Fires of the Futa Founders

[Nemo of Utopia]

Adameve (all right, Kae, in his original description)

Just wanted to respond to this one thing "Kae" isn't a name in that context, its the equivalent of "Him/Her" for a person that is both male and female simultaneously, While "Ka" is the equivalent for "He/She".

"Adameve" is perfectly acceptable for a default name.

...

OH, OH! IDEA!

There is this little phone game I play called 'Seed Ship' in which you play a ship designed to save the human race by finding a colonizable planet. It gets very grim/dark because it is very realistic, but what I'm thinking of is maybe something like that but with futa? (The Game basically cuts off when you colonize a planet but there's a brief epilogue bit, I think that part could be spun out into an interesting story...) The thing is, there are only a thousand colonists on the ship, and the cryo-stasis capsules can take damage, so you could start off with a manageable population of say, 200 individuals or so...

 

[Rubicon]

...I totally play Seed Ship. I honestly wondered if I was the only one. Stupid cultural database damage...

And... I didn't know that, so thank you for saying! (I expect my partner's going to tease me for not knowing it. Gently. My partner is awesome.)

And... that raises a really interesting possibility. We haven't talked about how the futa in question ended up on the ship... but if the colonists are genetically designed as hermaphrodites for colonization, then a lot of the issues we've been discussing would have been part of the process (internal organ redistribution, significant redesign of the hip and pelvis, as Mels reminded me, etc.) It's not outside the realm of justification -- if any two colonists can breed with each other, then you're not limited to M/F pairings... I'd think that if they were so specifically designed, then they'd definitely be designed to avoid self-fertilization, which brings our poor Adameve back to needing IVF to get the process going....

The question I'd have is... are they designed to breed true as futa, or would their descendants be standard human? If they're effectively two separate reproductive systems designed to produce eggs and sperm, I could totally see the intent being that the subsequent generations would be 'baseline human,' depending on what the colony designers were going for. On the other hand, I can see it the other way too...

(Eee! Love SF Erotica concepts!)

 

[Rubicon]

Sure, bringing bacterias with you is a surely a thing, though you would just leave behind a large share of diseases.

A lot of (most?) animal diseases aren't communicable to humans and while humans at least have a common ancestor, this won't be the case on another planet with an existing biosphere. So they might not even have a DNA or RNA but some other fancy way of storing genetic information — if even necessary.
Though on the other hand, you might encounter some kind of alien cold which would skin humans alive.

All true, though one thing about bacteria and (most especially) viruses -- they are driven very, very hard to survive and persist, and they mutate constantly as a result (and can wait, dormant, for long long times. (See also why our flu shots don't work for ten years, which I know you know but I babble.) Which may be getting off track, I realize, but it could be another factor in the long term of the colony -- generation seven or eight hits a certain critical mass and a certain herd immunity doesn't get passed along, and suddenly boom, everyone's sick out of nowhere...

Let's say a woman gives gets pregnant 13 times during her life. Assuming one-third of miscarriages and another third dying because of infant mortality, there are still about 6 children left. For humans, that would be tripling, but for a futanari, it would be sextupling. (That might only apply to a young species of futanari before natural selection decreased high fertility)

That said, just the knowledge of hygiene would help to reduce both, miscarriages and infant mortality.

True, though miscarriages can beget further miscarriages, depending on the reason for them. Honestly, with our futanari as a single person, my biggest concern would be them surviving a bad pregnancy complication. Eclampsia (in developed nations) is generally more of a risk for the fetus than the mother, for example, because we know how to look for it and what to do when it comes up, but for someone who's literally all alone on another planet, suddenly being struck blind as a pregnancy complication would likely be a death sentence even before other eclampsia complications came up. Even just having too large a placenta develop with the fetus can lead to bad trouble, when you're the only available womb (or life).

