Vilani Genetics

[kristof65]

Well, there is a difference between "officially" canon, and "unofficially" canon. I pretty much assume that all of the DGP products are "unofficially" canon unless something specifically over-rides them, since DGP was part of the MT development team.

 

[Infojunky]

Ok throwing a little bit of fuel on the fire.

Who is to Grandfather or whatever of his kin who sampled "Homo-Sapiens-Incognitus" didn't infect the entire population with a virus that controlled the evolutionary development of the entire clade?

A lot of the specifics that have been discussed in this topic can be attributed to environment, not adaption.

 

[EDG]

I do think that either Grandfather was an sadistic git in the first place for taking humans and plonking them on a world with an incompatible biosphere, or it was all some kind of perverse experiment to see how long they'd last or if they'd survive or what the effects would be on them.

The odds of the Vilani actually surviving, with or without their shugili or whatever they're called, should have been significantly reduced just because of the incompatible environment.

 

[captainjack23]

Again with the ploinking ?

I think that rereading the vilani chapters in GURPS and DGP (if available) will clear things up for you considerably. Theres no info that I'm aware of as to which human race was messed with by grandfather, as opposed to his kin. In fact, one can imagine that their tinkering may have been part of his motivation to eliminate them.
Grandfather (and his kin) mainly were limited by manpower. GF eventually went with robots -more resource and construction intensive, but way more easily controlled. His kin tried other stuff -and some of them went with terran hominids. Probably one of his kids found them, used them successfully (initially) and several others jumped on the bandwagon. At least one decided to alter the approach and create the vargr (possibly a human/canine chimera instead of an uplift ? )

The proto vilani were gathered as servants, and occasionally as pets, and as such, were probably kept in a controlled, terran compatable environment. The lack of modification to the outside environment is probably a means of control, al la Jurassic Park Pseudosaurs. If they can't survive in the wilderness, you don't have to worry too much about escapes.

That they were abandoned is probably due to GF destroying their keeper and lab more than anything. I doubt that he had any interest in the lab animals/slaves/self replicating lab equipment) given his other needs at the time (destroying dozens of superintelligent kin/clones of his)

 

[kristof65]

Whether or not he was sadistic depends on a lot of factors - like how they were housed and fed while he was using them as workers. OTOH, since he did start a war on his own children with the intention of wiping them out, he probably didn't care much about these lesser beings.

There are what, 40 or so human "homeworlds" left from his spreading humans around? Given the devastation of the Final War, and the unlikelness for humans to survive without help on many planets, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that there were 400 or more colonies of humans spread about by the Ancients to begin with, and that 10% or or fewer of those survived. Either that, or the Ancients tweaked human stock enough to be able to live (maybe not easily) on the planets they were taken to.

Probably both, since otherwise the number of colonies would have had to be in the thousands originally to get a beleivable survival rate.

 

[GypsyComet]

The number I recall was 46 *known* Minor Human Races (MHR), plus the three major branches, and the people of the Black Empress.

Note that of the named human variants, a few are not derived from the efforts of the Ancients, and are thus not counted in the 46.

Anecdotal evidence finds names for some of the Imperial MHR in the names of the Lightning class cruisers.

The list at http://www.urbin.net/EWW/RPG/SV/TRAV/aliens.html mentions:

Answerin, Cafadan, Cassildan, Darmine, Darrian, Dynchia, Floriani, Geonee, Halkans, Happirvha, Hass'kor, Ikhandre, Iltharan, Issugar, Khulan, Loeskalth, Mal'Gnar, Murrissi, Suerrat, Sydymic, Syleans, Tapazmal, Thaggeshi, Vlazhdumecta, Yileans, and Zaris. This is just over half of the "known" total, though a few of these are from unofficial sources and/or may be undocumented Solomani or Imperial geneered variants.

More recently engendered human variants (not included in the 46) include the Iziri, Jonkeereen, Mermani, Nexies, and Wuans.

 

[kristof65]

I think that rereading the vilani chapters in GURPS and DGP (if available) will clear things up for you considerably. Theres no info that I'm aware of as to which human race was messed with by grandfather, as opposed to his kin. In fact, one can imagine that their tinkering may have been part of his motivation to eliminate them.
Grandfather (and his kin) mainly were limited by manpower. GF eventually went with robots -more resource and construction intensive, but way more easily controlled. His kin tried other stuff -and some of them went with terran hominids. Probably one of his kids found them, used them successfully (initially) and several others jumped on the bandwagon. At least one decided to alter the approach and create the vargr (possibly a human/canine chimera instead of an uplift ? )

Secret of the Ancients does actually say that Grandfather is the one who experimented with using humans as servants, and is the one who took terran canines and made them into the Vargr.

