Speaking of unexpectedly cute and humanising rat behaviour, that reminds me of how they can laugh in the ultrasonic range when tickled, and even case the tickling hand for more and engaging in unique "joy jumps" behaviour.
Article:
The stereotypical sound of human laughter is an aspirated h, followed by a vowel, usually a, and largely because of our larynx is rich in harmonics. In contrast, rat laughter comes in the form of high-frequency 50-kilohertz ultrasonic calls, or "chirps," that are distinct from other vocal emissions in rats.
Rats Laugh, but Not Like Humans - Scientific American - (1 July 2012)
Guess it goes to show how much more animals are like us than we'd often assume from our world-views of what constitutes "intelligent" species, or could even realise from our limited sensory perspective.
Edit: Apologies for the initial triple posting of the 6-Million Dollar Man trailer - I hadn't realised that the last link I copied on my phone wasn't the first selectable link visible in the cache until I'd already submitted it. Learnt my lesson to always preview multi-media posts at least.
Turn 18 Results--Social Reproduction, Part 2: With Love, Water Is Enough
"It was, I think, a triumph," Cui Chuntao said, but Sarry heard… something there. She was distracted, focused on other things entirely, as they stripped out of their clothes. The bathhouse was remarkably quiet at this time, mostly because everyone was out celebrating or hearing Chittertongue's speech. "In normal circumstances it would be wise to give the speech yourself, or together with Chittertongue."
The thought of making a grand address left her teeth chattering in a far less eager way, and her tail lashing this way and that. Everything smelled a little bit wrong, and she didn't know why. It wasn't a bad feeling. She thought she was doing the right thing. She understood-grasped that there was a risk of corruption, but she thought that rules and laws could govern that. Especially when it came to the army and the factories, surely the answer would be to have standards which were iron-clad, so that… but at the same time, she knew he had a point.
He was not an unreasonable person. He was trying to do best for the Republic, and he was not so humble-shaky as to not think he was usually right. Meanwhile Sarry knew that she was often wrong, and yet had to do her best to make something better of this. She remembered how often she'd tried to make the best of a bad situation, yes-yes. It was necessary for the Under-Empire, then for herself, and then for this new Republic. There were a few people here, some Orcs that had no doubt been bored-annoyed at the focus on children, as well as a few humans who looked drunk and who half-danced around the baths and showers. They were going to have to be expanded, eventually, and at the rate things were going eventually would be in a few years. But what she saw was the joy and relaxation. It was a good thing, this bathhouse, and had become just another part of the world. There'd been complaints-words about how some fungal creatures, the lesser beings in the Green eco-system, had begun to spawn if the baths were not thoroughly cleaned out. But that was a cause to redouble-efforts, considering how welcome these baths were to merchants.
It was something they could do for those passing through, a little bit of solace and even warm water at times. She stripped, and Cui Chuntao stripped, and seemed tense and annoyed, glancing every so often at the crowd and attendants, as if wanting privacy. But that was the nature of the world: Sarry rarely enough got privacy, and half the time she wouldn't know what to do with it because of how strange it was.
She shifted a little, naked now, and moved to slide into the water.
"Here long, there short, is the duckweed," Cui Chuntao muttered to herself, the words unclear, but in the Cathayan tongue. She was staring at her hand, for as far as Sarry could tell, there were no weeds to hate or glare at. "One moment," she said, louder and in Mid-Queekish. Her voice was so soft, even when she raised it, as if she was afraid she was in a hallowed place.
Was that it? This had been the start of their friendship, being thrown into this water. She still didn't know if she liked how she smelled now that she bathed so often, but it was a very comforting thing in another way. It was about the ritual of it, it was about being able to do it with someone else, and it was about being pleasing to Cui Chuntao, at least so much as she was able. She settled into the water, and she looked up to see that Chuntao had swum towards her and reached a hand out, to tap it against the back of the bath.
"Sarry," she said. She considered it, and reconsidered it, seeming as if the word, the one word, was everything she wanted to say.
"Yes?" Cui Chuntao smelled… odd. Well, not entirely odd. There was a part familiar, but a part not. Sarry considered her.
"Do you have feelings for me?"
The words seemed to echo, her voice so soft that she had to strain to hear each and every word, and then she was sure she had gotten something wrong. She was sure that it had to be something else. But she could smell it, the way her skin smelled at once clean and entirely her. She thought about it, and she did not quite understand what she was feeling and why. She had half-rejected it, and half-accepted it.
