Ask your geography, geology, meteorology, anthropology, and related questions here!

[Carl]

Well to be fair a few million was an exaggeration to make the point. 300 years simply isn't long enough, period.

[brian 333]

If people lived on mars for 300 years without leaving, would their skin change color?
If so, to what?

Actually, yes, it would. You see, Mars receives about the same solar radiation at the surface that Earth does, due to the much reduced atmosphere of Mars. Therefore people would have to remain indoors unless wearing full body pressure suits. Therefore people would only receive ultraviolet light via their daily sunlamp baths. Therefore everyone, no matter his ethnic background, would become paler almost immediately because a large factor in skin color is tanning. Within a year paleness would dominate every racial skin tone. Africans on Mars would be dark-skinned, but not as dark as an African who grew up on Earth and had daily sun his whole life. Russians, on the other hand, might only look a little paler than their Earthly comrades.

Of course, vampires would love life on Mars. Everyone in closed spaces incapable of finding safety in sunlight? The problem there would be that very soon everyone would be a vampire. Well, there is no Utopia, apparently.

[Carl]

Therefore everyone, no matter his ethnic background, would become paler almost immediately because a large factor in skin color is tanning.

I assumed he was asking about genetics style skin color changes, tanning should i hope be obvious...

[Yora]

Genetic changes are rather unlikely. Useless traits don't disappear from a species genes until they are replaced by a more advantageous trait. Unless decreased melanin production provides any improved chances to survivial and reproduction (and the survival of the populations young, an often overlooked factor in evolution), the genetic information will remain the same, and any future individuals that move to earth will most likely gain the same color as people who never left. (Or at the very least, their Earth-born children will. Not being exposed to sunlight as children could hypotheically cause the mechanism for tanning to never correctly develop in a person.)

[Corneel]

Hi there everyone!

I have a couple of questions, first of all does anyone know of a source of how earth would look in a really long time? I'm thinking of writing a sci fi piece where the original homeworld has been lost in the memory of the space faring civilization and it is now colonized again. I'm personally partial to the Pangaea ultima theory thing, because Madagascar is in such a perfect place to be the capital of the Empire and wreck a space ship... but other ideas would be pretty great.

<snip>

Maybe a bit late but you could have look at "The Future is Wild" site, which looks how life on earth might evolve 5 million, 100 million and 200 million years in the future (and in the absence of humans). It also shows how the continents rearrange.
Wikipage
Homepage

ETA: it seems they drastically reduced available content on their site, so I add the wiki

[thethird]

Maybe a bit late but you could have look at "The Future is Wild" site, which looks how life on earth might evolve 5 million, 100 million and 200 million years in the future (and in the absence of humans). It also shows how the continents rearrange.
Wikipage
Homepage

ETA: it seems they drastically reduced available content on their site, so I add the wiki

Awesome, thanks! I happened to find the series so I'll make sure to look at it.

[zabbarot]

@ SirKazum

I just want to clear somethings up here...

Regarding using a dwarf star, i did consider that, but before it become a dwarf and star goes through a red giant phase, anything out to the habitable orbit of the star pre-red giant gets vaporized, their wouldn't be anything left to of the world.

I just want to point out that not only are there planets orbiting red dwarf stars, but there are earth-like planets orbiting red dwarfs, and red dwarfs are one of the best hopes for finding life.

Regarding runaway greenhouse effects. Venus was virtually 100% water coverage, the problem is steam is actually a really good greenhouse gases so if evaporation beats precipitation bam, runaway greenhouse, Venus's atmosphere is only CO[superscript]2[/superscript] now because it has no atmosphere and thus the solar wind broke it down into oxygen and hydrogen, the hydrogen evaporated off into space and the oxygen reacted with the carbon on the surface.

The water point is important for preventing seasonal effects and night time from creating too large a variance in temperature to be habitable. it can't stop a planet getting really really hot because it's too close to it's star.

First off, only trace amounts of water have been found on Venus and there is nothing to suggest it had 100% water coverage. It might have had oceans, but that's speculation. And the greenhouse effect is a quite a bit more complicated than you're putting it. Here is a really in depth explanation of what we think happened to Venus. Venus not having water in it's atmosphere now is because the atmosphere became warm enough that it didn't precipitate and instead reached the upper atmosphere where solar radiation broke the H2O down and basically blew the hydrogen away. The traces we find that even suggest water are deuterium which is just a bit to heavy to easily escape the atmosphere.

But these things don't directly effect a tidally locked planet because unlike Venus, this planet has a massive ice cap that won't be so easily overcome because it never sees the sun. The wind patterns that you've discussed help negate the loss of gaseous water to the upper atmosphere because of the cooling effect from that icecap, and in turn help keep the water cycle stable. Also, again, we aren't assuming that this planet is really close to a star like Sol, we're assuming a much dimmer red/brown dwarf(on the large end for brown).

