How much do you know about theoretical physiology, /tg/?
I need a scientific explanation why all the denizens of a specific fictional planet would be albino in appearance. We're talking pale skin, white hair, white eyelashes, possibly pink/red eyes. Health detriments optional.
Bonus points if you can tie it in to the nature of the planet's moon in any way. And no magic! Otherwise, have a field day.
>>44304045
The sun shit itself.
>>44304045
Off the top of my head:
>live underground
>nearly opaque atmosphere
>very dim sun/very distant orbit
>>44304061
This.
A dying sun with weakening light.
Any pigmentation getting in the way stops all that delicious sunlight that your body needs.
The albino gene or broken colouration gene is now a survival trait.
Small suns do not die quick. Many, many generations later and you have a planet of pale people.
>>44304045
Planet enters ice age, white fur suddenly becomes a benefit.
>>44304130
>>44304061
Lovely. I can work with that. Would there be any other consequences of living on this planet, if we're running with this explanation? And is there a name for a sun in this condition?
Alternate solutions still welcome, of course. And general albino discussion.
Yeah, even at the equator you do not need to protect yourself with a melanin-equivalent substance that would only absorb the light.
Plus you need whatever little light is there to synthesize stuff, like vitamin D for us.
>>44304172
Alternatively, the problem could be not in the sun itself, but in the sky, like permanent clouds or something.
>>44304045
>nature of the planet's moon
This world orbits extremely distantly from its sun and the only serious light that reaches the surface is reflected off of the moon. Normally, at this distance, the light from the sun would be negligible, but the moon of this world has developed unusually reflective surfaces.
Added to this is the extremely thick atmosphere (keeping what little heat there is trapped in and allowing life, unusual though it be, to evolve) so that not much light gets in anyhow.
You could easily evolve albinos in such circumstances, assuming life existed at all (a conceit that I presume you're willing to allow).
>>44304233
One facet of this that I failed to mention:
These albinos have to be human. Specifically, standard Earth humans who left their system and colonized an uninhabited planet, gradually (or not so gradually, doesn't really matter) becoming uniformly albino through generations.
>>44304089
>>44304130
>>44304136
That wouldn't give them red eyes. Maybe very pinkish slight pink tint, but their eyes would be light blue due to tyndall effect. If you want red eyes, their eye need to produce red pigment.
Perhaps they are fancy people looking people created to fit well with their goddess's dress.
>>44304307
>their eyes would be light blue due to tyndall effect.
I'd have to retcon them ever having red eyes, but besides that, I'm actually okay with this.
>>44304288
In that case, if they colonized such a planet, them becoming albino is easy: survival of the fittest. They require natural light for absorption of vitamin D, like everyone else. To get the maximum amount of it on such a clouded and distant world, they used advanced medical science to stimulate the gene for albinism in themselves (perhaps they lacked the tools/resources/knowledge to complete rewrite the way they absorb vitamin D; invent something clever).
Note that any world harsh enough to forcibly select for albinism is going to do unusual things to normal human beings. They're not standard Terran human beings anymore on such a world.
>>44304288
That actually makes thing easier. Just assume they went trhough a big eveolutionary bottleneck (say, the colony suffered a massive disaster that wiped out most of the population), and due to random chanse or due to the geen having some beneficial effect (such as how the same gene that causes sickle cell anemia also affects you resistance to malaria), most of the survivign population carried the gene that leads to albinism.
>>44304334
Making red eyed people would be trivial for a culture capable of travelling between the stars.
>>44304404
>>44304368
Both of these are great explanations, thanks.
However;
>Note that any world harsh enough to forcibly select for albinism is going to do unusual things to normal human beings. They're not standard Terran human beings anymore on such a world.
I'm not opposed to running with this, depending on the magnitude of the changes. How different from the norm are we talking, exactly?
Just make them spoopy gene engineered ayylmao ubermensch people. That's what you want to make them. Just go full anime with it. Fuck.
I think that natural selection doesn't seem so adequate to deal with advanced human civilizations. I don't know, usually I think that humans tend to think another tecnological solutions that normally would make the natural selection not so powerful (except in extreme cases).
I think sexual selection perhaps could be more adequate. Like, maybe for cultural reasons in a more closed culture albinism became greatly related to beauty. Although in modern societies being more beautiful is also very different from having more children.
Or perhaps a case of artificial selection. In this new planet, maybe they had to pracctice eugenics (maybe because of the enverioment or whatever, just an attempt to make humans better), and in the selection process, since the start population wasn't so big, some degree of in breeding became necessary. Perhaps they were trying to take genes related to intelligence or more dramatic aspects of healths, but due to the small population, by chance, some of the individuals with more relevant intelligence/health genes also had albinism, and it became more commom.
I guess if it was myself I would apply both reasons, (first the eugenics, after the beauty) to justify it, as I don't see a single one to be powerful enought to make a whole colony or planet like this. Maybe after the eugenics people new that most of the people with albinism had good healt/intelligence/wahter genes, and because of this didn't want to have children with people that didn't have albinism.
>>44305494
But that's the opposite of what I want, anon.
>>44304045
Someone parked a giant space station that steals the suns energy and throws it across space to blow up planets.
While trying to do this a second time, a rag tag group of freedom fighters swoop in and blow up the superweapon while it had the suns energy inside of it, causing it to create a smaller sun in another location in the solar system.
