austenandrews

Re: Speed and breaking a gravity well. Sometimes they call it Pistachio Spackle.

Re: Speed and breaking a gravity well.

Re: Speed and breaking a gravity well.

Re: What power would you buy (with a twist) Transform: Any object into the same under my control Locks would open for me. Computers would do my bidding. Streetlights would change at my whim. It'd be like having cheat codes for real life.

Re: A question of seasons Alternately, the extra season could be barren for whatever reason (too dry, too wet, annual plagues of pests, whatever) and overall resources would be scarcer.

Re: Mental Block:Scientist Plot Ah, so you don't need fuel for lift, just for thrust. In theory you could put sails on the thing and make it a near-silent airship.

Re: Dyson Spheres

Re: Dyson Spheres Depends on what they want to use it for. A thousand years ago no one would have thought constructing a 100-story steel office building would ever be worth it.

Re: Dyson Spheres

Re: Dyson Spheres

Re: Dyson Spheres

Re: Dyson Spheres

Re: Dyson Spheres Are a star's emissions essentially uniform over its surface? If not, wouldn't uneven emissions knock the sphere out of position?

Re: Dyson Spheres (Edit: Oh great, I get to follow Curufea and look like a chump. ) My understanding is that Dyson spheres are not stable. That is, while a ringworld can be put in a stable orbit, a contiguous sphere can't "orbit" something inside of it. So if your sphere is basically one monolithic construct, some sort of propulsion must be used to keep it from wobbling. Off the top of my head, this could be remedied by making the sphere out of concentric ringworlds that span the entire 360 arc perpendicular to the ecliptic. (Just make sure you space them apart radially so they don't crash together, which would be messy.) Depends. If we're talking about a monolithic sphere, you can't spin it for centripetal gravity like you can a ringworld. At best you could spin it and treat the equator like a ringworld, with gravity decreasing as you near the poles. My point is, a Dyson sphere by itself would not be Pellucidor on a stellar scale. You couldn't stand on the inside surface except at the equator (or whatever latitudes gravity is tolerable). Now if your "sphere" is made of freestanding ringworlds, each could have its own centripetal gravity. Alternately you can handwave a solution with artificial gravity. Or you could have the thickness of the "shell" be sufficient to generate its own livable gravity (though I'd hate to see the mass calculations on that monster). Or simply have everyone live in microgravity, attached in various ways to the inner surface. (Of course one could also live on the outside of the sphere, but that doesn't sound like the direction you're going.) From the inside surface, you wouldn't see the stars. You'd have unending sunlight (though if the sphere were made of ringworlds, they could be segmented so that inner rings provide periodic shade for outer ones - assuming of course the builders cared about light-dark cycles). There would have to be a mechanism for keeping solar radiation from just building up and cooking the inner surface. Space travel would be very common, if one wants to jump to different points inside the sphere. On a more planetary scale, navigationally it'd essentially be a "flat earth" making air travel simpler.

Re: I feel like a Pneu man... I thought you were refering to him. Cool, thanks for the link. I've always wanted to play with the idea of a steampunk pneumatic transport.

Re: Spells for the Goddess of Love and Lust I would be disturbed at the very inclusion of such a spell in a game I played. Ever see the movie Brainstorm?

Re: Mental Block:Scientist Plot That's my thought - use solar power for regular operations, with a store of fuel for use in darkness or rain, and a steam engine for propulsion. Of course a big problem with steam engines is the weight of the water. That's usually handwaved off, but alternately steam could be replaced with man/horsepower (necessitating a larger balloon, of course) or some other power source. (I quite like the clockwork idea of using extremely powerful coiled springs in big cartridges. You pre-wind them before takeoff and hook one up to your propellor. When one is spent, detach it and bolt in the next one. Just don't compromise the integrity of a loaded cartridge or it could get very messy.)

Re: Spells for the Goddess of Love and Lust Pertaining to relationships, there could be magic that bonds two people together more closely. For instance some kind of empathy (they always know the general mood of one another) or limited Mind Link (think Aragorn & Arwen); the ability to "scry" on one's partner, or one's partner's future; the ability to always find one's partner; maybe the ability to spread one partner's wounds and REC evenly among both partners, or to convey sustenance through a magical link; etc. Such magical bonds could be granted by a priest. Consummation by the couple may be required, but I wouldn't think so in all cases.

Re: Draining SPD to Zero

Re: Spells for the Goddess of Love and Lust Sounds like you need to answer some more fundamental questions first, like what social function does the church of this goddess serve? For what reason would someone plunk a coin into this church's donation box? Presumably it's more than just getting laid. Do they sanctify marriages? Preserve the distinction between romance and marriage? Protect fidelity by codifying infidelity? Preside over the transition to adulthood (sexual maturity)? Sanctify cosmetic practices? Once you've figured that out, possible powers should be straightforward. For instance, if the church sanctifies cosmetic beauty through traditional adornments, body modifications, etc. their magic would reflect that. If sacred piercings are the norm, healing magic is an obvious choice, as well as jewelry enchanted for various purposes. Sacred tattooes imply glyphs of health, potence, etc. The sanctity of personal beauty could imply mirror magic, or even water magic, as pools are natural mirrors. Transition to adulthood implies rites of passage, which could lead to any number of magical specialties - questing, hunting, fighting, agriculture, animal husbandry, crafting, and on and on. It doesn't have to be, and realistically wouldn't be all about just sex.

Re: If Healing was a flavor: HERO = Vanilla Healing --> Healing at range --> "Healing" usable as attack (sleep spells, "healing" a wooden shield back into a tree, transfering wounds from an ally to an enemy, etc.).

Re: "Neat" Pictures There's something vaguely unsettling about sexualizing child icons. Not wrong, as such, but it definitely triggers a squick reflex.

Re: Three new planets discovered Dunno, just going off what the article said.

Re: "Neat" Pictures The thought of Lucy Van Pelt with sexual power is terrifying.

Re: Three new planets discovered My first thought is, man, those are some huge chunks of rock.