[TML] "Dies the Fire"

[Richard Aiken]

On Dec 10, 2007 5:54 PM,  <shadow at shadowgard.com> wrote:
> On 10 Dec 2007 at 15:51, Richard Aiken wrote:
>
> > On Dec 9, 2007 11:58 PM,  <shadow at shadowgard.com> wrote:
> It gets really difficult to avoid gravity levels that'd make Mesklin
> (cf Hal Clement's "Mission of Gravity") look like a low gee world at
> the edges of the disk.
> Plus, with my design at least, it gets unreasonably hot ion the inner
> edge.

Then this would be the Hell of this megaworld.  The place the Balrog
calls home.  I mean, you'd have to be able to use magic like regular
creatures use air to be able to live there.  If such creatures could
travel to the more hospitable latitudes, they'd get worshiped as gods.

> And you forgot the outer edge. Colder than hell. But the gravity
> thing gets you again.

Then the outer edge is Hel (one "l") - the polar opposite of Hell.
The place where the natives are things that even Ice Giants are scared
to think about . . . :-)

> The edges of the larger oceans are *not* gonna be prime real estate.
> In fact, that may be a reason to keep the oceans smaller.

Maybe the big oceans lie in rings along the latitude lines and are
contained within parrallel mountain ranges.  This would serve to
dampen the extreme weather effects of the long days.  It would also
serve to stabilize the spin, I think.

> Given that there *isn't* any such thing as orbital velocity (not
> until you are dozens of AU out, anyway) and that escape velocity is
> in the thousands of km/sec range, you could have some really high TL
> societies that never got to a fraction of the disk before dying out.

Along this line, I was doodling through DriveThruRPG just now and saw
a campaign setting called "Castlemourn" by Margaret Weiss Productions.
 The Players Introduction is apparently old enough that it's now free
(priced at $0.00).  I haven't "bought" it yet, but according to the
reviews it's an extremely balkinized fantasy realm where hundreds of
years ago there was a catastrophe that shattered the land, so severely
that nobody remembers what caused it and most are afraid to ask.
Before the catastrophe, almost everyone could use minor magical
cantrips.  But now only dedicated mages and clerics can do so.  So
lots of folks assume the event had to do with magic and thus shy away
from same.  There are seven gods, but these are - at least according
to one of the reviewers - more akin to monsters which must be appeased
than deities to be respected and emulated.  Best of all, the Players
Guide is written from the point of view of a newly-arrived party,
folks who have come into the setting through a magical gateway from
somewhere else.

Add the details from these threads and *POOF!* instant campaign!  :-)

> > Ah.  But we aren't PCs.  We'd have to walk every step of the way.
> > When it's PCs, the GM just says, "After climbing down the Long Stairs
> > for a week (living off the weird plant and animal life along the
> > ledges as you go), you come to this huge iron door . . ."
>
> Not my idea of fun.

<shrug> Well, I never did finish "The World Of Tiers" myself.

> Given that the gravity (and thus convection forces) drop as you
> approach the midpoint, there's not going to be much driving any flow.

But wouldn't the mass of descending air on each side accumulate a
serious amount of inertia?  I mean, the Sun keeps endlessly bobbing
back and forth through the zero-gravity region at the disk core.  It
looks like a stream of air could do the same.  Maybe those permanent
tornados are *inside* the holes, rather than above them?

> It'd take one hell of a pressure difference to get the flow going and
> keep it going. But if there was a pressure difference, consider that
> there's a *lot* of atmosphere, and it could flow for a long time.

If you get it travelling around among holes that open at differing
altitudes, would "a long time" become "effectively forever?"

> For that matter, consider your ten or one hundred mile wide hole
> being at the bottom of an ocean on one side (or both)
> I don't want to try figuring the pressure at midpoint.

"20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" for real!  But why worry the extreme
water pressures at midpoint, when the air in a non-flooded hole won't
fall pass that point because it's in zero gravity?  BTW, how could you
have a hole that only opens into ocean on one side?  Seems to me that
if you didn't have an ocean on one side to start with, you'd have one
on both after the hole opened!  :-)

Hey!  I just thought of a design reason for having big holes.
Incoming debris - comets, asteroids, etc - can't be destroyed without
the pieces continuing on to impact the disk anyway.  So if there isn't
enough time for robotic tugs to steer such debris away from the disk
entirely, big holes exist to allow a chance at passing safely
*through* it.

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein