[GAME] Conceive a Cross Dimensional Fantasy Milieu

[ericthered]

Question 10 [MV] How long ago did the first recorded portal voyage take place?

Answer:
The first recorded portal voyage is a matter of legend and myth rather than one of history. Each people tell of how they arrived in their current home, usually a tale of mighty heroes, divine favor, and national pride that outsiders regaurd with disbeleif. There is some ordering to some tales, but nothing approaching anything like conscences. The most common answer is: "A hero of my people made the first journey from a land we can no longer reach..."

Question 13 [MV]: What useful products come from the Mother Plains?

Question 14 [MV] per answer #9 Calledronite is used by one world to make life-draining blades. What are the notably geological features of that world?

Question 15 [MV] Per answer #1, Many Portals have names, and each is unique. How may a wayfarer or sage distinguish between two portals?

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I was considering whether to call it "crocodile rock".

"Croc-Rock!" Now we have three names for it, and they all have a different context and say something about the person who uses them!

Like with the Megacorp thread, how about we considered separate tagged streams of questions, one focusing on Fragment [FRG], the other on portals and the multiverse [MV]?

That's a solid idea. We may even end up with additional tags for other worlds or topics.

We've been putting out more questions than we answer, and I think that may be the best way to run this game: the more questions, the less someone is forced to answer a particular question. In the real-time version of the game, you have one question at a time, but you also have someone in the hot seat who must answer that question.

[patchwork]

Answer 6 The near-constant warmish weather is actually not conducive to most known staple crops being grown on Calledron. There is yam and cassava, and limited amounts of rice. The Mother Plains portal is important to the powers that be in no small part because it provides reliable access to arbitrary quantities of pseudowheat. Chickens, pigs and goats are kept; there's no open meadows and plains well-suited to cattle, horses, or sheep (heavily implying the Calledronians walk pretty much everywhere). What it is good for is cotton, coffee, cocoa, tea and vanilla. These are the boring day-to-day goods that Fragment trades outworld for food and other useful things.

Calledron's wilderness doesn't have many dangerous animals aside from tigers. The tigers (and Calledronians who hunt) live on deer, rabbits, monkeys and wild pigs (and domestic pigs when things are not going smoothly). Some people are bothered by enormous spheroids that appear to be insect eggs scattered around, but there is no record of one ever hatching.

We skipped question 3, and I appear to have impinged a little on question 13.

Question 16 How many worlds is Fragment in regular contact with? How many has it documented but not maintained regular contact with?

[Daigoro]

Answer 9b) More Calledronite Trade
I was thinking that calledronite's self-attracting property should be useful somehow, then I realised:

Calledronite Compasses and Markers
A compass with a needle tipped with calledronite will point to large or nearby amounts of the gemstone. Obviously such compasses are useless in Fragment, and there will be interference from any calledronite items carried by a travelling party, but they can be useful in many realms and dimensions that travellers pass through. Calledronite marker stones can be placed next to portals to allow wayfarers to find them and navigate toward them from large distances away, especially in realms with unfriendly environments. Markers could also be placed next to travellers' huts or other places of interest, or they might be used by bandits to create an ambush.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Question 3 - The Capital
Where then are the Mother Plains Portal and the seat of governance on Calledron?

At the snoutward tip of Calledron. The skull of the crocodillian never fused at the tip, and a comparatively short crevice (500 miles long) extends into the maw. The mother plains portal and seat of governance is about 30 miles from the crevice

Question 17 [FRG]
Which end (or side) of Calledron gets sunlight first and darkness last? How gradual or sudden is that event?

[patchwork]

Answer 11 Fragment has a hard boundary and is shaped like a sphere; matter that "falls" away from the sun eventually pancakes against it. Light apparently passes through it, and it has slowly moving striations and whorls of predominantly blue with bits of green and violet. Lacking stars, Calledronians have a system of predictive uranology based on them. This has lead some to imagine Fragment as a sort of bubble floating in a volatile fluid, but with control of the Mother Plains portal, Calledronians have been far more interested in the polycosm next door than exploring the edge of the sky. There is no observed accumulation of debris on the inside of the sky, leading most to suspect that matter is eventually broken down and absorbed by either the boundary itself or the volatile fluid beyond.

Question 18 What entity or agency makes governing decisions in Calledron?

Question 19 What entity or agency controls access to the Mother Plains portal?

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Question 17 [FRG]
Which end (or side) of Calledron gets sunlight first and darkness last? How gradual or sudden is that event?

