Though I've made headway into the Timeline (which is both Part 16 of our Building a Sandbox goal as well as going into the PG) it is obviously not quite complete.
But as I go into designing more, I run across a few things that leave me doing a bit of head scratching.
Number one hiccup: When did the Lost Desert float into picture?
It is a desert island in a temperate climate and as of now, is still very much desert. Now, while I could, in theory, have it float to its current location and call away some mystical/magical/D&Dlike explanation as to why it stays a desert (and could very well do that if I end up with a cool mystical explanation), I want to also look at it from a "real world" inspired reason.
How long could a desert hang out in an area that receives rain and cooler temperatures and remain a desert? The island is floating beneath another, more temperate, island (though it does have a huge volcano on it), so pollination across the islands is possible. How long would it take to float into place? How fast would it move? If it moves too fast, then aren't all islands subject to just floating away from each other? Is there some sort of gravitational attraction to them, despite their relatively small size, or maybe something more mystical?
I don't the island to just have shown up in the past few years, it has been explored (though not very thoroughly and, as always, most of those explorers never returned) and may factor into other events in the timeline itself.
Things to ponder... Any ideas?
You could always do something like The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, where there was constant winter because of the witch. Just, in this case, with desert.
ReplyDeleteOr, a kinda-similar idea, some creature(s) that exist there do something to the environment to make it a desert rather than temperate.
Maybe whatever's causing the islands to float also causes them to be attracted to each other? It also reduces their movement relative to each other, maybe? The loose debris could also be attracted, getting accreted onto the island and clearing the surrounding area. It'd also make for some fun aftershocks following the Sorrow. All tentative, this is complicated.
ReplyDeleteSo following that, the desert chunk could have broken off from a collision between islands far away and gotten launched clear of its island cluster, plowing through the debris faster than it can pick it up, eventually getting attracted to the Bluestone cluster and swinging into it. I'm assuming the debris fields are problems for small ships, but not for big islands.
What's up with the region that's covered by the island on top? Permanent shade, more or less? Sounds cool. You could do some evil stuff there.
I'll deal with the ecological implications later.
Eddies in water will cause flotsam to gather together. Wind blowing across the destroyed surface could cause eddies in the air, and larger chunks will get caught in these eddies and hang together. A major collision could knock an island free of the eddie (eddy?) sending it floating free until it gets stuck somewhere (ooh...DOOOMSDAY device). The actions of our Gnomish cleaning crews help keep the little bits away from the populated islands.
ReplyDeleteAs for the desert...
Sand is rock. Rock isn't very growing friendly. I'm thinking the island will have to be slightly bowl shaped, and the edges will be bare bedrock where the sand has blown away, but the bowl shape of the rest of the island lets the sands collect. Our previously discussed high salt-content also prevents growing.
The problem I see with the bowl shape is that water will collect. Rocks like sandstone are fairly porous, I believe, and so water should filter through it, but the salt should stay. We can always invent minerals to suit our needs.