Random Worldbuilding Questions (Biology, Geography, Society, etc.)

[tbok1992]

@HeadlessMermaid Thank you, that was quite enlightening.

With those Minotaurs, I'm trying to create the idea of a culture that has retreated up its own rear in terms of self-importance even as they grow more decadent and insane by the day (Perhaps more like America than Rome), with the long downward spiral truly kicking off (though there had been inklings of it before) when they did the unspeakable act of converting the once glorious butterfly-like Ormyrr into pathetic caterpillar-like creatures by stripping them of their wings inherent magic or, indeed, any capacity to do magic and making them into their slaves.

So, perhaps this sort of "Bros before hos... in bed" thing along with the pederasty and misogyny was always there in its minor form, but crystalized grew to psychotic heights in their long spiral towards crazytown.

I do think that the other races would have a different idea of adulthood in-setting like you said, since even though the setting is a giant dungeon, much less education and much more life experience is required to do well in the world.

I think that master/apprentice pederasty would be looked at askance more for the potential (And, as seen in some runaways, very much actual) abuse of power than anything else. While it's probably be mixed in terms of actual happenings at the lowest levels, as you go up the social ladder things get more and more abusive/horrible until the ranks of the Nobles wold be committing the sort of stuff that would've been rejected from "Caligula" for being too horrible.

Also, how horrible was the treatment of women in Athens? Cause I may model their treatment after that rather than after the Romans (For the record the rest of the setting does have decent gender equality thanks to the lack of the stupid -4str we have in real life, except for the sexist but nonevil Gnoll society)

And anybody else have more Roman atrocities, as well as interesting real organized crime tidbits for the Undead Mafia?

[HeadlessMermaid]

Also, how horrible was the treatment of women in Athens? Cause I may model their treatment after that rather than after the Romans

"We have hetaerae to entertain our spirit, prostitutes to entertain our body, and wives to bear us children."
~ Aristotle or Plato, I forget

Women in Athens weren't citizens. They weren't exactly cattle, but they weren't exactly persons either. They couldn't represent themselves in court, they were the charge of their fathers and later their husbands, who decided everything concerning them.

They were excluded from the public sphere, and most of them were excluded from the public space altogether: if a household had a couple of slaves to go out and shop for groceries and stuff [note that having "a couple of slaves" didn't mean you were wealthy, it meant you were barely above poverty], the "free" women only stepped out of the house a handful of times per year, for religious festivals and duties. At least slaves (and women so poor that they had to go out and work/do errands) might enjoy the benefit of the sunlight now and then, and talking to people outside their own home.

Their training was limited to housework, and otherwise they were completely uneducated. In the city which pretty much invented public education. Their health was very poor (they ate less, they didn't exercise, lack of sunlight also played a part), dying at childbirth was very common, and living to see old age was not.

The women who managed to live better than that were either wealthy metics (these were non-Athenians living in the city, with some benefits and obligations but without citizenship) or hetaerae, upper class courtesans who were more entertainers than prostitutes, and who could end up very educated, very wealthy, and -quite irregularly- owning real estate and slaves and even businesses.

Athenian society was decidedly more misogynistic than other city-states of the time. It wasn't so bad in Thebes or Corinth or Sparta. But perhaps we have higher expectations from Athens exactly because it achieved so much, and because, at least for a short century, it was so way ahead of its time in all other aspects.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Let's say black clouds filled the atmosphere, thick enough to block sunlight from reaching the surface entirely.

Obviously, this would cause the biosphere in the real world to completely collapse. Not only due to changes in temperature (it would rise quite a lot) and the inevitable pollution this would cause but also because photosynthesis would become impossible. I have a fantastic solution for this problem, however, so life will continue. So my question is, how would the weather change? I imagine that winds would violently increase and storms would become more frequent, though I'd like an opinion on the matter.