Really you need water. It's the easiest way to write of one of the other major hurdles for tidally locked planets which I mentioned earlier. Basically only one point on your planet is weathering (the land at the subsolar point), and this can lead to incredibly unstable temperature variations. In the end the planet swings wildly from one end to the other and eventually either loses all it's atmosphere or ends up with a superheated, dense atmosphere like Venus. You don't have to make it a water world, I just thought that would be neat, but if you make it a desert it will be Mars (no atmosphere at all. probably).

[Carl]

I just want to point out that not only are there planets orbiting red dwarf stars, but there are earth-like planets orbiting red dwarfs, and red dwarfs are one of the best hopes for finding life.

Care to source that. he fact that the sun will expand past or approximately to earths orbit, (there's still some debate on that), is well established. There's simply no way for an earth like planet, (assuming by earth like you mean in the habitable zone), could survive that. Grav Capture could do it, but that would be astonishingly rare.

First off, only trace amounts of water have been found on Venus and there is nothing to suggest it had 100% water coverage. It might have had oceans, but that's speculation. And the greenhouse effect is a quite a bit more complicated than you're putting it. Here is a really in depth explanation of what we think happened to Venus. Venus not having water in it's atmosphere now is because the atmosphere became warm enough that it didn't precipitate and instead reached the upper atmosphere where solar radiation broke the H2O down and basically blew the hydrogen away. The traces we find that even suggest water are deuterium which is just a bit to heavy to easily escape the atmosphere.

I'm simplifying down to bare basics and explaining what is the best regarded theory, though i meant to say magnetic field and ozone layer (which I've heard stated as key points in the breakdown process), not atmosphere on the "no X" comment, tired when writing that, sorry. I do have a number of sourcebooks on this stuff btw, i just rarely bother to get more technical than i have to unless asked specifically for it or it requires a really technical answer.

Your point on the tidal lock may be valid. But i'm not convinced. Planets are fairly complicated things, but traditionally heat radiation rate is a factor of temperature differential and the composition of the radiating object. An icy pole would radiate more slowly than a hot one basically, and a dark side shouldn't radiate any faster because it's rotating than it should since it's tidally locked.

Runaway greenhouse quite simply is about getting the absorption rate to exceed the radiance rate.

The other point is that he was talking of placing it in the habitable range for a dwarf star. That's going to be really close, without looking up specific values i'm not sure on the precise value's, but i'd guess quite a bit closer than Venus is today.

[zabbarot]

Care to source that. he fact that the sun will expand past or approximately to earths orbit, (there's still some debate on that), is well established. There's simply no way for an earth like planet, (assuming by earth like you mean in the habitable zone), could survive that. Grav Capture could do it, but that would be astonishingly rare.

There are other ways for dwarf stars to form. Yes, all large stars eventually collapse into, but not all stars start out large. Brown dwarfs in particular never even have the critical mass necessary to start the Hydrogen fusion reaction that powers our sun. Here's a source for my statement about red dwarfs being a good source to look for life, though I guess I should clarify that that is partially because it's easier to find planets that orbit red dwarfs because of their shorter orbits.

I'm simplifying down to bare basics and explaining what is the best regarded theory, though i meant to say magnetic field and ozone layer (which I've heard stated as key points in the breakdown process), not atmosphere on the "no X" comment, tired when writing that, sorry. I do have a number of sourcebooks on this stuff btw, i just rarely bother to get more technical than i have to unless asked specifically for it or it requires a really technical answer.

And that's fine, but you can simplify things until they are no longer correct.

Your point on the tidal lock may be valid. But i'm not convinced. Planets are fairly complicated things, but traditionally heat radiation rate is a factor of temperature differential and the composition of the radiating object. An icy pole would radiate more slowly than a hot one basically, and a dark side shouldn't radiate any faster because it's rotating than it should since it's tidally locked.

Runaway greenhouse quite simply is about getting the absorption rate to exceed the radiance rate.

We're arguing two different things here I think. I was saying that the ice cap helps keep gaseous water from reaching the upper atmosphere because it can cool it and force precipitation. This has the effect of keeping the water cycle moving, and not letting too much water get trapped in the atmosphere. Also water has a very high specific heat so the more there is the better the planet should do as the water currents cycle from the day side to the night side.

If you really want to get into thermodynamics heat radiation based on difference of temperature is a function of closed systems, which the planet isn't. The thermal energy is being radiated into space as infrared radiation. Yes, at it's base the greenhouse effect is just about absorbing more heat than you can get rid of, but like you said, "planets are fairly complicated."

The other point is that he was talking of placing it in the habitable range for a dwarf star. That's going to be really close, without looking up specific values i'm not sure on the precise value's, but i'd guess quite a bit closer than Venus is today.

A tidally locked planet orbiting a red dwarf in the habitable zone would have an orbit smaller than Mercury's around our sun. This isn't relevant to your point though, because the reason the habitable zone is that close to the star is because the star radiates that much less heat and light than our star. It isn't going to be hotter than Mercury just because it's closer. It's like the difference between standing a foot from a bonfire versus a foot from a candle.

