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Old 10-03-2018, 11:18 AM   #1111
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Can people be rescued from Midas? Or was the transition to gold too traumatic?

It seems that some fluids are immune, such as air. Maybe magma is also immune, meaning only the crust is made of gold.

Here's a thought: maybe the effect takes hours now, but that's because it's spread over the entire planet's surface. There may be an entire city that was flash-transformed, meaning that aircraft might discover it and some people might have survived, albiet in some cases dented from a fall or something.
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Old 10-03-2018, 11:59 AM   #1112
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Quote:
It seems that some fluids are immune, such as air. Maybe magma is also immune, meaning only the crust is made of gold.

Air isn't immune, per se. About half of it has turned into gold: that's why you have only double the pressure, despite four times the gravitational pull. In order for the gravity to do what it does, the core probably needs to be gold.



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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
One of the weird things is why it's even this friendly. Gold is a very good thermal conductor and if Earth was solid gold as other things indicate the molten core and the room temperature surface would soon reach thermal equilibrium. An at least transient very hot phase for the surface would seem unavoidable.
I hadn't thought about that one. Though this effect obviously doesn't have too much respect for conservation of mass or energy.


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A solid gold planet probably wouldn't have an intrinisic magnetic field any more which might expalin soem of the radiation problems.
Yep!


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Then there are other geological (aurological?) issues reulting in probable gross deformation of the surface at a minimum. A mountian of gold probably susides in upon itself. Gold is not a great structural material.

This is also true!


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Originally Posted by PTTG View Post
Can people be rescued from Midas? Or was the transition to gold too traumatic?

Here's a thought: maybe the effect takes hours now, but that's because it's spread over the entire planet's surface. There may be an entire city that was flash-transformed, meaning that aircraft might discover it and some people might have survived, albeit in some cases dented from a fall or something.

Parts of the earth were certainly transformed faster than others. My thought is that the change to gold agonizingly killed most of humanity, but if you can discover the places nearest to the origin, where the change was fastest, you probably can recover some folks.



Remember that looking around is tough though: airplanes have double the lift, but 4 times the weight, and vehicles will slowly turn into gold themselves!
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Old 10-03-2018, 12:19 PM   #1113
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

One thing that could make Midas even more interesting is if a quirk of paratronics made it so gold could go to Midas but could not leave Midas. If someone stayed too long, they would be trapped.
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Old 10-03-2018, 02:22 PM   #1114
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
A solid gold planet probably wouldn't have an intrinisic magnetic field any more which might expalin soem of the radiation problems.
Why not? As far as I know, the magnetic field is a result of having a moving fluid conductive core, and that will all still be true on Midas. Gold is not ferro-magnetic, but at the temperature of the core iron and nickel aren't either.

A gold planet would cool rapidly, as mentioned it is much more thermally conductive, so the surface temperature will go up and the rate the planet radiates heat away will increase. Also, there will be no radioisotopes to keep the core warm. It would still be thousands to millions of years for the planet to cool fully, but it would be an issue on a geologic scale.
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Old 10-03-2018, 03:14 PM   #1115
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
One thing that could make Midas even more interesting is if a quirk of paratronics made it so gold could go to Midas but could not leave Midas. If someone stayed too long, they would be trapped.
Or that gold from Midas that had always been gold could be "infectious". Of course even identifying it could be quite difficult.
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Old 10-03-2018, 07:48 PM   #1116
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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
...and vehicles will slowly turn into gold themselves!
Would non-Midasian gold-plating insulate against the effect? It can't turn something to gold that already is, after all.
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Old 10-08-2018, 11:34 PM   #1117
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Circa 1954, Null-Tolkien-8* saw an uptick in banestorm activity that brought several hundred thousand Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Orcs appearing around Earth. The creatures all have full episodic retrograde amnesia, but do know the language of the region they appeared in, plus any languages they knew before.

Later, Homeline discovered Null-Tolkien-8b, which saw the same event occur in 1892.

Both worldlines are no-mana, and it appears that in both cases the beings appeared 40 years ago by homeline time. That puts NT8a at 1994, and NT8b at 1932.

In both cases, the USA and Britain adapted very well, with other countries doing somewhat less well all the way down to outright genocide.