[Geostationary]

Something that came up in game- what would the response be to a major city losing ~92% of the population with major damage to the city and surrounding countryside (In this case, it was Chicago)? No one is entirely sure as to what happened, except that lots of violent wild animals were involved. I know that there'd be a lot of aid for the survivors, but what are some general political responses (keep it general and nonspecific. Forum rules and all that), economic ramifications, societal shifts, or other things that would happen after such an event?

[Yora]

A decrease ba 92% means the city effectively ceased to exist. Those who remain are more like squaters in an empty city and entirely unable to maintain its infrastructure and even keep basic services running short term. If help can be flown in, water and electricity could be kept running but with a grid of that size proper maintainance would be impossibly with workers down to 20% their normal strength. Stores would be completely unable to open.
Logistically, the city would probably be run just like a large refugee camp.

Even more dramatically would be the effect on the rest of the country with a huge economic center suddenly disappearing. No manufactured goods would come from the city anymore and long term it would have catastrophic effects on the national economy if it's a major city of several million people. Major cities are also likely to be a way station for goods just passing through, which would all have to be rerouted, causing massive delays and losses. If it's a major port like Rotterdam or Hamburg, it could possibly trigger a major global economic crisis.

Let's say black clouds filled the atmosphere, thick enough to block sunlight from reaching the surface entirely.

Obviously, this would cause the biosphere in the real world to completely collapse. Not only due to changes in temperature (it would rise quite a lot) and the inevitable pollution this would cause but also because photosynthesis would become impossible. I have a fantastic solution for this problem, however, so life will continue. So my question is, how would the weather change? I imagine that winds would violently increase and storms would become more frequent, though I'd like an opinion on the matter.

You can probably look it up, it happened several times on earth. The year before the plague first came to Byzantium, "The year without summer", and the event that almost made humans go extinct are all relatively recent and I think all caused by giant vulcanoes on Sumatra.

[awa]

remember the loss of 2 buildings in new york and a few thousand pepole had a significant impact on the economy both the united states and the world.
chicago has a population of millons.

All the worlds economies are interconnected knock over one and everyone gets hit when a big player like the united states goes down every one feels it.

[Yora]

It wasn't the damage to the building and the loss of skilled professionals that did the economic damage, but the panic that made the affected countries shutting themselves down. That's terrorism by the book: Ignite one spark and watch the enemy destroy themselves.

Though the loss of an entire city would most likely create a much bigger panic, so the point is still valid.

[tbok1992]

"We have hetaerae to entertain our spirit, prostitutes to entertain our body, and wives to bear us children."
~ Aristotle or Plato, I forget

Women in Athens weren't citizens. They weren't exactly cattle, but they weren't exactly persons either. They couldn't represent themselves in court, they were the charge of their fathers and later their husbands, who decided everything concerning them.

They were excluded from the public sphere, and most of them were excluded from the public space altogether: if a household had a couple of slaves to go out and shop for groceries and stuff [note that having "a couple of slaves" didn't mean you were wealthy, it meant you were barely above poverty], the "free" women only stepped out of the house a handful of times per year, for religious festivals and duties. At least slaves (and women so poor that they had to go out and work/do errands) might enjoy the benefit of the sunlight now and then, and talking to people outside their own home.

Their training was limited to housework, and otherwise they were completely uneducated. In the city which pretty much invented public education. Their health was very poor (they ate less, they didn't exercise, lack of sunlight also played a part), dying at childbirth was very common, and living to see old age was not.

The women who managed to live better than that were either wealthy metics (these were non-Athenians living in the city, with some benefits and obligations but without citizenship) or hetaerae, upper class courtesans who were more entertainers than prostitutes, and who could end up very educated, very wealthy, and -quite irregularly- owning real estate and slaves and even businesses.

Athenian society was decidedly more misogynistic than other city-states of the time. It wasn't so bad in Thebes or Corinth or Sparta. But perhaps we have higher expectations from Athens exactly because it achieved so much, and because, at least for a short century, it was so way ahead of its time in all other aspects.

