Mention a random quirk of your world

That makes sense, actually.

Relevant fun fact: when in orbit, the Space Shuttle would orient tail-first in its orbital path, so any debris or similar (that didn't just obliterate the thing striaght-up) would hit the engines instead of the pressure cabin.

Spies who were caught doing espionage with intention to kill national leaders would be publicly executed with limbs and head cut off and buried separately in designated graves for 7 years before their remains cremated and buried with solid wastes.

I have an interesting quirk for you. See, my world is kind of a modern-day fantasy world, complete with video games. The quirk is, that unlike in our world, motion controls are still a thing rather than Deader Than Disco.

I know, hard to believe, right? Actually, I felt that motion controls still being alive required at least an attempt to explain it, so here's mine:

• Unlike in our world, the equivalent of the Wii basically had its equivalent to Wii Motion Plus right from the start. Thus, one-to-one motion was far easier to achieve, making Waggle much less prominent.
• Furthermore, the company behind this Wii equivalent actually made sure that their research on motion controls was widely spread; it actually went further than the company intended, but as the research still made it to their third parties, who eagerly used it, the company wasn't too upset.
• As a result of the above, developers were able to do far more with motion controls than they could during the initial period of interest, which had the dual effect of actually extending that period and ensuring a greater density of games with good motion controls by the time that period ended.
• This all adds up to a much weaker association between motion controls and shovelware on my world, what with more notable examples of good motion controls to point to.

Don't get me wrong; there's still a drop in popularity for motion controls once the sheen of novelty wears off, but it's more like the Pokémon "fad" than Pogs; it still has a lot of fans and general acceptance, it's just not the Big Thing anymore.

Thunderbirds and firebirds are both members of the Roc genus. Each species possesses an innate ability to channel a certain type of energy around themselves, for protection or for hunting prey: firebirds can channel heat, while thunderbirds can channel electricity. A rare species that can manipulate light is believed to reside deep in the Arcane Wilds.

In my high fantasy universe, evolution by natural selection is understood and accepted by most advanced societies- but rather than a principle of constant change, it is seen as a force for maintaining the status quo, because it is believed that existing life forms are already perfectly suited to their ecological roles and will tend to eventually outcompete any 'new' variations.

That's a very interesting way of looking at evolution. Not even an incorrect one, necessarily, since established species have a number of advantages over new ones. Especially in a fantasy setting, where evolution will often occur at lightning speed due to crazy wizards and whatnot.

My Magitek world is entirely centered in St. Louis and kept hidden from the outside. St. Louis is where it was discovered that in the human genome, there are genes that allow for the use of magic. The US government then shut down and/or redirected all roads and highways leading to St. Louis and contained it within a giant wall. Why don't the mages rebel and tear down the wall? Because of magic's fusion with genes and DNA, mages are highly susceptible to radiation. There are no micro-waves or x-rays in St. Louis because even the slightest radiation can cause abnormalities in magic function, shutting down someone's ability to self-power transportation, lights, etc. With this in mind, the US government has a system in place to nuke St. Louis if things get out of hand. Not only would all progress be reverted, but there would not be a single survivor in the explosion.

That seems problematic, as "radiation" would include things like visible light, infrared, let alone what comes pouring down from that great fusion reactor up in the sky. Or, for that matter, naturally decaying isotopes in the Earth.

Really, you'd need a dome that's opaque to literally everything and ban every light source or unshielded electrical wire (antenna), and that'll present more problems than it solves.

Yeah, for that to work at all you'd have to be pretty specific. You might limit yourself to certain UV wavelengths, which don't penetrate much and have well-known sources that can be dealt with and therefore can be removed from the equation as completely as possible, but the primary source of course is the sun, so...

Vrin crystals are notably radioactive as I stated earlier. The unstable form of Vrin can be used to give people super powers, but only through high exposure to the radiation, which still holds the risk of just giving you radiation poisoning.

Notably every Vrin empowered user whenever they use their powers emits a small radiowave of Vrin, small enough to be harmless thankfully, the radiowave has a very short half life and decays.

Ok, I understand. Guess I was so high on my "But what if?" spree that I forgot to actually think things fully. That said, I'd like it if radiation could still be a weakness of sorts; would anyone happen to know the most dangerous types of radiation? That'd be helpful.

To also stay on topic, in this alternate St. Louis, geomancers, aquamancers, and chronomancers can work together to grow crops at an increased speed.

That is once again a question too complicated for a simple answer.

