I'd like to try an experiment - building a world here, adding a new (hopefully interconnected) piece each week. I don't have a story in mind - that's sort of the point, seeing what emerges just from the creation of the world itself. At some point this is going to need a name, but that feels rather premature for the moment. It is, however, getting to the stage where it's rather silly to link posts individually, so I'm just going to link to the tag lookup result here.

I think my post publishing dates have gone skewiff, here, but anyway.

What's for lunch?

We have settled convicts living mostly-underground on an iceworld gathering phosphorescent light and guarding their sun. They are, at some point, going to get hungry, and their local environment is not (necessarily) going to be especially forthcoming with edibles.

Typically, Earth'sfrozen areas aren't abundant with life; while some plant life may survive, almost no animal life stays there permanently - and the few that do are generally just hanging on until a warmer, more fertile period returns. Even with adaptations, (and especially considering some of the adaptations life here will need to survive the gamma rays) it's unlikely this planet is going to be teeming with life like a rainforest. So what can our inhabitants eat? 

I'd like to try an experiment - building a world here, adding a new (hopefully interconnected) piece each week. I don't have a story in mind - that's sort of the point, seeing what emerges just from the creation of the world itself. At some point this is going to need a name, but that feels rather premature for the moment. It is, however, getting to the stage where it's rather silly to link posts individually, so I'm just going to link to the tag lookup result here.

Where'd you lot come from?

Last week, our inhabitants became settlers from another world, which brought up a whole lot of new questions - namely, what the hell are you lot doing here, don't you know that thing's gonna blow soon?

While I posted a while ago about the importance of keeping track of your worldbuilding in a sensible way, I confess I've been doing exactly the opposite here - just posting and trusting to my brain to remember things. However, the steady stream of 5am starts and long days this semester has rather diminished my ability to remember what the hell I'm talking about at any one time, so I thought it'd be a good idea to actually map out what I've been doing...

I'd like to try an experiment - building a world here, adding a new (hopefully interconnected) piece each week. I don't have a story in mind - that's sort of the point, seeing what emerges just from the creation of the world itself. At some point this is going to need a name, but that feels rather premature for the moment. It is, however, getting to the stage where it's rather silly to link posts individually, so I'm just going to link to the tag lookup result here.

Meet the natives

Or rather, not natives.

As we've examined before, the life-expectancy of our star means that anyone who lives here either underwent fantastically rapid evolution, or moved in for reasons of their own.

I'd like to try an experiment - building a world here, adding a new (hopefully interconnected) piece each week. I don't have a story in mind - that's sort of the point, seeing what emerges just from the creation of the world itself. At some point this is going to need a name, but that feels rather premature for the moment. It is, however, getting to the stage where it's rather silly to link posts individually, so I'm just going to link to the tag lookup result here.

I'm making fairly random decisions as I go about what to create and which way to take the world. That's part of the process, for me - just riding along, following the trail of each piece I create, being inspired by the previous ideas to build the next. That doesn't mean anything I decide is iron-cast - a better, more suitable or more interesting idea may well (and probably will) supercede it along the way. The important thing is to keep a hold of which things each decision influences, so I know that areas I need to rethink, should I change an idea.

I'd like to try an experiment - building a world here, adding a new (hopefully interconnected) piece each week. I don't have a story in mind - that's sort of the point, seeing what emerges just from the creation of the world itself. At some point this is going to need a name, but that feels rather premature for the moment. It is, however, getting to the stage where it's rather silly to link posts individually, so I'm just going to link to the tag lookup result here.

Let there be light

So our world is ice, with heat and safe living areas forged from volcanic tubes and tunnels. Our people live mostly underground, venturing out only during the night when the sun's gamma rays are hidden.

Outside, they'll be able to see a little by the moonlight, most of the time. And they may even borrow a few tricks from the Egyptians, using mirrors to reflect moonlight down into the tunnels. That's not much light to see by, however.

I'd like to try an experiment - building a world here, adding a new (hopefully interconnected) piece each week. I don't have a story in mind - that's sort of the point, seeing what emerges just from the creation of the world itself. At some point this is going to need a name, but that feels rather premature for the moment. It is, however, getting to the stage where it's rather silly to link posts individually, so I'm just going to link to the tag lookup result here.

A short one today, because it's now that time of semester when my brain starts melting from answering student questions and resolving staff problems.

Heat

Our ice-world is volcanic, but it's still going to be uncomfortably cold to live on. While our inhabitants can huddle near volcanic vents and lava beds, heat is still going to be scarce - fire is difficult to create on an iceworld, and wood requires venturing up to the surface anyway, so our inhabitants are either going to have to have a technological adaptation to ward off the chill, or be physically adapted to deal with it.