Perfect! This works especially well for a female minotaur NPC idea I had, a Monstromancer (Think Fleshwarper, but expanded to a full class and not just using Aberrant grafts) defector from the corrupt and decaying Minotaur Empire whose backstory includes severe body-image issues.

But I'm still looking for those interesting organized-crime-related tidbits to add to the Undead Mafia. Anybody have anything that could be fun to add?

[Andreaz]

Firstly, for the "Decadent, cruel Rome-falling-esque" minotaur empire, I need some nasty bits from Roman culture (especially as it was crumbling later in the Empire's lifespan) to add to them to flesh them out, because for now all I have is their love of making their cities as mazelike as possible, their really unpleasant enslavement of the Ormyrr that I will discuss later, and one other thing that I'm worried about. Could you help me out with that?

Do you know Portuguese? Tormenta is a Brazillian setting that has those since around 1990~. It's called Tapista and is nearly exactly what you are trying to do.

[HeadlessMermaid]

Perfect! This works especially well for a female minotaur NPC idea I had, a Monstromancer (Think Fleshwarper, but expanded to a full class and not just using Aberrant grafts) defector from the corrupt and decaying Minotaur Empire whose backstory includes severe body-image issues.

But I'm still looking for those interesting organized-crime-related tidbits to add to the Undead Mafia. Anybody have anything that could be fun to add?

Glad to be of help.

About the Mafia,are you looking specifically for intimidation/torture/execution methods? (You mentioned neckties and such.) All that comes to mind is a custom where prisoners of higher status forcibly applied very degrading tattoos to other prisoners. They functioned partly like branding: "this guy here is (for example) a snitch, so don't trust him and make his life in prison living hell". It could plausibly work outside prison, too.

(There's a very interesting book with drawings of Russian prison tattoos, and scans are floating around on tumblr. I don't dare link it, because it's really, really inappropriate...)

I know a couple of things about the customs, culture and organization of the Italian Mafia - but not torture techniques and such. Also, I'm not at all sure if they could apply to undead. It's all very... human. This sort of Mafia is run for (insane amounts of) profit and it's run ruthlessly - but it couldn't possibly exist without the concept of kinship and familial ties among its rank and file. It goes beyond mere loyalty (which could be attributed to undead), it's very, um, emotional. So let me know if such sociological observations would be useful - or if you're just researching the enforcement part, in which case I won't be of much help. :)

[tbok1992]

Glad to be of help.

About the Mafia,are you looking specifically for intimidation/torture/execution methods? (You mentioned neckties and such.) All that comes to mind is a custom where prisoners of higher status forcibly applied very degrading tattoos to other prisoners. They functioned partly like branding: "this guy here is (for example) a snitch, so don't trust him and make his life in prison living hell". It could plausibly work outside prison, too.

(There's a very interesting book with drawings of Russian prison tattoos, and scans are floating around on tumblr. I don't dare link it, because it's really, really inappropriate...)

I know a couple of things about the customs, culture and organization of the Italian Mafia - but not torture techniques and such. Also, I'm not at all sure if they could apply to undead. It's all very... human. This sort of Mafia is run for (insane amounts of) profit and it's run ruthlessly - but it couldn't possibly exist without the concept of kinship and familial ties among its rank and file. It goes beyond mere loyalty (which could be attributed to undead), it's very, um, emotional. So let me know if such sociological observations would be useful - or if you're just researching the enforcement part, in which case I won't be of much help. :)

Well, it's not just torture I'm looking for, but weird hideouts, weird methods of committing crimes, weird kit-bashed weaponry, weird products for smuggling, just anything bizarre enough to add from the history of real organized crime (And not just the mafia, but also the Triads, Tongs, Yakuza or any organized crime syndicate from anywhere at any time).

And I think I'd adapt the "Prison-tatoos-o-shame" concept as various embarassing undead grafts for those who screw up or piss off one of the higher-ups, like a skeletal hand that keeps slapping its owner in the face or a grafted head that recites your infractions in embarassing levels of detail, or a little black-slime-squirting tumor.

