A World In The Sky Setting - Feedback requested

It's definitely an interesting idea, but I'm leaning against it being canon right now. I like unique, but it's a little TOO unique. The existence of this luminescent organism isn't necessitated by the premise, and having too much stuff like this might distract from other elements of the story. After sky sponges, the setting's going to feel contrived as it is.

Well, I do think that your originating idea of wanting stars in the night-ysk was sound. It immediately provides that "surrounded by sky" feeling that This should have. Starcanoes and starcrobes were simply the best I could come up with, since actual stars seem... impractical, let's say. If erratic motion is fine, then the floating glowing critters you suggested at some point work also, of course.

Yeah, that's a good point. You've given me a lot to think about for sure. Thank you.

edited 8th Sep '12 1:22:12 AM by Topazan

Just had one more thought - if you do decide to go with the bioluminescence after all, it'd probably be better to have it only on the surface and nothing of the firefly variety in the habitable zone. That way, the only available explanation for the phenomenon would be a supernatural one, reinforcing rather than lessening the mythical awe with which the "underworld" is regarded.

I didn't quite grok where you were going with that at first. It didn't occur to me that the circles would look like stars from high enough up. It was a good idea, but when we started talking about artificial trails it started to get a bit too gimmicky. It's still a possibility, if distribution is determined by something other than human activity.

I think that stars might not be strictly necessary, but it would be nice if there was some source of light. Maybe a kind of reverse aurora? Or some kind of lighting activity? Or some kind of chemiluminescence? You mentioned radiation, what would be the source of that, and could it radiate visible light?

Out of those, an aurora is my favorite, but it's not absolutely necessary that there be any light at all. It may be best just to leave that aside for now. Anyway, if the source of the light was on the surface, wouldn't it be obscured by the atmosphere anyway?

I'm not really sure if the mythical awe is a problem. In my mind, the awe for the underworld comes from how... inevitable it is when you're flying. The way that everything in nature seems to want to send you there, and the only thing preventing it is rickety technology.

Sure, bioluminescence wouldn't have to be tied to human activity. I was just thinking that the main source of organic nutrients at the surface would likely be droppings from the main habitable layer, just as the main source of inorganic nutrients in the habitable layer would be dust originating at or below the surface. But even if that's so, humans don't have to be the only or even the main source of droppings. And even if you are, the surface winds could be so strong that the patterns aren't recognizable any longer. Instead, you'd get bright patches wherever those winds preferentially deposit stuff in the end, which would be determined by unknown surface features, presumably. The bioluminescent equivalent of a snowdrift, basically.

Auroras would be mainly occur at above-habitable altitudes, I think. On the other hand, all of the details depend on the solar wind and planetary magnetic field and that sort of thing, which you could tweak to your heart's content. Hard to tell if this would be plausible, at this point.

Lightning definitely works.

"Some kind of chemiluminescence" would have to be powered by something, and the only thing that can power chemical reactions indefinitely is life, as far as I know. So, any plausible form of this would be an indirect form of bioluminescence, really. But this is not something I'm very familiar with, so I may be completely wrong here.

Radiation at the surface could be the result of radioactivity. If you posit enough of that to produce significant amounts of light at a planetary scale, you're probably in a lot of trouble from the assorted less healthy varieties of rays which would have to be emitted alongside that light. Bad idea, I'm thinking. It could perhaps also be an electromagnetic effect similar to aurorae, except that the particle source isn't the solar wind but something emitted by the planet. I don't know of any natural examples of that, though, so there's probably something wrong with the idea.

I'm quite positive that you could have a situation in which the surface is invisible by sunlight but in which light coming from it would still be visible in the absence of sunlight. As I said somewhere above, our own sky, with stars invisible during the day but visible at night, pretty much makes that case by itself. The analogy isn't completely solid, but should hold up well enough.

Finally finished the short story I was working on.

Lately, I've been thinking what effect the 'edges' would have on the culture.

1. The skylanders have a sanitation system that's ahead of their time thanks to nature.

Granted, it's not as convenient for people living further from the edges, but those cultures might have migrated inland from the edge. I'm wondering if people would have developed higher standards in hygiene and sanitation because they're used to there being an easy means of disposal. That means that disease would be less of a problem.

2. It's really easy to commit suicide.

You just need to walk off. No body, and no one knows for sure if you jumped, fell by accident, were murdered, or just moved away without telling anyone.

I'm not sure if they would have strong cultural inhibitions against suicide or not. I can also see an 'honor' based society, like China or Japan, evolving, where people are expected to commit suicide if disgraced.

3. For the same reasons, it's pretty easy to commit murder.

If you throw someone off, there's no body, and no way to prove they were murdered.

Mass murder/genocide could also be easy. Just surround the population with a phalanx or something and force march them off the edge. No cleanup necessary.

