Author: Yora

Bringing prehistoric fantasy worlds to life

Work on my Ancient Lands setting is coming along nicely and not only do I have all the components parts ready, but also got names for almost all of them. Unless you tried building a fictional world and create a compendium of all the main groups, places, and creatures, you won’t believe how terribly difficult that last part is. Making names is easy, making names that are not total garbage and sound completely made up is unbelievably hard work. And it doesn’t get easier when you get to make some 200 of them that are supposed to come from half a dozen different language families.

Now that I know where all the places are, who lives there, what their relationships with each other are, and what kinds of environments and creatures make up the world outside the settlements, the next step is both much more complex, but I think also easier. A fantasy world is not a map with names on it, but it is all about the people who live in that world and how they interact with each other. How do they behave, what do they believe, what to they want, what do they fear, what do they opposose, who has power, of what kind is that power, how do they live, how do they fight? Take the first half hour of Star Wars for example: You don’t know who any of these people are, what those places are you see, and what everything is about. But it’s still a very evocative setting, just from seeing the people interact with the world around them and each other. (Star Wars is also what I consider to be one of the greatest examples of the effective use of archetypes: The moment you see Darth Vader you know exactly what kind of character he is, and the imperial uniforms make it perfectly clear what type of Empire this is. Nobody has to say it, it’s clear because you’ve seen people like these countless times before, and you’re meant to recognize them.) In Fantasy, it is very common to do things the standard way, which means the popular image of the European middle ages. Connor Gormley wrote some interesting thoughts on why this isn’t necessarily a bad thing at Black Gate a while ago. But the Ancient Lands is specifically meant to not evoke images of a medieval world, but instead aims to feel prehistoric. The reason I think it’s also easier than chosing the elements that you want to put into your world is that from this point on you’re actually staring to thing of people and events and the possibilities now are based on the things you already have in place and don’t come purely from a vacuum.

The idea of a “prehistoric time” is a bit blurry. Originall the term refered to the periods of human civilization and culture from which we have no historic records. Only archeological finds and reports from later times, but no documents in which those people wrote down what happened during their own time. The “historic period”, as least as far as Europe, the Mediterranean, and Mesopotamia are concerned, is generally divided into Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Modernity (which really just mean old age, middle age, and current age), while the “prehistoric period” is split up into the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. Antiquity is generally considered to start with the rise of the classical Greek civilization around the 5th century BC. (Which is convenient, as Antiquity also ends around 500 AD and the Middle Ages last to about 1500 AD, making it easy to remember.) It was a reasonably good idea to classify past human civilizations, but by now we know how to read Egyptian, Akadian, and Hittite and those people wrote quite a lot, so that we now have a lot of historic documents from the Bronze Age. So technically, it’s not really “prehistoric” anymore. But really, the main concern here is fantasy fiction, so when I use the term prehistoric, I mean the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. But even those terms are not perfect, as different parts of the world developed different technologies at different times or skipped some entirely. Southern Africa went straight from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, and it would be completely justified to say that people in Central America went straight from the stone Age to Modernity, skipping four of the six perioids completely.

And when I say “Stone Age”, I particularly mean the Late Stone Age, or Neolithic. Neolithic people didn’t have metal technology, but they were a far shot from being cave men. The Neolithic begins with the development and rise of agriculture, when people stopped wandering around hunting for food, but settled down in farming communities. And those could get quite sophisticated, with the Inca and Aztecs being great examples of how much you can do without metal technology. Conveniently for us, the move towards agriculture took place about 8,000 BC, which means from the start of human civilization to now it has been roughly 10,000 years. Always a good guideline for considering how much time passes between different periods in your fictional world.

Continue reading “Bringing prehistoric fantasy worlds to life”

Why Venus is the coolest place to go to

Everyone is still excited about Mars. And I can remember how 20 years ago it really was the big thing to do in space. Everyone was wondering if there was or is water, and perhaps there are some tiny bugs or mosses living in cracks in the ground and things like that. But now we had a lot of probes on Mars that did really well and even had a close up shot of a bit of ice under the red dust. Reaction was “huh, that’s pretty neat”, but didn’t really seem like such a great discovery anymore, with much more interesting stuff going on the Jupiter and Saturn moons and planets around other stars. And even after a decade of combing the desert of Mars, other than ice we ain’t found shit!

