The Quick Questions About World Building Thread

Atomic Science in Fiction

For Moonflowers, I wanted to fuck with the whole "The Fair Folk are elves" idea that most people tend to have, and I'm making concept sketches for a fairy castle that's been neglected for a thousand years. So I basically went "I'mma borrow imagery from Pans Labyrinth. The castle's old and twisted and kind of falling apart, and the throne room's in a cave underneath the main castle. But the previous owner was quite benevolent aside from using a maze for execution and owning something called the Night's Throne."

So I found some pretty awesome real-life architecture that's perfect for the look of my neglected fairy-castle: Half-towers and crooked spires. Most of the official examples only date back a few centuries, but is it safe to say that the architecture itself is probably way older than the current surviving examples?

Depends. I assume that you;re looking for something Gothic?

Gothic? In the "horror genre" sense, yes, but I don't see the castle anywhere near as ornate as Gothic architecture.

Here's the concept sketches.

The throne room.

The castle.

edited 19th Apr '15 11:06:06 PM by Sharysa

I see, well I don;t know anything about architectural history, so I can;t think of any older examples bar accidental cases for the half towers (and even then that would probably be improbable cases like a lightning bolt making full tower explode). I was just curious is all

I'll just chalk it up to coincidence, then. It's The Fair Folk, so they've got long-ass lifetimes. Someone would have found out "hey, we can leave out the inside of the tower's wall and now we've got a giant platform for defense!" And wood can warp in bad conditions regardless of the society's tech level. Maybe they would have come up with the technology earlier than us, but they also KEEP technology for a way longer time. (They're pretty happy to borrow technology from humans, though.)

edited 20th Apr '15 9:14:50 AM by Sharysa

I'm thinking of a setting where the entire world is covered with water (LOTS of water, where the shallowest waters are about 7-10km deep. I'm not sure if this is possible), with small scatterings of floating continents (sized around 500-4000 km^2 each, not counting insignificantly small broken-off islands) where remnants of humanity settle.

How would the climate be in that sort of world?

Lots of ocean surfaces lead to strong and large sea currents, a dark planetary surface and a large evaporation surface. You'd get a globally warm, wet climate, unless large icecaps form.

Likewise, these strong current would either result in Tidal Waves or large cliffs. On the bright side, this does seem like an ideal setting for undersea civilizations.

edited 27th Apr '15 2:18:52 AM by MorningStar1337

Can anyone help me figure out how the day/night cycle would work for a binary planet system? (New to forums of anything in general, so sorry if I'm doing this wrong!)

Same as a regular planet, unless we are talking about a tidally locked eclipsing binary (where one planet regularly shades the other) in which case the ipsilateral sides will be frequently shadowed and the contralateral ones will see a regular day-night cycle.

Depends on the size of each planet, really. For reference, the European Space Agency have referred to the Earth-Moon system as a double planet, because the Moon is just that big for a satellite.

So as a rule of thumb I'd say you're probably guaranteed to have eclipses, at least infrequently. Even less frequently if the orbital plane of the double planet is significantly misaligned with the ecliptic.

edited 10th May '15 12:17:43 AM by Aetol

I'm trying to figure out what would be the "iconic" equivalent to a sword for my aliens during their medieval period^note By which I mean I'm trying to figure out what these aliens' equivalent to Heroes Prefer Swords would be. They're both larger (giving them better reach) and stronger than humans, but armour was more common due to the fact that their home planet had abundant metal deposits.

I've tentatively settled on halberds or (more generally) polearms, but I'm not sure if that would make sense for such an environment.

If armor was more common, blunt and heavy weapons like maces/clubs/hammers would be better suited to deal with it.

That was one of my first thoughts, but mace-like weapons don't seem like they'd be particularly versatile (whereas a halberd can be used against armour, cavalry, spear/pikemen, and unarmoured opponents).

Though you did give me the idea of a small baton-like mace being used as a dagger equivalent (though that doesn't mean they didn't have proper daggers).

The problem is, I suppose, that swords are just versatile enough that they can do the job of more specialised weapons (and they're more concealable), but they can also do said jobs well enough that they can hold their own against the more specialised weapons.

The problem is, swordsmen are hard to train properly. That's why they're nobleman weapons—because they can afford the years of time and expensive equipment.

And what do you mean "blunt weapons can't be concealed easily?" You can use a good club/staff as a walking stick, but it's really hard to mistake a sword for anything else. Are you just going on "giant spiky maces/hammers"? The Irish shilellagh (probably misspelled that) was specifically used as a decoy walking stick, with the weighted end in the handle/knob.

