# A Myriad Worlds



## kilost (Dec 9, 2012)

Rather than one great world as exists in many fantasy settings, here there are a myriad worlds, most likely hundreds, all orbiting their two stars, the Red Sun and the Yellow Sun. The majority are in stable, circular orbits, but a few in elliptical orbits have widely varying climates, and can even swap between the orbits of the two stars.

Each world has a distinct climate. There are desert worlds, jungle worlds, archipelagic worlds, ocean worlds, ice worlds, temperate worlds, forest worlds, tundra worlds and so forth. While all have the same level of gravity, at Earth standard, their size varies. The smallest have a surface area similar to that of Wales, while the largest are closer to Great Britain. The average is around the size of Ireland.

Some of these worlds are connected by portals, hidden in caves and lakes, which allow the passage of wildlife, peoples, objects and so forth. They may or may not be permanent, and they may or may not be consistent in their destination. Worlds inhabited by civilised races will quickly have their portals mapped.

The vacuum does not exist in this universe. The space between the worlds is filled with evenly distributed air, in which birds, trees, dragons and insects dwell. How far this air extends is unknown, but it certainly encompasses the entire range of the Twin Suns. This makes travel between the planets without the use of portals feasible, especially as gravitational effects peter out only a few miles above the surface.

Into this world, the gods introduced the Seven Peoples: the Merfolk, the Kobolds, the Orcs, the Humans, the Dwarves, the Elves and the Djinn. Within each of the Seven Peoples, there exist a number of races, which may or may not be agreed upon. (I will base the cluster of human races on Earth cultures, with perhaps a couple of exceptions. I will be as original as possible with the cultures of the non-humans, but I may have to bring in inspiration from human history. The Mongols and the Orcs spring to mind.)

Every People has three worlds to which they are native, all of differing environments. These are linked by many stable portals. A few semi-stable portals link them to worlds of each and every other People-occupied world. They have no choice but to interact, until they can spread far away from each other across the virgin worlds, both around the Yellow Sun and the more distant Red Sun.

However, the Seven Peoples are not the only sapients among the worlds. There are rumours of lesser races, not blessed with the Gift of Civilisation by the gods, but who may yet steal or learn it from those who were. These include the cat people, the smartest of the dragons, the minotaurs and the sub-dwarves. There may be more exotic groups, like the octopods, the thellakai and the amphibious races. The numbers and ranges of these inferior peoples are unknown, but may be vast.

Magic use varies from race to race, People to People, and is not even present in some societies. 



These are just my initial thoughts, I want to see if there's any interest before continuing (or any suggestions).


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## Gandalf (Dec 12, 2012)

I love it! I think the binary star system is brilliant, as well as the portals.

The thing I think needs the most elaborating is the "thellakai" race-thing.


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## kilost (Dec 12, 2012)

Gandalf said:


> I love it! I think the binary star system is brilliant, as well as the portals.
> 
> The thing I think needs the most elaborating is the "thellakai" race-thing.



Thanks man! I'm really enjoying writing about it.

With the thellakai, I had a vague idea of a reptilian race. Probably something like the Nagas from D&D. Took me forever to find a picture, just imagine it more reptilian :L

But I'm still writing up the Civilised Peoples at the moment, I've done eight human races, I'm now doing the Elves :L


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## Zireael (Dec 13, 2012)

I love the idea, especially the idea of races for every People. Brilliant!

And, of course, I want to know some details:
1) do peoples live in cities? Do cities even exist in this universe?
2) What is the technology level in the universe?
3) How many people can live on a world the size of Wales? The size of Ireland? The size of GB?
4) Are there monsters on a world? In the space-between?


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## kilost (Dec 13, 2012)

Zireael said:


> I love the idea, especially the idea of races for every People. Brilliant!
> 
> And, of course, I want to know some details:
> 1) do peoples live in cities? Do cities even exist in this universe?



Thanks, always appreciate the support! Yes, there are lots of cities, especially on Dwarven and Elven worlds.



Zireael said:


> 2) What is the technology level in the universe?



Low. Fairly average early Middle Ages Europe style, with the most advanced being some dwarven races, and human cultures such as the Aku and the Tellenians.



Zireael said:


> 3) How many people can live on a world the size of Wales? The size of Ireland? The size of GB?



