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Post by dmdante on Jan 12, 2016 17:58:53 GMT
I am building my own world for the first time, and I have this idea where some cataclysmic event has torn the world in half. The gods of light, darkness and magic (Three self-concious aspects of the greater god of energy) teamed up to keep the planet together. But all they could manage was keeping them from drifting too far apart.
The world is basically two halves of the planet with floating islands and atmosphere in between them. I have some ideas on how the world could evolve but i'd like some imput. Any ideas?
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Post by DM Kiado on Jan 12, 2016 21:03:42 GMT
I see this is your first post, welcome to the forums. This is actually something I thought about doing in the past. I like taking the standard cataclysmic approach and spicing it up.
In my idea (and take inspiration or simply take any of these) the world was similarly split in two, and then held together by gods of some sort, because who else would have that kind of power. I also like to give the Fantasy realism, so in my idea this has a huge impact on the world. Throwing off the spin of the planet, for instance, my days were going to last for 6 days, and night for 6 days. (The idea of a 6 day night full of bad guys was kind of my idea at the root.) This would also have thrown off the tilt and angle of the planet in relation to it's star. Causing seasons to be sporadic, and completely change the climate of some locations. For instance, the tundra of this world was going to be a once great civilization now buried in ice. Perhaps this area thaws out a little from time to time, and allows entrance to ancient locations for a short time. The season changes could be drastic, random, or pretty much the same. Imagine in the deepest part of winter, where night last 6 days, just trying to stay warm would be an act of survival.
Anyways, just some thoughts.
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Post by ino on Jan 13, 2016 7:30:30 GMT
I imagine the world like an atom, with the bits of land rotating about something in the center. You could put something interesting at the planet's core.
I'm also curious about what it would do to the ecology. Would one part be prone to spawning creatures of darkness and the other creatures of light? Would the areas change "polarities"? Would there be creatures that would have different forms to deal with the change from positive to negative and vice versa?
I imagine there is a way to traverse the parts of the planet besides through the atmosphere. Maybe instead of a traditional underdark, the undersides of the hemispheres are jagged and cavernous, leaving large natural openings in which magic spontaneously creates portals to link the halves together.
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Post by DM Kiado on Jan 13, 2016 15:58:41 GMT
I imagine the world like an atom, with the bits of land rotating about something in the center. You could put something interesting at the planet's core. That's a great idea!
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Post by dmdante on Jan 13, 2016 17:34:51 GMT
I see this is your first post, welcome to the forums. This is actually something I thought about doing in the past. I like taking the standard cataclysmic approach and spicing it up. In my idea (and take inspiration or simply take any of these) the world was similarly split in two, and then held together by gods of some sort, because who else would have that kind of power. I also like to give the Fantasy realism, so in my idea this has a huge impact on the world. Throwing off the spin of the planet, for instance, my days were going to last for 6 days, and night for 6 days. (The idea of a 6 day night full of bad guys was kind of my idea at the root.) This would also have thrown off the tilt and angle of the planet in relation to it's star. Causing seasons to be sporadic, and completely change the climate of some locations. For instance, the tundra of this world was going to be a once great civilization now buried in ice. Perhaps this area thaws out a little from time to time, and allows entrance to ancient locations for a short time. The season changes could be drastic, random, or pretty much the same. Imagine in the deepest part of winter, where night last 6 days, just trying to stay warm would be an act of survival. Anyways, just some thoughts. That's an interesting take. I haven't thought what it would do to the seasons. I like the idea of the gods splitting to rule different halves. I was thinking of having the PC's having no knowledge of this, come out of a cave, or over a mountain and having where the world should be, be replaced by floating islands and a large red glow in the distance (magma from the other half). Just thought that would be a cool moment. It also opens up some interesting game play ideas. Floating island pirate airships?
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Post by kirklas164 on Jan 13, 2016 20:11:36 GMT
Just a few ideas, since I have to go soon, but I think the ecology of the open spaces would be really interesting. I'd do it like the open ocean but in the air; so you'd have birds and dragonoids instead of fish. I can see giant birds that have lost their legs because landing is no longer a necessity (maybe the females lay their eggs on the backs of the males?), jellyfish like gaseous creatures, fungal-looking plants with gassy pockets that float freely on the currents, dragon or bird gulp-feeders with mouths like blue whales swallowing whole groups of insect swarms that themselves eat the fungal-like plants, and I think the mammals on the floating islands would start to evolve bat-like wings to sustain short-to-longer term flight (air-seals!), and, if you were so inclined, maybe a people who were developing wings to the detriment of walking?
Air-ships would also be a really fun campaign run, especially if storms are frequent.
