Little People

[Laryssa]

Suppose there was an intelligent technological race in the OTU whose average adult height was 2 cm tall? There cellular structure is also one hundreth scale of humans, and lets say they were bipedual humanoids with two arms, two legs, five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot.

One thing for sure is that given these attributes, these creatures would not look human even adjusted for scale. Their muscles would be thinner as their bodies would not need as much proportional muscle mass to support their tiny frames. Also such tiny beings might not perceive time the same as we would, there reaction speeds would be much faster than ours, they could move their tiny legs and arms faster than we could, and since their tiny brain cells are closer together in their little brains they would think faster.

Now imagine an Earth-sized planet full of such tiny beings: how would you imagine such tiny beings going through the standard Traveller tech levels. How would their stages of development resemble ours and hw would they be different. Would building a spaceship be a problem for them?

Would a 2 cm tall creature make a suitable player character race?

 

[Spinward Scout]

Pressures and things also work differently at that level. I was just reading about some company making a miniature car, around the scale your talking, and I guess one of the things they realized, was that oil works differently at that scale. That's an interesting idea, tho.

 

[Laryssa]

One of the things though is that nature won't stay small if it could possibly grow big. if the planet's gravity is Earth-normal it will grow some normal-sized trees and to the little people they'll be gigantic, it will probably have normal sized creatures in it too.

A little person might be something called a microclone - a human being reenginered on a one hundreth scale with all the changes in physics taken into account. Maybe the ancients might have done something like that.

Now what are the dangers of being a 2 cm tall humanoid? If the proportions were the same, a 2 cm tall humanoid would weight 100 milligrams, if he had a skeleton made of bone and human like muscles, he would be able to carry many times his own weight, he could probably survive a fall from a table top even though that would be a fall of about 100 cm which to him would seem like 100 meters.

Probably the biggest danger is getting eaten by a large or medium-sized creature.

 

[archhealer]

Liquid surface tensions begin to be a lot more important at lower TLs. Vehicles and in some cases even people could easily traverse water or other liquid seas without too much danger.

Wind becomes a major issue. Buildings and structures and creatures that small are very easily damaged by wind, rain, and even the most minor flooding.

Medical tech would be very difficult; figuring out doses for medication would be a tremendously more difficult task than as we know it; If even a hundredth of a miligram off can kill a being of 200 lbs, think of how precise the doses would have to be for a creature weighing .5oz?

Fire is a major issue: Keeping a fire lit when it's big, like a pile of logs, isn't too hard. Keeping a fire lit when it's just a couple of twigs is a very difficult task. Creatures that small would have a very hard time lighting, and maintaining, fires that would be useful without being so large as to be unmanageable and highly dangerous.

Reaction times: Just cause they're tiny doesn't mean they're fast. There are plenty of very sluggish and very tiny creatures, just here on earth.

At that scale, they'd most likely be detritovores. Predation would be limited to very small insects, maybe some small vertibrates if a whole group worked together. Plant matter is a possibility, but cultivation by creatures that small might be tricky, especially if it required irrigation (See above comments about flooding and surface tension).

That's what popped into my mind right away... There's probably a million other considerations.

 

[Black Globe Generator]

Originally posted by Laryssa:
Probably the biggest danger is getting eaten by a large or medium-sized creature.

And here we have a picture of the microclone death-deity, Longnose, the Destroyer of Worlds.

Good list, Archhealer.

 

[Icosahedron]

Originally posted by Laryssa:
Suppose there was an intelligent technological race in the OTU whose average adult height was 2 cm tall? There cellular structure is also one hundreth scale of humans, and lets say they were bipedual humanoids with two arms, two legs, five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot.

One thing for sure is that given these attributes, these creatures would not look human even adjusted for scale. Their muscles would be thinner as their bodies would not need as much proportional muscle mass to support their tiny frames. Also such tiny beings might not perceive time the same as we would, there reaction speeds would be much faster than ours, they could move their tiny legs and arms faster than we could, and since their tiny brain cells are closer together in their little brains they would think faster.

Now imagine an Earth-sized planet full of such tiny beings: how would you imagine such tiny beings going through the standard Traveller tech levels. How would their stages of development resemble ours and hw would they be different. Would building a spaceship be a problem for them?

Would a 2 cm tall creature make a suitable player character race?

