What is Cidri?

[Shaira]

Hi everyone,

I started playing The Fantasy Trip in 1980, and played the heck out of it for a couple of years, loving the game and its system. My young self, however, always had a bit of a problem accepting the description of Cidri - something didn't quite gel for me. Now I think it has.

I used to wonder about some of the physics of this almost infinitely large world. If it was a world of at least 48 continents, surely it must be much bigger than our Earth? And, if so, if the planet was the same density, then its gravity would be huge, far greater than ours. And, even if you handwaved the super-earth gravity with a boatload of magic and Mnoren tech (gravity engines in the planet's core?), then there were other problems: how could you have climatic variation in a reasonable distance? The poles would be much further from the equator than our own world, so any campaign area would be pretty much a mono-climate in terms of latitude. Sure, meteorology could affect that, and of course you could handwave with magic and tech again, but...

Finally, the horizon problem. If Cidri was a super-earth, then the horizon would be much further away. How much further? That depends on how big the world is. But it would affect everything: curvature of the earth, ships vanishing over the horizon, the visibility of distant mountain ranges, even spotting approaching armies.

I finally shelved the question and moved on to other things, but it's always been at the back of my mind: what is Cidri?

So now, reading the new Legacy Edition, my mind is turning so Cidri again. Here's a thought experiment I've been mulling over while reading and scribbling:

What if Cidri is a "multiworld"? Start of with a planet very like our Earth. Maybe it even is our Earth. We know Jen Mnoren made huge use of his gating ability, and that the subsequent Mnoren Empire held together by way of gates: what if these gates didn't just connect to other worlds, or other places on this world, but also connected to other versions of Jen Mnoren's world, too? What if these gates could be macro-scale structures where you could simply walk in a straight line from one parallel to another while crossing a plain, a forest, a river...? Maybe all those parallels are lined up on an east-west axis, as well as being accessible via gate - you could literally walk east forever, without ever circumnavigating the globe...

In other words: Cidri is a linked network of versions of the same planet existing in parallel universes. Some are near identical; others have different geography, peoples; on others the laws of physics, magic, what-have-you, work slightly differently.

In game terms, this means we're all gaming in Cidri, but our own Cidri-realities, the ways we interpret the rules, extrapolate Cidri geography, society, magic, can all coexist in this coherent but varying network of alternate world realities. Cidri as a physical planet can remain as logical as we like in "scientific" terms - horizon distance like our own world, same for gravity, air pressure, climatology, meteorology, etc, all without resorting to magical or technological handwavium.

It also means we can hop from one to another. There's no "Cidri Prime" - just this network of vast, possibly infinite, extent.

That would make Cidri the supreme Mnoren artifact - a magitech creation of super-ringworld or Dyson sphere scale. It also raises some tantalising questions as to where the Mnoren actually went...

What do you think?

Cheers,

Sarah