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 (10)
The Capgras delusion normally originates from brain damage or neurodegenerative disease, so he really ought to see a doctor about that.
Perhaps Dan's brother really was replaced, just not by the military or any other human institution…
Well we still have these creatures labelled as "Ghosts".
This doesn't really answer Gharr's question though and it suggests they might not even know the answer. I mean, sure he starts going ballistic and extreme paranoia/conspiracy theory nut, but since Val doesn't know why Dan was so sure his brother is a doppelganger there's no indication of what started it.
The other strange thing is that Dan has an intense hatred for military, governments and humanity... But he's adoring of aliens? Suggests that Dan believes the government has the technology and capability of creating doppelgangers and aliens aren't responsible.
Hopefully it really is some strange mental or child trauma, or his brother simply being very different from the intense training and Dan reading too much into it.
Yep, I was alluding to the Ghosts. Disclaimer: I have no Idea what they are up to. But it would be cool, story-wise, if they did such things.
As usual, the million dollar question is: Why would the Doppelgänger return "home" and risk detection, unless he has some mission to fulfill right there? "I'm still with the army, and quite busy there" would have avoided his Dantection quite easily.
Sure, it would make for a lot of plot if there's something of interest to extraterrestrials within Dans own family, but ...
Well, the first conclusion (the service changes people) is actually quite reasonable, and children/teenagers can clue in on the subtle differences and changes in a person while closing their mind to the explanation; thus not understanding why that change happened - which leads to the false, second conclusion of suspecting a doppelganger.
I would suspect, just from this sparse narrative, that the brother had some traumatic stuff happening to him. PTSD, robot-like behaviour, not recognizing Dan at first sight (because Dan had grown too), less affection towards Dan... and bam.
It would be funny if plot twist would be that the Major is the brother
The Chekhovian Obscured Faces do suggest that we might recognize him otherwise. I doubt it'll be the major, though - their ages seem a bit too different. (And not Alec Hyde from the last panel, either. ;-)
Yeah, Age difference of 24 years. Dan would be at least 6 in those images so it's hard to imagine the brother starting military service that late in life.
Still... I can't help but notice that Dan is well aware of the military base nearby... and this house is supposed to be Dan's so I could see his brother being there.
Gharr:
Did Dan's brother not have antivirus installed on his implant? Because we used to have a problem with that...
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Dan may need some family counselling, therapy, and such. And maybe lay off the American sci-fi movies.