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07-15-2003, 07:45 PM #1
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Daniel McSorley wrote:
> I`m thinking of putting a what-if-Columbus-were-right continent over
> there. The part the Anuireans colonized would roughly resemble
> Kamchatca and the eastern coast of Russia, in terrain at least.
I like it. One very important question would be: are there elves in
those endless Siberian forests, or not? If yes, are they anything like
the Cerilian Sidhelien, or not?
> West of the asians, maybe some Mongol-type orcs, because I like orcs
> and I like Mongols.
A fine plan. Two great tastes that taste great together? ;>
> West of that, some mountains,
AKA the Urals and the Caucasus? =)
> then a hellenistic area, which is visited by some far-ranging Basarji
> from the original homeland of that people. They probably sailed
> pretty far, maybe island-hopping to get there.
Sounds good to me.
> In the south of this big landmass, maybe some big island chains
> like the islands between Australia and Asia.
>
> East of Cerilia, there are the Dragon Isles, right, and then the
> Basarji homeland. Probably a long gap between there and my asia,
> that`s about it for the northern hemisphere.
>
> South of Cerilia, we have Aduria, of course, which some people have
> variously put yuan-ti and beast-man type empires on that I know of,
> and the Adurian Empire or remnants thereof.
>
> Any other continents you`ve placed on Aebrynnis?
This leads us to the age-old question, just how big is this planet?
The map we have which shows the largest region is the cardstock terrain
types map from the original boxed set, and its near-twin ocean areas card
sheet from Cities of the Sun. The scale on those maps, taken at face
value, would imply they measure about 2,500 miles east-west and 2,000
miles north-south. With fantasy worlds, flat planets are always a
possibility, but the strong north-south climate gradient implies to me
that the planet is indeed round.** This would mean we can believe the N-S
number, but the E-W number is true only at some specific latitude -- which
we don`t know (or else the "lines" of longitude are _curved_ on the map,
which is a complication all sane sailors (Cerilia`s primary mapmakers, no
doubt) would avoid). Furthermore, properly correcting for distortion
requires we know at least two actual latitude lines on the map and the
radius of the planet.
Now, Cerilia is quite small -- a bit smaller than Australia (if, for the
sake of argument, we take 2000x2500 as a real, rectangular area, Cerilia
would need to cover half of this map to be the same size as Australia;
it`s shown as more like 20-25%). 2,000 miles N-S is about 29 degrees on
Earth -- is that big enough to handle the variation from Aduria`s deserts
to Thaele`s glaciers? I`d say yes, since that`s enough to reach from
Tunisia to Finland (though of course the effect of mountains and ocean
currents on rainfall and temperature should also be considered, not to
mention that desertification is largely the fault of goats...). That
means, although some people have in the past suggested this, it is not
actually necessary to make Aebrynis as small as Mars (one-quarter Earth`s
surface area). In fact, if we say Aebrynis is the size of Earth, the map
position is about the same range as Tunisia to Finland, and the horizontal
scale is set at the N-S center of the map (to minimize the relative
distortion between the edges), then we find that the map in question
covers, say, 30 N to 60 N, and 50 degrees E-W, and really does cover about
5 million square miles (my choice of middle latitude for the horizontal
scale is what makes this the same as the rectangular calculation).
The crucial result of all of the above is this: that map covers only
_one-fortieth_ of the total surface area of an Earth-sized Aebrynis.
There`s plenty of room out there for other continents!
Any thoughts on how big Aduria is? How about Djapar? Thaele?
** As an aside, it`s also probably a bit farther from its star, since its
year is 388 days long; its sun could instead or also be smaller than ours,
but I personally would prefer slightly farther away from a rather more
massive star, so that the amount of solar energy received per unit area is
not too much less than ours, lest we leave the whole planet too cold.
Ryan Caveney
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07-18-2003, 06:54 AM #2
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That is really well thought out. Its good to see world-builders not too afraid of science.
h34r: <_< :blink:
Explain how this is a signature, its not my handwriting.
The hardest part was teaching the bunnies to hug. -Duke Phillips
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07-18-2003, 01:51 PM #3
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07-18-2003, 04:31 PM #4
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Arch-Sorcerer Gargamel wrote:
> That is really well thought out.
Thanks. =) I`m really just following in the footsteps of my old college
buddy Gary Holian, who did a similar calculation for the world of Greyhawk
several years ago: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~monax002/Coun...4/measure.html
But really, AFAIAC, the math is the easiest part. The really interesting
stuff is the actual drawing and populating of the maps, in which area I am
quite pleased to steal^H^H^H^H^Henjoy the work of others. =)
Oh, one other option which I forgot to mention last time: if Cerilia seems
too small to you (e.g., you`d prefer Anuire to be the size of most of
western Europe, instead of just France): it`s pretty straightforward to
roughly double the map scale, and say instead for example that the map in
question actually shows 60x100 degrees, and is placed roughly from 10 N to
70N; this gives an increase of total map area from 5 million square miles
to about 17.6 million (note that it`s less than quadruple, because the
surface is curved). There`s still room for a bunch more continents (it
still goes less than a third of the way around E-W, and still doesn`t
cover the southern hemisphere at all), including Aduria, whatever Djapar`s
attached to, and Daniel`s Eurasia-inspired lands. The trouble this causes
is that now there starts to be a more significant difference in scale as
you go north on the Cerilian continental map -- e.g., Ariya and Avanil get
a lot bigger, but Hogunmark and Grabentod don`t change nearly as much.
This may make the whole "how big is a province" issue even more
problematic -- which might not be so bad, as it provides another reason to
redefine provinces on the local scale as composed of some specific number
of 6-mile hexes, as Kenneth does, as well as to help explain why the
Anuireans had such great success as imperialists.
> Its good to see world-builders not too afraid of science.
*grin* If you`ll cast your mind back, I was the one who discussed Fourier
transforms and quantum mechanics with you some months ago...
Ryan Caveney
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