Mmm... I think we all get a little touchy about our 'pet' topics. I don't think I'd care one way or the other if someone made a mistake in Roman Republican history, but there are some periods where I can be a little bit Nazish... sorry.
0 Kudo
Something Different?
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 Lady of Darkness |
Re: Something Different? | ||
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Posts: 1874 (02/10/07 18:26:08) |
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Lilith Nightwalker |
Re: Something Different? | ||
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Posts: 1367 (02/11/07 00:08:50) |
It's okay, I understand completely. Just as long as you don't kill me or anything...
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Lady of Darkness |
Re: Something Different? | ||
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Posts: 1874 (02/15/07 23:00:12) |
No. Not yet, anyway...
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Boss Hamster |
Re: Something Different? | ||
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Posts: 2968 (06/06/07 15:44:15) |
Righty-oh, ladies and gents, it's high time we dredged this dead horse out of old River Time and gave it some metaphorical mouth-to-mouth - mainly because I've got some ideas, and I need some help with 'em.
Firstly, riddle me this: Imagine a world with nothing but air on all sides. Literally, a vast ocean of oxygen, with no top or bottom or sides. If you fall, you fall forever and ever, long after you've died of starvation or thirst or sheer boredom. Animal and plant life would include lighter-than-air Scyphozoanesque creatures (think jellyfish) with helium- or hydrogen-producing glands, as well as miniscule drifting forms of aerial algae and plankton and bizarre root vegetables with kite-like leaves that catch wind currents - not to mention life forms that simply live their entire lives in a constant state of freefall, whizzing downwards from birth and even after death. A similar example could be found in the "jungles of the upper air" from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Horror of the Heights. But here's the trick: In this world, I have decided I also want balloons, zeppelins and turn-of-the-century rigid-wing aircraft, staging epic dogfights in this endless sky. The question, of course, is how did they get there? Without any land on which to set the inventors of these contraptions (not to speak of the raw materials needed to build the buggers), how can I work this out? Should I add some land, just sort of floating around out there, or what? Any and all ideas and thought-provoking questions would be appreciated, regarding the world or the main problem at hand. ----- ~ Wolfgang Kaiser, Zeppelin Vigilante ~ "Kidnapping Nubile Victorian Ladies Since 1867" |
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Lady of Darkness |
Re: Something Different? | ||
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Posts: 1874 (06/06/07 15:57:01) |
Lord DF once sent me a picture or an airborne island... perhaps you could have landmasses (even if they are just very small) and suggest that each tribe began life wondering what was across the air, and so... they invented things that flew. Of course, failed attempts would be rather wonderful to relate... It ends up being a very interesting psychology too... since there is infinity on all sides, what is their concept of heaven going to be? They would need some very different expressions of speech. Lots of things would need to be worked out, but I know that you'll be aware of that and you'll do a damn good job. Let us know what comes of it!
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anacharis |
Re: Something Different? | ||
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Posts: 956 (06/06/07 17:53:32) |
First of all, Boss, The Horror of the Heights kicks ass. Seriously. I love that story- thanks for reminding me of it.
Remember the Skyroamers? Can't speak for X, who I think did most of the work, but now that I think about it, the bits I worked on had a lot of that story in them. That said, it's pedantry time: Quote: Mmmmkay, let's not make it pure oxygen, right? Else the first bloke to rub two sticks together to get a spark's gonna have a bit of a problem on his hands.  Quote: So, is it infinite? just more and more of the same, no matter how far you go? or if you go far enough, do you end up where you were? or is it just really fricking big- say, a gas giant, or a nebula or some sort of cloud of gas floating out in space, or the inside of a Dyson Sphere? Quote: Best. Descriptor. Ever. Quote: Why're they falling- what's the source of gravity pulling them down? And how do you know which way down is? Quote: Seems the more important question is: how did the people that made the airships get there? Doesn't seem like they'd be native- Horror of the Heights-esque beasties aren't going to have much need of airships, so I'd imagine the folks we're dealing with are, if not human, then at least much closer to humans than to Sir Arthur's eldritch beasties. So where did they come from? Did they evolve on floating islands? Where they colonists from whatever passes for outer space in this place? where they explorers from another dimension? The creation of the Gods? Did they create this place? Actually, a thought just occurred to me while I was typing this- supposing they are native? Where did the biomass of the native life-forms come from? how did the myriad elements that go into life get there? You'd need Carbon and nitrogen at the very least, and iron and calcium and dozens of others. And How did they form into complex molecules- DNA, RNA, proteins? Or do these creatures work on something entirely different- say, creatures of living magic, or something? Anyway, Am I overthinking this? Do I have too much time on my hands? Hells yeah. But, point is, figure out where your people came from, and you can probably wring a zeppelin or two out of the same place.  P.S. There are air pirates. Note that this is not a question. It is a statement. ________________
Can you patter romany? Can you patter flash? Can you rocker romany? Can you fake a bosh? |
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Lord DragonFang |
Re: Something Different? | ||
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Posts: 1736 (06/06/07 17:54:21) |
I did? Must have been Zeal, I can't think of any other airborne landmasses I might have shown you. Though I just recently finished playing an old SNES game called Bahamut Lagoon, where lands are only floating continents in the sky called lagoons, with no "surface world" mentioned even once.