Also, I mentioned before about burying the dead 'at sky'. The problem is, I'm having trouble picturing how they would do this in a dignified way.

For a dignified way to bury someone at sky, how about naval burial methods? Wrap them up in a flag or banner or something, then sliding them down a plank off the edge. Simple, dignified, and applicable to people of all ranks.

Hm, the part about the flag/banner is good, but they would need to be sewn in to keep it from coming undone as they fall.

My thinking was that they wouldn't stay in the position you placed them in as they were falling. Would they stay in a lying position? Or would it depend on the wind?

I think it would likely depend on the wind unless you weighed him own with stones. How about strapping a parachute to it, so it descends lightly?

I thought about that, but again, how to do it in a dignified way? I'm thinking you'd need a pretty complicated rig to keep the body balanced in a laying position.

I think the problem is the lying position faces too much air resistance. Seems like head-first or feet-first would be easier, especially because you can just weigh down that side of the bag. I guess that would be ok.

So, the full procedure is to bind the body in a cloth wrapping, weighed down at the feet, then place them on a plank on the edge. At the end of the service, the plank is lifted from the near end until the body slides off feet first. I can live with that.

Oh, and the crew and passengers of any airships flying lower than that skyland should hold their hats over their hearts for a moment if they see a body so falling. In case you're wondering, it's extremely rare for an airship to be hit by a body, so there are really any special traditions there.

A similar idea I had to the parachute was setting them afloat in a balloon with a limited amount of fuel, but then the risk there is that the wind would catch it and blow it back to the skyland.

edited 18th Sep '12 12:05:25 AM by Topazan

Finally got 'round to reading the story. Nice work establishing a sense of place, given its brevity! There were two words I stumbled over. The first was "villager". Unless I misunderstood the context, you're (and your characters are) employing it to refer to everyone sharing that skyland, not just the inhabitants of their village, right? That there's only one village on that skyland is happenstance, more or less. So, some analog to "skylander" would fit better, IMO. The second was "shore". On reflection, and having had a look at the etymology, it's exactly the right choice, though, which makes this just an instance of having to pause to mentally adjust to their worldview. Definite "keep" vote on that one.

Regarding sanitation, I don't think people will want to throw organic wastes overboard. That would unnecessarily impoverish their soil. Much better to process them as needed (in compost heaps, say) and then spread them around the fields to increase yield. What would be thrown away would mostly be things that don't decompose, and given your setting, those don't generally constitute health risks. The way I see it, the convenient means of disposal would turn out to have very little impact on everyday life, because pre-industrial societies simply can't afford to dispose of anything which has a secondary use - which is almost everything.

Pragmatically, the same applies to corpses - why throw away a hundredweight of organics, rather than recycle them by interment? But it's entirely plausible that religious considerations would take precedence here, so never mind that aspect. I think I'd suspend the wrapped body by means of one or more air plants, and then let it float away on the wind. As long as the wind doesn't arbitrarily change direction, the "blowback" you mention just upthread can't really happen, can it? This could either involve negative buoyancy from the start, so you'd get a gentle drift downwards, or there could initially be positive buoyancy which would then be reduced some way offshore. For example, there could be several plants, one of which has some sort of primitive timed-release mechanism - a string of a certain length goes taut and pulls loose a knot, or the village marksman shoots an arrow, or something along those lines. Anyway, I agree with your initial perception that a simple throwing or letting slide wants for dignity.

Re: villager

Does that really make a difference? As you noted, there's only one village, and everyone on the skyland lives in that village, so I thought 'skylander' and 'villager' would be interchangeable.

At some level, I may have been trying to establish how insular they really are. Not only have they never left the skyland, they only live in one, walled off village on that skyland.

Re: shores

That was an oversight. If I had noticed, I would have changed it.

Re: organic waste

That's a good point. As you said, religious considerations would take place over pragmatic ones because they do in our world. You don't throw your dearly departed on the compost heap. In fact, in the states we usually seal their remains in burial vaults or urns.

I know that some ancient cultures made use of 'night soil' in farming, but others seemed content to bury it haphazardly or pipe it away. I also know that suburban gardeners generally don't compost meat and animal products, possibly because they smell terrible while they're decomposing.

I'll have to do more research, but I have a feeling that what you said would only apply in an area where the soil quality is naturally poor. There are hygienic considerations to be balanced against the agricultural ones. They might use some of their waste products, but not all to enrich the soil.

Re: funerals

As I said, if you attached anything to reverse or slow their fall, you'd need a pretty complicated rigging to keep them in a lying position. You might be right about the wind, but that's only if it's blowing the right direction to begin with. On a smaller skyland you can go to the other side to do the funeral if the wind's blowing the wrong way, but on a bigger one that could be complicated. I'm not really sure how much dignity would be added by slowing the descent anyway.

Of course, if the craft had a negative buoyancy like you said, the wind wouldn't be a problem. I suppose one possibility would be to use a negative buoyancy airship. That way it would feel more like you're sending them on a journey. That would be a little more expensive though, so maybe it would be reserved for the privileged.

Actually, a parachute or air bud* bouquet might work if you place the remains in a square basket. This could also work for condemned prisoners. The 'humane' execution method could be doing this to them while they're still alive.

• I've decided to start calling those plants air buds until I come up with a better name. "Air plant" is a colloquial term for epiphytes in the real world, a class to which the air buds belong.

Thanks for your comment on the story.

edited 18th Sep '12 3:21:17 PM by Topazan

Ok, I think I've decided how it works:

A typical coffin is a round wicker basket or pottery jar. If possible, the remains are arranged in a fetal position with all the grave goods. If not, then they're wrapped up however possible. To this container, a round balloon is attached with a burner stocked with a limited amount of fuel oil. If the wind conditions are favorable, the burner has enough oil to provide some lift away from the skyland before in burns out and the balloon starts to descend. If not, then it's lit just hot enough to slow the descent slightly.

The balloon has a special color and/or design to indicate its purpose. During times of mass death, such as famines, plagues, and wars, larger balloons might be built to carry many bodies at once. Those who can't afford to commission a real funeral balloon might sew together a symbolic one out of old rags, that doesn't really provide any lift.

"Villager" - I think it does make quite a difference, but that may admittedly be a pet obsession of mine. The term you primarily use to refer to a group of people ought to capture the primary factor that gives them their group identity. In this case, surely that primary factor is the circumstance that they live on the same isolated skyland. If there were several villages on Rain, they'd think of themselves as citizens of Rain first and as inhabitants of their particular village a distant second, no?

"Shores" - "[... P]robably from P.Gmc. *skur- 'cut' and according to etymologists originally with a sense of 'division' between land and water [or] 'land "cut off" from the mainland' [...]" (etymonline), which really hits all of the right notes for a skyland, don't you think?

Organic wastes - I guess this would depend on how densely populated a given skyland is. If it's far below its "carrying capacity", then your argument, that the extra effort and trouble of recycling all of the organics may not be deemed worthwhile, has merit. As it approaches said capacity, though, they'd have to transition to a pre-industrial form of intensive agriculture in which nothing that can help increase yield would be considered disposable. Somehow, I assumed that the latter would be the case more often than not, but now that I'm spelling that out, I'm not actually sure what I'm basing such an assumption on. Your call, obviously.

That's a good point, but I pictured them as kind of a religious commune, like the Amish have. They have a strong sense of identity based on cooperation, shared resources, and collective worship within the village. They may not have this with other villages, even if those villages shared their faith.

I suppose that the word shores works, but then there has to be a distinction between air shores and the shores of inland lakes/rivers.

I had pictured this world being underpopulated at first, mainly because the premise of the game is that each player controls their own skyland. Underpopulation was the reason why there can be so many skylands open for colonization. However, I am reconsidering that, since having a rural world kind of limits the kind of stories that can be told.

Ah, okay, I didn't glean the "village as commune" aspect from the text, I guess. That does make sense. If you were to find a replacement for "villager" that directly emphasizes the settlement's communal nature, you'd be killing several birds with one stone (which, I'm just realizing, is a bit of a squicky turn of phrase)... something like "neighbour" or "clansman", perhaps?

Good point re "shores", I hadn't thought of that. I looked up "coast", and where "shore" has a root sense of "border (of the land)", that one has a root sense of "side (of the land)", as in a beach that slopes from above to below the waterline. I was hoping for an obvious association of the two terms with the two types of shore, but don't really see it. FWIW, "off-shore" might be a nice term to use for the open sky in some contexts, though.

I don't see that a predominantly rural world has to be that much of a limitation. After all, you still have those rare mineral-rich (metabolically messed up) skylands available as a more urban kind of setting, since those would plausibly attract more settlers and more industries than is the norm. And they'd also plausibly trade and war with each other, even if there is some distance between them, rather than with their rural next-door neighbours which don't really have anything worthwhile to offer, from their perspective. That way, the setting can accomodate different kinds of stories at once. If you go for a uniformly dense population, you'd even lose some of that variety, it seems to me now that I actually think about this.

Well, yeah, that didn't really come up in the story. If they were talking about "neighbours" it would sound like they lived together and were gossiping about people nearby. "Clansman" puts me in mind of tartan and bagpipes. :)

I suppose "brother" could work. The Stranger would have to say "your brothers and sisters", while the Elder would say "our brothers and sisters".

Maybe the word "bank" could be used for lakes and rivers?