And for that matter... you'd want to have a number of children in short order to develop even an inbred gene pool... but when you're the literal single caregiver for babies, there's a lot of potential danger to them just because of something happening that you can't address quickly enough. And, until at least some of your children are self-sufficient, when you die, they die.

A-ve

...we're literally talking about self-impregnation of a futanari on another planet as a colony starter, and now I have Ave Maria stuck in my head. Well played, gene.sys. Well played.

Probably works best in diary style with weeks, months or even years between the entries.

Agreed. And brings us back to Martian comparisons, which is no bad thing.

 

[Nemo of Utopia]

...I totally play Seed Ship. I honestly wondered if I was the only one. Stupid cultural database damage...

OHHH, now you've done it, I have to vent! (You Couldn't have known, don't worry.)

Cultural database damage is BAD, but one time I brought it through totally intact and the colonists (their leaders anyway) DESTROYED IT THEMSELVES!!! I wanted to go full-on Skynet on their asses!

And... that raises a really interesting possibility. We haven't talked about how the futa in question ended up on the ship... but if the colonists are genetically designed as hermaphrodites for colonization, then a lot of the issues we've been discussing would have been part of the process (internal organ redistribution, significant redesign of the hip and pelvis, as Mels reminded me, etc.) It's not outside the realm of justification -- if any two colonists can breed with each other, then you're not limited to M/F pairings... I'd think that if they were so specifically designed, then they'd definitely be designed to avoid self-fertilization, which brings our poor Adameve back to needing IVF to get the process going...

I'm just going to say this, and I hope you understand, but I no longer support or endorse the original idea of this thread. The second someone pointed out that it became incest after the first generation automatically I decided it was a bad idea, I'm just glad I stuck with it till I came up with an alternate solution.

The question I'd have is... are they designed to breed true as futa, or would their descendants be standard human? If they're effectively two separate reproductive systems designed to produce eggs and sperm, I could totally see the intent being that the subsequent generations would be 'baseline human,' depending on what the colony designers were going for. On the other hand, I can see it the other way too...

Could be interesting to see it done both ways.

With respect to the hermaphrodites remaining hermaphrodites version though, have you ever read the works of Lois McMaster-Bujold?

(Eee! Love SF Erotica concepts!)

(I Know, Right?!? So much to consider, so many possibilities: makes my brain all tingly!)

 

[Rubicon]

OHHH, now you've done it, I have to vent! (You Couldn't have known, don't worry.)

Cultural database damage is BAD, but one time I brought it through totally intact and the colonists (their leaders anyway) DESTROYED IT THEMSELVES!!! I wanted to go full-on Skynet on their asses!

....oh I'd have frothed for an hour! I get mad enough when I manage to bring all the colonists through safely, and then a bunch of them set themselves on fire or get eaten because they don't know how to put up a fence.

I'm just going to say this, and I hope you understand, but I no longer support or endorse the original idea of this thread. The second someone pointed out that it became incest after the first generation automatically I decided it was a bad idea, I'm just glad I stuck with it till I came up with an alternate solution.

Hey, you literally pointed out the thing was squicky when you first brought it up. There's no shame in hitting the 'wow, this is outside my comfort zone' button at any point. It's still fascinating to work out the implications!

Honestly? I'm half-way moved off the idea of the self-fertilizing soul survivor and more interested in the engineered futa colonists in their own right -- especially if they've got a biological imperative against monogamous pairbonding, but a romantic yearning for it. The social dynamics of the founding colonists alone...

With respect to the hermaphrodites remaining hermaphrodites version though, have you ever read the works of Lois McMaster-Bujold?

Some, but not a huge amount.

 

[Nemo of Utopia]

....oh I'd have frothed for an hour! I get mad enough when I manage to bring all the colonists through safely, and then a bunch of them set themselves on fire or get eaten because they don't know how to put up a fence.

Don't even get me started on the idiots who had a 90% functional industrial module and a 70-some % cultural module but couldn't figure out how to make a damn flame thrower to deal with the fucking carnivorous plants...