Cui Chuntao was beautiful. She was well-formed, her eyes were soft yet hard, her hair was always well cared for, and her lack of fur was… oddly pleasing. It did mean she didn't capture scents as well as some, but it also meant that the scents she captured didn't blend and blur together. It felt crisper, it felt cleaner, and it made Sarry--pardon the rudeness, even in her own head she felt rude and crude to think so--wonder just what her skin tasted like, wanted to like her from top to bottom.
This was not a thought to be entertained, not when it was so crude, because Cui Chuntao was a person. She was a kind, decent, wholehearted, canny person, and the canniness was one of the more impressive things about her: kindness was rare, and canniness common, among the Skaven, but there was a kind of canniness that made her interested. It was different than Chittertongue's--who would not have attracted her even if she liked hims--and different than just about anyone's she'd seen. Perhaps Skit had something like it, but she was also her own thing entirely, and she was not kind.
There were some things it was better to see from afar, and the work of the spy and the saboteur seemed like it was one of those things. Perhaps very far away, however sleek her figure or occasionally fascinating stories of her work were.
Sarry, though, could not quite process what she'd heard. She blinked. She felt herself scream to a halt once her brain told her she had heard it right. "What?" she asked, because surely she would have known? This was absurd, this was--
Cui Chuntao said, quietly, "I have feelings for you."
Sarry couldn't help it. Her voice squeaked desperately as she asked, "Why?"
Then the moment she asked it she hated herself. She didn't know what she was even asking. Who asked why in response to someone confessing… feelings? She had to assume they were sexual? Or romantic? Or both?
But at that moment, there were none of the thoughts that'd happen later, about all the different ways to interpret them.
"You're asking why I have feelings for you?" Cui Chuntao asked, and, oh no, that was fond. That voice was very, very fond. It caressed the very idea of her, the very thought-feeling of Sarry Inkclaws as she was something worth treasuring… but also something very, very silly.
"You are asking why I have feelings for a brilliant, kind person who always does her best for the world, regardless of whether it's popular, who's nervous and afraid but still spoke up, who has been a friend and always has a kind word for clerks and scribblers and others passing-by?" Cui Chuntao spoke quietly, in a whisper as she almost pressed her body against Sarry, but not quite. "You are asking why someone would find a good person who does right and is adorably earnest about all things attractive? Why would they think-dream of what might be, or at least let it cross their mind that it would be a sweet and gentle thing to hold them through the bad times and celebrate the good?"
Sarry took it all in as one might an all-body papercut. She trembled, shocked, but she had to ask now, even as she didn't know what she was thinking or feeling about this, this, very good friend.
"That's… that's friendship," she said, because yes, without lust-desire… surely that was just friendship? She knew one could exist without the other, so perhaps romantical love could exist without sex, but… for her, the two were tied-together. Perhaps they were even connected-bonded at a fundamental level.
"What, do you want me to be more explicit-blunt? I want to feel your breasts, I want to see what sounds you make when you're aroused, and what you sound like exploding in pleasure," Cui Chuntao said, her voice a deadly whisper. "Would you whimper? Would you whine? Would you just let out cute little breathy moans? I don't even know… or maybe you'd surprise-shock me." Her Mid-Queekish was getting a bit rougher, the grammar correct but the tone a little off, as if she was having trouble saying the right words.
That was the only explanation for why Sarry could… oh, wait.
The reason why she was startling to have trouble hearing it was because her teeth were chattering louder and louder, bruxxing together for whatever reason.
Cui Chuntao trailed off and she tried to figure out what she was feeling. Cui Chuntao wanted her like that, and that bad? That much? "I'm a Skaven--"
"And I'm a human: do you have feelings for me? Are these the feelings of friendship? Though, I know some Skaven who do have sex with friends."
Chittertongue, for one, except Sarry knew he hardly needed friendship, it was just that he wanted to be friends with everyone and also had sex with everyone, and so there was definite overlap there. That wasn't how Sarry was, most of the time. Obviously she'd done things in the rat pits, but that was just stress-relief. She wanted more. She wanted… what?
"But… wait, Sarry, are you okay?" Cui Chuntao asked, suddenly derailed to reach a hand out, because Sarry's teeth continued chattering.
Was she okay? She realized she wasn't stressed, or not really, it was more that she was distressed-happy.