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Post by robosnake on Jan 14, 2016 2:25:13 GMT
An odd thing occurs to me that could be interesting. I imagine this planet split apart, and the atmosphere now fills in all the areas between the different chunks of the planet, held together by gods of energy. So what that means is that there is less atmosphere for the once-surface of the planet (no new breathable air, but the breathable air has to cover more surface area now). So it's like a falling ocean level, leaving high elevation locations stranded without breathable air. Mountain-top fortresses and temples are now frigid and uninhabitable. Think of it like maybe 3,000 feet above sea level is equivalent to 10,000 or more. The small eroded mountain outside town would be like K-2, and everyone all over the planet has had to adapt to high-altitude living like people in the Andes. So you could look up in the too-clear sky to see these ruins at higher elevation, wondering who could have built them, since nothing can live there now - they might as well be on the surface of Mars.
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Post by dmdante on Jan 14, 2016 16:23:42 GMT
So, i'be figured out that the planet was originally built as a prison for an entity that could destroy the fabric of reality. A cult who worship true nothingness manage to perform a ritual to open the prison but it gos wrong (possible pc intervention?) Instead of releasing the entity, they just expose the prison. The core of the planet.
Also, each half has as much area as earth. Due to the increased gravity before the split, giants and dwarves where among the first people on the planet, after the split came elves, humans and races who could not have lived on a super massive planet.
As for the area between the halves, I'm kicking around the idea of calling it the Shattered Skies.
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Post by Tesla Ranger on Jan 14, 2016 17:22:35 GMT
My science brain just wants to dissect this idea like a wonderful little mind puzzle. Physics-wise, a lot probably wouldn't change. It's still the same amount of planet/mass in roughly the same area. Gravity will continue to cause those hunks of mass to mutually rotate around a shared center of mass (presumably the core). The orbital mechanics wouldn't really change all that much. On it's own, gravity would soon recombine any split planet chunks which implies that something somewhere is generating a force to countermand gravity. How the planet stays split could be an interesting question to ask.
The distribution of the atmosphere could be a pretty big problem (atmosphere's tending to be pretty thin to begin with). If that distribution is at all similar to Earth then I would expect the mostly likely scenario is that only place with a sufficiently dense atmosphere for habitation is probably going to be between the two halves of the planet. Outside the break, on what was once the surface, there wouldn't be enough air to really support conventional life. That could muck up the water cycle in some interesting ways too.
And if everything does move into the split (what a migration -that- would be!) imagine how that would change their daily life. The length of a "day" would depend on how close you were to the edge/surface of the planet and how the rotation lined up with sun. Although, if the split was along the equator I guess the opposite could be true and you could be lined up with the sun perpetually. In that instance "night" might be when shadows cast by the terrain happen to fall on a given area.
And there's a whole other side to this that hasn't come up yet. If the planet is split then it seems unlikely it maintains a rotating mantle (geologically speaking). Without a circulating, massive sphere of molten iron (and some other things) it won't have a natural electromagnetic field. That exposes the planet (and anyone living on it) to the full brunt/spectrum of the sun's radiation. That would almost certainly destroy any organic life on the surface short of a tardigrade (or terrasque). Organisms may migrate into the crack just to escape the harmful light on the surface. And any atmosphere that was left exposed to that radiation would eventually be eroded away (we're pretty sure that's what happened to Mars).
It occurs to me that it would probably take a few decades for the mantle to cool enough to walk on but that's probably something that could be hand-waved. The upside of moving your industry/craftsmen into the crack is that suddenly you would have access to all the heavier elements that tend to fall/shift down to the center of the planet. Super dense elements like osmium or iridium (real world adamantite) would suddenly become accessible. Whether or not craftsmen would be able to work with them might be another question.
It seems like walking between the two halves of the planet should have some weird effects gravity wise. All mass pulls on all other mass with equal intensity which diminishes with distance. So if we ignore all other factors and just employed a thought experiment where we crack the Earth in half and walked down the split... The mass probably wouldn't be perfectly distributed so it's likely one half would be a bit heavier than the other half. If the divide between them were small enough it's possible our imaginary trekker might "fall" towards the heavier half. But they would fall very slowly because they're still being pulled on by the lighter half. If they managed to walk all the way to the center (the core) then they're being tugged on by all the mass around them, which is roughly equidistant in every direction. So, I suspect, the closer something gets to the center of the planet, the lighter it would weigh. At the actual center it would probably become trapped at the exact center of all that mass (presumably where your prison is at). I wouldn't be surprised if the terrain reflects this, perhaps with a pair of "mountains" from each half that both peak in the prison.
In any case, you're free to use or not use as much physics as you like. I enjoy it as a thought experiment if only because I find it entertaining but you're obviously free to do as you like irregardless of physics.
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Post by dmdante on Jan 14, 2016 18:10:17 GMT
Some interesting ideas. Check out minutephysics on youtube. They have some cool thought experiments there.
