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Open questions about the world in SP#1


Oltux72

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  • How does the water cycle work? Are there normal oceans apart from the dry oceans?
  • What are they burning for their machines? Spores? Sprouted Verdant?
  • As they know wood, rain must be falling. That means activated spores where rain is falling and rivers empty into the dry ocean? What happens to the vines and other stuff?
  • What happens to the spores? Why is the planet not buried under spores? Are the moons old?
  • What happens when different kinds of spores meet?
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I had the same question about the water cycle. Can you imagine how terrifying a thunderstorm would be?

It mentioned getting water from a well on the island, so there is water underground. Maybe there is an entirely underground water cycle instead of an atmospheric one. The one tree was in the duke's grounds and the other methods of agriculture sounds very much like transplants not native to this place, so could all be irrigation from underground.

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5 minutes ago, Frustration said:

They mine it.

I mean geologically. How did salt deposits get there without large bodies of water? Salt mines on Earth usually mine halite, which is formed by sedimentary deposits of ancient oceans.

Edited by Ironeyes
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I suspect that this planet had normal seas at one point. And maybe still does somewhere. 

But I think there is rain- Tress treats even dead spores with caution; people think of them as an ever-present danger, and although there's talk about importing food, they don't seem to have any shortage of water. 

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4 hours ago, Oltux72 said:
  • What happens to the spores? Why is the planet not buried under spores? Are the moons old?

That's my biggest question. If they're not that old, or at least the spore fall isn't that old (cosmologically speaking) that could explain why there are so many animal metaphors and things. Perhaps most of these animals are extinct and remembered through stories mostly.

If the spores are incredibly old, then what is disposing of the spores? Even the inert ones would eventually become a huge problem - filling up the world with dust.

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13 hours ago, Zibus said:

If the spores are incredibly old, then what is disposing of the spores? Even the inert ones would eventually become a huge problem - filling up the world with dust.

Maybe they recycled like Atium does? Spores crumble into dust, and dust evaporates as pure Investiture, and returns to the respective Aether.

Something similar to Stormlight Cycle on Roshar, just more hostile.

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22 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

Maybe they recycled like Atium does? Spores crumble into dust, and dust evaporates as pure Investiture, and returns to the respective Aether.

Something similar to Stormlight Cycle on Roshar, just more hostile.

Or maybe there's giant Larkins living in the oceans eating all the excess.

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3 hours ago, Nameless said:

Or maybe there's giant Larkins living in the oceans eating all the excess.

Ooh I can just imagine that. It could fit the tone too if there's pirates and an old-timey map showing sea monsters and stuff - "here there be monsters"

Edited by Dreamwa1ker
Typo
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  • 2 months later...
On 3/3/2022 at 1:36 PM, Gilphon said:

But I think there is rain- Tress treats even dead spores with caution; people think of them as an ever-present danger, and although there's talk about importing food, they don't seem to have any shortage of water. 

There is a brief reference to thunder, so there must be rain on this planet.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm going to guess that most questions about how this planet functions are ultimately going to be answered with some flavor of 'Adonalsium Diddit', where the system is either dependent on Shard-tier manipulation to keep it running, or it's not intended to be stable beyond the kind of timespan Brandon is working within.

On 3/3/2022 at 11:20 AM, Oltux72 said:
  • What happens to the spores? Why is the planet not buried under spores? Are the moons old?
  • What happens when different kinds of spores meet?

For the first, I'm going to speculate that the planet has something akin to the ash-eating microbes that kept Scadrial from being completely smothered in ash which helps break down the spores once they're dead.

For the second, that's a good question. The fact that we can talk about various distinct seas suggests that the types don't mix. Possibly it's some kind of Investiture reaction with the result that each kind repels the others? Another possibility is that they do mix, but new spores fall from the moons rapidly enough that each sea is able to retain its distinct character and it's only towards the edges (farthest from the lunagrees) that you would see a mingling of types.

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Good point, that's also a possibility. My assumption would be that since they're referred to by Hoid as oceans and he's aware of how they work on other worlds, that they're at least somewhat like ours on Earth where you have a whole bunch of different ones that are contiguous (and so in one sense all a single big ocean) with regional characteristics that distinguish them, but I don't think we have enough detail to confirm that.

Either way, this planet must look pretty spectacular from orbit, with so many differently-colored spore seas. Or pan back a bit and you get that plus twelve moons to look at. Though I'm pretty sure any would-be astronomers in the Cosmere would take one look at the system and say they have no idea how it manages to stay that way. Especially since the planet somehow manages to have a dozen moons all in geostationary orbits; Brandon uses geosynchronous but if they don't appear to move the former term's more precise. We can probably chalk that up to Hoid not caring about the distinction since he's narrating all of this.

Edited by Weltall
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That's possible, but it seems like the "formal" names use Sea rather than Ocean (Verdant Sea, Crimson Sea, Midnight Sea) which can often imply a more bounded body of water, either inland like the Caspian Sea or connected by a narrow passage like the Mediterranean and Black Seas.

Not that the naming of these things is at all consistent in RL nomenclature... why does the Salton Sea in California get to be a Sea while the Great Salt Lake in Utah doesn't?

I am pretty sure that a non-equatorial geostationary orbit is impossible in RL without some major constant external force.

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