I'd like to try an experiment - building a world here, adding a new (hopefully interconnected) piece each week. I don't have a story in mind - that's sort of the point, seeing what emerges just from the creation of the world itself. At some point this is going to need a name, but that feels rather premature for the moment. It is, however, getting to the stage where it's rather silly to link posts individually, so I'm just going to link to the tag lookup result here.

Lay of the land

I don't know about you, but I'm rather sick of maths-y mathsness for the time being. So no more maths for the moment at least. We have an ice-cold world with a super-long year and three moons, and people are going to need to live somewhere.

I'd like to try an experiment - building a world here, adding a new (hopefully interconnected) piece each week. I don't have a story in mind - that's sort of the point, seeing what emerges just from the creation of the world itself. At some point this is going to need a name, but that feels rather premature for the moment.

The sixty-fourth day of Fentebruary

 Our slightly-larger-than-earth ice planet rotates around its deadly start once every 120 years, while its three moons - a small dark, medium red and large white - loop around once every 426, 1150 and 5840 days respectively. We have four eclipses, occuring every 1380 days (dark-red), 7008 days (dark-white), 18396 days (red-white) and 22075 days (triple eclipse). That's earth-days, by the way - 24-hour rotations. We could change the day length (planetary rotation's more or less whatever you want it to be - it's dependant on how fast things were going when the planet was formed, and tidal locking stuff, so have at it. Anything up to about 96 hours is okay- after that, the temperature fluctutation between night and day gets too extreme. Also keep in mind the faster your rotation, the more volatile your weather.) but we've already got complicated things here, let's keep it simple.

I'd like to try an experiment - building a world here, adding a new (hopefully interconnected) piece each week. I don't have a story in mind - that's sort of the point, seeing what emerges just from the creation of the world itself. At some point this is going to need a name, but that feels rather premature for the moment.

Over the moon

Our bigger-and-heavier-than-Earth planet orbits around its deadly star every 120 years. That's a looong time to wait for Christmas - almost two generations. It'd be nice if they had something else to look at in the meantime.

Satellites are important to a planet's health and not just from a spiritual or aesthetic perspective of the inhabitants. Orbiting satellites help prevent tidal locking - a planet being stuck with the same side always facing its sun, the way the moon always faces the same side to earth. A planet that's tidally locked to a sun will fry on one side and freeze on the other, becoming rapidly uninhabitable. Satellites also help protect a planet from passing comets and asteroids, by influencing the gravitational pull or even providing a physical shield (if we're lucky).

With a solar year of 120 years, I'd like to add a couple of moons in there - it'll help break up that 120 years with varying kinds of eclipses and alignments. And besides, multiple moons is a great ingredient for inventing religions and cultures.

I'd like to try an experiment - building a world here, adding a new (hopefully interconnected) piece each week. I don't have a story in mind - that's sort of the point, seeing what emerges just from the creation of the world itself. At some point this is going to need a name, but that feels rather premature for the moment.

Planetary plans

So our planet is orbiting around our super-hot, super-short-lived, super-deadly blue star once ever 120 years, far enough out that it's largely made of ice. Or it would be, assuming there's water. There doesn't have to be. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

How big is this planet? What's the gravity like? Do we have huge creatures loping gracefully through a moon-like bound, or short, squalid inhabitants hugging the surface? Are there metals? How thick is the atmosphere?

Some of these are going to be decided for us by the fact that we're orbiting a blue star. Blue star radiation isn't just deadly to DNA, it also breaks molecular bonds in a process called photodissociation - blue stars steal your planet's free oxygen from its upper atmosphere. Without free oxygen, there's no life-as-we-know-it, no fire or civilised technology. So we're going to have to do something about that.

I'd like to try an experiment - building a world here, adding a new (hopefully interconnected) piece each week. I don't have a story in mind - that's sort of the point, seeing what emerges just from the creation of the world itself. At some point this is going to need a name, but that feels rather premature for the moment.

Starting with stars

I like blue stars, they're problematic. They're too hot, too big, too short-lived, and emit so much deadly-to-DNA UV radiation that they make the Australian hole in the ozone layer look like a giant lead umbrella. Problems are good - they force you to be creative with your solutions, give you opportunities for inventiveness and originality. Problems are the antidote to lazy worldbuilding.

Blue stars only live a few billion years - no where near enough time to get an intelligent life form off the ground. Consider that our planet's about four billion years old, and homo sapiens only started appearing, at the earliest, four hundred thousand years ago, it means anything smart enough to think about the sun in their sky isn't going to have the chance to do so for long. Even your longest-lived blue star will be threatening to go nova when your native species have just begun metaphorically crawling. Which means either we'll have a native species with a really big problem, or a some settlers for whom such a star was either ideal, or the best they could get. All three of those sound promising as starting points.