[Vaz]

Aside from listening to Jedward for hours on ebd, one of the more "interesting" tortures that I have heard of is "sandboarsing" - while I originally got it from a video game (Spec Ops the Line), I think a similar process could be applied; mud-boarding, hell, even vermin-boarding being fantasy; trying to "drown" someone in maggots/larvae/worms/crickets/earwigs sounds like a particularly disgusting way to go.

There is the ever effective waking up with a horses head in your bed; doubly so when this head starts moving around of its own accord on severed arteries etc.

[Inglenook]

Some of the grodier forms of torture (and/or execution?):

• Brazen bull. A large, hollow, bronze bull with a door to place the victim inside. A fire is lit underneath it, and the person inside is roasted alive. Has tubes that magnify the victim's screams and makes it sound like roaring of a bull. The story goes that the inventor waxed rhapsodic about the sound, and the ruler who commissioned it was so disgusted that he tested the bull out right then and there on its own creator.
• Scaphism. The victim is tied up to a tree or in a boat, fed until they, um, excrete all over themselves, and are then covered in honey and left there. Insects are drawn by the smell and slowly eat the person alive over the next few days.
• The wheel. The victim is lashed to a wheel, and then all their limbs are broken with clubs. If they're not finished off, it could take them days of hanging there to die.
• Rats. This made a recent (and gruesome) appearance on Game of Thrones. Basically they take a jar with a rat inside, place the open end against the victim's belly, and apply heat to the back of the jar. To escape, the heat, the rat tears into the victim's stomach and eats them alive from the inside.
• Judas Cradle. Methods vary, but they usually involve being forced to sit on a wide, sharp, pyramidal block, until you were impaled by your own weight. Oh, and they never washed it, so if you somehow survived, you died of blood poisoning anyway.
• Sawing. The victim is tied upside down with their legs spread, and then two people begin sawing at the victim's, um, grundle, working their way down to the head. Because the victim is upside down, they don't bleed out as quickly, and they could often stay alive until the saw hit the sternum.

Aaaaaand … I've grossed myself out.

[tbok1992]

Keep in mind, I'm not just asking about weird torture (Though what Historias said would be good basises for new undead, and I already do have an idea for the Brazen Bull for the Minotaur civilization) of the undead mafia, but weird anything relating to Organized crime, like weird headquarters, weird people, weird kitbashed weapons, weird things to smuggle, weird plans, and so on.

[Eric Tolle]

To revisit this old question...

At 1000 meters depth, water pressure is about 100 kg/cm² or 1,500 psi. That's about the output of a moderate size pressure washer. But those things are tiny. With portals, you could have a jet of water several meters accross.
If the portal is 1m in diameter, that would be 20.000 kg of force pushing on whatever the water hits. That's about three elephants. Make it 5m in diameter and you get 500.000 kg. That's about two fully grown blue whales.

Is this taking into account the gravitational potential difference? My view is that it wouldn't come out at all, due to the difference in height and related potential energy. As an equivalent thought experiment, imagine a 1 meter wide unbreakable tube filled with air extended a thousand meters into the ocean. Now open the bottom. Will water jet out of the top with a force of 20,000 kg? If not, why expect a portal to similarly ignore potential energy differences?

I was thinking about this because of a silly SF story I read once where the heroes refilled the air in their spaceship by extending a tube into the atmosphere and letting the tanks just fill up.

[Ksheep]

To revisit this old question...



Is this taking into account the gravitational potential difference? My view is that it wouldn't come out at all, due to the difference in height and related potential energy. As an equivalent thought experiment, imagine a 1 meter wide unbreakable tube filled with air extended a thousand meters into the ocean. Now open the bottom. Will water jet out of the top with a force of 20,000 kg? If not, why expect a portal to similarly ignore potential energy differences?

