[BAW 2] Truncated Chapters 1 and 2

[jacb547]

So looking awesome Dan! Yesterday was a busy day for me, I also vote yes on the map changes. Also Barry explanation most likely classifies exactly what would have happened, anyways that idea of yours might be best applied as a culture instead of a race. I'd also like to add I express some in interest in making an east Asian based culture around the northeastern islands.

[Barry Goldwater]

Yeah, if you want to have a bunch of hardass supersoldiers they'd make much more sense as our Spartan-y culture instead of an actual race that's better at war not b/c they were put through training from hell, but instead are literally born that way. As for a culture on the NE islands, Rose might already have beaten you there I'm afraid Perhaps you could take the bigger southeastern and/or southwestern islands (equivalent to our...Australia/Polynesia & South America respectively, I guess) instead? They're reasonably close to each other anyway, if this world is still round. As Rose's elf proposal mentioned & as Dan knows from our last Skype chat, I already have big plans for my rewritten Falinesti on the northwest continent myself.

But I might be getting ahead of myself. This is still only chapters 1 & 2, after all.

[jacb547]

Alright no problem, any islands will do basically.

[Barry Goldwater]

If we're keeping the giants from last time btw, why not modify them to be in line with Kip's idea of tropical giants?

Isolating them out west sounds cool, but I think it would be neat if we subvert the "frozen north" giant trope and keep them in the tropical islands and the grass/scrublands to the south. Evolutionarily, height imparts an advantage on flatter lands where a longer stride helps escape predation and peer over tall shrubs (whereas opposable thumbs negates height advantage in other climbs via climbing). How cool would it be to design "tropical" giants? That's something I don't think I've ever seen before.

Actually, now that I think about it, there's no reason that giants couldn't evolve in the south, spread across the continent, and then be driven to the peripheries (including the north) after the Barbarians invade. Maybe we treat the south as the giant "homeland", and then the north as "refugee" settlements/tribes?

So say, a species of humanoids who are normally 7'-10' in height & have the muscle to match, originating in the northwest of the southern continent/southern northern continent/southeastern western continent where as mentioned their height imparts an evolutionary advantage, but who are steadily driven north into the tundra/mountains of the far north by the march of early humanity. They live in small nomadic families and generally keep to themselves, so they may have already gone extinct (due to both conflicts with humanity & as I've said before, lack of genetic diversity) - or perhaps they could've also gone extinct due to interbreeding with northern humans to create a regional variation of humanity that happen to be extraordinarily tall, at least for their time (6'-7', in days when most adult males are in the 5'3-5'7 range due to a lack of nutrients in their food compared to today) living up in the extremes of the northern & western continents. Basically, that theory that Neanderthals didn't quite get annihilated by force but instead interbred with early humans, as applied to giants What do you guys think?

[jacb547]

I quite like that idea, Giants could be a dying breed with only a few hundreds remaining isolated in the fringes of the North and doomed to fail. Around those parts there could half-giants, giant descendants and once in a while a giant hunt. While in the South, their original homeland there would be only tales. As for example: "Eat your vegetables or the giants will kidnap you!"

[chesser2538]

is the area on the NW continent, eastern coast, southern river taken yet. Iv'e been rethinking my bellator race. How about instead
Homo Bellatorem
Height Range: 5’ 5” – 6’ 10”
Life Expectancy 50-70 years
Complexion- dark olive- med brown
Religion- pantheon system

A variant of humans that are both above average in athletic ability as well as in intelligence. — they can run, AND swim, AND climb, AND can adapt to climates wet and dry, hot and cold, etc.... yet this all forms a synergy with their psychology to make them among the most capable warriors on the planet. The Bellator people use a multi divisional system of settlements. Agriculture is derived from river irrigation along with regional hunting. Housing is largely composed of mud brick and wood construction. Defense is composed of unit like groups that protect their settlement from wildlife and hostiles. The unifying aspects of this civilization is culture and religion. Along with a mutual military alliance between settlements.

