[TML] "Dies the Fire"

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 9 Dec 2007 at 10:23, Greg wrote:

> I designed a fantasy world which was on a Ringworld year and years ago
> (yes - after reading Ringworld). There were some interesting
> side-effects..

Well, Alderson Disks have a *big* advantage over Ringworlds.

For one, other than the magitech that keeps the disk from collapsing 
into a sphere, the geology is *real*. You can dig mines, have 
earthquakes, volcanoes, drifting continental plates, the works.

The surface area is a lot bigger (the players may not see that as an 
advantage :-) and the climates a *lot* more varied (near the inner 
edge, conditions will resemble dayside Mercury in all the old SF 
books, near the outer edge, you've got conditions that make the 
Arctic look tropical)

Here's something I wrote for a sort of "test" walkthru I ran a few 
folks thru. It's the description of an object they found in a long 
abandoned Inn/reststop/whatever along a "roman" type road (with 
mileposts that had numbers in the tens of thousands along the road 
:-)

It appears to be a chldrens book. It's hexagonal and printed on 
something that reminds you of Tyvek. It's written in an unknown 
script, and has drawings on the lefthand pages and text on the right 
hand ones. After examining it, it appear to be intended to be read 
"backwards" (that is, what we'd consider the back cover is the front 
cover with the page closest to it being the first page"

The first page pair has a drawing of a child. Fairly young, laying 
down stretched out on some grass. The "frame" of the drawing is a hex 
rather than a square or rectangle.
[~1 m]

The second page pair has a small yellow hex outline in the middle 
that holds what looks like a 1/12th scale copy of the drawing on the 
first page. There's an adult next to the child. There's a line with a 
bar at each end next to the child. There's a line next to the adult 
that's twice as long and has a bar at each end and another across the 
mddle of the line.

They are stretched out on the ground near a house(?). You suspect it 
might be six sided. There's also a line extending from top to bottom 
of the hex that forms the "frame" of he illustation.it's divided into 
12 segments. 
[~12 meters]

The third page pair has a small yellow hex outline in the middle that 
holds what looks like a 1/12th scale copy copy of the drawing on the 
second page. The rest of the picture is a triangular "block" wth 
other hexagonal houses on it. along with portions of surrouding 
"blocks".
[~144 meters]

The fourth page pair has a yellow hex outline in the center with a 
1/12th scale copy of the third page image in it. The rest of the page 
is a triangular street grid with some non-residential stuff beginning 
to appear at one side.
[~1.7 km]

The fifrth page pair has the town and surounding terrain.
[~21 km]

The sixth page pair has map of area with various terrain features, 
towns, streams, roads etc. "state" sized
[~250 km]

The seventh page pair has more terrain, large lake/small sea, 
mountain ranges, perhaps the edge of an ocean?
[~3000 km]

The eighth page pair has continents and oceans to the edge of the 
picture
[~36,000 km]

The ninth page pair:  still more land and water.
[~430,000 km]

The tenth page pair has land and water but mostly abstracted, vague 
texturing and color coding that might be climate/vegetation and 
relief. 
[~5 M km]

The elevength page pair is much the same but the bottom part of the 
page hs more desrt and the top has more "snow/ice" terrain. These are 
arranged in curving  bands centered  somewhere well off the bottom of 
the page.
[~62 M km]

The twelfth page pair:  lower part of page has circular hole about 
twice the size of the yellow hex in the center. with a stylized sun 
in the center of the hole. The terrain/climate band are centered on 
the hole. parts close to the hole are desert and even "red hot". 
Areas far from it are depicted as ice. 
[~5 AU]

The thirteeenth pagepair: there's a disc with a hole set slightly off 
center from the yellow hex. and maybe twice as big.
[~59 AU]

the rest of the pages are missing, torn out with ragged edges at the 
binding.
--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com