Val Genetics

For the naming I thought the book said somewhere that they took on the name of the family whose powers they inherited.

Recessive traits are only carried through if there are two copies of the recessive. Say the gene was H, with its recessive being h. If you are HH, you have the dominant trait. If you have Hh, you have the dominant trait, but carry the recessive. You only express the recessive trait if you are hh (two copies of the recessive gene).

If Val’s are recessive, then two humans can make a Val. If it is DDOMINANT, than at least one of the parents has to be a Val. If dominant Val gene is V, and recessive gene (human) is v, Val’s can be Vv or VV, while humans are vv.

We only have a single NPC example of V+V=H, but that was made as a big deal because Val’s used to always breed true in 3.5. Now that they don’t, the significance has been lost. Also, if Val is a recessive trait, you could have two random humans make a Val, which has NEVER happened in canon so far.

Here is my take on a union between a val’Tensen and a val’Ishi.

Most Likely outcome:
val’Tensen and/or val’Ishi kids (equal chance for both). Family puts pressure for the val’Ishi children to be raised by the vl’Ishi…presumably in Enpyben. Family pressure from the val’Tensen family for the children to be raised by the val’Tensen (likel mitigated by the chaos in Almeric and the presumption that no one can claim to speak for the family for the family as a whole).

Less Likely outcome
Some human offspring too. Surprise! Pressure from both families for the child to be raised by one of the “vassal” families. Maybe (or maybe not) some whispers of infidelity on Mom’s part. This definitely does happen now with the way vals work.

At present I know of no named vassal families for the val Ishi. The biggest known vassal family of the val’Tensen family is the Balin family (famous for a certain senator Tensen-Balin). If given up, the child is called Balin (or whatever family it is placed in). If the parents buck the family? Who knows? By defying convention the parents need to figure out what the heck they’re going to call their kid. Not “val X.” Ishi-Tenson seems possible … but as I understand it NEITHER the val’Ishi nor the val’Tensen look on this with favor. This definitely has repercussions. Don’t expect an invitation to the family’s annual holiday parties. Also, like “the boy named Sue” expect junior to have some trouble with his peers.

Wildly & Provocatively Speculative
Dark-kin child! Okay maybe this can’t happen. We know you can’t be both a val and a dark-kin because the celestial influence is incompatible with and blocks the infernal stain … at least that’s the party line. (Maybe it does happen once in a generation, but the kids are quietly disposed of at birth). But what if the stain was still there lurking in the “genetic code” waiting for the chance to emerge? A human child of 2 val wouldn’t have the celestial “shield,” and might then have the normal tiny chance to turn up dark-kin (assuming some dark happening in the past). This could potentially make a great story which is why I like it …

One thing we do know: that the val “gene” is not a straight comparison to an ordinary recessive gene.

My understanding would be yes to the former. There’s no rhyme or reason as to which bloodline manifests in a val’Holryn.

There’s an old thread on it which boiled down to ‘magic’.

Alas (from the scientist in me) this is almost certainly what is truly at work here. Ultimately, things work in Arcanis due to the Word of Henry, and we mere mortals cannot hope to truly fathom such things without going mad. He’s like Cthulu, only more Latino.

The ‘val gene’ is effectively recessive, but becomes dominant if one parent is already an active val. Tried to work it out biologically and it was un-modellable using the available information (the ‘one parent must already be a val’ clause).

Again, I truly do not think that the recessive model works all that well, which is why I champion the “Dominant Gene” model. Of course, we’re basing this on Mendalian genetics here, rather than more complex genetics that are very difficult to explain using text in a forums and based on a fictional High Fantasy universe, but it still doesn’t line up.

For example (If Recessive):

For a val to be a val, they have to have a Recessive allele (call it ‘h’) while a Normal Human has a Dominant allele (call it ‘H’). Inheritable genes have two sets of alleles (one from each parent) except in the case of individuals with genetic disorders (ie: missing a chromosome) or Men (the Y chromosome is, functionally, an incomplete X chromosome so it is missing some genes).

So, this means that Humans are HH (Homozygous) or Hh (heterozygous), with the Hh being carriers of the “Val” gene. This means that humans can breed as such:

HH + HH = HH 100 % of the time.
HH + Hh = HH 50% of the time, Hh 50% of the time.
Hh + Hh = HH 25% of the time, Hh 50% of the time, and hh 25% of the time.

The way recessives work is that to express that genotype/phenotype, you need two copies of the recessive gene (or, at least NO copies of the Dominant gene). In this case, Vals would be hh, which means that there is a statistically significant chance that two humans would produce a Val without any Val-sex going on that generation.

There is, to my knowledge, only a single instance of this happening in Canon, and that is during “Shadows of a Forsaken Past” where the soul of the Dark-kin killed by Hilmur is reborn to two normal human parents as a val’Hamen. There are no other times in Arcanis History that I can recall where this has happened, and in this case it was heavily implied to be an aberration of epic proportions from the ‘way things usually go’.

