The "Zahhak needs a life" thread

[Zahhak]

Sorry, cannot think of a better title for this.

Anyways, For the last few years I have off-and-on working on a world. Well, actually, I've built a few worlds. The first one I completely abandoned when I realized how stupid it was. Since then I've made a few worlds in some way, usually restricted to initial research in some area, and then ended up giving up. Now, I've got this thing for reality in my RP to varying degrees. Because of this I'm taking my knowledge of physical geography to its insane conclusion: I will be making a map of ocean and air movement, and expected long-term weather and natural disasters (where will there be earthquakes naturally occurring?)

But, it is a fantasy game, so some crazy crap still has to happen. Here is what I'm thinking so far:

There was once one world, and one race, and no gods. And then they came: The Deep Gods. They were cruel and violent. They demanded sacrifice, and would decimate villages that did not. Somehow, some managed to leach power from the Deep Gods and became gods themselves, called the Old Gods. The Old Gods quickly outnumbered the Deep Gods a hundred to a dozen. Confident, the Old Gods went to war with the Deep Gods for a thousand years of mass murder. Unfortunately, none of the Old Gods were able to outright kill the Deep Gods, but they did manage to force them into a state of hibernation under the oceans. And for awhile, everything was pretty good.

Unfortunately, some started to worry that the Deep Gods would rise and seek their revenge. So, the Old Gods gathered a dozen or so per member and made them into gods, called the New Gods. After a few centuries to make sure the New Gods could run things, and then they left to try to find where the Deep Gods came from. And then, things got weird. Soon after the Old Gods left, the world broke into 6 spheres of similar size, and settled themselves on a single orbit. As the worlds drifted around over the millennia, the history of the one world became lost, forgotten, or turned into myth and legend. The New Gods insisting that that was what happened was cast on largely deaf ears.

Time and different conditions led to speciation among the Protos. From the cold north came the Orcs, the temperate mid-latitude regions bring Humans and Halflings, from the tropic equator came Elves and Gnomes, and from the arid regions came the Dwarves. All names are what they are called by the Humans.

Relatively recently the elves found a way to travel between the planets, they found the ethereal plane. The thousand years since worlds were reunited has been enough time for the initial extreme paranoia and hatred to calm down. Unfortunately, other things have shown up since then, called "Devils" by the Humans. No one is really sure where they came from or what they want, but they show up from parts unknown (often staying at temporary camps for days or weeks to deal with anyone who might be following them), orchestrate highly coordinated and vicious attacks, and have apparently been intentionally leaving witnesses. Some are worried that they are a symptom of the movement of the continents rousing the Deep Gods from their slumber. But, what is known is that after their attacks they drift into the ethereal plane and vanish. Possibly to some deeper plane.

Cosmology and Gods:
The world is not actually a single world, as I said, but there are other planes. Well, sort of. They are all a series of planets which all sit on the top of the ethereal plane. Except for one thing: The sun is not a star. It just acts exactly like one, and it does another thing. A kind of big thing. It's the Soul Forge, where souls are made (holy crap, I'd have never guessed!).

Speaking of the Soul Forge, here's how magic works (to be repeated elsewhere). So, mages, unlike others, can rip chunks of their soul out and use it as a weapon. They do this either by directly turning into some kind of energy, or by using it as a catalyst to change other objects around them into different objects (think a cross between DBZ's energy waves, Bleach's Kido, and FMA's Alchemy). Now, mages can this because they can basically re-grow their soul.

A more broad thing about the Soul Forge is that it makes gods more powerful and makes new gods. It does this because when a humanoid is a born a piece of the sun goes into their body, and when they die it goes to the god or entity they worshiped in life. This has the effect making new gods from former mortals, called the Child Gods, some of whom were already dead when they were made gods. So, most of the Child Gods are actually incorporeal. The Soul Forge making gods also has some interesting effects. There are plenty of animists who made a god from nothing but their collective souls. These various gods who are made from nothing but souls are extremely powerful, even compared to the New Gods, and are the embodiment of the thing they represent. So, there is a god of animals, the moon, the sun, etc. These are called the "Rogue Gods"