Happy?
She didn't know what to think about that, and so she took a moment to try to think about it. She… she thought that Cui Chuntao's breasts seemed the right size, not too large (because then what would her little hands do with--wait, where did THAT thought come from) and not too small.
She, she--
She was definitely attracted to Cui Chuntao. And…
"What do you want?" Sarry asked, helpless-hopeless before the revelation.
(Behind them someone splashed and someone else yelled, but she did not notice it at all. She'd be told it later by Cui Chuntao, who had been very, very aware of every single sign that someone could be overhearing.)
"I want to kiss you," Cui Chuntao said, quietly. "I want to sleep in the same bed as you, and feel your warmth. I want to wake up in that bed, and eat breakfast with you, whatever that is. I want to do things with you, to be able to hold you when you are sad, and to endure even against the 'Bitter east wind'--"
The what?
"--And against all, so long as you will have me. And so long as I can have you."
She noticed the difference between will have and can have. Sarry did not know what it meant, except perhaps that she was referring to Sarry's lifespan. Or perhaps it was something else.
Her heart was racing, but more than that her whole body felt light. It was everything and nothing like being high on Warpstone, because when she'd been on Warpstone she'd had all sorts of ideas-visions for the world, and now she simply had ideas and visions for, what? For nothing.
This was what at last broke her up, that shattered her confusion: she was visualizing not sex or grand passion, but how it would feel to bury herself in Chuntao's side and not let go, or how nice it'd be to drink tea with her… but different, somehow, because they would be lovers-partners while doing so. It'd be completely different, even though it should be the same. And she wanted to take Chuntao to task for her references. Were they from classical literature? She'd been told in Cathay that references to ancient poems, stories, and philosophy was so common as to be its own kind of total wisdom, not that there was any land free--if that was the right word--from reverence for the great writers and thinkers of the past.
But even that would feel, would feel…
It'd feel different from doing that as friends. It'd feel different in a good way.
"I… can try," Sarry said, because she did not know. The one time in her life she had loved someone, it had ended so badly, and so absolutely nightmarishly, that… it'd shaped her entire life. She'd failed, and she'd been failed, and love had died and it had died rotting-stinking. She hated that thought, but she could not turn back yet. "Will you stick with me, while I question and try to understand-grasp what it is I feel? I think it is love, yes-yes, I am almost sure, but I do not know how to love healthily-purely."
"Perhaps I do not either," Cui Chuntao said, and reached out to cup her chin gently. "But perhaps we can learn together."
And she leaned in, and when Sarry didn't squirm away, their lips met briefly, and gently. She almost didn't notice it; she could not notice anything else other than it.
"Yes," Sarry said.
Actually not much yet, but a few things WILL increase.
And what comes next? (Choose 1)
[] Altdorf. (Chittertongue's game?)
[] Agriculture. (Food, glorious food?)
[] Research. (Boy have you been busy)
[] Andratse (Temporarily pause the Turn 18 you're doing to do a Turn 18 as a War Turn (and Personal Actions) with Andratse)
I am curious how our Waaagh-enhanced plants will fare in the Darklands. We had our greenskins 'train' them to survive in poor soil which should improve their chances, but that's not the only problem; it doesn't rain very often in the darklands so they might just shrivel up without proper maintenance.
On the opposite end, the plants being enhanced with 'presumably' waaagh magic could have the unintended side effect of having them spread rapidly and aggressively. Which would be great considering the ongoing famine, but if our crops spread in any way similarly to greenskins themselves, we might accidentally generate a kudzu situation where they overgrow and choke out other forms of plant life.
[X] Andratse (Temporarily pause the Turn 18 you're doing to do a Turn 18 as a War Turn (and Personal Actions) with Andratse)
I am also curious to see how the war at the eight peaks is developing right now. Would this choice also include the Diplomatic meeting with Belegar that's supposed to happen this turn, or not?
Eh, IMO it's not that big of a deal. As long as we do all of it before moving back to the turn actions, instead of how the war at Mount Grimfang against the goblins was structured. I'm really eager to see how the Eight Peaks situation turns out, We've been planning for the actions related to it for well over a year now.
At long last. Can't wait to see the two of them develop like we have seen Zhen and Qit. (As well as their mortification at how many of their fellow councilors recognized it before they did.)
[X] Agriculture. (Food, glorious food?)
Speaking of a long time coming, more food variety.