There are a number of problems with this concept.
Firstly, cells and cellular structure are pretty constant across all known life-forms - life forms are merely conglomerates of cells in greater or lesser numbers.
Secondly, it is highhly unlikely that the 2cm scale would give rise to a humanoid form - it wouldn't be efficient. They probably would not have lungs, for example, but insect-like spiracles for breathing - which in turn would make clothing a non-starter.
Thirdly, their brain cells would not be 'closer together' as I showed above, but their brains, having a much smaller number of cells, would be vastly less intelligent. I would doubt whether any creature at this scale could be labelled as 'intelligent life'.
Sorry to put the dampers on, but ye cannae change the laws o' biology.

 

[Maladominus]

Originally posted by Black Globe Generator:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Laryssa:
Probably the biggest danger is getting eaten by a large or medium-sized creature.

And here we have a picture of the microclone death-deity, Longnose, the Destroyer of Worlds.

Good list, Archhealer. </font>[/QUOTE]LOL Archhealer.

OK, Longnose the Destroyer made me laugh.

 

[Laryssa]

Originally posted by Icosahedron:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Laryssa:
Suppose there was an intelligent technological race in the OTU whose average adult height was 2 cm tall? There cellular structure is also one hundreth scale of humans, and lets say they were bipedual humanoids with two arms, two legs, five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot.

One thing for sure is that given these attributes, these creatures would not look human even adjusted for scale. Their muscles would be thinner as their bodies would not need as much proportional muscle mass to support their tiny frames. Also such tiny beings might not perceive time the same as we would, there reaction speeds would be much faster than ours, they could move their tiny legs and arms faster than we could, and since their tiny brain cells are closer together in their little brains they would think faster.

Now imagine an Earth-sized planet full of such tiny beings: how would you imagine such tiny beings going through the standard Traveller tech levels. How would their stages of development resemble ours and hw would they be different. Would building a spaceship be a problem for them?

Would a 2 cm tall creature make a suitable player character race?

There are a number of problems with this concept.
Firstly, cells and cellular structure are pretty constant across all known life-forms - life forms are merely conglomerates of cells in greater or lesser numbers.
Secondly, it is highhly unlikely that the 2cm scale would give rise to a humanoid form - it wouldn't be efficient. They probably would not have lungs, for example, but insect-like spiracles for breathing - which in turn would make clothing a non-starter.
Thirdly, their brain cells would not be 'closer together' as I showed above, but their brains, having a much smaller number of cells, would be vastly less intelligent. I would doubt whether any creature at this scale could be labelled as 'intelligent life'.
Sorry to put the dampers on, but ye cannae change the laws o' biology. </font>[/QUOTE]Well, I kind of assumed these 2 cm tall humanoids were artificial, but they still eat and reproduce. The key here is randomness vs nonrandomness. Human DNA is longer than it needs to be, most of it is junk, but the parts of it that do useful things have accumulated over millions of years through random trial and error. Now what if someone wanted to produce a biological microclone deliberately, he starts out by creating artificial cells from the bottom up. These cells are made of the same stuff as normal natural cells are made of, but the designer is lookg to make them as efficient as possible. The DNA would only be as long as it needs to be, and would not contain genetic junk that accumulated over millions of years of random mutation, since the DNA is smaller, it would fit within a smaller cell. The designer would also seek to improve upon the various parts of the cell to see about reducing their size and making them more efficient. Perhaps his goal is to make this being as intelligent as a human with a perception of time the same as ours.

Perhaps he doesn't have to shrink the neurons to one hundreth scale, but if he can achieve some shrinkage, he can fit more brain cells in that tiny brain case and those brain cells would be closer together, nerve impulses would travel a shorter distance, and the processing speed per unit volume of brain matter would be faster just like it is for shrunken circuits. Maybe with faster processing speeds you don't need as much parallelism as exists in the human brain. Also a nerve impluse is slow compared to that of an electric current. If the designer can speed up the the nerve signal so that it actually travels faster than a signal in the human brain, the brain cells of the tiny creature can be used alot more times than the brain cells of a human. Perhaps a unique cell structure could be devised that could carry an electric current rather than just a nerve impulse. If you can increase the processing speed and efficiency of tiny brain cells, you don't need as many of them, and you can fit as many as needed into a tiny space. Such a think might not evolve naturally in our world, but it might be deliberately created by intelligent beings who live closer to our scale. They would have to be created in such a way so that they can subsist in a natural environment, eating the plant and animal sunstances, their digestive system would break down this matter and they would produce the structures of their own unique artificial biology from them, they would also reproduce and so forth.