Hey, you literally pointed out the thing was squicky when you first brought it up. There's no shame in hitting the 'wow, this is outside my comfort zone' button at any point. It's still fascinating to work out the implications!

Yes, but I feel we've beaten that horse all kinds of funny colors, time to either skin it and tan the hide or give it a decent burial...

Honestly? I'm half-way moved off the idea of the self-fertilizing soul survivor and more interested in the engineered futa colonists in their own right -- especially if they've got a biological imperative against monogamous pair-bonding, but a romantic yearning for it. The social dynamics of the founding colonists alone...

Oh, I KNOW! Just creating the base personality profiles will be fascinating.

Some, but not a huge amount.

Read up on 'Beta Colony', people like this literally already exist there...

 

[Nemo of Utopia]

Oh, I KNOW! Just creating the base personality profiles will be fascinating.

Speaking of which, I want to get started on that! Let's assume the search for a new homeworld has been long and hard, 222 of the original thousand survived to make landfall, what are they like? (All futa, obviously, but...)

I'm thinking to start with we have a fairly even mix of custom designed 'races', so there's the 'high altitude' kan, the 'deep diver' kans, the 'extreme radiation tolerance' kans, and so on...

Thoughts?

 

[Rubicon]

I'm going to ask the base question I asked before -- just 'cause it informs the rest, at least in my brain.

Are the children futa? Or are they baseline human? Or something in between/variable?

 

[Nemo of Utopia]

That's the last choice you make in the story set up, and one of the few 'free' ones (picturing this as very "Game Mode" heavy, with you having 1000 "travel points" to chose what the (now shut down,) AI managed to save and/or find for your new homeworld... The only thing from the game which is static is the 222 colonists.

 

[Rubicon]

Okay, that's a very, very cool idea.

 

[Nemo of Utopia]

I certainly think so, though it presents its own set of challenges.

Back to what we were discussing though, I'm thinking here that in terms of culture the colonists will all have been raised from a young age to consider polyamory and in-vitro fertilization for genetic diversity purposes normal. Obviously, they had time to genetically engineer colonists, and raise them to adulthood, so they would have had time to anticipate that a large percentage* might not survive the journey, and a rapid crossbreeding program might be necessary. Because of that, I think they would have prepared the colonists for this eventuality as best they could.
*(77.8% to be exact.)

Furthermore, one option I want us to consider is the possibility of this being set in a universe similar to that of the Vorkosigan Saga, where there is already widespread galactic colonization and pre-existing futa populations on certain worlds. How might that affect the story if we assume that this colony, for whatever reason, is isolated on a planet on the fringes of space that will not be easily recontacted for an unknown period of time, such as FTL travel working through wormholes and the one that they took to reach here closing behind them for unknown reasons?

 

[gene.sis]

All true, though one thing about bacteria and (most especially) viruses -- they are driven very, very hard to survive and persist, and they mutate constantly as a result (and can wait, dormant, for long long times. (See also why our flu shots don't work for ten years, which I know you know but I babble.) Which may be getting off track, I realize, but it could be another factor in the long term of the colony -- generation seven or eight hits a certain critical mass and a certain herd immunity doesn't get passed along, and suddenly boom, everyone's sick out of nowhere...

Well, viruses and bacteria can't survive outside of a host forever.
Flu is said to survive about a day. Others can stand it longer.
Some (like flu) survive a day, others (like a prominent bacterium of biological warfare) can survive several decades.
So even if you bring some of them, some of them might cease after a while in an environment of limited hosts.

But sure, some now harmless strains could turn evil after a while.
Additionally, evolution teaches that creatures will become more vulnerable in a more safe environment. Basically, that doesn't change anything as long as you're inside the bubble but could kill you quickly if you'd get back to earth.

True, though miscarriages can beget further miscarriages, depending on the reason for them.