I was thinking about this because of a silly SF story I read once where the heroes refilled the air in their spaceship by extending a tube into the atmosphere and letting the tanks just fill up.

I don't think the tube analogy would be equivalent, if you are using some sort of portal device. Yes, if you had a tube open on both ends, the level in the tube would be equal to that of the surface of the water. However, if you think of a portal as skipping the intervening distance through null space, then it would be more like bringing the top portal directly to the bottom portal.

As an example, lets say that the top portal is at sea level. Now, lets take that area directly around the portal and "cap" it (if it were your earlier example, making it so the tube was only open on the bottom end, effectively making a barometer). Easiest way to show this would be to take a cup or a glass, and hold it upside down at the surface of the water. It is now holding the air at the pressure present at the surface. Due to the difference of density between air and water, so long as the glass is held vertical, but upside down, the air will remain inside.

Now, lets lower the glass down to the level of the lower portal. As we get further and further down, the increase of pressure of the water will compress the air. Soon, the glass will be half full of water, but it will have the same amount of air in it. Then, it'll be 2/3rds full… and 3/4ers full. Pretty soon, there will appear to be very little air left, because of the difference in pressure between the top portal and the bottom. Now, if we just passed the cup through the bottom portal back to the top, it'll be nothing but air again (assuming somehow that there isn't a geyser of water shooting out of it… lets just say that this bottom portal will only allow the glass and it's contents for the time being).

Because the portal is going through null space, we can say that the bottom portal has the same pressure as the atmosphere around the top portal, while the top portal has the same pressure as the bottom portal. This pressure difference will effectively act as a syphon pump, but due to it's nature it does not have to worry about having the source end at a higher area than the destination, as it doesn't work on gravitational differences due to utilizing null space.

[Andreaz]

It's a closed system. At the portal you have two conditions. On one side you have high pressure water, and on the other you have low pressure air. High Pressure fluid flows towards flow pressure area.

The tube example doesn't contradict the portal at all: At any given height (depth), you have pressure being applied on either side. It's different from the portal because you have to actually walk the entire distance between the two surfaces, spreading the pressure difference in a (mathematically infinite) gradient.

[Eric Tolle]

The thing is though, you're getting the pressure differential because of a gravitational potential difference. Whether you're using a tube or a portal, you're still moving water a thousand or more feet up. Frankly if you can ignore the potential energy difference, you might as well ignore the pressure difference as well, because physics doesn't apply.

[TuggyNE]

because physics doesn't apply.

Basically.

Magic is great at selectively enforcing physics, although taking it to its full logical conclusions usually ends poorly.

[hymer]

I could really use some suggestions. I'm designing a region which is based pretty much on mythological Scandinavia but with less ships. I'm putting a trading port on its shore, where the locals go to peddle their wares with the more civilized people, who have set up the city for this very purpose.
I could really use some good ideas for things you could get in a cold, mountainous region, which are

A: Sufficiently lucrative that setting up the harbour in the first place makes sense.
B: Not critically important for pseudo-medieval society to function. The harbour was set up not too long ago, and the civilized world had existed for while before that.
C: Could be gotten hold of and transported by a rugged and scattered people.

Any and all suggestions appreciated. I've already got timber (doesn't really qualify alone on any count) and fur (which does better, but probably isn't enough on its own).

[ShadowFireLance]

Question:
In a World full of about 99% Predetors, How long would one estimate they would Hunt for the remaining 1% Prey before they attacked each other?

[Spiryt]

Ivory from walruses, narwhals and similar, possibly fantasy creatures would be good choice, together with seal, whale etc. fat, and oils in general.

[TheWombatOfDoom]

Question:
In a World full of about 99% Predetors, How long would one estimate they would Hunt for the remaining 1% Prey before they attacked each other?

What you fail to realize is that predators are prey to larger predators. So unless the entire world were the same creature save 1%. If that were the case, then the world was 100% prey and 99% predators.

[hymer]

Question:
In a World full of about 99% Predetors, How long would one estimate they would Hunt for the remaining 1% Prey before they attacked each other?