[brian 333]

I would like to point out that planets may not need water on them originally to have water on them now. One way water could have been introduced after a planet has formed is via cometary bombardment.

The total volume of Earth's oceans is a sphere about 420 miles in radius, which is smaller than Charon, but about the size of the largest known centaur, (supermassive comet.) A single massive hit after the sun collapsed from red giant phase upon a tidally locked inner planet may have resulted in both altering its orbit and providing it with the water and hydrocarbons it needed to begin the evolution of life. I prefer several hits by smaller objects, and orbital capture and decay as opposed to direct strikes, but that is my preference.

One thing not mentioned in this discussion is the effects of solar radiation upon a world with no magnetosphere. Much of the stellar radiation is deflected by Earth's 'force field', the effects of which can be seen in the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis. I didn't reflect on it in my original thesis, mostly because I wasn't thinking about the star itself, but the world. But water is a great insulator and it is also a very good means of absorbing radiation and deflecting sub-atomic particles. I hypothesize the volume of water vapor in the upper atmosphere acts as a radiation shield and heat sink, allowing the sun's heat to be more evenly distributed. It would also, by capturing charged particles from the solar wind, drag them from pole to pole, creating a small magnetosphere which would further deflect and capture particles which would strengthen the magnetosphere. (Rather than Earth's internal dymano core, this world would rely upon an external linear accelerator effect to charge its iron core.)

Edited because someone can't tell his diameter from his radius.

[SirKazum]

While that "water vapor shield" idea sounds interesting, I don't know if the atmosphere would have that much water vapor going around unless the planet's temperature was way too high to begin with. Otherwise (with a livable temperature), it would simply precipitate and rain down. Then again, we are talking about a planet with a huge temperature differential... maybe the water simply evaporates in the sunward side, generating vapor in the sunlit area, which helps shield against solar radiation, and then gets carted off to the colder parts of the planet by the wind currents, where it precipitates as rain or snow.

There's still the problem of snow falling on the "night" side and the moisture just staying there, essentially forever, as ice, thereby reducing the total amount of freely-circulating water on the planet, which would make everything worse... but then again, maybe that's exactly what's happening. Maybe that's why there's so little liquid surface water on the planet and such a massive ice shelf (as per the map); maybe life evolved in this planet ages ago, under more favorable conditions, but then this trapping of moisture as "night-side" ice has been making the planet's weather worse, and it will be completely unlivable in a few million years (or maybe even sooner), barring some terraforming. That raises some interesting possibilities...

That would mean, of course, that something changed more or less recently, in geological terms anyway. Maybe the tidal locking itself is relatively recent, with days growing longer and longer over time, until the planet's rotation finally "locks" in with its yearly period. Even a very long apparent day (as in the period the sun takes to move around the sky, from the ground's perspective, which in this case would be different from the planet's rotation period) would still allow for more varied weather, so maybe the water-trapping runaway effect wouldn't take place until the tidal lock really set in for good. Which would allow us time for life to evolve in a planet that's fast on the way to becoming unlivable. That make any sense?

(btw, in this setting, the main population in the planet in question came in from elsewhere, but there had to be intelligent life in there before... as their method for finding habitable planets involves using psychics to detect intelligent life in outer space.)

[brian 333]

Ice is a wonderful insulator, which is why Eskimos build igloos. Ice is also very heavy and not very strong. When it gets stacked over a certain height, compression and friction generate heat. This occurs in Antarctica where the ice sits on rock, and it occurs more quickly beneath moving glaciers. A mountain of ice will not grow beyond a certain size before it forces itself to squeeze away from its center or melt from beneath due to the crushing weight above it and the lack of tensile strength of the ice itself.

In my proposed scenario the ice cap was surrounded by an ocean, almost certainly formed by the ice itself scraping away at the rock over the eons. This ocean would have the dual role of transporting warm surface waters into the frigid zone and allowing the transport of nearly frozen meltwater away from beneath the ice cap, creating a more or less upper limit to the mass of the ice which would grow and shrink based on periodic solar variability.

Note that we know of exactly one other waterworld: Europa. While what we know is as yet mostly speculative, we do know that Europa has a liquid ocean beneath its ice crust, which is six miles thick. The ocean is another 60 miles or so deep. Since Europa has almost no atmosphere, all liquid water either freezes or sublimates when exposed to the surface, and is then split by stellar radiation into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen blows away almost immediately leaving a tenuous oxygen envelope around the moon. Gravity on Europa is somewhat less than on Earth's Moon.

[zabbarot]

Brian makes some good points. With enough water I think your planet will be stable and habitable for a very long time, so the tidal locking doesn't need to be recent, even on a geological time scale. Glaciers and just the weight of the ice forcing it to melt should be enough to keep all the water from accumulating on one side of the planet. It adds some neat features to your habitable ring around the planet too. You have this advancing glacial wall that breaks and melts as it reaches the warmer side of the planet. It's pretty cool.

I still suggest a water world, but that's mostly because I think it's awesome. If you've got around 70% water coverage like earth, it should be pretty stable, hellish at times, but stable.