Yes, or infertility.
So there can be some all or nothing situations.

...we're literally talking about self-impregnation of a futanari on another planet as a colony starter, and now I have Ave Maria stuck in my head. Well played, gene.sys. Well played.

Actually, I deliberately chose that spelling to emphasize a different intonation than "ave" in "avenue" and making it sound more like A-vee

then they'd definitely be designed to avoid self-fertilization,

no, why?
If they already bred out all dangerous genes, self-fertilization shouldn't cause problems in terms of genetic diseases.

Let's assume the search for a new homeworld has been long and hard, 222 of the original thousand survived to make landfall, what are they like? (All futa, obviously, but...)

Way too many people to manage. Why not send 100 mini ships of 10 persons? (or even just 5 persons)
That highly increases the chance of survival.
A big ship hit by an asteroid and you're done... a small one, 99 to go...
So they could land all over the planet, some earlier, some later, creating additional possibilities like small societies which might be friendly... or not.
If you want to create multiple paths, you could offer a choice which ship the protagonist has chosen.

 

[Rubicon]

no, why?
If they already bred out all dangerous genes, self-fertilization shouldn't cause problems in terms of genetic diseases.

Except that would likely make the design process exponentially more difficult. When you're already tweaking the human genome that much, it's really hard to make sure that there's absolutely no potentially harmful recessives in the DNA strand, versus comparatively little benefit. It's much easier to do as complete a screen as possible and then mate them to each other, tracking lineages as you go. If unexpected recessives _do_ reinforce, that gets noted in the lineage and dealt with through one of any number of ways.

Further, _accidental_ self-fertilization (which we already talked about) could be a significant (if rare) issue, otherwise. Wups -- wet dream? Sorry, Adameve. You're knocked up!

It could be as simple (simple -- hah!) as the onset of menses triggering the production of sperm in the testes, so that at the end of menses the cock was ready to fire, while the uterus's pH shifted to something inhospitable to sperm. Sperm production would then slow and cease a few days before ovulation, and for one or two nights the futa would essentially have a biological trigger for wet dreams, draining out the seminal fluid and replacing it with fluid lacking fresh sperm. 100%? Of course not. But it would make sense.

And... well... there's something to be said for building in two separate 'going into heat' phases in your cast in a given month, when you're writing up smut.

This still doesn't eliminate self-fertilization if that's what you want to do with your story -- it just would have to be IVF, which I think we'd pretty much settled on as a requirement anyway.

(And not that it needs to be said? But if you want to write a self-breeding futa story that flies in the face of all of this? Go for it! We are not the Cardinals of All Porn. )

Way too many people to manage. Why not send 100 mini ships of 10 persons? (or even just 5 persons) That highly increases the chance of survival. A big ship hit by an asteroid and you're done... a small one, 99 to go... So they could land all over the planet, some earlier, some later, creating additional possibilities like small societies which might be friendly... or not.

If you want to create multiple paths, you could offer a choice which ship the protagonist has chosen.

It's by far a better way of handling it, I agree. I guess the $64,000 question is... how much less expensive (or resource intensive) is it to build ten small ships instead of one big one. That could go either way -- if its reactionless drive/ramscoop had incredibly difficult to source materials, they might need to make one big one because they couldn't easily build several per colony.

Honestly, I could see the game version opening with that decision point -- though it would significantly complicate it, admittedly. It might make sense to have two games -- one of small colony ships with small colonist crews and one with the single large ship with the 222 surviving colonists on the planet.

It's a pretty huge concept, really.

 

[Nemo of Utopia]

Well, viruses and bacteria can't survive outside of a host forever.
Flu is said to survive about a day. Others can stand it longer.
Some (like flu) survive a day, others (like a prominent bacterium of biological warfare) can survive several decades.
So even if you bring some of them, some of them might cease after a while in an environment of limited hosts.