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Boss Hamster |
Re: Something Different? | ||
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Posts: 2968 (06/06/07 18:31:03) |
Sweet holy barrage of ideas! You guys rock!
 Quote: Floating islands = pure awesome, even if they are a tad clich. There's gotta be some way to get around that clich, though... Quote: Damn, I hadn't even thought of the psychological aspects yet...  Quote: Point taken. Being less than scientifically adept, I tend to forget that air is only about 20% oxygen. You know what I mean. Quote: Infinite. Or at least, so ridiculously big that it might as well be infinite. Basically, I'm thinking space-sized, here, but with air instead of... no air. See? ...Although, that Dyson Sphere idea has me intrigued... Quote: Um... Hmm... I shall get back to you on this one. I foresee some wracking of brains on my part - unless anyone's got any ideas? Quote: Hmm. Hmmmm. Perhaps all of these are partially true. Floating islands, created by the gods (maybe as their personal empyrean domain), become home to a batch of colonists from who-knows-where... Quote: Eek! Science! *runs and hides* Quote: Most emphatically yes. ----- ~ Wolfgang Kaiser, Zeppelin Vigilante ~ "Kidnapping Nubile Victorian Ladies Since 1867" |
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Lilith Nightwalker |
Re: Something Different? | ||
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Posts: 1367 (06/06/07 18:52:00) |
AIR PIRATES.
Yay. *cough* Anyway, I don't really have anything to add here. It's getting late and my brain has almost nearly shut down for the night, but one thing that does peak my interest is the idea of the floating islands. Sure, they're cliche. But there are ways. Let's see if we can twist this into something less-than-cliche here. Okay, the first thing that pops into my head is that the islands are actually made out of clouds. Which is weird, since without any real land of any kind, that whole condensation process wouldn't exist. The next thought I have is of some sort of steampunk machinery. The islands themselves are mechanical/built out of something. But then you once again run into the problem of trying to figure out how they got there, who built them, how they built them, etc. Huh. I just had an interesting thought. What if the air wasn't really air? What if it was like... congealed or something? Not quite solid, but kind of... I dunno... gelatin like? So that things aren't floating, but more like... suspended. And humans and other plants and creatures would have evolved to be able to breathe this... substance. Wow, that's a weird idea. Let's move on. Now, we could combine a couple of these ideas. What if some sort of natural phenomenon caused pockets of this congealed air, and the floating islands developed on top of them? So that the islands themselves are suspended on top of this substance. And the congealed air could be used for other plot devices... maybe the airships use this stuff as a power source. Maybe it's toxic when digested. Maybe organisms live in it... like fish. Or something. Maybe kids go swimming in it. Maybe there's a problem with pollution of the congealed air, and the substance is beginning to rot away, and if it completely rots, then the islands will start to fall. I'm just brainstorming, here. I really don't have any idea what I'm talking about. But it's still fun. One thought you have to consider is that if there are islands, and the stuff between them is only air, then the people on each island would be able to see the other islands. With nothing to obstruct the view, someone would feasibly be able to see for thousands of miles. Boss, this is an awesome idea. The gravity bit is still bugging me a bit, but the overall concept is brilliant. I love it. I want some stories, please.
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anacharis |
Re: Something Different? | ||
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Posts: 956 (06/06/07 19:04:58) |
Quote: For that matter, it could be water, couldn't it? Like those cute* little orbs you get when you spill your perrier on the space shuttle, only thousands of times bigger- Ditch gravity, have everything built around floating liquid planetoids, from the size of raindrops to, say, the size of a small moon. Maybe have some of the larger ones built around clanking, mysterious mechanical cores that somehow generate earth-normal level gravity on their surfaces- bits of machinery that break the surface can be inhabited, functioning like rusty islands or mini-continents, or there can be clods of rock and dirt floating in these water-balls, thatched together with plantlife. *Cute, yes, but apparently a bitch to sort out if they get into any sensitive equipment. ________________
Can you patter romany? Can you patter flash? Can you rocker romany? Can you fake a bosh? |
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