Now, when you go the other way, you see that Vals almost NEVER can breed a Val using anything other than a Val:

hh (val) + HH = Hh 100% of the time (human)
hh + Hh = Hh 50% of the time, hh 50% of the time
hh + hh = hh 100% of the time.

This means that Val children would be a fairly uncommon (statistically), with only those who are heterozygous for the trait even standing a chance of producing Val offspring with a Val. Of course, a significant portion of the Val’s in the world are probably of a noble background, which means that their ‘marriage options’ are probably more than a little limited. This means that the humans that they breed with are probably statistically MORE likely to be carriers of the val genes.

As an example of how this could work; The Balin family are known to be a vassal family of the val’Tensens, and are considered nobles/patricians in their own right. When arranging a marriage for their own children, the val’Tensen family will probably focus on other ‘noble’ lines above commoners for political alliances. With this history, there is a stronger likelihood that there are Val-genes kicking around their cells because (as stated above) the likelihood of producing a Val is not that great from such a union, but at least a significant portion of the humans produced are carriers. These matches would likely be even MORE favourable because these humans would have a far greater statistical likelihood of producing a coveted Val than just a random human would off the street.

For example (Dominant)

As stated before, I feel that the dominant theory fits better with past and present canon (going from ‘breeding true’ to the new ‘no longer breeding true’). The reason for this is that in this system, you can only produce a Val if you have at least one Val parent. There is absolutely NO chance of producing a Val from just two humans:

Let us call this gene V (Val) with the non-val allele being v, so Vals would be VV (Homozygous dominant) or Vv (Heterozygous), and humans would be vv (homozygous recessive):

VV (Val) + vv (human) = 50% Vv (Val, human carrier), 50% VV (Val)
VV + Vv = 50% chance of VV, 50% chance of Vv
VV + VV = 100% chance of VV.

In all three above examples they will always produce Vals. That said, there is another combination which does NOT:

Vv + vv = 50% chance of Vv, 50% chance of vv (Human)!
Vv + Vv = 25% chance of VV, 50% Chance of Vv, 25% chance of vv (human)

This means that a Heterozygous Val (being a Val who had a Human ancestor) could produce a normal vanilla with a similarly Heterozygous Val or a normal human. This lines up with established canon–again, using the good Senator Tensin-Balin as an example, who managed to bag himself a val’Tensen wife and had at least two children. One (Cassicus) was a val’Tensen and another (Aphineas) was human, which would suggest that the Senator (vv) had a wife who was Vv, meaning that they had a 50/50 chance of Val or Human, which is supported by this example.

Now, you could say that the above example of Tensin-Balin and val’Tensen can be done just as well with the recessive theory, and you would be correct. As stated, the good Senator is from a vassal family, and may well have Val ancestors to make him a carrier of the gene, which would also give a 50/50 split. However, I think the Dominant theory is the superior one because it also remains closer to the whole “Val’s Breed True” story from the previous campaign. It would also be CLOSER (not quite as close as I’d like, but that’s fiction!) to explaining the pariah status of the Vivisectionist, and it would prove that the birth of the val’Hamen from humans was a truly awe-inspiring act of the Gods. If they are recessive, then Val + Val = Human mixes are probably at least as common as V+V=V, so there should be far less stigma, and it makes the H+H=V rare, but not unheard of.

They both have their pros and cons, but I am strongly in favour of the one which actually fits more into the story (from my opinion).

Also, to the “It becomes dominant if the parent is a Val” doesn’t hold water to me from a genetic point of view. In this case, it would simply be a Dominant gene as that solves all these issues quite nicely from a scientific point of view without even having to factor in magic and the gods and such.

…snip…
Now, as to why vals no longer breed true – there’s a problem with the divine power grid. The change is reflected in the new edition of the rules. This also corresponds to the time after the war of the Valinor in the heavens above Grand Coryan at the end of the first story arc. The channels themselves may be less reliable (intermittent signal) missing (dead Valinor) or have a certain level of interference (power released in the fight) to cause that initial connection with the new potential val to fail.

It is not clear to me if the change in how vals breed is something that happened after the events of the first campaign … or … a retroactive change to canon. Based on the side bar in the A:RPG my reading is the later. I don’t think vals have been breeding true since some time in the First Imperium. But that’s just an opinion. I would love for Henry to clarify that.

I’ve heard references to the Blood Wars and would LOVE to know what published materials or mod(s) the references are in as it sounds very interesting and applicable to this discussion. .. . snip …

The Bloodwar was a civil war in the First Imperium. All players will be able to read about it in Cradle of Empires when it hits the shelves. Former IK members also received a private document that contains at least some of the information from Cradles. I wrote a little bit about the Bloodwar in “Tukufu’s Letters” last Halloween. It would take too much space and effort to rewrite it here (to say nothing of translating out of Tukufu’s subjective First Person account to a 3rd person “objective” account.)

Is this theory at all effected by the val’Holryn’s being the first/oldest val line? I thought that Henry said that in a Q&A that I found once. Is that accurate?