These trivia bits are generated randomly.
Raharrs are warm-blooded creatures and are accustomed to temperature range a bit warmer than Earth's.
"Dawn" class mothership and "Lake" class tankers are the only spacecraft in the Exploration fleet that can create artificial gravity while not under acceleration.
If a space ship accelerates at the same rate as it would in a free-fall under Earth's gravity (Otherwise known as "1G acceleration"), it can reach Jupiter from Earth in just under 6 days. It would need to flip in the middle of the travel, to start decelerating and enter the planet's orbit.
Insectoids in a lot of ways are the weird ones among the Alliance members. Besides having a completely unpronounceable name of the species, they have dextero amino acid biochemistry, which makes their food and biosphere to be inedible by the rest of the Alliance, and vice versa.
The names of every species of the Alliance (besides Insectoids) are words taken directly from their respective native languages that they use to refer to themselves. They all have same translation:
"a human".
Azinarsi relationship to death is different from the rest of the civilizations of the Alliance: they do not care about it. Death would mean loss of information and experience gathered by that instance of a person's mind, though, and these two things are about the only valuables for an Uploaded mind, so Azinarsi try to avoid it when possible.
A lot of backgrounds and other elements in the comic are actually 3d models. It helps reduce the time each page takes to make.
Raharrs descended from the evolutionary branch that can be described as "apelike cats" by their evolutionary niche. Although initially carnivorous and solitary, they were forced to become omnivorous and form persistent packs during the latest of the rare ice ages of their homeworld, approximately 30 million years ago.
It takes more than a year to cross the Alliance space even with the fastest FTL drive.
Prior to becoming a webcomic, Leaving The Cradle was initially developed as a modification for Source engine, back in 2007. It was vastly different back then, much closer to the usual space opera look and feel, and the plot had nothing in common with the webcomic version, sharing only exactly two characters and nothing else.
Many homeworlds of the respective species are still divided into countries, but freshly established colonies on other planets are almost always monolithic and basically independent, since they sprawled from a single initial outpost, and time lag involved due to interstellar distances making remote management of the colony from a homeworld to be ineffective and frustrating at best.
There's no way to communicate faster than light. If you want to send your message to another solar system, your best bet is to use a courier spaceship. It can take even a month for it to finally reach the destination, but it still beats sending it as a transmission and expecting it to arrive decades or thousands of years later.
So far there hasn't been a single instance of a massive interstellar war. Due to the vastness of space, there's no territorial or economic gain from it. The presence of armed spaceships is still warranted for keeping space travel safe and for peacekeeping or policing missions since unexpected events or rogue states can still happen and might require force as a solution.
The Alliance space stretches for an impressive 16 thousand light years along the longest axis, and contains approximately twelve billion star systems. Despite that, 99.99% of those star systems weren't explored even by an automatic mapping drone yet, and the borders of the Alliance space are defined mostly by the reach of spaceships from the nearest colony or space station.
Comments (21)
Hmmm, so we have (so far) Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, China(?), and the USA. Looks more like the Security Council (15 member nations) to me, rather than the General Assembly (almost 200) ...
I do believe you're right, and it makes sense. At this point, Protagonistan is still keeping the alien contact secret from the general public, and only sharing it with useful experts or policy-makers who have a need to know. Informing the UN but keeping it within the Security Council is the same logic writ large.
Edit: it will require a certain finesse to get through this scene without revealing whether or not Protagonistan is Russia.
Sure, but the problem with that is that per current procedures, there are only five WEOG seats and three are filled with the permanent members France, UK, and USA, so there's no way that Germany, the Netherlands, and Portugal could be on the SC simultaneously ...
... short of one of them having had an alignment change and qualifying as "Eastern European" in the storyverse ... :-3
Or the apportionment procedure changed. Or somebody conquered France.
Edit: and I'm not sure where you got Portugal in the first place. The only ones I was able to make out were Japan, USA, Germany, Netherlands, and maaaybe the UK.
I would have guessed Russia, based on the names of some of the human characters, but two of them don’t have names that could be of Russian origin. Maybe it’s Canada?
I just found this comic last night, and I could not stop reading when I got started, so I stayed up until way too late reading all the way through. It is a very good take on humanity's first meeting with aliens, very close to what I would have done myself, if I was talented enough to make something similar.
I am looking very much forward to seeing where this goes…
I also like the art style and the design of the main aliens, being quite different from humans, but not so different that the reader is “alienated” too much to relate to them.
It is also good to see that some of the aliens in the fleet are non-humanoid, and vary different from the main ones, as I think it would be stupid to expect all intiligent aliens to be humanoid.
Thanks! Even the main cast of the alien side isn't humanoid though, they just share the upright posture. =D
Well, that depends how you define humanoid. An extra set of arms and tail is not enough to make you a non-humanoid IMO. Not then you otherwise have an overall human body structure.
But maybe we can agree on calling them simi-humanoids?
Also, I was wondering, do they have some kind of amphibian origin? Their tails seems like they would be very good for swimming.
Great minds think alike, I asked that myself earlier. The answer I got is that Raharrs evolved as wide-ranging persistence hunters/foragers (like us, and unlike any other Alliance species) that had to cross a lot of rivers while on patrol.
The correct term is semiaquatic :). Though that's just because their home planet has A LOT of rivers and lakes, not because water has important role in their lifestyle.
And for me, humanoids are those that can be mistaken for a human at least by silhouette. Like vulcans or even turians.
They might almost have enough information to act. But they don't know about the 2 survivors of the crash who are not hostile. (And I suspect the scene is about to change to the one who's been living with those people for a nice perspective...)
well, one survivor and one missing-presumed-alive, as far as Bahin knows.
It would be difficult to not be seen (for the one MPA) but He might just be "the other one we just aren't sure of or know much about" for the officials. His friends might work to help him in a greater way than all those others combined.
When put in a situation no one has experienced before, it is impossible to say whether you have enough information or not. What Bahnin says in the two last frames is very much speculation based on very shallow observations. A very big problem here is that a military person are talking to politicians and not to other military. These two categories will react very different on the same information, due to their different background and experience.
Just look at the phrase: "Our experts unanimously agree". If you do not want a politician to take a hasty position of how to meet this potential threat, this is not the way to explain things. Bahnin's goal here should be to get the politicians to slowly contemplate the issues at hand and thereafter make a responsible deliberation before they make any decision. And also lead them to make decisions that are not irreversible if the situation changes (maybe even drastically).
The way Bahnin handles the outbreak of questions is bad. He should ask them to hear his whole report before they ask any question. To start answer questions here will most probably derail the report and mix knowledge and assumptions to an degree that will make it impossible for the politicians to understand what is what , thereby have them make the wrong decisions.
Yes. All of that and more. They've never done this before so mistakes will be made BUT if they can learn quickly enough from their mistakes it might turn out well (or better than expected...)
But it's much more dramatic this way :-) (plus it would take lots of extra pages)
Another way is to see Bahnin's actions as correctly done according to his job description. As a career Military Man he must be decisive and sure of his actions... He really can't do it any other way, although it might not be too difficult to change his mind with the right information.
"What are the intentions"
"a provocational attack"
"Our experts unanimously agree"
even if their technology [was] [roughly] similar
attack [by] an enemy force
alternate phrasing:
all the signs of a [first-strike] attack
'Hello, Commander. In light of the recent extraterrestrial incursion, this Council of Nations has convened to approve the activation of the XCOM Project.
You have been chosen to lead this initiative. To oversee our first—and last—line of defense.
Your efforts will have considerable influence on this planet's future. We urge you to keep that in mind as you proceed.
Good luck, Commander.'