Predators, if we're talking animal intelligence, usually attack anything they think they can kill and eat so long as they're hungry. They sometimes kill for less reason. Crocodiles don't lie in wait and let a hyena cross the river unmolested because it's hoping to get some zebra later on.

@ Spiryt: Good ones, thanks.

[ShadowFireLance]

No, Sorry I did not put this in, But Near Human level, Like say...Ape?
More like They know anthor being is a Predetor, But About their power level, and as such, would be a waste of time to attack it.

[Aux-Ash]

I could really use some suggestions. I'm designing a region which is based pretty much on mythological Scandinavia but with less ships. I'm putting a trading port on its shore, where the locals go to peddle their wares with the more civilized people, who have set up the city for this very purpose.
I could really use some good ideas for things you could get in a cold, mountainous region, which are

A: Sufficiently lucrative that setting up the harbour in the first place makes sense.
B: Not critically important for pseudo-medieval society to function. The harbour was set up not too long ago, and the civilized world had existed for while before that.
C: Could be gotten hold of and transported by a rugged and scattered people.

Any and all suggestions appreciated. I've already got timber (doesn't really qualify alone on any count) and fur (which does better, but probably isn't enough on its own).

Fish. Dried, salted, pickled, treated with lye. Good solid food that lasts for a long time. Always a commodity valuable for traders (if for nothing else to feed it's own staff).

Metals. Mountainous regions tend to have them, and regions which have been exposed to massive icesheets due to ice ages tend to have them more easily exposed.

Slaves. Especially in cultures with an inclination for raiding, slaves are easily available and a valuable resource.

Tar. It's made by boiling the roots of the dominant type of tree in a scandinavian climate. Really useful for building reliable ships.

Alcohol. Any local variety that exists will also be sold as a commodity.

Any craft produced by the locals. Jewelry, pottery, weapons, armour, clothing, carpets, rope, boats, tools and so on.

[hymer]

@ ShadowFireLance: They'd gang up on it and ambush it when they got hungry enough. It being a predator wouldn't factor into it, only how dangerous it's thought to be. Apes would be more likely to attack a small predator than something like an elephant, even though elephants aren't predators.
I don't think there's a general rule of thumb on when desperation due to hunger sets in across species.
This is assuming they even encounter each other. Take away nearly all the non-predators, and the world suddenly gets pretty empty, and the number of predators would fall dramatically in just a week or so - they'd die of hunger.

@ Aux-Ash: Thanks! I guess some particular metal that's never been seen in civilized lands before is a pretty good excuse to build the harbour, and all that other stuff can get tacked on as the place becomes a general trading town.

[ShadowFireLance]

Well, Im going to have fun with that...

[Aux-Ash]

@ Aux-Ash: Thanks! I guess some particular metal that's never been seen in civilized lands before is a pretty good excuse to build the harbour, and all that other stuff can get tacked on as the place becomes a general trading town.

Well yes... but far more mundane metal also works. Remember, just not access to but the quantity also matters. It could be regular iron, but another source of irons means the possibility of expanding industry or undercutting opponents. Kind of like opening new factories or discovering new sources of oil today.

Just the availability of metal for sale alone should in sufficient quantities be enough to fund a small trade office that eventually expands into a port and then ventually a city.

[hymer]

Only that entails a level of culture I don't want in the region. It's supposed to be pretty barbaric, so I don't want a lot of mines and smelteries and stuff. But thanks anyway! :)

@ Craft (Cheese): No idea if you'll be reading this. Thick clouds would actually cause the temperature near earth's surface to drop markedly (like nuclear winter). Nearly all earth's surface heat comes from sunlight hitting the surface and being absorbed there, turning the energy into heat. If no light comes in, no heat comes in. Though the clouds would reduce heat loss compared to a normal situation, that would not be anywhere near enough to compensate for the almost complete loss of light in the lower atmosphere.