Extremely variable between cultures and peoples. Feasibly, tens of millions, even on a Wales level. Practically, tens to hundreds of thousands.



Zireael said:


> 4) Are there monsters on a world? In the space-between?



Certainly there are monsters. Most are located on the wide diversity of worlds unoccupied by sapient races, but there are some dotted around the wilder areas of the Peopled worlds. And as for the space in-between, very few now, but more will develop later.


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## Addison (Dec 31, 2012)

My fantasy world is like that. The back story goes into why; basically a magician from the future gets hurled back to pre-medieval times and works to save magic as its sudden re-birth caused the end of the world and his magic, and another incident, created several different worlds where different races, magics and ways of life existed in peace without any interference or meddling/infection from other worlds.


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## SineNomine (Jan 3, 2013)

kilost said:


> Rather than one great world as exists in many fantasy settings, here there are a myriad worlds, most likely hundreds, all orbiting their two stars, the Red Sun and the Yellow Sun. The majority are in stable, circular orbits, but a few in elliptical orbits have widely varying climates, *and can even swap between the orbits of the two stars.*



I just want to note that you may need to explain this one with fantasy logic, because physics won't work.  I am not even sure if you have can have a stable orbit around both stars in a binary system in a perfect system where there is no other source of gravity in the entire universe.  In a system with other bodies, it's about as close to impossible as you can get (I haven't ran infinite simulations of binary systems obviously so I can't say that no possible stable orbit that switches between both exists so...).


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## JCFarnham (Jan 4, 2013)

SineNomine said:


> I just want to note that you may need to explain this one with fantasy logic, because physics won't work.  I am not even sure if you have can have a stable orbit around both stars in a binary system in a perfect system where there is no other source of gravity in the entire universe.  In a system with other bodies, it's about as close to impossible as you can get (I haven't ran infinite simulations of binary systems obviously so I can't say that no possible stable orbit that switches between both exists so...).



To my knowledge it's perfectly probably to find a body orbiting both stars in a binary. There are inherent problems with a more "figure eight" type path between the two stars, involving odd tidal forces and such, but I would be hesitant to say this needs to be explained away. Frankly such worlds, wracked by the forces of their orbit would be fabulous story fodder, don't you think 

Nice idea for a setting Kilost.


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## SineNomine (Jan 4, 2013)

JCFarnham said:


> To my knowledge it's perfectly probably to find a body orbiting both stars in a binary. There are inherent problems with a more "figure eight" type path between the two stars, involving odd tidal forces and such, but I would be hesitant to say this needs to be explained away. Frankly such worlds, wracked by the forces of their orbit would be fabulous story fodder, don't you think
> 
> Nice idea for a setting Kilost.



Perhaps I was a bit unclear, you can certainly orbit both stars if the orbit of the substellar companion is outside the barycenter of the binary star system (by quite a significant amount usually, but that's neither here nor there).  I was only commenting on the specific "figure 8" type orbit where the substellar companion orbits one of the stars part of the time and the other star part of the time.  Though tidal forces would certainly be a big issue, the more important issue is that orbit is simply unstable;  In time, the substellar companion will either be flung away, flung into the star, or degrade into a different, stable orbit.

It certainly is a rich idea for a story, just physically impossible.  Luckily, writing in fantasy gives us great ability to do the impossible, so as long as you have a good reason (IE magic), it's not a problem.


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## Mindfire (Jan 4, 2013)

Sounds pretty cool! But if air fills all the space between the planets and the two suns they orbit... are stars visible at all? And more importantly, how do the suns not set everything on fire?


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## kilost (Jan 6, 2013)

Mindfire said:


> Sounds pretty cool! But if air fills all the space between the planets and the two suns they orbit... are stars visible at all? And more importantly, how do the suns not set everything on fire?



Well I'm not COMPLETELY sure, but I was thinking that thicker gases fall into the area immediately around the stars, and insulate them to a fair extent from the oxygen and such further out, while hydrogen is present either within the star itself or floats away from them. It isn't confirmed how far it goes, because we don't know where the air stops. Maybe if you kept going outwards you've eventually hit a region where there was only helium, and have to bring air supplies.