Now about fire, one of the problems is that heat radiates away very quickly when such a small amount of material is being burned. I believe an internal combustion engine has been built on that scale. I think that may be the key, you enclose the fire so that the combustion temperature is maintained, that would be how all small scale fires would have to be maintained by the little people. As for larger scale smelting operations, well humans have built structures that are larger than themselves, and so would the little people. They would have to manipulate tiny globs of molten metal so they can forge tiny little metal swords and farming implements. later on as they advance to tech level 3, they need to make tiny little tubes out of metal and some explosive powder to propel their tiny projectiles. Later on at TL5 they'll have machineguns. To kill larger creatures, they need to make artillary pieces and so forth.

 

[archhealer]

If they were made artificially, then perhaps they were also advanced up the TL ladder a ways artificially. My purpose in pointing out the difficulties with forging and other fire-related technologies is, I doubt very much creatures this small, however intelligent, would EVER undergo the neolithic revolution. They would have no problem feeding themselves, as at that scale even tiny amounts of food would feed a lot of people for a long time (Mice can survive on a handful of cereal for weeks). Seeds, nuts, other plantstuff, small animals, would all provide easily obtained and plentiful food sources. Even if the population reached large numbers, I should think they would stay fairly primitive; no pressure to advance.

Also, as fire is one of the keys to technological advancement (It could in theory happen without fire, but very, very unlikely), having to build internal combustion and/or heat and air controlled forges before even being able to keep a fire going make it very unlikely they would ever start using fire enough to reach that point.

As for the whole cellular issue... Two centimeters may be pushing it, but there are some pretty tiny mammals in the rodent family. Some voles and mice are less than an ounce on average, and I have a pygmy mouse for a pet who is only about 2 cm long, not counting her tail. They have lungs, spines, a closed circulatory system, a central nervous system, and a brain.

The intelligence issue is something of a sticky spot, but many studies on the intelligence of animals has shown that size of the brain matters much less that the proportional size of the brain. Rats have brains the size of peas, but are extremely intelligent. Some large herbivores are dumb as bricks and have brains the size of basketballs. Of course, these studies probably didn't deal with the hypothesis of a brain the size of the head of a pin in a creature the size of my fingertip.

Keep in mind folks, I'm pointing out all these troubles not to keep people from creating such creatures, but because I'm curious what ways around the problems people will come up with! I like the idea of really tiny aliens.

 

[Laryssa]

I guess I was thinking of a "nanotechnology run amok" type of scenario. Big creatures create little creatures, and a whole ecosystem of little creatures, and then the big creatures distroy themselves either because of their advanced biotechnology being used for warfare with others of their kind or because of some seperate unrelated reason. Remember the Dinosaurs died out, but numerous small creatures survived. Perhaps their is a planet that underwent such a history and the more efficient biotechnology invented by the extinct larger aliens took over the whole planet, as that biotechnology was more efficient. Naturally even though the cellular biology of these creatures is smaller, larger creatures evolved anyway because they could, but you still have the 2 cm sapient humanoids. The neural complexity and the nerve impulse speed is higher for these creatures than for more Earthlike creatures. Not enough years has gone by for true evolution to have occured, most of whats on the planet are survivors of the catastrophe that destroyed the big aliens. But as you said before, the small aliens can survive on alot less than the big aliens could. Perhaps as they were artificial creatures, they are less likely to mutate, their DNA strands are shorter and are also reinforced so the correct themselves. Something like radiation from nuclear fallout might kill the big aliens, while the small aliens have ahigher tollerance for it and are less likely to mutate or have cancer from it. the designers improved upon themselves in some fashion. Also since they were designed from the bottom up by intelligent larger aliens, their is no real reason for them to age, the tiny creatures cells just keep on repairing themselves, although they can meet up with accidents, be devored by larger creatures and the like, a few of them could possibly live for a very long time baring accidents and violence.

 

[princelian]

First off, 2 cm creatures would be...let's see....

M = 6 ft (182 cm)
S = 91 cm
T = 45 cm
Diminutive = 22.5 cm
Fine ~= 11 cm

Two or three size categories smaller than Fine, which means that they get at least a +16 AC modifier if not higher, and they get a movement rate modifier of around x 1/8 or worse. They also are going to have a +32 or so modifier to the Spot DC of those trying to find them.

All of this means that they have some game-balance threatening modifiers. (They'll probably also have a -6 or -8 Str modifier and a +6 or +8 Dex modifier, which on top of the +16 they have to their attack bonus (due to size) means they're hideously dangerous if they can wield a human-threatening weapon.)