I think that what the Ancients actuall did has been left purposely vague, so that we as GMs can decide what works for us. We know that Grandfather had dozens and dozens of experiments of his own. We know that he had 20 children, and each of them had about 20 children, and he used to assign them projects. We also know that he attempted to recall them to help him with a new project, and most of them failed to show up because they were busy with their own projects. All told, we have at least 800 seperate projects that the Ancients partook in, but that's simply an inferred minimum number from the data given. It is probably more like thousands of different projects and then the Final War, which would give rise to more.

How many of those have really been defined by canon? Not many - a few dozen at best. We know the kind of things the Ancients were capable of, the rest is up to us as GMs.

FREX, a couple of things I've posited IMTU are:

1. Vargr weren't the only genetic experiments the Ancients attempted - there are at least 3-4 other minor alien races who were derived from animal stock on other worlds.

2. At least one of the factions in the Final War cloned humans to use as troops.


All in all, I like the fact that not every thing the Ancients have done hasn't been spelled out, and that things like the genetic makeup of the Vilani have been elft vague enough in canon for us GMs to decide what the Ancients did/didn't do.

 

[kristof65]

The number I recall was 46 *known* Minor Human Races (MHR), plus the three major branches, and the people of the Black Empress.

I knew it was around there. If you figure the 46 MHR, and the three major ones, that's 49 - let's round it up to 50 to make the math even.

If you figure that the survival rate of the transplanted humans was 10% - a very high figure, btw - you end up with 500 some colonies prior to the Final War. Assuming the Ancients didn't tamper with human genetics at all, a more reasonably beleivable rate is 1 to 2%, then you're talking 2500 to 5000 human colonies prior to the Final War.

Taking the following into account, what conclusion(s) do you come to?
- 46-50 Human colonies survived the Final War to become minor or major races.
- The Ancients were known to have tampered with the genetic code of at least one race.

I don't think there is any one "right" answer to that question, btw.

 

[GypsyComet]

Taking the following into account, what conclusion(s) do you come to?
- 46-50 Human colonies survived the Final War to become minor or major races.
- The Ancients were known to have tampered with the genetic code of at least one race.

I don't think there is any one "right" answer to that question, btw.

Probably not. There seem to have been 48 or 49 "right" answers, with considerable variation. Some ended up fairly close to the Terran baseline, some "wandered away". Heck, it wouldn't surprise me to find a race in Known Space that has been classified as alien is actually a deeply modified MHR.

 

[EDG]

I always thought it was kinda dumb that (a) Ancients were explained in the first place (so one alien suddenly gets godlike powers, has 20 kids who also have 20 kids, who later all went on to ultimately wreck their area of local space and wipe out entire biospheres all because Granddaddy got stroppy about his kids getting in the way of his fun? And these guys are supposed to be hyperintelligent?!) and (b) that the Ancients - who started off in what is now the Spinward Marches (apparently we're ignoring 300,000 years of relative stellar motion here, but never mind) - had to go most of the way across Charted Space to find Earth where they decided that not only dogs would make for cool uplifts, but also that humans would and that they'd make a zillion different varieties of them and scatter them across Charted Space.

Were there really NO promising races closer to home? What was so special about Earth that two species there would later become four Major Races? Especially given that we know that the proto-Aslan, proto-K'Kree and proto-Hivers were around at the time (not to mention all the other minor races too).

It all seems a bit silly to me. We know Earth isn't inherently special as a life-bearing world in the OTU - there's loads of others around. Some of them must have had something worthwhile on them for the Ancients to use instead, so why didn't they?

Maybe one can come up with a reason to make Earth special, but I'd still rather toss the whole "grandfather/droyne" shtick out of the window and keep the Ancients as unknowable mysteries.

 

[rust]

Maybe one can come up with a reason to make Earth special, but I'd still rather toss the whole "grandfather/droyne" shtick out of the window and keep the Ancients as unknowable mysteries.

Indeed.

In my setting there are no other humans besides those from Earth, and
I replaced the Ancients with the Precursors, a truly alien coalition of mu-
tually symbiotic "insectoid" species with a unique bio-nano-technology
(the first Precursor relics the characters encountered were nanites which
erroneously attempted to "repair" the humans ...).

For me this is a far more plausible and interesting plot device than Grand-
father, Vilani, Vargr and all that stuff.