A good mix or urban, rural, and wilderness is what I'm going for. I'm just saying the abundance of empty habitable skylands may have to be Gameplay and Story Segregation. If living space is so abundant that just anyone can claim their own, where does the conflict come from? No one would be impoverished, since they can just start a homestead. Sure, resources may be rare, but with no shortage of the essentials, people don't really need them. With the absence of urbanization, there may not be much technological or socio-cultural advancement.

It occurs to me that both "neighbour" and "brother" might work for the character voices but won't work for the narrative voice. "Clansman" (which actually makes me think of KKK even before Scotland (or was it Tocsland?)) was the only real synonym for the unwieldy compound "community member" that I could think of, I'm afraid. Bah.

reference.com offers these usage notes:

I guess that makes "coast" best suited for the land/air border, since the sky replaces the sea - leaving you with the rest to use as you see fit.

Sounds like you have the population density question more or less sorted out now.

I had intended to have land animals on the skylands, but now I'm wondering if that's plausible. How would they expand from one to the next? That applies to humans as well.

Maybe a giant avian tends to carry them around? Or maybe during the sponges reproductive phase a piece breaks off of the skyland and gets carried away with the new sponge? But then each skyland would be less diverse than the last.

Maybe every creature is capable of flight, in a limited way, during at least one phase of its development. Domestic animals would be like turkeys, originally capable of flight but losing the ability through selective breeding. Some creatures could have followed this process naturally as well.

Maybe some creatures have buoyant eggs.

That means that I need to come up with a whole new bestiary, which isn't a problem because it might be fun, and that I need to either introduce flying mounts or come up with a reason why they don't exist. I was hoping to keep transportation options limited for game purposes.

I suppose just limiting the size of flying creatures works. If the setting calls for large animals, they can have a smaller juvenile stage that's capable of flight.

edited 19th Sep '12 10:31:11 PM by Topazan

I prefer the versions which have the land animals mostly restricted to their own skyland, with exchanges happening only due to rare chance occurrences and not as a common part of their life-cycles.

That way, each (sufficiently large) skyland can have at least small-scale evolution going on, and thus have its own characteristic fauna.

The way this sort of exchange between islands occurs on Earth is often pictured (whether realistically or not, I couldn't say) as involving animals being unlucky enough to be on the wrong tree at the wrong time, and then being lucky enough for that log to drift onto a new shore coast before they starve. Imagining something analogous here doesn't seem too difficult.

That's what I was trying for with the "giant avian" or "budding sky sponge" explanations. I guess another possibility is freak windstorms.

I think you're right that it would be better if each skyland had its characteristic fauna. Maybe they can fly, but not well enough to skyland hop without the assistance of freak windstorms?

EDIT: When I was doing research on what kinds of creatures are described as living on gas giants in scifi, I seem to remember a lot of references to floating mantas. Maybe there's a creature like that that tends to camouflage on skylands when resting. Unlucky land creatures that step on its back may get carried to other skylands?

I guess I don't really need a definitive answer, as long as I have a few to pick from in case the question comes up.

edited 20th Sep '12 12:43:41 PM by Topazan

Oh, yes, I like the Manta scenario. It's got a bit of a sailor's yarn (the island was really a leviathan) or thousand-and-one nights (the Roc unwittingly helping Sinbad escape) flavour. Those sorts of associations never hurt!

When it comes to flora/fauna I suggest that try to put things in a food web(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_web), both to keep track of the flora/fauna and make them believable.

You should have at least one "producer", something that lives on the gases, minerals in the atmosphere and a energy source (light from a sun, radiation from the planet/minerals etc). Both the "Unnamed plant" and "Sky sponges" can fit this role. But the "consumers" would have to live on whatever producers you create or be predators that eat these consumers.(or predators that eat these predators and so on.)

For example you could have "sky planktons"(producer) and "sky lichens"(Producer/Decomposer-symbiot) that's filled with gas* and just floats around. There could also be variants that's not filled with gas and instead drops to the surface and lays dormant until the next wind picks them and the minerals up. Different filter feeders(mantas etc) could then live on these.

Putting thing in evolutionary steps can also make thing more believable. Something like: Plankton without gas —> Plankton with gas —> simple small plants with gas —> More advanced larger plants with gas —> floating trees. Other plants could then have split of at different stages and evovled to only grow on skylands.

• The gas could be hydrogen if the atmosphere is mosly nitrogen. If the atmosphere is mostly Xenon or some other heavy gas the plants and the floating island could use oxygen instead.

Almost forgot to mention that(on earth) most of the dry weight in flora/fauna is carbon. So if you wanted to the minerals you talk about could be "trace minerals", and the floating islands could mostly consist of carbon form the atmosphere(co2). The carbon could even be converted to something fancy like carbon nanotubes, graphene and maybe even diamonds.