[Barry Goldwater]

Yep sorry, that's part of where I'm planting my Falinesti (one of the dominant cultures on said continent, alongside Dan's Dafcikar).

As for this new rendition of homo bellatorem - I hate to continue being the critic, but they kinda sound like...normal humans, basically. Maybe they're a bit more optimized for running or w/e (taller = longer legs) and specialize in athletic activities/martial pursuits (though that sounds more like a cultural than biological trait), but we wouldn't call say, Yao Ming or Michael Jordan (actually, pretty much most professional basketball players anywhere) members of a different species after all.

I'll use this post to keep a running tally of the votes on my own suggestions btw.

1) Changes to the map - 5 (Barry, Jacb, Rose, Chesser, Dan)
2) Tropical giants who end up migrating elsewhere (technically Kip's idea) - 6 (Barry, Jacb, Rose, Chesser, G2TC, Dan)

[chesser2538]

Iv'e also gone to the trouble to calculate the astronomical and physics equations for a realistic solar system. You can use mine on make up your own, whatever you guys want. and all of it is scientifically possible.



Sun I
Type F6 V Yellow-white Main Sequence
Radius 8.55 x 105 km (1.23 x sol)
Mass 2.86 x 1030 kg (1.44 x sol)
Temperature 6500 K
Luminosity 2.22 x 1027 W (5.79 x sol)

Planet I
Type Rock Planet
Orbital Radius 7.29 x 107 km (0.49 AU)
Period 2.48 x 103 hours (0.28 earth years)
Gravity 13.44 m/s2 (1.37 x earth)

Asteroid Belt I
Type Asteroid Belt
Orbital Radius 1.21 x 108 km (0.81 AU)
Period 5.32 x 103 hours (0.61 earth years)

Planet II
Type Jovian Planet
Orbital Radius 1.74 x 108 km (1.16 AU)
Period 9.11 x 103 hours (1.04 earth years)
Gravity 19.65 m/s2 (2.01 x earth)
Special Planetary rings, 3 large moons

Planet III
Type Terrestrial World
Orbital Radius 4.36 x 108 km (2.91 AU)
Period 3.63 x 104 hours (4.15 earth years)
Physics Large ocean
Gravity 12.55 m/s2 (1.28 x earth)
Hydrosphere 76 % water, 58 % ice
Atmosphere Dense breathable
2 moons

Planet IV
Type Rock Planet
Orbital Radius 7.94 x 108 km (5.31 AU)
Period 8.92 x 104 hours (10.20 earth years)
Gravity 5.82 m/s2 (0.59 x earth)
Special Heavy radiation, trace atmosphere

Planet V
Type Rock Planet
Orbital Radius 1.52 x 109 km (10.14 AU)
Period 2.35 x 105 hours (26.93 earth years)
Gravity 13.26 m/s2 (1.36 x earth)

Distant Companion Sun
Type M6 V Red Dwarf
Distance 4.81 x 109 km (32.18 AU)
Radius 2.88 x 105 km (0.41 x sol)
Mass 6.62 x 1029 kg (0.33 x sol)
Temperature 2500 K
Luminosity 1.51 x 1025 W (0.04 x sol)

[Xion]

Yep sorry, that's part of where I'm planting my Falinesti (one of the dominant cultures on said continent, alongside Dan's Dafcikar).

I'll use this post to keep a running tally of the votes on my own suggestions btw.

1) Changes to the map - 2 (Barry, Jacb)
2) Tropical giants who end up migrating elsewhere (technically Kip's idea) - 2 (Barry, Jacb)

I support the map changes as well. I thought the giants were already in the game.

I believe the tally for the Islands proposal right now is the following :
3) Island changes - 3(Rose, Barry, Dan)

[chesser2538]

I also support the changes to the map as well as the tropical giants.