[Carl]

@zabbarot:

1. Ok went digging through the wiki. looks like i need to go update my stellar sourcebooks, (admittedly they are rather old, dating mostly from between 80 and 90, fortunately my solar systems ones are rather newer). They only talk about stars down to the range where they do go through a red giant phase, albeit only a hydrogen based one.

Fair's fair on that one. There is a narrow range of red dwarf's that burn without a reg giant phase and that burn long enough at a stable radiance that you could get the tidal locking effect.

2. Aside from a typo nothing i said about venus was actually inaccurate.

3. Your missing the point there. All the ice in the world mans nothing because if that ice isn't re-radiating all the excess heat it absorbs via that cooling of the air moving around the planet from the hot pole. If it can't it eventually melts. Or more likely never forms since in the early planet formation the star will likely have lit off before the planet properly cools from the early bombardment phase.

Also complicated doesn't mean violates laws of physics. Heat Differential and reflective properties are going to set an upper limit on heat transfer off the planet. There isn't really any purely physics advantage to the tidal lock setup, or given solar radiation isn't hitting it at all, all the ice. Basically if the system isn't heat stable without the water and ice then they're just giant heatsinks that will eventually be overloaded.

[avr]

A tidally locked world is most stable when the mass is concentrated about the poles facing directly towards and away from the star, i.e. any oceans are most likely to be around the terminator.

One feature of tidal locking which doesn't get mentioned a lot is libration. Tidal locking isn't an all or nothing affair, even once the day and the year become the same length there can be some rocking back and forth - the terminator isn't quite fixed. Libration is barely detectable on Earth's Moon but could be more significant on an alien world. It would be most noticeable on the equator and zero at the poles.

[zabbarot]

@Carl:
Here you go, a peer reviewed paper from the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. If you still have reason to argue after reading this, I bow to your superior desire to be right.

[SirKazum]

I remember the explanation of rivers running out from under the glacier due to crushing-generated heat in the thread I inadvertently made about this. That's a cool idea, and I'd definitely like to use it.

I didn't know about the libration effect... and it shows that both eccentricity and axial tilt are definitely possible in a tidally-locked body. Hmm, seems New Eugeron will have some luminosity variations close to the terminator after all.

Again, thanks all for the feedback! You guys are awesome.

[brian 333]

I remember the explanation of rivers running out from under the glacier due to crushing-generated heat in the thread I inadvertently made about this. That's a cool idea, and I'd definitely like to use it...

If your glacier sits on land the meltwater will be in huge, blue-white rivers which chew their way through mountains and deserts to make their way to the sea, (or evaporate before they get to it.) These rivers will quickly pick up debris, dirt, and virtually anything which stands in their way, rapidly becoming colored by the soil through which they travel, and by the life which thrives in their violent channels. As they wend their way through river basins they carve meandering courses which over time chew up the land until it is a flat plain loaded with fertile soil and organic debris. If they do not ever reach a sea, you can look to the Okavango Delta for an example of the terrain they would create as the last of the powerful river's waters evaporate.

In this scenario you would see little in the way of floods in an annual cycle, but perhaps the evolving underside of the ice traps vast lakes which generate massive floods when they break free, or perhaps the river's source finds another outlet and the original river system is abandoned leaving a chain of oxbow lakes like Australian billabongs.

I have already described the situation if the glacier were situated on or in a sea in my original post on this topic.

The paper cited above brings up an important point, in that a planet rotating a star will still have a rotating atmosphere which will distort the winds and currents to a degree depending upon the speed of its orbit. I had assumed a moonless planet more-or-less in the range of Earth from a Sol-like star in my original thesis. However, according to that paper the temperature variations from dark-side to light-side will range from about -30F (-33C) to 116F (47C) assuming the same amount of stellar energy Earth receives from Sol. Aside from radiation affects, humans could survive there.

[Ursus the Grim]

I think this is a pretty simple thought experiment, at least compared to some of what's been asked.

Premise: This setting takes place on an island/continent roughly the size, latitude, and longitude, of the USA East Coast, from New England (Maine) to Florida. However, there is no land West of the Appalachians. How would the climate change? What might your typical vanilla D&D setting have cause to war over? My geology is incredibly neglected, so I should have been able to figure this out, but if the rest of North America never formed, how close to the Appalachians could the pacific get?

[Jendekit]

...there is no land West of the Appalachians...if the rest of North America never formed, how close to the Appalachians could the pacific get?

I can't answer the climate questions, but for the last question you already answered it. If there's no land west of the Appalachians, then the Pacific ends on the west side of that mountain range.

[brian 333]

The Eastern US is a forest. One single forest. The reason it is a forest is that this is a very wet region of the planet.

In a nutshell, here is what happens:
Coriolis winds flow from West to East across North America. The Rocky Mountains are high enough to create a Rainshadow, and this after the Cascades and Sierras create a Rainshadow along the Pacific Coast. This generates a situation in which either sub-polar jet streams meander South, or sub-tropical jet streams meander North across the Great Plains.