Hunting for life on Mars has for a very long time been more about searching for traces of microbial life on Mars from billions of years ago. With some hope to find tiny fish on Europa or Enceladus and methane rivers on Titan, Mars really looks pretty boring now. No real need to get any scientists on the ground there to research microbes anymore. So getting people on other places than Earth and the Moon is really mostly (or entirely) because we could and it would be cool. So let’s scrap going to Mars, that place sucks. Venus would be so much cooler to go to.

venusNow the big problem with Venus is that the surface is about 470°C hot and air pressure more than 90 times higher than on Earth and enough to crush almost all submarines. Also, the atmosphere consists mostly of Carbon Dioxide and sulfur dioxide, which likes to form sulfuric acid. Which makes Venus the worst place to land on in the entire solar system, other than the surface of the sun. However, you don’t have to land on it when you could also cruise around in an airship high up in the clouds. And then it’s actually probably the nicest place for humans in the solar system other thab Earth.

  • At a height of about 50 km above the surface, the air pressure is similar to that found on Earth at sea level, with temperatures around pleasant 20 to 30°C.
  • The atmosphere consists mostly of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, which are both not harmful to humans. You would suffocate because there is no oxygen to breath, but that luxury is found nowhere except on Earth.
  • This only leaves the sulfur dioxide as the remaining nasty environmental factor, but when sulfuric acid reacts with organic matter, it leaves behind pure carbon. Carbon fibre, carbon nanotubes, and graphite are all modern materials that people get quite excited about and they all happen to be really just pure carbon. (Carbon fibre is mixed with fibres of other materials, but there are surely options that also don’t react with the acid. Some metals, like titanium, will react with the acid, but then form a thin layer of oxide on the surface which seals the metal and keeps the acid away.
  • While there are almost no oxygen molecules in the atmosphere of Venus, most of it is carbon dioxide. If you can split the carbon dioxide, you get oxygen to breath and carbon to make replacement parts for your carbon airships.
  • Even 50 km above the surface, there is still so much atmosphere above you that it helps block radiation from the Sun, which on the Moon and Mars would be a lot nastier even though they are much farther away.
  • The atmosphere also makes the whole landing part a lot easier. Landing on the Moon is easy because it has very little gravity. Landing on Earth is also easy, because you can use parachutes and wings to gently float down to the surface. Mars has lowe gravity than Earth, but still quite a lot, but also barely any atmosphere, which makes landing pretty rough. Robots can handle it, but with current technology any astronaut would feel like being in a plane crash. Or not, since he’d probably dead. On Venus, you have all the nice atmosphere so you can use parachutes to slow you down. And best thing, since you don’t actually go to the surface, you don’t have to land at all. If your airship goes down a bit faster and ends up lower than you aimed for, it will just bob back up to the altitude it was meant for. (Unless you get too deep and crushed and baked.)
  • One of the best things about Venus is that it has a similar size and mass to Earth, which means it has also a very similar gravity. Even 50 km above the surface, the pull of gravity is almost the same as on the ground, which for Venus is about 90% of the gravity we experience on Earth. Floating around for a few minutes is fun, but low gravity does all kinds of unpleasant things to muscles, bones, and circulation over time. In an airship on Venus that would not be an issue.
  • A trip to Venus is also shorter than a trip to Mars. Not hugely, but cutting a 550 day trip down to 450 is still 100 days not hanging around in space doing nothing. Carrying around 20% less food will also make the engineers very happy.

Really, the only annoyance about Venus is the sulfuric acid, which really is only a big problem when you get it on your skin and in your lungs. Which is sad, because otherwise you could go paragliding on another planet with nothing but a breathing mask. If weather is good and there are no acid clouds nearby, you probably still could get out on the roof without a full suit, enjoying the sun for a few minutes. Having irritated skin for a week and a minor sunburn would be totally worth it.

So yeah, forget about Mars, Venus is so much more fun.

Fantasy Safari: Monsters of Faerûn (D&D 3rd Ed.), Part 3

Ghaunadan
Ghaunadan

The Ghaunadan is a slime creature very much unlike any other in Dungeons & Dragons. In addition to being an ooze, it also is a shapechanger that can take the form of any kind of humanoid. It is also far from mindless like other oozes and instead a highly intelligent creature. It’s slime has a paralysis effect on living creatures and it also can easily disarm enemies by pulling their weapon into its body. A ghaunadan also has a limited form of charming gaze, which gives it a significant boost to all Charisma checks against a creature it has charmed, which makes ghaunadans excelent for infilitrating humanoid cities and palaces. Ghaunadans are associated with the ancient and evil god Ghaunaur, who rules over slimes and all kind of weird Underdark creatures and is sometimes worshiped by drow. Since all his traits are basically the same in every way as those of the demon lord Juiblex, I always consider them to be actually the same being. I don’t remember seing any hint of ghaunadans in any works older than this book, so it’s quite likely that they were inspired by the Shapechangers from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, who are mostly the same thing but can also take the shape of objects and nonhumanoid creatures.