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## Mindfire (Jan 6, 2013)

kilost said:


> Well I'm not COMPLETELY sure, but I was thinking that thicker gases fall into the area immediately around the stars, and insulate them to a fair extent from the oxygen and such further out, while hydrogen is present either within the star itself or floats away from them. It isn't confirmed how far it goes, because we don't know where the air stops. Maybe if you kept going outwards you've eventually hit a region where there was only helium, and have to bring air supplies.



How does gravity work in this universe? Because that's going to have a huge effect on this massive space cloud.


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## kilost (Jan 8, 2013)

Mindfire said:


> How does gravity work in this universe? Because that's going to have a huge effect on this massive space cloud.



Basically, it works weirdly. The planets all have the same gravity, roughly equivalent to Earth's, even though their masses vary and pretty small by comparison to our Universe. But gravity gets to a certain height then just stops. No tapering off. On some worlds, mountains might get over half way there. 

As for orbits, they work normally, more or less. Aside from some artistic license (worlds aren't colliding all the time). The stars have gravity, but its not as strong as in our Universe.


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## Mindfire (Jan 8, 2013)

kilost said:


> Basically, it works weirdly. The planets all have the same gravity, roughly equivalent to Earth's, even though their masses vary and pretty small by comparison to our Universe. But gravity gets to a certain height then just stops. No tapering off. On some worlds, mountains might get over half way there.
> 
> As for orbits, they work normally, more or less. Aside from some artistic license (worlds aren't colliding all the time). The stars have gravity, but its not as strong as in our Universe.



Different size planets could have the same gravity if their densities vary. And planets smaller than Earth could have equal gravitational force if they're denser than it is. As for the rest of it... I have no idea.


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## Creed (Jan 12, 2013)

Three things…
1. A very interesting world! Ripe with opportunity for myriad adventures among the myriad worlds!
2. About the naga thing, I was immediately reminded of the naga from Dungeon Lords (the game's buggy as hell, but still fun). Here's an okay picture of them: 






3. 


kilost said:


> As for orbits, they work normally, more or less. Aside from some artistic license (worlds aren't colliding all the time). The stars have gravity, but its not as strong as in our Universe.


I think the idea of worlds crashing together is pretty damn awesome! You should have a part where two planets collide at least once, just because it sounds really cool!


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## kilost (Jan 13, 2013)

Creed said:


> Three things…
> 1. A very interesting world! Ripe with opportunity for myriad adventures among the myriad worlds!
> 2. About the naga thing, I was immediately reminded of the naga from Dungeon Lords (the game's buggy as hell, but still fun). Here's an okay picture of them:
> 
> ...



1) Thanks  That's the idea. I've taken a break at the moment, but after my exams are over I'll finish writing up the Kobold sub-divisions and then begin history.

2) Wow, pretty cool. There's some inspiration for me 

3) OK, just for you I'll have one story where two worlds collide through some screw-up, resulting in some mass apocalypse yadda yadda. Maybe some residents surviving on a little fragment are shot off to the far side of the system and land on another world.

I'm thinking that the Gifted Races, the six which have their own worlds and relatively advanced societies, are going to have a fairly supremacist attitude towards the other more feral races, and it will take some time for the latter to develop their own civilisations, at which point they'll hopefully get their own back.

My current plan is that, after a few decades, the portals rapidly become less stable as the magic involved in their creation decays, forcing people into travel through the air through whatever means. After that magic as a whole will increasingly decay, until its all down to technology in a couple centuries.


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## wordwalker (Jan 13, 2013)

Should have mentioned this earlier: take a look at Jack Chalker's _Well of Souls_ books. It's an artificial planet built to contain hundreds of separate environments and their own sentient species, some areas with tech-inhibiting fields or magic and some not. You get things like how difficult conquest is because the high-tech zones are surrounded by low-tech (can't invade them without losing their toys, but the others _really_ don't want to rush into their guns), with water sections and so on to fill the other gaps. Great fun.


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## Creed (Jan 13, 2013)

kilost said:


> 3) OK, just for you I'll have one story where two worlds collide through some screw-up, resulting in some mass apocalypse yadda yadda. Maybe some residents surviving on a little fragment are shot off to the far side of the system and land on another world.



I'm honoured! And as we all know, catastrophe provides the most fertile soil for a hero to rise! }8-D


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