The wetter sub-polar air brings rain, (or more often snow,) while the sub-tropical air brings heat and on an annual monsoon cycle, vast thunderstorms. These storms sweep from West to East across the Great Plains creating vast counter-clockwise rotations in the atmosphere. This is where the good part comes in.

You see, right on the boundary between the Western flowing tropical air mass to the south and the Eastern flowing temperate air mass that dominates central North America, there is the relatively shallow and very warm Gulf of Mexico. Heat and warm water generate a lot of water vapor in the air over the Gulf, and as counter-clockwise rotating storms sweep East, they suck air northward along their 'front'. This air is heavily laden with moisture, which cools and precipitates along the frontal boundary from the Gulf Coast to Canada. Basically, anything East of the Mississippi River is going to get a crapload of rain on an annual average.

This results in a differential of about 30 inches of rain a year between the Western states and the Eastern ones, (30 inches or less in the West, and 60 or more inches in the East.) Some parts of the Gulf Coast receive over 100 inches of rain, (my hometown of New Orleans being in that region,) and relative humidity all along the region is horrendous as compared to the West. Only the Northern Pacific Coast gets more rain, and this is caused, as I said earlier, by the Rainshadow effect of the Coastal Ranges.

What Rainshadow is is that when an air mass is shoved upwards it cools, and warm air holds moisture better than cool air. Any vapor in the air condenses and precipitates out, and what goes over the mountains is dry air. So on the windward side of mountains you have very wet conditions, and on the leeward side of mountains you have very dry conditions. Eastern and Western Washington are effectively two different states due to this.

So, we apply it to your proposed continent. If its terrain is exactly like North America, with a thick, broad chain of low, weathered mountains with flat river valleys between them and an ancient forest of scrub oak dug into its crown, it will be only a marginally effective rainshield. Most of the Appalachian Chain is simply too low to effectively generate a rainshadow. However, it does generate enough of an effect to cause turbulence which results in frequent showers, which would tend to maintain aquifers which are the headwaters of rivers, (unless farmers have learned to pump the aquifers out for crop irrigation...)

Now the real questions begin: does your Western Ocean have a cold arctic current running south along it? Is there a massively cold sub-arctic zone just north of it which can generate a temperature differential large enough to maintain a polar ice cap? Is there a warm shallow sea south of it to generate a massive volume of water vapor in the air? All of these conditions are required for the wetness of the Eastern Seaboard of the US. Consider that New Orleans receives 100+ inches of rain in a dry year, while Cairo Egypt receives less than 1, (yes, that's ONE inch of rain a year!) and both lie 30 degrees North of the Equator. (Egypt and New Orleans have another thing in common, and that is that the Sahara Desert affects both of their climates, but I'll let you discover the connection on your own!)

So, to answer your question: the climate of any region is dependent upon many other factors, including the climates of the regions around them and of the world overall. There was a time, in the Carboniferous Period, when the land mass which was to become North America was about the size you want, but it was lodged firmly in the Tropics in a much warmer and wetter world. This was the age of America's great coal deposits, and vast forests and swamps covered the land as the continents collided to create Pangea, (and incidentally to create some of the mountain groups which are now known as the Appalachians.)

[Melzentir]

Hello,

I'm making typical D&D world though with slightly less magic (there's still wizards and dragons) and more GoT-style political depth and gruesome combat (permanent injuries). I want to divide a Kingdom in about a half- to a dozen provinces and have some very basic economy going on between each of them, both over land and sea.

I'm planning on implementing about 15 different resources (iron, wheat, cloth, leather, fish and so on). A pine-filled mountainous province may produce for example 2 units of iron, 1 fur and 2 logs. I'd much like to know where my dwarves will be digging up coal, copper, iron, silver and gold. Instead of each mine just pumping out 20% of each, I want at least some vague semblance of realism to know where each of these materials come from. I've played Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress, but this thread seems quite promising.


TLDR: Where and how deep can I find coal, copper, iron, silver and gold? Info will be used for inter-kingdom trade and also dungeon and location design. Possibly player crafting.

P.S. this entire thread is much appreciated, thank you all for partaking in it.

[avr]

I think this is a pretty simple thought experiment, at least compared to some of what's been asked.

Premise: This setting takes place on an island/continent roughly the size, latitude, and longitude, of the USA East Coast, from New England (Maine) to Florida. However, there is no land West of the Appalachians. How would the climate change? What might your typical vanilla D&D setting have cause to war over? My geology is incredibly neglected, so I should have been able to figure this out, but if the rest of North America never formed, how close to the Appalachians could the pacific get?

The Pacific ocean ridges have been creating new crust for a very long time. They can easily fill the gap you describe with oceanic crust.

Now, if that oceanic crust is being subducted beneath the Appalachians they will be quite a bit taller and more volcanic than in RL.

There are already minerals in those mountains D&D-landers might war over, a few volcanoes and more rising and folding of the terrain will only make that more so.

