[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by ericthered

On the other hand, large numbers of people travel through the main portal every day and every night, and I don't think we've established that no-one spends the night there: they just have to sleep on the ground. I think it could be counted either way.

Actually, as of A13/p28, Mother Plains supports some isolated communities and alchemical workshops, which I'd forgotten about. I guess Mother tolerates small groups who are staying quietly out of the way, yet would submerge any major roadworks or fortifications people try to build.

Originally Posted by ericthered

The 1 province per portal statement is odd: I don't think we've actually established that.

I'm not sure where that idea came from, I can't find it going back through the thread, unless it popped up in side commentary. And A18/p17 actually says that county size depends on how many links it has, so a number of counties would have more than one. However, I could see a political ruling that no Archmage can control more than one major portal- perhaps excess portals are governed by an imperial dispatch?

Originally Posted by patchwork

For not-kitchen-sink, that's a whole lot of plumbing.

That's a fair comment. Actually, I realised myself after saying that that a cross-dimensional trading setting with unique realm geometries is antithetical to not being kitchen-sink in some way. However, that comment was directed more at the suggestion of there being soft rules for how cosms are connected. I think we still only have a handful of ways that happens, and they still fit an overarching thesis of some kind. Either they were made by Divinities (Mother Plains portal(?), River of Seasons, Thresher's Ring of Bitter Worlds), by mortal network builders, or like Kidnapper and Bugout, are their own thing somehow. The Distorted Lands would seem to be a dimensional overlay that connects the mortal and spiritual/divine realms and is part of the fundamental nature of the polycosm. The method for how the mortal network builders created their portals is unstated, just that their architecture and operating parameters differ. It could be variations on the one technique- such as it being outside their own natural power and they have to capture and harness wormhole beasts to make the connections for them, or their deities do it for them, or they find the polycosm's single functioning portal drilling machine.

The early setup mentioned "tens or scores" of portals.

I took it to be in the context of describing the home realm, therefore that's the count in Fragment.

Later, in Answer 16, we talked about 6 cosmi for the Calledron Empire, 4 other polycosmic political entities (let us assume comparable to the Empire in scope) and 6 cosmi important or powerful enough to function as independents. That gives us about 36 major cosmi in the setting, of which we've mentioned Fragment, Eddy, Gnomon, Mother Plains, Ton, and perhaps Praxis. But with hundreds of cosmi documented, that heavily implies the rest of them are minor, lots and lots of small places portals can go to.

Indeed, "minor" could mean many things. There's only one portal in or out, or the portals are widely geographically separated in-realm, making them dead-ends for travellers. Or they have small, dispersed or un-unified settlements, thus having no civilisation of interest to interact with. Or they are just "flyover" realms, where travellers pass quickly between connecting portals without interacting with anything of interest along the way, except for random encounters and natural hazards.

18 collapsed portal networks also implies lots more that "tens or scores" of portals to me. More like "hundreds or thousands" or "a comprehensive map is probably impossible".

Again, that would be the number on Calledron, so it fits in with the rest of the setting assumptions. I think it's been stated or implied a few times that there are lots of realms beyond Calledron's knowledge, so we have the 40 or so major realms you counted as a localised connected cluster which is fairly well-mapped.

Especially if rival trading houses can monopolize whole chains of cosmi. We've had illustrations of markets where anything can be had, including many things you'd never imagined before.

Not necessarily whole chains- networks would cross over at certain nexus worlds like Calledron. But one monopolised network might provide short cuts with fewer links or safer passage, and then have access to some minor side-realms with their own unique trade goods. However, unique access to a whole chain of cosmi could indeed also be interesting.

I'm interested to hear if your synthesis agrees. In any case, we'll press on shortly.

Yeah, I think we're mostly going for a "big polycosm" style of setting. Take my anti-kitchen sink comment to be mainly in relation to cosm connections and creation. In fact, I'm in favour of a myriad of trade goods, civilisations, races and odd realm physics. I'm not too worried about strict consistency, as long as we get some cool ideas out of the exercise.