Hmmm, considering it's a prison, the force keeping the planet split could be the entity trying to escape. It could also force the atmosphere away from the prison itself, causing there to be a perfect vacuum in between the halves. and keeping the halves habitable. Which has the unintended effect of preventing prying mortals from messing with the prison, haha. Leaving a ring of breathable atmosphere where there should be land.
I still can't figure out what would keep the mantle and inner core spinning... and I love the idea of the world being split at the equator. That fixes my day night problem.
Perhaps creatures within the shattered skies evolved without the need for sleep?
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Post by Tesla Ranger on Jan 14, 2016 18:36:19 GMT
Science-wise, sleep is an odd thing we're still sorting out. My understanding is that it seems to be linked to the function/health of the brain, particularly memory. Aside from the central nervous system the body doesn't really seem to need much rest/sleep, but the without it the CNS just falls apart. It seems unlikely to me that processes of adaptation could result in an organism that once needed sleep no longer needing it. That said: magic bridges all gaps.
Again, the simplest approach to the lack of an EM shield would be magic. Alternatively, if it is indeed a vacuum between the halves then it will take significantly longer for the mantle to cool. Instead of decades you'd be talking millennia. It's a little hard to wrap our heads around but a significant portion of the Earth's internal heat today is left over from it's young days as a molten ball of lava. The effect of this is that your mantle would still be molten, likely for thousands of years. Depending on the size of the gap, molten metal might flow between the halves, at least in glops and globbules. As long as the metal is molten and there is a temperature differential (which is more or less required by physics in this case) the metal will circulate and you'll have an EM field. It also presents a not inconsiderable challenge to anyone who might want to reach the prison. How would you go about walking from London to Moscow when 99% of the trip was made over magma and lava occasionally rained down from above or fell up from below? Toss in the aforementioned effects of gravity and it could get pretty weird.
So far as the night/day cycle you could get into some weird orbital physics such as a catywhompus rotation (looking at you Neptune). Assuming you're sticking with something Earth-like then not that much is likely to change. If some force is keeping air (and likely water) out of the divide then life on the surface of the planet would likely continue as before. The two halves would be separate though so they may develop along very different paths, sort of like how various species in Australia developed separately from their cousins in Africa.
So far as YouTube goes, my wife and I are fans of MinutePhysics along with the wider world of science channels. CrashCourse is perhaps the best but the various SciShows are excellent for staying up to date. Then there's a litany like Smarter Every Day and Veritasium that are a bit more eclectic but still pretty good.
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Post by dmdante on Jan 14, 2016 18:58:18 GMT
Sweet, thanks alot. I now have a world, creation myth, and a unique area to populate with strange creatures. This went way beyond what I was expecting. And it's awesome.
I may put an alternate time line where the atmosphere is thinner on the halves. That could lead to some interesting complications.
When I finish the map I'll post it.
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Post by whipstache on Jan 17, 2016 2:00:22 GMT
Sweet, thanks alot. I now have a world, creation myth, and a unique area to populate with strange creatures. This went way beyond what I was expecting. And it's awesome. I may put an alternate time line where the atmosphere is thinner on the halves. That could lead to some interesting complications. When I finish the map I'll post it. That's what happens on the DMB forums. Seems like a cool world.
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Samuel Wise
Demigod
Ready to Help...
Posts: 989
Favorite D&D Class: Warlock
Favorite D&D Race: Mousefolk
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Post by Samuel Wise on Jan 17, 2016 2:10:14 GMT
Now what about a world that is an inverse orb? With the center of the planet being the sun and where gravity is pushing in all directions outward...
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Post by Tesla Ranger on Jan 17, 2016 5:23:07 GMT
Now what about a world that is an inverse orb? With the center of the planet being the sun and where gravity is pushing in all directions outward... Sounds like a Dyson's sphere. Gravity there would pull like anywhere else, so the -gravity- of the Dyson Sphere would pull anything towards the center of the sphere (where there's a star). Centripetal force can be used to simulate gravity around the sphere's "equator" but that only works in a certain band. Above or below that band, closer to the poles, and the radius of the cycle would be too small. A kobold standing at the equator would be spinning in a wider circle, ergo with a greater velocity, than a goblin near the pole. Because of the difference in rotational velocity, that kobold might experience 1G while the goblin might experience .1G. At a certain point the G force would be counteracted by gravity and the unfortunate goblin would fall inexorably into the sun. Dyson Sphere's are pretty cool like that. Hypothetically the best reason to build one is to capture all of the energy output by a star. If someone's gone through all the trouble to construct a Dyson Sphere, one would wonder what they're doing with all that energy... Also, this fellow was stuck on one for about a hundred years, just constantly cycling in a transporter buffer:
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