[Ursus the Grim]

First, thanks Brian. I am mostly going with this idea because its easier to me modify and existing thing than forging a whole world.

The Pacific ocean ridges have been creating new crust for a very long time. They can easily fill the gap you describe with oceanic crust.

Now, if that oceanic crust is being subducted beneath the Appalachians they will be quite a bit taller and more volcanic than in RL.

There are already minerals in those mountains D&D-landers might war over, a few volcanoes and more rising and folding of the terrain will only make that more so.

There's an interesting idea. Would higher Appalachians change any of the results Brian suggested? I would assume a yes. . . .

[avr]

Hello,

I'm making typical D&D world though with slightly less magic (there's still wizards and dragons) and more GoT-style political depth and gruesome combat (permanent injuries). I want to divide a Kingdom in about a half- to a dozen provinces and have some very basic economy going on between each of them, both over land and sea.

I'm planning on implementing about 15 different resources (iron, wheat, cloth, leather, fish and so on). A pine-filled mountainous province may produce for example 2 units of iron, 1 fur and 2 logs. I'd much like to know where my dwarves will be digging up coal, copper, iron, silver and gold. Instead of each mine just pumping out 20% of each, I want at least some vague semblance of realism to know where each of these materials come from. I've played Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress, but this thread seems quite promising.


TLDR: Where and how deep can I find coal, copper, iron, silver and gold? Info will be used for inter-kingdom trade and also dungeon and location design. Possibly player crafting.

P.S. this entire thread is much appreciated, thank you all for partaking in it.

You can get those minerals at any depth. Even when they form lower they can be brought to the surface by higher terrain being eroded and/or faults folding blocks of rock over or raising them up.

Copper you can get in so many places that it's the availability of tin (to make bronze) which is the real limit, at least without modern technology creating a demand for good electrical conductors. Good tin ore is relatively rare as I understand it.

Gold can be found where volcanoes have been heating groundwater - maybe not recently! Look for volcanic rocks in general.

Silver can be found in similar places to gold or mixed into some lead or copper deposits. Often it's the silver content which makes mining lead or copper economically viable.

Coal is found in old sedimentary rock. Unless there's a local shortage of wood (because of a shipbuilding boom or an industrial revolution) it will normally only be mined when it's close to the surface.

[Jendekit]

In a campaign setting that I am currently running for Pathfinder, I have introduced a new race that has an animistic, tribal culture and a deep seated hatred for dragons. As in, they hat dragons just as much if not more than dwarves hate orcs. I have their naming convention (basically that of the Avvar from Dragon Age), origin myth, racial stats, and a few different cultural features (such as having no concept of permanence and the use of tattoos to denote outsiders as worthy of respect). Since I mentioned them, I'll provide naming convention and origin myth.

In any case, what I am basically looking for are ideas to further flesh out the culture beyond just dragon hunting. Ideas?

---

Spoiler: Naming

Show

Personal names tend to be single syllable, and are followed by ba/bo (son of/daughter of) *mother's personal name* bi (child of) *clan/tribe name*. So Yok ba Tie bi Vorkka would be Yok son of Tie child of the Vorkka clan.

Spoiler: Origin Myth, could also use suggestions in fleshing it out

Show

Long ago, in an era before time was time, there was nothing. From this nothing, there was a flash of light and a clap louder than the loudest thunder. At the center of the flash and clap, the world began. This early world was not like the world today. The ground roiled, the water boiled, the air was poison, and the rain burned like liquid fire. It was in this world, that the first spirits arose.

These early spirits breathed in the poison air, and kept the poison within them when they breathed out. For age after age the world continued as such. But as it did, it slowly began to change. The world cooled, the earth settled, and the spirits unknowingly were bringing about their own end. The early spirits needed the poison in the air to live, but with each breath there was less poison in the air. Eventually, there wasn’t enough left to support the first spirits.

As the first spirits died, new ones took their place. New spirits that learned from the mistakes of their predecessors. They breathed the cleaned air, and made sure to return more of what they needed than they took. As these new spirits arose, something else new arose with them. The plants and animals that you see around you are the descendents of those that were born in this time. The plants and animals of today are not the plants and animals of that time, for all things change in time.

Ages passed, creatures were born, they lived, they bred, they died. They spirits came, lived, then went. Then, something happened unlike anything that had happened in the history of the world. A creature did something that nothing before it had done, it asked why. Building from that first intelligence, came all thinking things. Even the hated dragons owe their ability to think to this first thinking creature.

[brian 333]

There's an interesting idea. Would higher Appalachians change any of the results Brian suggested? I would assume a yes. . . .

When they were in their formative years, (as Pangea was being formed, and all the continental collisions which accompanied that event,) the Appalachians were probably the height of the Rocky Mountains. They've worn down quite a bit over the ages since. This is why they have broad flat river plains between the mountain peaks.

As to what climactic features change, this depends on the regional climate. Assume a cold Western ocean with a polar current running south along the coast: this would lend itself to a coastal rainforest similar to modern day coastal Washington/Oregon.