 

[kristof65]

I think the Ancients were explained because people were asking GDW to. Either that, or someone just wanted to explain them with their "cool idea."

Even for GMs who use the official explaination, how many of them actually run their players through the Secret of the Ancients adventure?

I never have. It's strictly GM only material, as far as I am concerned. In fact, my take on the adventure is that Grandfather has re-written history to suit himself. After all, there is no one around to dispute his version of events. Therefore IMTU, the Droyne as a whole were the Ancients, and Grandfather is simply the only survivor of the Final War because he retreated to his little pocket universe.

 

[GypsyComet]

but I'd still rather ... keep the Ancients as unknowable mysteries.

To hear Loren talk, GDW was of the same opinion. Especially after Adventure 12 was released...

Of course, who is to say that "Grandfather" isn't a much younger and quite delusional super-Droyne? The Droyne approach to technology of hand-making every solution and no two being alike has been attached to the "every Ancient's site is different" finding, but what if the various sites really are the results of different races? Maybe the "Ancients" included an earlier cycle of Humaniti amongst their numbers? Maybe, for all the evidence in its favor, the Solomani Hypothesis is wrong?

And heck, even if that is the real story, getting your players to doubt it restores the mystery sufficiently to use "the Ancients" for whatever purpose you like.

 

[aspqrz]

On Vland, the need to cope with the alien environment is much more likely to induce mutations faster. IF a particular physical trait becomes linked with a successful survival mutation for that environment, that trait is quickly going to become dominant there, regardless of how humans on earth evolved.

Umm.

No.

Why would a pro-survival trait become more common on Vland quicker than it would on Terra?

I didn't say "quicker than on Terra". I said, that any pro-survival trait that appears on Vland is quickly going to become dominant there -[/quote]

So, you accept that it won't become more common quicker than similar traits did on Terra?

Like lactose tolerance? Which was one of my examples.

much in the same way that blond's defied the odds of random chance here. That is going to happen regardless of how we evolve here - it's a different environment. It doesn't matter what that pro-survival trait is - if it works for that environment, it's going to become dominant.

But at what speed?

And will it arise in the first place?

Which is my point and which you continue to carefully ignore.

You only have 250,000 years or thereabouts. And, as noted, some mutations seem to occur only very rarely.

So, my statement that you aren't going to get Vilani blondes, blue eyed Vilani and no Vilani with lactose tolerance ... which makes them quite different from baseline humans ... is ... likely ... correct.

I never said that they would be identical to baseline humans other than for those differences ...

You seem to be flogging the horse of "will be different in other ways" ... I never said that they would be identical to baseline humans other than for those differences ... arguing about something I never ever said.

You seem to be confusing the fact that there will be more mutations because of the higher levels of solar radiation with the speed at which mutations spread.

No, I'm not. The mutations themselves will spread faster or slower than here on Earth depending only upon other factors like the number of years between generations; life expectancy; regional terrain, topography and population distribution.[/quote]

Good, since this means that you except that even if blonde hair occurs once (and that's all that happened on Terra) in the last 500,000 years there's been (and that's stretching it) recognizable humans, it would take 650,000 years for it to spread through normal random breeding selection to the percentage of the world's population that now has it.

So, no Vilani blondes. Or a handful, almost literally, if the mutation does appear.

For other mutations, yes, well, lactose tolerance spread fairly quickly. So?

Please keep to what my points were, not what you seem to believe they were.

I reiterate - no blue eyed blonde, lactose tolerant, Vilani.

However, given the size of the human genone, the chance of the exact same mutation occurring because of radiation damage more than once is ... very low ... which is why, I would suggest, all modern baseline human blondes are descended from the one precursor mutant.

The rate at which this mutation spread, by pure random chance, as noted, would have required in excess of 650,000 years to reach the current percentages of blondes in society ... but was managed in 11,000 years.

Why? Two possible reasons - blondes tend to have light skin and produce more Vitamin D in sunlight in high latitudes, a definite pro-survival trait on Terra or, equally, they were seen (ghu knows why, exactly) as socially more desirable as mates because, one presumes, of their exotic looks.

The problem with this mutation on Vland is that the hotter sun means that light skin/blonde hair is a *bad* trait as they will be more prone to skin cancer ...

I see you as contradicting yourself here. You're tying blond hair/light skin together in the same mutation, and then saying it won't happen on Vland. [/quote]

Not at all ... you seem to have difficulty with the concept of adding information and confusing it with information that is "contradictory".

