Also, their bodies really don't go along well with humidity...
I am sure I saw some where that thri-kreen cannot swim in water, and would sink if they ever landed in a large body of water. But that got me thinking. Can thri-kreen hold their breath underwater? With the way their insectiod mouth is formed can they seal it to prevent water from rushing into their throats and drowning them.
Correct - thri-kreen cannot swim, nor can they float without support (TKoA, p28). Furthermore, thri-kreen don't breathe through their mouths, but through breathing holes (Jeral breathing holes are located on the sides of the protothorax between the arms and Tok'sa breathing holes are on the head, one pair between the eyes and the other pair above the mandibles. The various references to breathing holes in TkoA suggest that the kreen cannot close them voluntarily and need to cover them with cloth or something similar to keep dust from clogging them. If water reaches the breathing holes, they drown much faster than humans. The section on the protothorax (p 26) says that the lungs connect to the oesophagus, so we have to assume that the breathing holes feed air to the oesophagus, which in turn feeds air to the lungs.
I wouldn't say that a kreen could hold its breath at all, based on the info given in TKoA. You needn't rule that a kreen immersed in water drowns immediately, but you could drastically cut the time before drowning sets in.
I think the Thri-Kreen of Athas book has a blurb about this, but I don't have access to it at the moment.
As far as water goes, a wet thri-kreen starts growing a lethal fungus so even if they can't swim (which sounds logical enough to me) they're still pretty screwed if they fall into water.
Edit: Hehe didn't post quickly enough, I guess. ;)
This reminds me -- one of my little house rules is that only players who are playing kreen can carry clicking pens at the table.
Kreen have lungs - it says so in TKoA. So fie on biology!
Part of that is due, I'm guessing, to the fact that a thri-kreen can't be a "true" insect, biologically speaking, as they're way too large - I can't remember what the size limit is, if there even is a definited limit, but I've heard repeatedly that insects and other creatures with exoskeletons can only reach a certain size as they'd die if they got any bigger. I think it's even due - in part, at least - to how they breathe, something along the lines that without true lungs an insect beyond a certain size wouldn't be able to get oxygen into their system quickly enough.
Another case of trying to attribute real-world physics and such to a fantasy universe, but hey...that's what I'm good at. ;)
The "kooky sounds that kreen make," all those poppings and stuff -- none of that requires a trachea. Those are at most unvoiced consonants. They need not even necessarily come from the kreen's mouth.
Even if they have lungs, the fact that they breath through holes in the sides excludes the idea of a trachea, which is what you'd need to sing or yell in the way that we do.
The "kooky sounds that kreen make," all those poppings and stuff -- none of that requires a trachea. Those are at most unvoiced consonants. They need not even necessarily come from the kreen's mouth.
They also can be emulated with vibration and the shaping of a hollow space to manipulate sounds. Thir-Kreen eat with their jaws and mouths, so when I have Thri-kreen talk, I have them vibrating their mandibles and throat and shaping those vibrations into something not quite unlike talking, but alot like a n artificial larynx.
Next time I play a thri-kreen I'm going to wear this:
http://www.buzzerks.com/mantis.html
and talk through this:
http://storeforknowledge.com/Voice-Changer-Spy-Toy-P3969C214.aspx
to make me sound buzzy.
They also can be emulated with vibration and the shaping of a hollow space to manipulate sounds. Thir-Kreen eat with their jaws and mouths, so when I have Thri-kreen talk, I have them vibrating their mandibles and throat and shaping those vibrations into something not quite unlike talking, but alot like a n artificial larynx.
Next time I play a thri-kreen I'm going to wear this:
http://www.buzzerks.com/mantis.html
and talk through this:
http://storeforknowledge.com/Voice-Changer-Spy-Toy-P3969C214.aspx
to make me sound buzzy.
Sounds good. As a rule of thumb I'd say that a thri-kreen can make any sound that you can make with your mount without breath, i.e. while breathing through your nose, and probably a bunch of sounds like that that we can't make. The breathed sounds, like fricatives, f, v, etc. would be harder. Liquids like M, N, L would seem harder. What I think for sure they could not do is distinguish between voiced and unvoiced fricatives, like between F and V, or between S and Z. S & Z would sound the same since they don't have a voice box processing their exhaled breath.