Immediately beyond the coastal ridges would be dry valleys. If we assume some kind of mountainous terrain to the north this dry zone might extend Eastward as far as the mountains go due to the sub-polar air mass being trapped north of this barrier. If, on the other hand, we assume no barrier, we may well have a glaciated North coast similar in appearance to modern Norway.

The south faces similar issues. Is there a warm shallow sea, or a deep cold ocean? Warm and shallow means we get more active and wetter weather, while deep and cold means we get milder temperatures and more sunshine. A deep and cold ocean south of our landmass would mean there is no Gulf Stream to bring warm waters up along the coastline both to moderate winter weather and to increase the bounty of the northern seas.

So, your proposed East Coast may well be a rainshadow desert similar to the Namib or Atacampa deserts. Look at Madagascar for an example of this kind of climate. Or it may well be very much the same as it is today with warm sub-tropical winds carrying rain Northward along the leeward flanks of the West Coast Range in the summer and cold sub-polar winds carrying freezing ice southward in the winter.

In short, it is difficult to project a continental climate because climate is a global phenomenon. To have a warm wet climate in the North is utterly dependent upon a warm shallow sea to the south. (Gulf of Mexico and Mediterranean.) In places where no such body of shallow warm water exists you have Siberia's climate in the north. In order to have drastic cold winters you must also have an ice cap. This almost certainly requires either a land-locked sea or an actual landmass upon which the ice sits, or the ice cap will be small and probably melt in summer. (Note that for most of its history Earth has had no ice caps primarily due to this feature.)

One must not forget the impact of north-south continents in the disruption of weather patterns as well. Water will tend to flow around a globe in patterns similar to the atmosphere, leading to isolated cells in the far north and south, with very slow migration over the horizontal bands. North-south continents force that water to find paths other than simple bands around the planet. It is this feature which brings the warm Gulf Stream into Ireland and Northern Europe, without which Northern Europe, and most of the northern globe, would be sheathed in ice year round. Without something to force currents to go North and South we would have very cold poles and very warm tropics with little exchange of heat between them. This would lead to a dryer atmosphere overall, and far less violent weather. Land would be mostly desert outside of the coastal zones, (like Australia.)

[Melzentir]

You can get those minerals at any depth. Even when they form lower they can be brought to the surface by higher terrain being eroded and/or faults folding blocks of rock over or raising them up.

Copper you can get in so many places that it's the availability of tin (to make bronze) which is the real limit, at least without modern technology creating a demand for good electrical conductors. Good tin ore is relatively rare as I understand it.

Gold can be found where volcanoes have been heating groundwater - maybe not recently! Look for volcanic rocks in general.

Silver can be found in similar places to gold or mixed into some lead or copper deposits. Often it's the silver content which makes mining lead or copper economically viable.

Coal is found in old sedimentary rock. Unless there's a local shortage of wood (because of a shipbuilding boom or an industrial revolution) it will normally only be mined when it's close to the surface.

Thank you very much! I'll be sure to include tin as the limiting factor to bronze, as well as making gold more common in volcanic areas. I'm actually planning on making a volcanic desert mixed race kingdom of humans, dwarves and perhaps some dragonborn, all ruled over by an ancient dragon. The desert used to be a volcanic, highly fertile jurassic park-like area, but after thousands of years of exploitation eventually turned to what it is today. Gold being prevalent in such areas? Bingo.

Mixed deposits is another interesting thing. I will do something with that. I'll combine it with the fact that only the largest of forges in barren areas will be using coal. Unless magma forges buried deep within the Dwarven Holds take over production. But that would be an enormous undertaking to construct. Talk about being economically viable.

In any case, thanks! And perhaps someone somewhere will find this link useful: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums...medieval-world

[jqavins]

A pine-filled mountainous province may produce for example 2 units of iron, 1 fur and 2 logs. I'd much like to know where my dwarves will be digging up coal, copper, iron, silver and gold.

Sounds like Dragons of Catan.

Copper you can get in so many places that it's the availability of tin (to make bronze) which is the real limit, at least without modern technology creating a demand for good electrical conductors. Good tin ore is relatively rare as I understand it.

As I understand it, bronze was (either) discovered (or invented, depending on your point of view) due to deposits that bore both copper and tin and were thus actual bronze ores. But those are rare and it was not long before it was found that the two metals could be smelted from separate ores and mixed afterword. That quickly became the common practice as tin ores, although less common than copper, are a lot more common than bronze ores.

Silver can be found in similar places to gold or mixed into some lead or copper deposits. Often it's the silver content which makes mining lead or copper economically viable.

It's really rather common for more than one metal to come from the same rocks or rock deposites, and methods have to be found to separate them, which can mean separating the different minerals before smelting, separating the metals afterward, or smelting in a manner that only yields one at a time. I've occasionally wondered if the use of magic and magicaly successful alchemy would make this enough easier to spur greater progress in metalurgy and metals production at a lower tech level than occurred in the real world, and what the industrial implications of that might be.