Alpha particles are hideously damaging, but they won't even penetrate a sheet of paper. Just about anything will protect you from an alpha source outside of your body...but if you get an alpha source into your body, you're in a world of hurt. No other form of radioactivity will fuck you up more.

On the other hand, there's gamma rays. When they don't turn mild-mannered scientists into giant green rage monsters, they're best known for having the lowest energy transfer out of the Big Three...and by far the best penetration. It's pretty much impossible to keep gamma rays out entirely, you can only mitigate them. Low damage, but very high likeliness of actually getting through your protective measures, which makes them as dangerous as alpha in a completely different way.

edited 29th Jun '15 6:44:48 PM by MattStriker

The need for a Warp drive and Space Colonies was accelerated when it became clear humanity would not survive on Earth forever, not in the way it was going.

The Governments of the world faced with the prospect of a bloody and violent death or leaving the planet united and formed the United Colony Space Federation in a attempt to colonize other worlds out in space.

The front for this was that humanity's leaders were doing away with their hatred greed and intolerance, and in a way they were... just not in the bright optimistic tone they had put forward.

When the first Colonies went up, much of Earth's population was moved to there, with the powerful and elite staying behind. Many were angered, but the Colonies were luxurious and safe making it slightly moot to complain forever.

It wasn't until humanity started it's mining operation on Mars did they finally complete the early Warp cores, and the UCSF set off for Alpha Centurai.

Fortunately gamma emitters are rare. They overlap considerably with X-rays: there are frequency differences, but I think the general consensus is "if it comes from the nucleus, it's a gamma ray; if it comes from an electron being knocked around, it's an X-ray."

The thing is, "radiation" can cover the entirety of the EM spectrum, plus particulate things like alpha and beta particles. Natural background radiation happens a lot: coal mines, for instance, contain a lot of radon gas, which throws off alpha particles. Natural isotopes undergo radioactive decay all the time, too, although that happens very slowly. Then there's the really nasty stuff like neutron radiation, that rarely-occurring-nature fun-for-the-whole-family stuff that can induce radiation in surfaces that are exposed to it. (If alpha particles disrupt magic, you'd have a serious problem, because slow alpha particles that have picked up an electron charge are simply helium atoms; ditto beta particles because those are just electrons.)

The Song aren't called that for nothing. Unlocking even the simplest of Songtech — the stuff they left behind with the intention of it being used by a "primitive" species — requires a knowledge of mathematics, abstract music theory, and their integrations thereof that humanity is only barely beginning to achieve. The Song just took it for granted that mathematics and music theory were obviously inseparable aspects of the same thing.

edited 29th Jun '15 8:53:54 PM by KillerClowns

Alpha is probably the best 'cripples magic' radiation; highly damaging but easy to defend against.

Fun fact: there is no place on Terra where you can be completely shielded from all radiation; neutrinos regularly punch through the entire planet without a care. Hold up your hand? A few million neutrinos just passed through it.

- = - = - = -

Quirk: Due to a redefined Kardishev scale in my 'verse, and some mildly terrifying technological progress, Tier 9 and 10 civilizations tend to draw power from either zero point systems, or by encircling dying stars with massive shields. If the star goes nova, it outputs tremendous energy into the shields (promptly converted into usable form and stored in colossal capacitors), and if it goes black hole, all the materials being pulled in by gravity have their kinetic energy absorbed by the shield (less than the nova, but still not bad).

There are rumours of a predecessor species drawing their power from exploding galaxies, but no evidence of this yet.

Do neutrinos even count as radiation ? They hardly interact with matter at all.

On the other hand, it is true you can never be completely shielded from radiations. They come from the sky, they come from the ground^note in fact, nuclear submarine crew are exposed to less radiations than us : while they live meters away from a nuclear reactor, they are shielded from natural background radiations by water, they come from the bananas you eat, they even come from inside you.

Sleep tight !

I surely will. Where would we be without infrared radiation warming us on cold winter nights? Without visible light illuminating our way? Without hard gammas spewed from homemade death rays to conquer the world and eradicate all who are foolish enough to resis—

—uh. I mean. Don't be silly, everyone knows gamma-emitting death rays don't exist.

