scrape_r_rational/data/cache/5ncmla.md

[D] Wednesday Worldbuilding Thread

Post:

Welcome to the Wednesday thread for worldbuilding discussions!

/r/rational is focussed on rational and rationalist fiction, so we don't usually allow discussion of scenarios or worldbuilding unless there's finished chapters involved (see the sidebar). It is pretty fun to cut loose with a likeminded community though, so this is our regular chance to:

• Plan out a new story
• Discuss how to escape a supervillian lair... or build a perfect prison
• Poke holes in a popular setting (without writing fanfic)
• Test your idea of how to rational-ify Alice in Wonderland

Or generally work through the problems of a fictional world.

^(Non-fiction should probably go in the Friday Off-topic thread, or Monday General Rationality)

Comments:

• u/alexanderwales:

  In a D&D campaign that I'm running I have a three mile high cliff with a city running down the side of it to the ocean (or technically a crevasse that splits the cliff a bit). In my head, this is super cool, but I think I only have the knowledge base to take a very shaky stab at it. Figure a population of 2.5 million, roughly the size of modern day Paris.
  
  The biggest issues for a three-mile high cliff city would be ... transportation, waste removal, water, and stuff falling. Since it's D&D, many of those problems can be solved via magic if necessary, but I'm not entirely sure how serious those problems are, or whether you could solve them given purely 16th century technology.
  
  Transportation can be done with elevators, but that requires some form of motive power, which I suppose you could get with water, but that then requires large amounts of water capture at the top of the city and some kind of long-distance piping. But that then bring meteorological considerations up, because you *probably* need weather systems producing constant rain at high altitude in order to be caught by your catchments in order for your elevators to keep running. (Which I guess leads to the sort of worldbuilding thing that I like.)
  
  (Yes, in the real world cities are built for a purpose, but one of the conceits of this setting is that there are magical cities whose existence is a constant, even over geological time. h/t to /u/nighzmarquls who posted that idea to the Discord, which I took for this campaign because I thought it was Neat.)
  

  • u/MonstrousBird:

    Three miles is enough for noticeable differences in atmospheric pressure and temperature, so I'd imagine different trades or classes of people preferring different levels which could lead to cool zoning by level - fishermen at the base, wind farmers at the top etc. You'd need to decide which level the rulers prefer to live, which I'm guessing depends on defendability as well as comfort.
    
    You could have a lot of birds on a cliff like that, and if you have some mythically large flying beasts they could be used as transport - especially if they're the sort that roost at the top and use the sun's rays to get going in the morning before swooping down and climbing back up in the evening - then you could have a whole day night cycle of human activity based on that.
    

  • u/trekie140:

    A simple way to give the city a source of fresh water is to have a waterfall from a large river flowing off the cliff. The locals could build some kind of vertical aqueduct system that would fill counterweights for elevators, which just dump their ballast into the ocean. Assuming Roman-era technology, a simple sewer system could work the same way or even use the same aqueducts (sanitation didn't exist back then). If things falling is a big danger, they could just build large nets beneath the buildings.
    

  • u/Frommerman:

    If magical desalination is practical on an industrial scale (and it should be due to enchanted heating stones and the like), your elevators could use seawater as ballast, with animals/slaves/bound skeletons as their motive power at the top. The seawater is brought to the top of the city while people are moved around with it, and at the top that water is desalinated and sent through pipes to the rest of the city. This allows for gravity - powered indoor plumbing, with the highest water pressure at the bottom of the city. The salt from the water becomes the city's primary export and reason for existence due to D&D's wacky economics and fixed pricing. The families who own the city are fabulously wealthy and employ most of the denizens in this industry.
    

  • u/MagicWeasel:

    Waste disposal is going to be a big issue for this city, especially if it's been there for a *geological timescale*. My first thought was primitive people can just throw shit in the river, but with a city that size, or even with a smaller one, over geologic time that's just going to fuck the whole river up.
    
    A landfill would need to be used, and having one on the side of a cliff is a *massive* engineering project. I have some very minor expertise in landfills and they collapse regularly, and they're effectively giant landslides of garbage, and that's when they're reasonably properly planned by civil engineers and not *placed on the side of a three mile cliff*. Especially with 2.5 million people. It's going to be a huge issue even if we assume it's medieval technology so they're doing things like composting food scraps and there's no plastic packaging to contend with.
    
    Since it's D&D you probably want a guild of wizard garbagemen who make the rubbish go poof, or teleport it elsewhere. Maybe the town has an artefact that's a dimensional portal that puts the rubbish into some desert somewhere and it gets stolen or blocked up so they need to find some other way to dispose of their rubbish (or the portal puts their rubbish into some powerful being's Private Dimension, and now it's full enough that they want revenge?).
    