Notes on the gods:
* The Deep Gods: Yes, some people do actually worship them. Not openly though.
* The Old Gods: While gone, many take the basic position that they are the only true gods, the New Gods are nothing but their regents, the Child Gods are angels, and the Rogue Gods are abominations. Granted, the Old Gods have no real theology, so the worshipers of the Old Gods tend to be essentially atheists.
* The New Gods: They split themselves and followed the continents as they drifted. Their children, and grandchildren, and great grandchildren, are of a power similar to their own and so are also called New Gods. They are tribalists and are more concerned with the preservation of the tribe or state that worships them then they are concerned with anything else. So, they don't have the same portfolios as gods like how most DnD gods have them.
* The Child Gods: Since they are risen mortals, they come in the full range of personality and portfolios, from tribalists to representatives of some specific ideology. The Child Gods are the least powerful of the gods, but also tend to be the most involved in worldly affairs, so they tend to be most worshiped by mortals.
* The Rogue Gods: They represent something specific: animals, the sun, the moon, life, death, time, math. They are more powerful then New Gods, and maybe as powerful as the Old Gods. But, they are almost completely uninvolved in mortal affairs, so are mostly worshiped by adventurers who hope to curry their favor by being potentially valuable souls. This doesn't normally work.

Now, sometimes the gods die, and the collected souls returns to the Soul Forge, as does the souls of those who don't worship anything. What will happen if the Soul Forge ever dries out, or where the souls in it come from is anyone's guess.

Religious Philosophies:
There are still groups who could be called "atheists" in this world. This is essentially the perspective that while there are quite obviously godlike entities in this world, the fact that some have been shown to get old and die (over a few dozen millennia, but still) leads some to believe that they are not truly gods, but essentially exceptionally powerful magic users. There are also those who are essentially agnostic: they recognize the arguments of the atheists, but take no real stand either way. There is a school of thought within the "atheists" who believe that there is a god, but that none of the deities on the world are the actual god. These groups, almost always small and unorganized, are referred to "gnostics".

Monolatrism, the view that there is more then one god, but focusing on worshiping on.

At this point, I'm tired, so I'm going to call it here. I am planning on using this to post crap as it comes to me/I develop it. I'm posting this so that I will hopefully feel motivated/brow beaten into keeping working on it.

[zzuxon]

When I started making the setting I'm currently working on, I considered a Dyson Sphere. I'm glad someone else had the same Idea.

[Zahhak]

The climate and ocean physics are going to be weird to figure out, but that will make it all the more enjoyable, right? Right?

[Deepbluediver]

There is a series of fantasy novels called "The Death Gate Cycle" that includes something very similar. I've never finished the series, but the second book describes a world that is a giant sphere with 4 artificial suns at it's center. The constant 24-hour daylight and warm atmosphere eventually covers the entire surface in a miles-deep jungle.


When creating a world like the one you envision, the most important thing, I think, it to keep in mind just how much space you are really generating. If you wanted to circumnavigate the interior at 650 mph (roughly the speed of a comercial aircraft) it would take you more than 16 years, provided you somehow manage to travel 24 hours per day (feel free to double check my math).

Most areas of the world never experience nightime (though you could have an underground area). The parts that are along the orbital path of the moon would experience a weeks or even months-long twilight as they are subjected to what is essentially a solar eclipse.
Which I guess would render the concept of "days" pretty meaningless.

If you are planning on having seperate landmasses divided by water, when viewed from a distance, the surface would seem to be dotted with thousands of islands, but of course each island is really the size of a whole continent. Any uninterupted landmass that occupied a significant portion of the surface would likely have very different weather patters and/or geography than what we are used to, but I can speculate in any number of directions exactly how it might play out. You can, of course, explain away just about anything with "magic did it". But then what's the point of having something so radically different from a normal world?

Frankly, this almost seems like it might be to much space; you can have multiple empires with multi-millenial long histories that quite plausibly never know of the others.

[Zahhak]

The constant 24-hour daylight and warm atmosphere eventually covers the entire surface in a miles-deep jungle.

Actually, it would have turned it into a desert. Wind is caused by differences in air pressure, which is caused by differences in temperate between regions. The difference is caused by solar heating. 24 hours of sun means no wind. No wind means no movement of water. So, all of the water would have been concentrated somewhere, probably in high altitude clouds and below the surface.