Answer 17 [FRG]- Dawn, Dusk & Daylight
Taking the snout-end to be the South and the neck-end to be the North, the day-night terminator sweeps across the landscape from the SSE on a 30 degree angle, taking just half an hour to cross the basin. However, ninety minutes before dawn, the Claw lights up the landscape with bright rays of reflected light, then later, the first morning sunlight hits the 150 mile high east-side canine and its massed banks of cloud to scatter light through the atmosphere, so dawn isn't exactly a sudden event.

ETA: The day is only short, with about 8 hours of directly illuminated daylight and 16 hours of night. /ETA

Dusk isn't so impressive, as the last light of the day kind of just slinks off over the low rim of the North.

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Some numbers if anyone wants to do more calculations:
Fragment sphere is 100,000 miles diameter
Sun is at radial centre
Calledron is 30,000 miles from the sun (compared to Earth-Moon of 240,000 miles)
Calledron's 4,000 mile length subtends a 7.5 degree angle at the sun
The teeth, in proportion to the skull for real crocs, would be 150 miles high for the canines, and maybe 10-15 miles for the other teeth (twice the height of Everest)

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Question 20 [FRG]- Fragment's Sun
What is it? What does it look like?

[Emerald Cat]

Originally Posted by patchwork

Question 18 What entity or agency makes governing decisions in Calledron?
Question 19 What entity or agency controls access to the Mother Plains portal?

Answer 18
Calledron is simply too big for a single authority to rule Calledron. Portals to Calledron sometimes form in close proximity. Travel using a portal network is often significantly faster than walking the normal route. Most of Calledron is under the control of portal network based states or states carved out of portal-free territory. The Calledronian Empire has the largest portal network and this allows them to dominate matters of interdimensional politics.

Imperial counties are in charge of local governance. County and garrison size depends on local resources and how many links the county has. The largest counties are about 350 miles in radius. Each county is ruled by an Archmage. They are responsible for writing and enforcing local laws, appointing judges, and hearing appeals. In practice, this means that most counties are CR 4 - 5 depending on the personality of their Archmage.

Emperor Julius Martellus won the throne in a magical duel to the death with the former Emperor 14 years ago. He is responsible for commanding the Imperial Army, writing imperial law, appointing imperial judges, and serving as the court of last appeal. Emperor Martellus is a benevolent dictator who has undertaken reforms to transform the Empire into a CR 3 meritocracy. His reforms of the tax code, reduction of the portal tariffs, and elimination of the portal tolls has lead to an economic boom. While he is popular with the general public, Emperor Martellus' reforms have earned him some powerful enemies among the old guard.

Answer 19
The Calledronian Empire.

[Emerald Cat]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Question 20 [FRG]- Fragment's Sun
What is it? What does it look like?

Answer 20 [FRG]
Fragment's sun looks like a giant, pitch black, rotating eyeball with a pupil that glows gold. All of the heat and light from the sun comes out of the pupil. The pupil is round, and is as large in comparison to the eyeball as a human pupil is to their eyeball. Most people believe it to be a portal, albeit an unusually large and bizarre one.

Question 21
How does magic work on Fragment? Does magic work differently on other worlds?

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

Answer 20 [FRG]The pupil is round, and is as large in comparison to the eyeball as a human pupil is to their eyeball.

Which means that light probably comes out of it in a 120 deg arc, so directly illuminated daylight only lasts 8 hours, if we presume that Calledron lie directly on the plane of the sun's rotation. I'll add this to my last answer.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

Question 21
How does magic work on Fragment? Does magic work differently on other worlds?

Magic is found as specific abilities of supernatural creatures (many of which are intelligent) and in the exotic properties of various substances (like Calledronite)

Many different supernatural creatures and substances are found throughout the polycosm. Most effects work in most universes, but there are some worlds that shut down most magic and some magic that only works on a few worlds.

Most magic works on Calledron, and the local flavor of mage retains their power on most worlds. 'Mage' seems to be a semi-genetic trait passed to parent to child. Calledron mages mostly work with kinetic energy. They can fly, form walls of force, throw objects around, and even perform delicate motions. They also seem to be able to see through objects and around corners. Archmages have the same abilities, and come from the same population, but are far more powerful, throwing objects many times the limit of a normal mage. The secret to their power is unknown, but its widely speculated that each has access to a power source that lets them lift faster, heavier, and farther. This magic requires hand motions to direct it, particularly to use large amounts of power.

Others with their own genetic magic live on Calledron, as well as alchemists who merely achieve diverse effects via exotic substances (such as Calledronite).

Question 22 [MV]:
What shape is the world or cosmos of the mother plains?