I doubt it's true albinism, as albinos have shit-tastic eyesight. If it is, then some other sense is going to have to compensate. Also, they probably run hot seeing as how cold it's going to be, and thus need extra calories to burn. I'm basing this on the idea that your planet's days are about the same light level as a full moon on a clear night.
>>44304307
>If you want red eyes, their eye need to produce red pigment.
Albino's red eyes come from the utter lack of pigmentation in the irises. What make their eyes red is the blood in the eye reflecting light, in some animals at least. In humans, you can have purple eyes, because of the blood reflecting red and the light blue pigmentation of the iris.
>>44304045
Humans?
>>44304045
>red nose pic
Why is this a thing?
>>44304172
In a general sense I think a star that partially ignited or didn't have enough mass/energy/gas to become a normal star is a Red Dwarf or Brown Dwarf.
I believe in such situations (of the star being a Red Dward or Brown Dwarf) that the planet would need to be very close to the star to get enough light to support humanoid life.
I believe such a planet doesn't have much vegetation, and most of said plant life would not look like our plants, their pigment would be a different color as they'd need as much light as they can absorb for photosynthesis to occur.
Which means not many herbivores on the planet, and the ones that are there are either very small (like rat sized) or have VERY efficient digestive tracts.
>>44305506
The 'Technological' solution could very well have been genetic manipulation. Either the albinism was the solution to their problem, or it was a side effect of the genetic manipulation, whatever they needed to be transformed in their genome also turned off their pigmentation production for whatever reason. If you don't want them living on a twilight planet. (Though I think that's a cool setting to flesh out personally)
>>44306378
*Sighs* becasue peoples noses and Cheecks are slightly red in reality? I mean most artist go over board with it, but in this case I don't see that big of an issue. The pic looks more anime then anything,
I actually once had an idea that is related, but it's actually intentional rather than naturally occurring.
Essentially there exists a splinter state that practices such an extreme form of totalitarian collectivism that they destroy the capacity to produce melanin in the womb as one method of removing as much potential individuality from the population as possible, as part of a wider gene therapy program, which they also use to counter the obvious detrimental side effects of having no melanin production, i.e development of the optical system, UV exposure, etc.
It's crazy, but that's sort of the point.
>>44304045
The religious caste that run the world worships the Moon, so they think the color white is sacred and shun the Sun in all its form.
To aquire the priests' favor, the wealthy inhabitants started hiding from the Sun, too, eventually using gene selection to give their descendants paler hair and skin.
This lead to the priests altering their own members, resulting in a caste of religious rulers completly albino.
Later, this standard was imposed on all of the society, as the leader of the time started considering having natural-colored skin a crime against the Moon itself, and his rule in particular.
>>44306410
So the plants are either black lichen or things with big black leaves.
If you have fewer herbivores then you have fewer anything else.
We are looking at a world of twilight at noon, cold and dim. The people and probably most of the animals are snowy white and move about the dying world like ghosts before the fact.
How would society function on such a world?
Food would be mostly vegetarian as there are not many layers in the food chain when the energy source is so depleted. Most crops would be fleshy leafed plants.
Humanity would be top of the food chain, if only because the food chain is so pathetic. Resource lack would fuck us over more than any war ever could.
Don't know what the PCs could do on such a world.
Discover a volcano and try and convince the tribe to settle round it for the energy maybe?
>>44306378
>What is shading?
Are you retarded, Anon? I mean, I can understand the issue with Tumblr-tier artists who do the red nose thing because it's the only tool they have to give a face definition. But like everything, 4chan takes its hatred overboard and starts seeing false positives everywhere. And that's where it crosses the line from legit criticism to edgy whining.
>>44306410
>extremely carnivorous albinos
Wow, so vampires.
>>44307292
>Don't know what the PCs could do on such a world.
Try to leave it, that place blows.
>>44307595
Are you bad enough dudes to bring back the sun?
>>44307292
Most likely people settled there out of desperation than anything else, like perhaps their seed ship started to fail so the automated systems located the nearest planet that could sustain human life and crashed there, and now the albino descendants are the remains of the crew and settlers from back then, as generations and evolutionary survival had them drop all the genes that promoted different hair, eye color, and skin pigmentation to focus only on survival?
Honestly there would be very little reason to settle such a planet unless there is a very valuable resource there or there was literally no other way to survive to the next nearest humanoid-supporting planet.
>>44306410
Is there any chance it could be a White Dwarf?
No scientific reason for this, I just think it would be neat for a planet of albinos to be orbiting a white star.
>>44304172
Eyes would be bigger people would have problems with bright lights and possibly colors would disorient them
>>44307870
I think White Dwarf stars don't emit much energy, but there is no real reason why they couldn't be orbiting a White Dwarf star.
Alright, let's get this stuff down:
>Planet orbiting a white dwarf
>Cold, barren landscape (perpetual snow?)
>Sunlight is so sparse that melanin becomes a biological liability
>Melanin is subsequently phased out, by natural or artificial means
>As a result, they have very little pigmentation, resulting in a pale complexion and bright white hair
>Eyes are pale blue due to the Tyndall Effect (also slightly bigger)
>Natives can become disoriented when exposed to certain lighting conditions
>Primarily vegetarian, perhaps resulting in a largely underweight society
>Moon-based religion would have taken root early into the colony's development, has mostly subsided now due to progression of the planet's colonization and such
>Perpetual auroras in the sky for no real reason, I just think it fits the idea of a cold, white, serene world
How's that all sound?
And what should we name this planet?
>>44310111
Albo
>>44310111
Valkye