Fog Giant
Fog Giant

I can’t really say anything about the Fog Giant, other than it’s a giant without special abilities who ranks in power between a stone giant and a frost giant, but is taller than either. But look at this picture! When this guy hits you, you’re paste!

Phaerlin Giant
Phaerlin Giant

The Phaerlin Giant is a creature native to the Phaerlin region of the Underdark in the Forgotten Realms, which lies under the huge Anauroch desert and was once the location of the mighty wizard empire Netheril, but is under control of the phaerimms (more on those later). Phaerlin giants look like slightly mutated stone giants and live entirely underground, which I think is a neat idea. Reminds me of grimlocks. But their stats in this book are pretty wonkey. They are probably the only creature in D&D that is size category Huge and has a Challenge Rating of 3. Like any self respecting Underdark creature they have magic resistance and being primitive and feral they can sense nearby creatures by scent. Almost 70 hit points is also nothing to laugh at, but their backs are bent so badly that they move only very slowly. And for some unexplained, but nonmagical reason, they are so terrifying that characters who fight them have to make a saving throw or suffer penalties to all their attacks and saves because of fear. This is usually an ability reserved for the most powerful beasts and inhuman abominations. Here it just seems out of place. I like the cave giant from Pathfinder a lot more. Continue reading “Fantasy Safari: Monsters of Faerûn (D&D 3rd Ed.), Part 3”

Voting for Gemmell Awards has opened (last week)

With all the feather ruffling about the Hugo Awards and the mud slinging and bitch slapping about what the awards should stand for, I mentioned at Black Gate that the people who want space adventure books over socially thoughtful science fiction could simply make their own award without getting into indignified fights with the Hugo people. For example there have been the Gemmell Legend, Morningstar, and Ravenheart Awards for heroic fantasy for a few years, which to my knowledge have been very well received by fans of this type of fantasy.

And as someone has pointed out to me, the voting phase for this years Gemmell awards has just opened. You can just go here and vote for the works you enjoyed the most. Unfortunately, I have to admit that I haven’t read any of those on the lists, as I don’t really read a lot and most of it are old classics.

Though I am currently reading Blood of Elves, which I didn’t know got the first Legend award in 2009. (Even though the Polish version had been released 15 years earlier, but whatever. It’s a really cool book.)

Cypher System Rulebook this summer

I’ve been looking at the Numenera RPG this week and while I wouldn’t say I am a fan of it and don’t plan to run a campaign with it, I do quite like the basic rules framework behind it. It’s not quite rules light, but manages to strike a pretty good balance between quick and easy rules while still being relatively open in what kind of characters you can make and what they can do. The problem with classless RPGs like Shadowrun or GURPS is that character creation is a lot of work as you build your custom characters from scratch and assemble them from very small parts. On the other end you get games with character classes like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, where your choice of class determines a huge part of your characters to the point of dictating much of the characters personalty and backstory. And of course, there’s the d20 games which combine the worst of both worlds. There are also games like Fate and Burning Wheel, which define characters more by their role in the story than their own traits and abilities. The Cypher System used by Numenera and The Strange is pretty close to what I consider an ideal approach. There are three classes (warrior, rogue, mage), three ability scores, six levels, and monster stats really come down to only their hit points and the difficulty for all dice rolls the player characters are making against them. Bit more complex than Barbarians of Lemuria, but I think not really very much. I really quite like the idea of the system, though not so much their execution in Numenera.

Actually quite a while ago, it was announced that there would be Cypher System Rulebook, which will be released this summer. I’ve seen stores that already have it for preorder with a release date of late July, but that might just be their personal estimate and nothing official. (Like amazon listing release dates for Baldur’s Gate 3 for years. Good times…) And I have to say I am quite interested in this.

Cypher-System-Corebook-1-John-Peterson

My interest with Numenera started because it’s an RPG that is about explorers setting out into a vast wilderness to explore the ruins of past ages to scavange for pieces of techno-magic they could bring back to their villages and city states, where they could be of great use and further the understanding of these artifacts. Which happens to be exactly the same thing I am doing with my Ancient Lands setting. While Numenera looks good, there is just a lot of focus on electronics and robots, which is admitedly a bit distracting when you want to use a Bronze Age fantasy setting. But it’s still a game about exploring places and finding stuff with special properties, so having a book with just the cypher system to use as a base for your own settings really does sound quite appealing. Might even work well for a Star Wars or Mass Effect campaign.

While Numenera got quite a bit of attention at its release, I hadn’t really heard much about since. But while looking for the original announcement for the new book, I was really quite surprised to see how much stuff there is for both Numenera and The Strange. No clue how well it sells, but it looks like this might be a system we’ll be having around for quite some time to come.