But let's set aside the game mechanical issues, since I think Laryssa was wanting to know about the sci-fi science implications.

You don't need fire.

Let's assume that although they look humanoid (and are as intelligent as humaniti), they aren't human. They secrete chemical compounds as do some insects, and they can use the biomass of their gathering places as heat regulation, as do, for example, ant and termite colonies.

Furthermore, they will have discovered in the distant past that if they gather the right conditions together, they can create fire or other chemical reactions.

This would imply an innate sense for biochemical-related science. (Watch out for their poison darts, they pack a whallop.)

Having developed this biochemistry much earlier than metallurgy, their technological developments would have gone in a different path, but it gives them an incredible edge against the myriad predators (and accidentally-predatory omnivores that eat them along with the leaves), which is what would give them a chance to get civilization going.

They would be highly social creatures who don't generally fight against one another, although one group may have different goals. They're unified against the elements (which as others have said are real dangers to them) and creatures of their world(s). They probably cooperate, even across regional boundaries, extremely well. Their politics, however, might be incredibly, even inconceivably complex, and possibly resolved by personal combat (a given individual's life isn't likely to be as valuable because the mortality rate for this species will be staggering).

They will be incredibly vicious and incredibly cunning when defending themselves. They will be well aware of their relative vulnerability (one grenade could kill an entire village) and will take steps to minimize it as much as possible.

 

[Laryssa]

Intelligent creatures aren't likely to secret chemicals, they'll manufacture them. Biomass isn't going to produce high enough temperatures to melt rock and smelt metals from them. If you can light a match, that should be enough fire for them, you just need to shelter the fire from the winds. Its possible for them to make a small-scale furnace, smelt out metals from rocks, pour the molten metal into molds and have them bang out tiny little swords with their tiny stone hammers, they'll have to act fast, because tiny little globs of molten metal will cool fast. Unless they have a "collective consciouness", their should be plenty of conflicts between them. I really don't want to put stingers on their butts, I think intellengent creatures shouldn't have specialized equipment attached to them that forces them to fight only a certain way. Game mechanics-wise the little people should have reduced scale hit points, in otherwords any normal-sized creature should have his hit points greatly multiplied for purposes of any encounter between them, it would be very hard to a big person to step on them since they can leap up in the air like a grasshopper, they don't have wings per se, but since their strength is so great in proportion to their weight, they can jump many times their height from a standing position, for them Earth-normal gravity is like a low gravity environment.

 

[princelian]

I wasn't saying they should have stingers; it was just a suggestion on how they could begin higher-level toolcrafting without building a forge 100 m on a side (to their scale).

And get the right chemicals together, you can melt rock just fine - can you say "thermite?"

 

[archhealer]

So, starting with an artificial creation, artificialy manufactured tech base (Either bio, chemical, or industrial), and the other factors... I like it. I was going to mention hive-conciousness, as it would help mitigate the extreme individual vulnerability of the creatures. Giving them a very high rate of reproduction would also be logical; most small creatures reproduce frequently in moderate litters (Small rodents, birds, etc.), or occasionally but numbering in the thousands or even millions (most insects & fish). Also, since th ey were created with an already intact infrastructure, perhaps their reproduction is entirely based on cloning. that woudl give them total control over population numbers, preventing food shortages and such but also ensuring that when the population needs to grow quickly (Wars, times of plenty, time to spawn a new colony) there are enough warm (albeit very tiny) bodies available. It would also fit with the earlier mentioned biotech model.

 

[Laryssa]

A "drone" would make a lousy PC though. I was thinking more in line of a shrunken human that didn't have insect-like characteristics just because they are small. There is nothing that says a small creature couldn't last a long time. If they had short lives, there is really no point in making them intelligent as they wouldn't live long enough to learn anything, and if they aren't intelligent then they really are just another kind of bug, so what's the point?