Blonde hair and light skin is linked as a mutation. You don't see terribly many blonde people of african ethnicity (except, of course, if it's out of a bottle :wink: )

You're right there - I doubt they'll show up together like they did here on Earth - but that doesn't preclude blond hair OR light skin showing up tied to a different beneficial mutation on Vland.[/quote]

Which means it will be as likely to occur as it was here on Terra ... which is to, it has a miniscule chance ... and, of course, it has to be linked to a pro-survival mutation ... blonde hair, at least the sort that survived and spread, seemingly (assuming the Vitamin D argument is valid) was ... but that mutational combo occurred exactly once in 500,000 years ... since all mutation is random, increasing the amount of mutation doesn't increase the chance of two random combinations being pro-survival very significantly at all.

Ergo, blonde Vilani are unlikely. Which was my point.

Assuming that most life-forms will begin to experience random mutations in an attempt to survive an alien environment, it seems more likely to me that some wierd things wuold pop up more frequently.

Indeed. Many, many "some weird things" will pop up ... most will, however, be deleterious. And just because "some weird things" pop up does not mean that the same "weird things" will pop up on Vland that popped up on Terra.

There is also the assertation that human hair and skin colors will stay within the current human norms for the Vilani and Zhodani.

Not by me.

I merely asserted that you aren't likely to have blonde Zhos and Vilani because the blonde mutation postdates their isolation from baseline human stock and is sufficiently rare to have occurred only once on Terra in 500,000 years to date.

Are you likely to find blue haired Vilani, well, yes, I forgot about Baboons silly me ... maybe you would find blue haired Vilani ... but it would be as likely as finding blonde haired ones ... not very.

The odds may not be good, true. The odds of winning the lottery aren't very good either. But it happens. All it takes is a single event. [/quote]

No.

All it takes is single event with a mutation that provides the mutated organism with an improved chance of surviving and then reproducing. Blue hair by iself won't do that ... just as, as the current theory suggests, blonde hair by itself may not have (there are two theories, remember) ... having blue hair will have to provide a definite survival advantage.

Now, assuming that (like albinism), low production of pigmentation that results in blonde hair is inextricably linked with light coloured skin, the Vitamin D theory makes it plain the survival advantage.

You'd have to have blue hair linked with something similarly advantageous ... what causes blue skin in baboons? Excess pigment? Different combinations of pigment? Blowed if I know ... but it will be something to do with pigment, I'd hazard a guess.

Maybe blue hair in the Vilani means that they have a pelt rather than normal (for some iterations of "normal") distribution of body hair ... so Blue haired Vilani are more resistant to solar radiation as a result.

But Blue haired Vilani are ... very ... hairy ... eeuuwww. :shock:

There'd have to be something ...

My assertion here is that we can't say for certain what they will/won't have for skin tone, hair or eye color based on what happened here on Earth.

And my assertion is that we can, based on how frequently those mutations occur and why they spread.

Phil

 

[aspqrz]

Just. A. Game.

But it's our game, darnit, and if we want to argue about it, we will!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Exactly :twisted:

Phil

 

[EDG]

So after all this, apparently we now know (based asprgz's interpretation at least, though I don't recall him providing any actual references for his claims yet) that we won't get blonde/blue-eyed Vilani, and that if you feed a Vilani milk then he'll be running for the toilet not long after. Awesome.

Personally, I still think that it's likely that you'll get the mutation for blonde/blue-eyedness showing up some other way (especially if the original stock happened to have the potential for the mutation that lurking latently in their genome anyway). And really, not being able to drink milk isn't exactly earth-shattering, considering that they're from another planet that doesn't even HAVE those proteins to start with.

 

[EDG]

Even for GMs who use the official explaination, how many of them actually run their players through the Secret of the Ancients adventure?

I thought it was one huge Railroad myself... the players were at best just along for the ride, then they get lectured by Grandfather, then (inexplicably) let go?? The whole scenario made little sense to me.

 

[subunit]

Hey aspqrz, thank you for the interesting thread. Not often I get to think about exogenetics!!

A couple of points. First, your assumptions with regard to hair colour are somewhat flawed. A specific point mutation is not required for non-black hair colours

Indeed, you are probably right ... however, what I said was ... and the evidence seems to support this ... is that *blondes* are the result of a single mutational event, almost certainly occurring in one individual, as are blue eyes, at varying times in the past and that, as far as blondes are concerned, natural spread by random chance would have taken over 600,000 years to give the same incidence of blondes as exists in the world today.