As for versatility, you don't need versatility when you can cave in someone's skull or break a few limbs from blunt-force trauma. Hell, that's the main reason blunt weapons came around—to deal with killing heavily-armored knights more easily.

edited 17th May '15 6:32:33 PM by Sharysa

Conceded on the various concealed blunt weapons. I was already aware of why blunt weapons came about, but thanks nonetheless.

What I meant by versatility is that - in my understanding - things like maces are pretty poorly suited to handling, say, cavalry. Of course, there's always the option of employing spear or pikewomen^note The aliens in question are predominantly female!

By "handling," do you mean "used AGAINST cavalry" or "used BY cavalry"? In the former, horses are pretty much spooked by EVERYTHING without considerable training, so swinging a giant shiny object at them would go a long way to ruin most cavalry attacks even if you didn't actually hit anything. In the latter, any cavalryperson worth their salt would be able to use a range of different weapon-types whether on or off a horse.

I think horses actually make using blunt weapons BETTER because they've got so much more mass and momentum behind them. Mace hit = you've broken a few bones. Mace hit from a mounted attacker = you're probably a bag of mush.

edited 20th May '15 2:02:33 PM by Sharysa

I should've been clearer, I meant used against cavalry, yeah. Although it's a bit of an intangible, I imagine that it'd take quite a lot of discipline to stay put in the face of a cavalry charge when you're only armed with a big lump of metal^note Of course, this is doing maces and their cousins a disservice, but you catch my drift hopefully.

That's not to say that spear and pikemen didn't suffer problems with discipline, but I imagine the physical distance afforded by a spear or pike would've made it easier for their wielders to stand their ground (since they wouldn't have the cavalry right up against them from the word "go").

EDIT:

This is very insightful nonetheless, however!

edited 20th May '15 2:14:45 PM by Flanker66

What are the common methods to reduce first turn advantage in a match three game styled after Puzzle Quest?

so...if a small continent sized little planet formed within earth's atmosphere left earth, and in the process the inhabitants revved up the gravity to steal some atmosphere for themselves (friend suggested it, dont blame me if atmosphere doesnt work that way)...

i assume earth would regenerate its atmosphere with time but would there be any side effects in the process?

Honestly that sounds like a small scale Earth-Shattering Kaboom with all The End of the World as We Know It that follows. Wait on re-read it looks more like a Floating Continent turning Colony Ship. Still going to be an Apocalypse Wow though.

If we assume "small continent" to be something like the Indian sub-continent - so 4.4 million square kilometers or about 0.86% of the Earth's surface.

So if it just takes the air which was above it (the 0.86%), the Earth's atmosphere will be okay eventually. Even if it takes enough for above, below, and a ring around you're probably only stealing 2%.

The Earth's atmosphere will be okay. Life might not be. The Earth can't replenish the atmosphere because the air has to come from somewhere. You could release oxygen and carbon from underground reserves (sand is mostly oxygen) but that's not going to happen by any natural means. In the long term life will have to adjust to a new lower median air pressure (which I believe will be 98-99% of previous). That's well within normal fluctuations so shouldn't be too bad. But the continent's departure is going to punch a continent sized hole in the ozone layer - which doesn't recover quickly.

Short term though, that's going form a massive low pressure (hyper-hurricane, possibly Day After Tomorrow style) where the continent was as air rushes in to fill the vacuum. Also that level of artificial gravity is going to cause massive tsunamis as it drags the oceans to it. Since effectively there's a moon hanging mid-atmosphere.

Even once the continent leaves, it's going to have to keep the artificial gravity going to keep its atmosphere.

wow, that was a wonderfully indepth response

thank you.

Alright, so I'm trying to make a Fantastic Measurement System using Mana, and I've run into a problem.

I'm trying to make Mana into a (derived not base) SI Unit, but it seems very similar to the Joule, since Mana is a form of energy too. That said, my current definition for Mana would be some constant multiplied by Joule.

• Mana Constant (Z): 1 unit of Mana can be converted to many more Joules, the multiplier is the constant.
• Mana (Mp, or Z.kg.m².s^-2)

If I remember correctly an SI unit should not have a constant in it? What would be a good idea for Mana as an SI unit, if that's the case?

edited 30th Jun '15 7:04:49 AM by ironcommando

If mana is completely equivalent to energy (such that the constant is unitless) then it's SI derived unit will be the joule (the proper SI unit being kg.m².s^-2). The "Mana" unit you've described is more a contextual unit, similar to the electron-volt or kilowatt-hour.

Scientifically a unit of mana doesn't make much sense. Unless there's some very common, reliably quantum (not neccessarily microscopic, but always the same size) source of mana. Then you might have a derived unit similar to the electron-volt, which is a scaling of the joule relevant to the area of physics (magic) you're dealing with.

You're only going to get mana a fundamental SI unit if it can't be expressed as a unitless constant by some combination of the current seven fundamental units.