When creating a world like the one you envision, the most important thing, I think, it to keep in mind just how much space you are really generating. If you wanted to circumnavigate the interior at 650 mph (roughly the speed of a comercial aircraft) it would take you more than 16 years, provided you somehow manage to travel 24 hours per day (feel free to double check my math).

As I said in the OP, the continents are drifting back together, so while there's a huge possible area, they're concentrated in an area that makes getting from one place to another much easier.

[Deepbluediver]

Actually, it would have turned it into a desert. Wind is caused by differences in air pressure, which is caused by differences in temperate between regions. The difference is caused by solar heating. 24 hours of sun means no wind. No wind means no movement of water. So, all of the water would have been concentrated somewhere, probably in high altitude clouds and below the surface.

A couple things: first, this isn't something that I designed, it was written by some one else, and that was the dirrection they decided to go with it.
Second, this was high fantasy, so there may well have been other magical forces at play.
Third, with a thick enough covering, water may have been hidden in the shade of the vegatation, so that the plans where fed from underground reserves instead of rainfall.

But it's been a while since I read the books, I may be forgetting some details.

As I said in the OP, the continents are drifting back together, so while there's a huge possible area, they're concentrated in an area that makes getting from one place to another much easier.

Oh, sorry, I missed that. It will be interesting to envision how the plate-tectonics are working out on such a scale. But even a small fraction of this area is still a mind-bogglingly HUGE space.

All the land on the surface of Earth covers approx. 149 million kilometers, roughly 30% of the earth's surface. The same land area is the equivalent of approximately 0.0000013% of the inside of your sphere. (please feel free to check my math, I may have dropped a decimal some place)

To put it another way: if just 1% of the surface area of your sphere is land, it is the equivalent of approx. 17,000 Jupiters. There is abosutely no reasonable method of travel for covering significant distances short of instant teleportation. Which is entirely possible in D&D, you should just keep this in mind if you decide to have your campaign visit different spots.


Edit: Just realized that I was working in kilometers, and you gave the distance in miles, so obviously my math is totally wrong. The approximate scale is still comparable, though.

[Zahhak]

A couple things: first, this isn't something that I designed, it was written by some one else, and that was the dirrection they decided to go with it.
Second, this was high fantasy, so there may well have been other magical forces at play.
Third, with a thick enough covering, water may have been hidden in the shade of the vegatation, so that the plans where fed from underground reserves instead of rainfall.

I'm aware of the first two, it just a point of interest from the real world. The third wouldn't work, plants do something you can think of like sweating which is a part of evaporation, called "evapotransportation", which also includes water that is lost from soil moisture. The more you know!

To put it another way: if just 1% of the surface area of your sphere is land, it is the equivalent of approx. 17,000 Jupiters.

I know. It gives me an incredible area to work with. I am half-considering building this world in a lot of detail and selling it as a generic fantasy setting.

There is abosutely no reasonable method of travel for covering significant distances short of instant teleportation. Which is entirely possible in D&D, you should just keep this in mind if you decide to have your campaign visit different spots.

My plan is that large cities have teleportation hubs with ranges relative to the size of the city.

[Deepbluediver]

I'm aware of the first two, it just a point of interest from the real world. The third wouldn't work, plants do something you can think of like sweating which is a part of evaporation, called "evapotransportation", which also includes water that is lost from soil moisture. The more you know!

I still don't see how this would cause desertification.
It's been a while since I read the books, but if I recall correctly, the entire inside of the sphere was uniform, without seas or oceans. Meaning that there was water evenly distributed everywhere to start with. Anything that evaporates eventually has to rain back down, so if it doesn't get pushed anywhere else then it just rains back down in the same area.

My plan is that large cities have teleportation hubs with ranges relative to the size of the city.

So you can teleport out to the boondocks, but you need to walk back?
I'm just joking, I know what you mean.

[Zahhak]

I still don't see how this would cause desertification.

Cloud movement is part of what causes rain. So there would quickly be no water in the soil except for underwater lakes, and the clouds would probably be almost permanent. Also, 24hrs of light would heat up the air a lot, which also reduces how often it rains.