Assume, for the sake of argument, that the exact same mutation occurs on Vland, since, with the higher radiation background, light skinned (and that's what blondes are as well, with that exact same mutation) are less likely to survive than darker skinned (that is, my understanding anyway, one of the theories as to why africans tend to be dark skinned ... resistance to skin cancers ... though I understand that this theory is ... somewhat controversial) Vilani ... so one would presume that, unlike the case in the higher latitudes of Europe, there is either no or not enough socio-cultural survival benefit on Vland to outweigh the fact that blondes die younger.

Which means that, by random chance spread, there would, at best, be far, far less of them ... indeed, since this is a late development on baseline humans, unless the Vilani expressed that one off mutation 300,000 years ago, the likelihood, as I said, is that most Vilani will have dark hair, black, brown or, possibly, hazel ... red/blonde is unlikely as they seem to be related and linked with that anti-survival (on Vland) light skin ... auburn, I s'pose. Grey, as I said, Albino-white ... even more anti-survival on Vland. Green? Blue? What other colours do you suggest are likely? Shades of brown? Sure, covered in "brown" ... piebald black/white or brown/white?

Phil

Hi aspqrz,
I wasn't clear in my original post. Not only is a specific point mutation not required for non-black hair coulours, no specific mutation is required for any specific hair colour. There is no 1:1 correspondence between genotype and phenotype for these sorts of traits. In other words, you can't draw a meaningful relationship between the probability of the the particular mutation which resulted in a given phenotype and the overall probability of that phenotype occurring without a complete knowledge of all possible genetic and epigenetic events which could result in that phenotype.

Let's look at blonde hair as an example. Blondes are known to have suppressed eumelanin levels in a number of tissues. Melanin is produced in melanocytes and a number of other cell types. Lets focus on melanocytes. Melanin in melanocytes is produced from tyrosine by the action tyrosinase as well as other enzymes. Ok, so, let's look at tyrosinase.

Tyrosinase has four exons spread over a 65kb region on chromosome 11. It has multiple regulatory elements in its >2kb promoter region upstream of the CDS which are important for the correct expression of the protein product. This promoter region also specifies which cell types tyrosinase will be expressed in. The intronic regions of this gene contain splice sites which are important to the correct processing of the mRNA transcript from this gene. In other words, there are hundreds of point mutations, insertions, deletions, etc etc which might cause alterations in tyrosinase gene activity, within this gene alone. Some of these alterations might be subtle, others less so. Now think about the regulatory elements in the tyrosinase promoter. There are at least a few different transcription factors which regulate tyrosinase expression through these elements. Mutations in the genes which encode those transcription factors can ALSO have effects on tyrosinase, and, downstream, on melanin production.

That's just talking about your ho-hum standard mutational events. Alterations in the regulation of euchromatin and heterochromatin packing could result in the tyrosinase gene being silenced altogether in specific cell types if it were to fall in new heterochromatic region. The promoter region of the tyrosinase locus might be methylated in any number of epigenetic events, specifically reducing its activity. RNA interference from novel siRNAs might knock down the amount of tyrosinase transcript that is produced.

See how complicated this is? There are literally hundreds of events which could cause alterations in the activity of one single gene which is involved in the normal production and distribution of melanin. Repeat that again for loci like the melanocortin type 1 receptor, or any number of other genes involved in the regulation of melanin production.

You absolutely correct to state that the majority of mutational events have deleterious effects on the organism. Moreover, the sum of the probabilities of the various events that could produce, lets say, a blonde hair phenotype, are still quite low. Your point that an overall decrease production of melanin would probably be selected against on Vland is well taken (I can't believe I just wrote that sentence). However, the idea that specific mutational events are required to produce specific phenotypes for complex polygenic traits like hair colour is incorrect. Thus the probability of, say, phenotype "blonde hair" occuring cannot be inferred from the probability of the specific mutational event which resulted in that phenotype in our evolutionary past.

TL;DR version: Biology is complicated, traveller GMs have lots and lots of wiggle room for weird looking Vilani

 

[subunit]

If you read all of that and think I'm full of crap, or just want a practical example, a really, really good one is pseudohypoparathyroidism. It's a very, very rare condition which is caused by abnormal suppression of a particular G protein. Literally hundreds of different types of mutations and epigenetic events have been demonstrated to lead to this particular phenotype. Family A will have a mutation in one exon, family B will have a mutation in another, Family C will have an epigenetic suppression, but they all end up with the same disease.

Decent, short, free review (no journal access required) available here.

 

[EDG]

I gotta ask, subunit - are you a professional geneticist or something? That long post you wrote was pure awesome (I didn't really understand most of it, but I'm rather amazed to find that I actually followed it at least ).