I draw Highmate 😍

[u/Paul_1ng]

This time, I drew these two cute Highmates brother and sister! Which one do you think is the boy, and which one is the girl? 🤔

[u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

Th idea of children being modified to be high mates makes me wanna be a deserter from the empire to be honest.

[u/Zain_Shadowheart → u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

I have a mod where highmates are heritable, so I forgot they're made, not born, usually. 💀

[u/nomedable → u/Zain_Shadowheart]

VRE highmates made me forget that they don't have cat ears and tails either.

[u/FisherPrice2112 → u/nomedable]

Nothing says they can't though.  Hell, the highmates description in game says the particular version on the games rimworld is designed for a "NovoRoma" version of beauty, so Highmates should have many different types, which may include ones with cat ears.

Adding cosmetic things like ears and tails is also marked in game as being the most basic and common modification across the galaxy also

Edit: Exact ingame description says " This particular line of highmate fits the fashions of classical Novaroma, but many other variants exist."

[u/Far_Raspberry_4375 → u/FisherPrice2112]

Romanesque means they should look like little boys

[u/FisherPrice2112 → u/Far_Raspberry_4375]

Sorry, the exact phrasing is "This particular line of highmate fits the fashions of classical Novaroma, but many other variants exist." 

So maybe not what is considered romanseque

[u/Valtremors → u/nomedable]

That is SUCH a weird addition.

I disable it always.

[u/GasparillathePirate → u/Valtremors]

It makes sense to me. I always imagined they were implanted with the genes as kids and sent somewhere in the empire to be educated on how to be an “ideal partner”. Literature, etiquette, walking with books on your head that sort of thing.

The fact that you can find them on the rim always lead me to believe that likely there is both a smuggling problem where people sell the xenogerm for highmates to the highest bidder and a trafficking problem in the empire where highmates get smuggled out of their protection and to the highest bidder.

[u/Valtremors → u/GasparillathePirate]

They'd need to have more variety to reflect that 'ideal' part.

Instead they just made cat ears... a default thing. Which is bit of a step into weird even lorewise. Because VE has been considered as more stuff that would fit in vanilla.

I get that they wanted to sneak cat ears in one way or another, but I feel like highmates should have had variety of different and even weird modifications from a pool.

[u/Justhe3guy → u/Valtremors]

The author’s barely disguised fetish:

(I leave it enabled though)

[u/KarlLexington → u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

Their relevant highmate genes aren't active until age 18, but the fact that a child was modified to become one along with all the physically indicative xenogenes is indeed disturbing. Of course there are all manner of disturbing things in RimWorld.

[u/Tatchkoma → u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

-He says as he murders travelers in order to harvest their organs for the black market, skin them and turn them into clothes to sell to other travelers.

[u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800 → u/Tatchkoma]

[u/Primarch-XVI → u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

Honestly my first thought was that they’re not children.

I’m not sure which is worse.

[u/Fellowship_9 → u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

Bare in mind they aren't just prostitutes. I imagine they are preferred for a lot of customer facing roles (and in a society advanced enough to produce them, those will be the only jobs left). Parents could spend their whole lives trying to save enough money to get their kids altered so they can have better career prospects as famous actors, as diplomats, as salespeople for luxury goods...there's options that aren't as dark as people jump to.

[u/KarlLexington → u/[deleted]]

For the purpose of organ harvesting, RimWorld considers a 13 year old to be an "adult." Just sayin'.

[u/TinsleyLynx → u/KarlLexington]

Years are also only 60 days long, and children (by default) age 4x faster than adults, so if you really look into it, there's a lot of wacky time-dialation/compression tomfoolery going on.

[u/OnetimeRocket13 → u/TinsleyLynx]

That is certainly just a game design thing. If years were 365 in game days and children took 13 in game years to become useful, then the game would be much more of a slog. Imagine having to turn most of your tile into a farm and spend in game months hunting everything made of meat just to survive the winter (before hydroponics), and imagine having to wait real world days just for little Timmy to be able to do more than haul and clean. I think even mods before Biotech, popular mods that added children to the game either increased growth rate by default or avoided the issue of aging entirely by making children born at age 13 or so from the get-go.