No, my point was to have a creature that could be played as a PC or used as a character. Something with a "hive mind" doesn't really suit that purpose as they are not individuals, omething that lives a short time doesn't suit either. We need something that is basically human, except it is 2 cm tall. I know their isn't a biped creature that is that small, or perhaps their is: A humming bird is fairly small and it has two legs and two wings, technically it is a biped, now suppose this humming bird was as smart as a human? The only problem with humming birds is that they don't have hands to manipulate tools with. So we basically got a biped that is 2 cm tall that lives approximately 80 to 90 years. Maybe life is cheap at the lower tech levels, but that is always the case. What about higher tech levels? I'm sure at TL7+ these creatures can build something to fend off the giant creatures. Humans after all have driven many giant animals into extinction. Now what would happen if humans landed on a fairly advanced planet inhabited by little people, these creatures have pretty much mastered their environment like we have through technology, but they are still 2 cm tall. Trees make natural sky scrapers for them. If you did a planet like that in the OTU, their population would be way off the chart. A million of these little people would take up the same space as a single normal sized human, but perhaps since they walk on the ground they would take only 10,000 of them to occupy the same amount of land as a human, seems to me the planet's population digit would be something like E rather than 9 as it is on our own planet, the E would not tell you much about how crowded the planet really was though since we are talking about creatures 2 cm tall. I imagine the population statistic had more or less human-sized creatures in mind.

 

[sid6.7]

there is a 3 book series called
the micronaughts that does have
some tech. data on micro-humans
you might go read that or another
one is the micronaught comic series
(i actually have EVERY issue) i have
the books too but i am not at home
right now( 2 more days away)...
from the sci-fi side anyways..
in fact the book series is a perfect
traveller adventure..

in either case i dont think they
were 2 cm though why did you pick
that size?

probably 6 inches would be better
for reacting with traveller PCs...

if i remember right you wouldnt be able
to communicate with them "normally"
as your voice would be too loud
(like thunder) to a 2 cm size being
so you'd have to have some kinda
comm. device....i think another
problem was heat exchange at
such a small size...as for fending
off giants i'm sure with high
enough tech. they could come up
with something...


but then in traveller anything is possible
to make it how you want!

other books:
the borrowers
the littles
gullivers travels

Mistress Marsham's Repose
(kinda gulliver part 2)

 

[Laryssa]

in either case i dont think they
were 2 cm though why did you pick
that size?

probably 6 inches would be better
for reacting with traveller PCs...

Well for one thing Traveller Uses the Metric System, so I try to adhere to that convention. Besides it sounds more futuristic to use meters, kilograms and liters than to use yards, feet, pounds, quarts and gallons. In the metric system everything scales by tens. Centimeter is a more familiar unit to most laymen, decimeters are hardly ever used at all. Perhaps a decimeter scaled humanoid could interact better with humans.

What happens if we go the other direction? What if there were giant humanoids that averaged about 18 meters in height? Under 1-G conditions there were never the less creatures that got that big, most lived in the oceans, but a few species of land dinosaurs got spectacularly huge.

A humanoid, or giant if you prefer, that averaged 18 meters in height has its own unique problems to deal with, it would have to have a thick trunk, thick bones and massive muscles to support its enourmous weight. If scaled perfectly to human dimensions, such a creature would weigh 100 metric tons, that comes before thickening of bones and adding muscle to support this enourmous weight, perhaps such a creature would end up weighing 500 metric tons at a guess, it would have thick stumplike elephantine feet, it would walk or amble very slowly and it would never run! Each stride would carry it a respectable distance, but a normal human could easily outrun it. Now what if these creatures were as intelligent as humans, what if they were technological as well? There is nothing to suggest that they couldn't build spaceships. The population on an Earthlike planet would be a hundred times less, with a carrying capacity of only hundreds of millions instead of tens of billions for humans. An Entire planet with a high technology base and an efficient food source might have the population of the United States, and with 300 million it would be fairly crowded, most of the land that is not given over to homes for these giants would have to be used for agriculture to feed them. Giants like these would feel pressure to expand and colonize other worlds. In the OTU a meeting of some kind between giants and humans would eventually occur.

 

[sid6.7]

Originally posted by Laryssa:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />in either case i dont think they
were 2 cm though why did you pick
that size?

probably 6 inches would be better
for reacting with traveller PCs...

Well for one thing Traveller Uses the Metric System, so I try to adhere to that convention. Besides it sounds more futuristic to use meters, kilograms and liters than to use yards, feet, pounds, quarts and gallons. In the metric system everything scales by tens. Centimeter is a more familiar unit to most laymen, decimeters are hardly ever used at all. Perhaps a decimeter scaled humanoid could interact better with humans.
</font>[/QUOTE]ummm..no i wasnt asking about metric i was
asking about size isnt 2 cm like 1 inch?
was wondering why you picked 1 inch?

 

[Laryssa]

well, I had to pick something.

 

[Straybow]

They're called Smurfs, and they are delicious.