  • u/somnolentSlumber:

    The elevators could work by the waterfall pushing a giant waterwheel that has gears that connects to a bunch of other wheels, so instead of up and down elevators it'd just be constantly rotating ferris wheels everywhere that could temporarily disconnect from the gear system to stop and go.
    

• u/eniteris:

  *Magic is Radiation*
  
  Thaumons are the particle of magic. Produced by mages/magical artifacts, mages have the ability to partially direct and detect thaumons, allowing them to perform magic. However, high thaumon concentrations quickly become uncontrollable, and result in an extremely destructive magical blast. Magic must be carefully regulated to avoid loss of control.
  
  Mages intrinsically emit thaumons, which are absorbed and re-emitted by other (non-mage) animals. However, mages release more thaumons than they absorb, making it especially dangerous for mages to live in dense population centres, and even more dangerous to have large gathering of mages. Two low-powered mages working together can amplify their powers significantly, but two high-powered mages can barely stand in the same room without resulting in a magic blast. This makes it difficult to teach new students, and when a mage does receive formal training, it is done mainly through master-apprentice relationships.
  
  New mages are often found as a result of a magical blast in a densely-populated area. Mages are feared and discriminated against due to their power and the danger they pose to society.
  
  Recently there has been the discovery of element Null, which absorbs thaumons without re-emitting them, making them indispensable to magical shielding. A single magical Academy has been established, where all mages must wear Null robes to prevent a magical blast. Magical artifacts can also be stored in Null, but Null is still extremely scarce and valuable, resulting in a monopoly by the Queen for usage at the Academy.
  
  Magical artifacts are infused with a large amount of thaumons, and their efficacy slowly decays over time as they emit thaumons. They have the same problem as mages; it is unwise to store powerful magical artifacts together.
  
  And of course there's the Philosopher's Stone, made from powerful mages, a physical manifestation of pure thaumons. Mere exposure to the Philosopher's Stone can turn a non-mage into a mage, but is extremely volatile, as exposure to even the most middling mage can result in a magical blast.
  

• u/None:

  Idea: 
  
  You're a secret agency/task force tasked with dealing trans-dimensional travelers. 
  
  Earth has become a destination in the multiverse, and strange denizens are starting to make their way to Earth.
  
  Already, you watch over four teenage girls who are monster hunters in training, and an elf enchanter/artifacters who thinks all the round-ears are actually the elves.
  
  How long can the masquerade last? What will you do if some other nation, hostile to you, play host to a trans-dimensional traveler? How do you detect and locate the whereabout of trans-d travelers?
  
  There's also the mundane matter of ensuring your superpowered teenagers going to school and not making a fuss......
  

  • u/space_fountain:

    Hum, lots of variables here. First I must mention teenage monster hunters seems a bit strange and worth farther investigation. It's a common trope but makes next to no actual sense. We don't see teen police officers or bounty hunters very often, especially if earth is for some reason newly accessible you'd expect to see mostly experienced people. Possible solutions include them not actually being teens (magic healthcare for the win) or some incentive for the young to go into this kind of work. Magic is stronger when people are young. Monsters have some form of instinct not to attack the children. Even unicorns with the classic myths.
    
    On to your actual question though. You'd be hard pressed to keep it secret long and the real question and problem is why would you? Are you gaining financially because of this? Are you worried about a destabilizing effect. Here also is where other variables come in. Is the transdimensional travel restricted in some manor? Does it have just one exit point or can you predict where a traveler will appear? Do travels have a reason to keep their presence a secret? Let's assume the following. Travelers can only arrive at the full moon and you can predict their exit point down to about a squire mile up to a week in advance. Travelers themselves don't really care one way or another about exposing themselves with maybe a slight bias for secrecy.
    
    Here I think you could maintain things but the last thing you would want to do is send people off to school. If at all possible if you really have a strong motive for keeping it hidden you'd try to turn back the tide. Either imprison anyone coming through or send them back. Maybe if there was enough reason even kill them. Maybe though you need to let them through. Monster will invade Earth or some other disaster occurred otherwise. In this case you let them in but minimize contact between them and other people.
    
    This is of course everything I think you'd actually want to do in this situation. In reality it would make terrible fiction so either come up with really strange starting cases (the teens are rebellious and misbehaving and they are going to public school one way or another with or without your help). Here again you try to minimize contact. Choose a small school somewhere out of the way. Greenland would be ideal. Maybe contrive to cause an internet outage to the area. Through out the key to keeping it secret will be to limit the number of people who know anything. It will be useful to have a team ready with stories meant to discredit anyone coming out with the claim. Without good evidence it shouldn't be hard at first.
    

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