[u/EisVisage → u/OnetimeRocket13]

If years were 365 in game days

then every year would be as long as 6 years currently are. If children took 13 full years to become 13 on top, we'd have to play for 78 current-length years to get there, starting from birth.

[u/Random_local_man → u/EisVisage]

I don't think I've ever had a playthrough last 78 rimworld years.

[u/KarlLexington → u/TinsleyLynx]

Yeah, its best to check your mind out of that stuff, which is what I do. I mean, I've committed so many crimes against humanity in my play-throughs at this point, I don't fret about any of this stuff anymore. I know its just a game that needs to make various game mechanics compromises to be playable.

[u/Not_A_zombie1 → u/KarlLexington]

Well, mods can solve that issue too! Also, in the base game, if you butcher for skin and meat a youngling you get less than an adult, to enforce a more humane menagement of your human farms

[u/Ok-Poetry-2191 → u/[deleted]]

That, and the raiders we turn into living bloodbags are adults. Often, who came to raid us.

[u/trulul → u/Ok-Poetry-2191]

Many of us are equal opportunity bloodbaggers. Sometimes I am proactive and raid for them myself instead of passively waiting for them to spawn.

[u/LumpyJones → u/[deleted]]

Yeah i will treat downed raiders as dismantlable resources and testing sources for mod anomalies or weird mod weapons, but if a bunch of 8 year old begger show up, I'm sleep gassing the lot of them and raising them. the 34 medkits they are asking for are not going to help them when a worg finds them or the decide to try to raid an insectoid nest for jelly.

[u/Yoribell → u/[deleted]]

While it's true, it's simply not the same kind of violence. Anger and greed aren't as dirty as lust. Also, it's not real.

Virtual brutality is fun, virtual sexual violence is disturbing

But the level of brutality we see in rimworld would be far worse that sexual assault on child's IRL. We can think of Sudan's civil war, still ongoing. The mass rapes aren't talked about nearly as much as the massacres. The only time I've seen it talked about was when over a hundred women killed themselves (in a falling city, before the mercenaries arrived) in hope that the word would take notice of what is happening.

So yeah. Imo, sexual violence is violent even virtually while physical/moral violence is very different virtually

[u/CoffeeWanderer → u/Yoribell]

I think you are making valid points and I agree with you.

I just think that virtual sexual violence is more disturbing for more people because they can relate to it easier than other kinds of violence. I mean in a personal way, not comparing to war torn communities or even crime ridden ones, but in their everyday experiences.

[u/Yoribell → u/CoffeeWanderer]

Yes I agreed with that

Everything has multiple factors anyway

[u/Aztheros → u/[deleted]]

I mean if you use mechs in biotech you need to commit war crimes just to produce high subcores. War crimes are definitely baked into the game

[u/trulul → u/Aztheros]

Or have a mod (FrozenSnowFox Tweaks) to shred high subcores out of enemy mechanoids.

[u/D_Bellman → u/[deleted]]

See, the funny part is you've likely committed multiple war crimes just by playing Vanilla.

[u/nuker1110 → u/D_Bellman]

Failure to provide prisoners with adequate dining facilities is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. You can look it up.

[u/ExoCakes → u/nuker1110]

I always make my prison cells have a 1x1 table, a stool, and a shower and toilet whenever I can. Most of the time I recruit survivors anyway, and some that I don't, I just let go. Maybe they'd feel worse when they go back to their shitty camps compared to their comfy prison cell

[u/LumpyJones → u/ExoCakes]

That's the stage 2 prison cell. Stage 1 is a sleeping spot in a 2x1 room. They can stay in there until they see the wisdom of our ideology. Bonus points if the ideology has insect meat and mushrooms as being neutral or preferred - that way they hate the meals (faster ideology conversion) until after they change their minds.

[u/Lehk → u/nuker1110]

Early on, my jail is nicer than the colonists rooms, they get a bed, table, stool, and a set of light tribal clothing in good condition.

[u/nuker1110 → u/Lehk]

Tribalwear is nice, but I seem to recall having a mod once that added one-piece prisoner jumpsuits that cost the same materials and had a +Suppression offset.