[Dan the Man]

Chesser, your efforts are noted and appreciated but I really don't thin that's necessary right now. this is called a truncated version of chapters 1 and 2 for a reason. Keep it simple! Also apologies for typos here, typing from my tablet away from home and apparently TWC has become an even buggier mess on tablets than it ever was before.

[Barry Goldwater]

@Chesser's galactic outline I don't really mind a bit of structure to our universe's space, so I'll support those. Though in the interests of time, we should probably just stick to our solar system and leave it at that.

[Barry Goldwater]

BTW, we should really figure out some basic universal names for each continent, I don't want to keep having to refer to them as 'that northern continent' or 'those mega-islands to the southwest' or 'the NW continent' Each culture we develop later could have its own names for these continents ofc, but for now I'm just suggesting we create universal names that people from one culture can ask about & those from others can understand right away, like 'Europe' or 'Asia'.

[Dan the Man]

Problem with that is it's a cultural thing. People in China don't generally call their continent Asia, for example. Different people have different names for the same thing.

[Gone 2 the Celts]

While different people have different names for everything, players close to each other probably should have similar words due to cultural interaction. I know this is more of a cultural thing than the world itself, but I think we should make some basic landmass names that can be altered by each player.

also, I support the tropical giants and Chesser's solar system.

[Barry Goldwater]

Problem with that is it's a cultural thing. People in China don't generally call their continent Asia, for example. Different people have different names for the same thing.

Well yeah, but if you ask an educated Chinese guy 'hey can you point out where Asia is on this map', he'd still be able to answer correctly. Likewise, we should have basic universal names for each continent that we can use OOC so we don't have to keep referring to the continents as the 'northern continent' or 'southern continent', even if in-universe only the learned scholars of each society (at best) would know these names.

@G2TC what about the map changes?

[Dan the Man]

True enough, but how globalized is our world? 500 years ago a random Chinese man might not be able to do that.

[Barry Goldwater]

Perhaps not random Chinese people, but Chinese scholars would've been another story. Besides the documented Sino-Roman relations (however weak) and Silk Road, and Claudius Ptolemy was able to draw a decent-ish map of East Asia with China clearly marked on it prior to 200 AD. Perhaps the same could happen between continents as our ancient empires establish trading relations with one another, and scholars in the one closest to the center of our world succeeds in piecing their intercontinental maps together into the first ever world map? This would probably have to wait until after all the big empires are established of course (so like, idk, mid to late Iron Age?), but it would be a good start to getting these universal names for landmasses out.

[Xion]

Perhaps not random Chinese people, but Chinese scholars would've been another story. Besides the documented Sino-Roman relations (however weak) and Silk Road, and Claudius Ptolemy was able to draw a decent-ish map of East Asia with China clearly marked on it prior to 200 AD. Perhaps the same could happen between continents as our ancient empires establish trading relations with one another, and scholars in the one closest to the center of our world succeeds in piecing their intercontinental maps together into the first ever world map? This would probably have to wait until after all the big empires are established of course (so like, idk, mid to late Iron Age?), but it would be a good start to getting these universal names for landmasses out.

So perhaps some early Arion scholars form the first world map as iirc, Arion began relatively near the center of the map, which could make it a nexus of trade between ancient empires? Plus Arion, if Dan plans to have the culture be similar to the 1.0 version still, becomes a inter-continental empire so the map would likely spread across the world as they expand into new lands, with regional scholars developing local names for the continents(example being Taihon as the Teisarian name for the northwestern continent) but Arionic ones being the basic names?

[Barry Goldwater]

Sure, I'd be down with. @Dan & other players What do y'all think?

Edit: Since this involves cultures I dunno whether it should be decided here, or in part 3; on the one hand all cultural stuff is supposed to go in part 3, on the other hand names for continents are kinda important to geography (which is what part 1 is supposed to be about). Dan, as the host I think you should decide