telepathy as a way to communicate without alerting predators.
  11. [3:54 AM] Hālian: I'm not the world's biggest fan of Option 1, as the present idea in my head of the condition of the safir when they first settled Daia and Lessa ~1 Ma includes psychic powers. Option 2 seems plausible, however, especially given that other traits endemic to safir (mainly extremely long hair) must have been sexually selected, so there's no reason why psychic powers couldn't have been, although societal pressures would have trended towards more and more use of telepathy over speech. I was going to say that Option 3 is the most likeliest, but then you posted Option 4, and that made me hmm again. It wouldn't be the least bit farfetched for there to be psionic nonsapients native to Daia, as the dragons thereto native are also psionic.
  12. [3:55 AM] Sabrina: You could also combine them
  13. [3:56 AM] Sabrina: verbal communication evolves independently, but the same parts of the brain then get adapted for use with telepathy, making it more effective than simple telempathic projection
  14. [3:57 AM] Sabrina: With communication and social intelligence evolving primarily due to an intra-species evolutionary arms race due to pseudo-monogamous pair-bonds and adultery.
  15. [3:57 AM] Sabrina: (Much like how it worked with humans.)
  16. [3:58 AM] Hālian: Most Daian safir cultures are polyromantic in some form, but of course there's no telling what things were like a million years ago
  17. [3:58 AM] Sabrina: nods
  18. [3:58 AM] Sabrina: It's entirely possible that their equivalent of psychology became much more advanced, much earlier on, due to telepathic mind reading being available
  19. [3:59 AM] Hālian: Oh, definitely
  20. [3:59 AM] Hālian: I'm pretty certain telepathy evolved either alongside or before verbal communication
  21. [3:59 AM] Sabrina: Thus they would have much more ability to deliberately modify their social norms
  22. [4:00 AM] Hālian: Yeah
  23. [4:00 AM] Hālian: On other servers the complexity of Āirumāli (the safir lingua franca) has been chalked up to a conscious desire to mimic in some way the absurd bandwidth of telepathy compared to any other form of communication
  24. [4:01 AM] Sabrina: I assume it's borrowing a bit from the vein of Ithkuil/Ilaksh in terms of using an extreme variety of phonemes to permit maximum information density per syllable?
  25. [4:01 AM] Hālian: It's not polysynthetic, unfortunately, merely fusional, in the vein of Latin with a dash of Finnish noun craziness because I'm so original
  26. [4:02 AM] Hālian: That said, I do plan to try my hand at making a polylang sometime, but I must first summit Mount How
  27. [4:02 AM] Sabrina: Aye
  28. [4:02 AM] Sabrina: Conlang is always fun to contemplate, but exhausting to actually try to do
  29. [4:03 AM] Hālian: files that under "Aranese", explaining that the Aran State is a supposed direct theocracy surrounding the mountain of the same name, and basically the Vatican of the Daian safir's most popular religion, presently named the Sevenfold Path but ever in search of a better title
  30. [4:03 AM] Hālian: Yup
  31. [4:03 AM] Hālian: Thankfully books like Rosenfelder's and Peterson's exist now
  32. [4:07 AM] Hālian: Random safir culture funfact du semaine: A thumbs-up means "I don't know"; the closest safir analogue to a human thumbs-up is to slam the bottom of the fist in the opposite hand, which is actually closer in meaning to "eureka!".(edited)