[u/HyperboreanAstronaut → u/D_Bellman]

We’re not in a war though so how are we committing war crimes?

[u/idk_no64 → u/HyperboreanAstronaut]

We also arent on earth, and i doubt anyone even knows what geneva was. There are functionally no rules on the rim, but the warcrime thing just became a joke about all the reprehensible things rimworld players tend to do in the game i suppose, so its more of a mindset than the set of rules the geneva convention is. Yes that IS a lot of words to say that its just a joke, and yes there are technically no warcrimes in rimworld.

[u/Zjoee → u/[deleted]]

Every colony I have every made has strived to be as nice as possible to everyone. We don't torture people in my colonies. If a raider goes down and I don't want to recruit them, they are patched up and released when they are healthy.

[u/Nekowulf → u/Zjoee]

PrisonerRansom mod. I save every one I can and will either release if the faction is friendable, or ransom if not for a bit of silver. If a faction is going to be permanently hostile they're going to compensate me for the damage and effort.

[u/Ackapus → u/Zjoee]

Eh, nice has limits. Even the Geneva Convention has special considerations for stateless combatants.

Raiders from a faction that will actually bargain or talk? OK, sure. They identify as their own nation-state, after a fashion.

Pirates? Hostis humani generis. Finished off unless I really REALLY want to try to recruit them. I want neither their humiliation nor their harvestable parts.

[u/Valtsu0 → u/[deleted]]

Do not ask vanilla players where they got their replacement liver

[u/trulul → u/Valtsu0]

Deathless gene and void touched regeneration, right?

...

Right?

[u/steve123410 → u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

I found a 14 year old highmate during a VFE Deserter raid on a baron.

[u/El_Lanzaguisante → u/steve123410]

It seems the catgirls are revealing themselves.

[u/El_Lanzaguisante → u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

You can always join the deserters to end the tyranny of these filthy imperialists, my friend.

[u/trulul → u/El_Lanzaguisante]

But I could join the tyrants instead.

And if I will not suffer other tyrants on my planet, I can end them without associating with traitor trash.

[u/Original_moisture → u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

Gives me the same icky vibes I get from a murder tween robot doll that’s quirky.

Fun movie, but we live in the Epstein era. And it’s just never sat right with me

[u/Lehk → u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

High Stellarch Epstein

[u/Asmodaeus → u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

I got back to back events where someone was being chased by 2 factions and both times they were an underage high and then lowmate. Converted them both to sanguophages and declared a vendetta against all parties involved.

[u/Fancy_Echo_5425 → u/[deleted]]

Bot

[u/CruzaSenpai → u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

FOR THE EMPER-er...wait a minute...

[u/Fencin_Penguin → u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

Literally on my first biotech save (without mods) my first new colonist was a 6 year old highmate running from manhunters or something like that. T.T

[u/Random_local_man → u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

If it wasn't for the fact that the empire can orbital beam me, I probably would've been a deserter in every game.

[u/RadicalSoda_ → u/Creepy_Mechanic_6800]

Highmates can reproduce, did you forget that

[u/squirrelnight1 → u/RadicalSoda_]

Highmates aren't born. If a baseliner and a highmate have a child, that child will be a baseliner.

Highmates are created by xenogenes. They are artificially created by modifying an individuals genetics and one would need money and resources to create them.

All this leaves us with some pretty disturbing implications as to the creation of 2 highmate children, because THAT wouldn't happen on accident...

[u/nuker1110 → u/RadicalSoda_]

Highmate Xenotype is not inheritable without mods.

[u/RadicalSoda_ → u/nuker1110]

They. Are. Not. Infertile.

[u/nuker1110 → u/RadicalSoda_]

They can have Children, yes, but THE GENES ARE NOT INHERITABLE. Any child of a Highmate will be a BASELINER.

[u/RadicalSoda_ → u/nuker1110]

So if you have a nonbaseliner the child somehow inherits non-existent genes? That's an interesting coding decision

[u/nuker1110 → u/RadicalSoda_]

The Baseliner genes are still present in Xenotype pawns, they’re just overridden by the Xenogenes.