But sure, some now harmless strains could turn evil after a while.
Additionally, evolution teaches that creatures will become more vulnerable in a more safe environment. Basically, that doesn't change anything as long as you're inside the bubble but could kill you quickly if you'd get back to earth.

And that, right there at the end, is exactly WHY certain diseases would be sent along on purpose. You cannot allow a colony to become a world of bubble people. One or more diseases WILL emerge eventually, and we MUST have an immune system that can respond effectively to that event. Furthermore, if you deny your immune system enemies to fight, it begins causing auto-immune disorders looking for opponents that it instinctively knows MUST be there, they always have been before now...

If they already bred out all dangerous genes, self-fertilization shouldn't cause problems in terms of genetic diseases.

Mutations, gene, they can be caused by things as innocuous and diet and exercise, to say nothing of increased or bizarre radiation levels on an alien world.

Way too many people to manage.

I disagree, way too many people to micro-manage, but not too many to form a tightly bound community. Think about this: how many people do you know that you would recognize them if they walked up to you? Now, how many of those do you know their name off the top of your head? Now, how many of those do you interact with on a yearly basis? Monthly? Weekly? Daily? The pool narrows considerably doesn't it? If we only concern ourselves with the people one interacts directly with around every week to a month, I think the story will do just fine.

Why not send 100 mini ships of 10 persons? (or even just 5 persons)

Mass and physics, gene, mass and physics. It takes a certain amount of thruster mass to move any given object. The more of that mass creating thrust to move fuselage and structure instead of useful cargo the more you are wasting. Fuselage and Structure take up exponentially more of a small ship, percentage-wise, than they do of a larger one, up to a certain point, so obviously you would want the ship to be as close to that tipping point as you can feasibly manage.

That highly increases the chance of survival.
A big ship hit by an asteroid and you're done... a small one, 99 to go...

Conversely, however, more ships have more chances to encounter the true dangers of interstellar travel, cometary fragments, and micrometeorites, which when you are moving at a significant fraction of C has about the same effect as being hit by a nuclear warhead on Earth.

So they could land all over the planet, some earlier, some later, creating additional possibilities like small societies which might be friendly... or not.
If you want to create multiple paths, you could offer a choice which ship the protagonist has chosen.

I'd argue they didn't 'chose' at all, they were not precisely bred for the purpose but more BUILT, from the molecular level on up.

That said, this idea of multiple landings has merit, and I might include it in the story.

 

[Ms. Hammer Critic]

Most of what I'd tackle here is now either moot (plot concept adjustment) or dealt with, but oh my gosh, cocklaundering:

Um... what's the difference between an unwashed finger and an unwashed cock?

That's not the issue. This is: if you're capable of space flight, you're probably aware enough to wash your cock before sex, but you may not be 100% about your hands. Maybe you haven't a nail file or anything to trim rough edges with, dig out crud, whatnot. If your cock has discharge or irritation, you're probably less likely to ignore it than you are some tiny skin fissures around your fingertips. And in those extra seconds, with the extra air/skin/hand/sweat/dust/etc. contact the semen comes in contact with, you increase your threat surface. If the cock hasn't been washed (wash your cock!), it's even worse.

Generations of humans have survived bad environmental conditions and still survived

And none of them had the sole responsibility of replacing the species, but many of them have had a very unpleasant time with their reproductive organs. Many vaginas have known horror because so much had accumulated on both fingers and cocks. It's good to be cautious when you're the allparent, is all.

Luckily, our lovely team of futa are off to the races in ships with IVF labs and, I assume, lots of Cetaphil!

 

[Nemo of Utopia]

Luckily, our lovely team of futa are off to the races in ships with IVF labs and, I assume, lots of Cetaphil!

"Brand names? Where we're going we don't NEED brand names!"

 

[Ms. Hammer Critic]

"Brand names? Where we're going we don't NEED brand names!"

I'm sorry. "Gentle unfragranced skin cleanser! As used on porn sets to simulate icky, icky semen."