On another tangent, there is an interesting D&D connection to the problem of finding good ores for silver, particularly a problem faced in Germany. A different metal would foul the ore, and the miners attributed its presence to mischievous creatures, and named this nuisance metal after them. The creatures we know as kobolds, and the metal, this "kobold metal," we now call cobalt. But I digress.

Coal is found in old sedimentary rock. Unless there's a local shortage of wood (because of a shipbuilding boom or an industrial revolution) it will normally only be mined when it's close to the surface.

This may be more detail that you really want. As a general rule, the deeper coal is found the higher grade it will be^*, with the stuff on the surface most often (but by no means explusively) being either lignite or peat (which is actually a coal precuror, but similar to coal as a fuel for heating.) If there is accelerated progress in metalurgy as I suggested above, there might be accelerated demand for higher grades of coal, as these are often used in refining metals.

* Higher grade means harder and closer to pure carbon. Lignite is about half volatile organics.

[Melzentir]

In a campaign setting that I am currently running for Pathfinder, I have introduced a new race that has an animistic, tribal culture and a deep seated hatred for dragons. As in, they hat dragons just as much if not more than dwarves hate orcs. I have their naming convention (basically that of the Avvar from Dragon Age), origin myth, racial stats, and a few different cultural features (such as having no concept of permanence and the use of tattoos to denote outsiders as worthy of respect). Since I mentioned them, I'll provide naming convention and origin myth.

In any case, what I am basically looking for are ideas to further flesh out the culture beyond just dragon hunting. Ideas?

---

Spoiler: Naming

Show

Personal names tend to be single syllable, and are followed by ba/bo (son of/daughter of) *mother's personal name* bi (child of) *clan/tribe name*. So Yok ba Tie bi Vorkka would be Yok son of Tie child of the Vorkka clan.

Spoiler: Origin Myth, could also use suggestions in fleshing it out

Show

Long ago, in an era before time was time, there was nothing. From this nothing, there was a flash of light and a clap louder than the loudest thunder. At the center of the flash and clap, the world began. This early world was not like the world today. The ground roiled, the water boiled, the air was poison, and the rain burned like liquid fire. It was in this world, that the first spirits arose.

These early spirits breathed in the poison air, and kept the poison within them when they breathed out. For age after age the world continued as such. But as it did, it slowly began to change. The world cooled, the earth settled, and the spirits unknowingly were bringing about their own end. The early spirits needed the poison in the air to live, but with each breath there was less poison in the air. Eventually, there wasn’t enough left to support the first spirits.

As the first spirits died, new ones took their place. New spirits that learned from the mistakes of their predecessors. They breathed the cleaned air, and made sure to return more of what they needed than they took. As these new spirits arose, something else new arose with them. The plants and animals that you see around you are the descendents of those that were born in this time. The plants and animals of today are not the plants and animals of that time, for all things change in time.

Ages passed, creatures were born, they lived, they bred, they died. They spirits came, lived, then went. Then, something happened unlike anything that had happened in the history of the world. A creature did something that nothing before it had done, it asked why. Building from that first intelligence, came all thinking things. Even the hated dragons owe their ability to think to this first thinking creature.

Okay, just going to spew out some chunks brainstorming style:

There must be a reason why they hate dragons more than any other. Perhaps the dragon's ideals are diametrically opposed to that of the people. Since dragons view themselves as deserving of fortune, possess great greed and are both manipulative and egocentric, perhaps your people's ideals will be sharing, self-sacrifice for the greater food and community-based decisions. Perhaps every step of their daily life will be a contribution not to themselves, but to the community as a whole. Perhaps they will strongly depend on eachother because of this. Is there an environmental reason this dependence has arisen (such as extreme cold/warmth)? Or could that be the dragons?

Why would banding together give them an edge over the dragons instead of fleeing as every man for himself? Perhaps they have a way of repelling the dragons which only works in unison, since they hate them so much. Perhaps they have enclaves which are safe from dragons due to many of their people being there at once and all protecting it using the same technique. Perhaps something to do with spirits or psionics or magic or a primal emotional bond or somewhat. I feel like I'm running dry on that trail, so let's read your question again.

Dragon hunting. That is quite a bit different from repelling or exterminating them. So if they hate them so much, they probably hunt them for that reason. If they'd actually benefit from hunting them you could slip some native american bison philosophy in there, but that would constitute too much respect and love for dragons since your people hate them.

Tattoos huh? Do these tattoos have magical properties that bestow powers? Do the tattoos signify status, such as certain elite warriors or a cabal of shaman having them? Can a tribesman 'catch them all' like the Game of Thrones Maesters gather chains? How do they make those tattoos in the first place? Do they use ink, or something else (burning it in, a spell ritual, spirit binding into the skin)? Is that in some way related to the dragons?

In what kind of environment do your people live? A tropical, densely overgrown archipelago? An arid wasteland of sand and rock? Something else?

Okay, that's it. Deleted some of the poorer ideas since this post got bigger than I thought.