*Null-Tolkien-1 through -7 aren't odd at all, aside form being somewhat boring in most cases. Apparently the author's survival is a bit of a low-probability event, considering he's missing from a surprising number of worlds.
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Old 10-09-2018, 04:59 AM   #1118
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I really do not think that less than a million nonhumans appearing would qualify as a weird parallel (the transportation of large populations is just a fact of the setting). Now, what would make a weird setting is if fifty percent of the population became nonhuman and the people of the world accepted it without an uptick of violence. A few decades after the event, you would have orcs being elected President of the USA, goblins on cable TV discussing the immorality associated with violent video games, elves receiving Oscars for their portrayals of WW II soldiers, and dwarves protesting the genocide of the ents who protect the Sumatran rainforest. When asked about the Change, you would probably have a conversation similar to this:

Bob: "I Changed into a dwarf during the second wave of '88, right around the time that my parents got their first computer. A few kids made fun of my short size, but that stopped after I tossed one of the humans into a pond. After I graduated from UNC Chapel Hill with my BS in computer science in '99, I started up my first company, an online photo clearing house, and sold it within three months for $5 million to a group of frenzied investors right before the tech collapse. After 9/11, I saw a need for better prosthetics for nonhuman women soldiers, so I started up..."
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Old 10-09-2018, 07:39 AM   #1119
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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
I really do not think that less than a million nonhumans appearing would qualify as a weird parallel (the transportation of large populations is just a fact of the setting).

I haven't seen much in the way of bane-storms in the setting. In addition, I'd think one that mixes up species is pretty weird, even for bane-storms. And the aging effects are going to be a big deal.



The location of where everyone ended up is a big deal, as well of how densely/remotely the new comers showed up. If they all show up in isolated communities in the hinterlands, that's one thing, but if they appear on the streets of the major cities in ones and twos, that's another.



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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
Or that gold from Midas that had always been gold could be "infectious". Of course even identifying it could be quite difficult.

I can't think of a scenario where this doesn't end up destroying a chain of worlds or at the very least killing a lot of good agents. Though I you're looking for a non-traditional threat for ISWAT to handle, there you go.



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Would non-Midasian gold-plating insulate against the effect? It can't turn something to gold that already is, after all.
That sounds like a very viable idea. And a very expensive one. I mean, homeline is rich, but building protective golden shells is something else...


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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
One thing that could make Midas even more interesting is if a quirk of paratronics made it so gold could go to Midas but could not leave Midas. If someone stayed too long, they would be trapped.
as in you leave all parts of yourself that have turned to gold when you leave the worldline? that could be nasty. I'm not sure if that should be treated as radiation damage or not, removing random atoms from your body.



You already can get trapped there from staying too long, because your conveyor turns into gold and stops working, or you die from gold poisoning. But the gold refusing to leave might be a simpler method than it rapidly returning to its previous state. Though that kills the "Rescue a victim" plot-line.


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Originally Posted by a humble lich View Post
A gold planet would cool rapidly, as mentioned it is much more thermally conductive, so the surface temperature will go up and the rate the planet radiates heat away will increase. Also, there will be no radioisotopes to keep the core warm. It would still be thousands to millions of years for the planet to cool fully, but it would be an issue on a geologic scale.


Did we ever get an idea of just how high the temperature would get? We could do a different midas that is the massive red-got ball of molten gold. Of course, that might just be a vanish.
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Old 10-09-2018, 10:36 AM   #1120
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
...
I can't think of a scenario where this doesn't end up destroying a chain of worlds or at the very least killing a lot of good agents. Though I you're looking for a non-traditional threat for ISWAT to handle, there you go.
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That sounds like a very viable idea. And a very expensive one. I mean, homeline is rich, but building protective golden shells is something else...
I was thinking in classical plague terms. And most realistic plagues have some methods of being fought off. Perhaps a form of magical sterilization like massive explosive overkill or removal with protective suits.

Though expanding on the protective gold idea, imagine coating a space suit in gold in some low tech world with easy access gold only for someone to steal the super expensive thing. (Also intriguing explanation for some Midas adjacent worlds' pictographs of space suits.)

Or perhaps even hint at immune cross-timers like the old episode of Buck Rogers: The Golden Man.
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Last edited by Flyndaran; 10-09-2018 at 10:40 AM.
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