Da, it's technically neutrino radiation. It's just that actually get hit by neutrinos (instead of them passing clean through you with nary an effect) is rare.

xkcd did a What If a while back on neutrino radiation. It was concluded that yes, you can absorb a lethal dose of neutrino radiation... if you're approximately 1 AU from an exploding supernova.

http://what-if.xkcd.com/73/

:D

In my superhero setting Japan, Tokyo in particular is attacked every other week by some oddity, so much so that this has become commonplace leaving them not to talk about it. Hell it barely gets mentioned on any tourist brochures they put out, would you make a brochure about what coffee your office serves at breaktime?

This leads anyone not reading brochures put out by anyone who is not from Japan to get a big surprise when they enter and see colourful people making odd poses while generic humanoid monsters explode.

This has also put Japan forward in terms of various technologies namely in robotics engineering, making some of the super powers of the world jealous and slightly worried about the idea, especially with Vrin still being available enough to make a few super heroes.

edited 2nd Jul '15 5:25:08 PM by EchoingSilence

My low fantasy setting has a sort of Complacent Warring Syndrome :

Because wargs are so formidable fighters, nothing short of other wargs can stop them, unless they are really badly outnumbered. As a result, an army with a warg vanguard will beat an army without one almost every time, so everybody use warg mercenaries for their front lines. Some even don't bother with an army of their own and fight by warg proxy. Causing the enemy's mercenaries to desert or switch camp is a crucial part of any campaign ; nobody in their right mind would engage in battle without them.

(If they're so unstoppable, why don't wargs dominate the setting ? Two reasons. They lack unity, with the other races subtly making sure it stays that way ; and they lack numbers, due to their bellicose nature and the aforementioned lack of unity.)

edited 3rd Jul '15 11:35:11 AM by Aetol

In my Space Fantasy setting, the ships are all built to resemble boats and personal starfighters are planes. The ships are able to traverse space due to having built-in generators that are able to create their own personal gravitational field and limited air supplies. Essentially, space is both air and an ocean...with the right life-support.

Dragon riders exist but their existence required generations of selective breeding by both dragons and riders.

The demi-dragon, as the ridable dragon is often known, is considered something of a pygmy by dragon standards. It maxes out at about 500 kg and 15 feet long when including the tail. Likewise, the wingspan is about 15 feet. Aerodynamic profile is similar to a pterosaur although this is usually augmented by magic. A normal dragon tends to be 3-6 tons and have the lengths and wingspans of over 50 feet.

The effects on the riders tend to be more subtle but no less dramatic. Heights tend to average at about 5'4" while weight never exceeds 140 lbs. Skin color is caucasian but body hair is rare to the point of absences. Red blood cell density is extremely high, higher than most gurkhas and high enough to ensure heart complications if the heart wasn't about 10% larger than normal. The eardrum has weakpoints that break cleanly with rapid pressure change and the semicircular canals in the inner ear are more numerous. The Eustachian tube that connects the nose to the inner ear is also wider than normal. Motion sickness is unheard of among riders. The skin it'self is thicker as is the subcutaneous fat deposits. Eyesight hovers at about 20/10.

Even with generations of adaptations, dragons and riders need to be raised together to form a strong dragon-rider binding. However, this link tends to be neigh impossible to break and reestablishes it'self if the pair are brought back into contact.

edited 3rd Jul '15 1:21:12 PM by Belisaurius

among the united Noskeläni tribes, a prevalent social expectation is to spend more time in education than is necessary; the minimum requirement of one institution could be 3 years, but graduating 3 years in will simply be seen as just barely avoiding the failure of dropping out

meanwhile those who spend more years are seen as more knowledgable, skilled or capable than those who do not. a prodigy/genius would be someone who spent say, a decade or more in that institution, the logic behind it being that there is no upper limit in what you can learn or improve at, and thus those who spend such a long time in the institution have naturally risen to the level of prodigy/genius. obviously, this is not necessarily true.

a large reason this expection exists is the noskeläni species naturally long life (typically between 130 to 560 years), so rushing through something as vital as education is heavily frowned on as unnecessary.

In the web serial novel I'm currently in the process of writing (and the thread for which can be found in my signature), after the existence of magic and monsters was revealed to the world, several pagan deities, as well as Christian angels, followed suit.

This has caused many of the faithful among the three Abrahamic religions to have a crisis of faith, leading to the angels having to clarify that the Exact Words of the First Commandment was, "Thou shalt put no other gods before me", not "There are no other gods, period". This in turn led to the angels being asked why God himself doesn't make public appearances like Zeus, Thor, the Morrigan, etc. do. While most angels simply say Mysterious Ways, eventually the Archangel Michael got fed up with that question and just explained that God prefers a hands-off approach to the universe.