 

[Nemo of Utopia]

I'm sorry. "Gentle unfragranced skin cleanser! As used on porn sets to simulate icky, icky semen."

Hey, semen is not icky! It actually tastes pretty good, at least so my girlfriends have told me... (And I mean, why would they lie about that, AND then not bring that up when they were breaking up with me?)

 

[Ms. Hammer Critic]

Hey, semen is not icky! It actually tastes pretty good, at least so my girlfriends have told me... (And I mean, why would they lie about that, AND then not bring that up when they were breaking up with me?)

Don't mind me. I joke because of semen with soot, alien dust, and potato spores in it.

 

[Rubicon]

...cocklaundering:

...I am undone. You have undone me. I am dead.

Luckily, our lovely team of futa are off to the races in ships with IVF labs and, I assume, lots of Cetaphil!

...and then you said that, and so I had to write this.

Musical Cue and Sting
Title Card
"NEWS MARCHING ACROSS THE RIM"
Intersexed Pioneers On The Move
(original transmission 3422-04-09)​

Dateline: Earth-Sol L3 Compression Drive Launch Station! The excitement is in the air as humanity takes its first giant step past the borders of our own solar system and launches itself into the unknowable void of space! Here, the Giant Wheelship 'Cornucopia' spins up its CpD drive with an eye to accelerating to the till-now impossible speed of 1.3 C, thanks to the engineers at Driveline! And climbing aboard the Wheelship are ten thousand pioneers ready to bring humanity's best to new horizons!

But these aren't just any pioneers! Thanks to the hard work and dedication of those number crunchers at Genosmith Industries, our ambassadors to the stars have been rebuilt from the organelles up to be the ultimate colonists in any situation. After decades of careful research, these modern day Conestoga Cuties have been redesigned for durability, for longevity, for quick thinking and long, robust health, and most of all for redundancy! With a completely redesigned interior architecture, each and every one of these brave homesteaders has not one but two fully functional reproductive systems, enabling each colonial cultivator to sire children and bear them. With every nation on Earth, Luna, Mars, the Jovian Satellites, Titan and the Belt represented in the genetic heritage of these stalwart sailors of the stars, the full heritage of good old Sol System will be represented, and since every colonist can pair up with every other colonist, there are orders of magnitude more possible people to pair off and populate their new planet than with the old single reproductive system standards we're used to! Before these inclusive incubators were designed and grown, it would have taken at least fifty thousand colonists to do the job these ten thousand can do instead!

But hold on -- our intrepid explorers are lining up and going... straight to bed? That's right! The 'Cornucopia' is headed off on the almost forty light year trip to the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 -- even breaking the old universal speed limit of light speed, it will take thirty years for the Wheelship to get where it's going -- imagine the case of cabin fever you'd have after that!

So it's into cold sleep pods our fertile frontier founders go, for their thirty year's siesta. Don't hit the snooze button, folks -- you're going to be waking up on whole new worlds!


"...it's... I can't even imagine it. What... how did it happen? I thought that in an irrelevancy there wasn't anything to run into!"

"That's what we thought. I don't know if we hit anything or not, honestly. We just had a catastrophic superstructure failure. We held together, but the linkages connecting the power grid were disrupted across the board, and gave us cascade failures. By the time we came out and MONA was able to wake us up, our cold sleep pods were running off emergency internal power storage. They weren't ever meant to run off that for more than... maybe a year?"

"...do we have a count?"

"...yeah. Two hundred and twenty two."

"Out of ten thousand?"

"We could always... send a distress call back home. They'll get it in thirty nine and a half years, and who knows. Maybe they can go faster than 1.3 C by then."

"...do we have viable genetics from the... from the ones who didn't make it?"

"I don't even recommend opening those damn pods. Even without power, their hermetic seals stayed intact, holding in moisture and--"

"Please don't go on."