World building of SP#3

[+Oltux72 he/him]

Yumi's planet

• How does the water cycle work?
• Are the plants and animals themselves using Invested arts?

Painter's world

• What precisely are they eating? How does agriculture work in a lightless world?
• How is oxygen made without photosynthesis?
• What is the point of having many cities?
• Why isn't the planet covered in ice? How does thermoregulation work?

[+ILuvHats he/him]

Just speculation at this point, but I'm assuming that on Painter's world, the darkness only absorbs energy in the visible spectrum, so the temperature is still regulated by the sun with relative normalcy. Any deficits in heat caused by the absorption of that particular sub-spectrum of energy could be accounted for by a denser atmosphere.

Edited March 17, 2022 by ILuvHats

[HSuperLee he/him]

Yumi's Planet

• How does the water cycle work?
  • Presumably on a smaller scale. There are likely massive underground aquifers on large sections of the planet that feed the geysers that we saw in the reading. These geysers eventually erupt, sending tons of water into the air, where it eventually rises high enough to form clouds. Once the temperature massively drops in the evening, these clouds likely condense into rain or snow, or the water merely becomes dew on the ground. From there, the water either finds paths in the ground back to the aquifers, or it evaporates again and helps form the next day's clouds.
• Are the plants and animals themselves using Invested arts?
  • Based on how big their plants are and the fact that to fly by "riding the thermals" alone would require that the plants be incredibly lightweight and have an immense surface area, I'm going to say they're likely invested. Probably some interaction with the spirits that helps reduce their effective weight to significantly below what it should be (another thing they'd have in-common with Roshar.)

Painter's Planet

• What precisely are they eating? How does agriculture work in a lightless world?
  • It was mentioned that plants grow towards the hion lines, which means they produce enough light for the local plants to thrive. Its possible each city thus allocates a large area to specialized farm space using the hion lines to maintain a food supply.
• How is oxygen made without photosynthesis?
  • Said plants growing off of hion lines likely generate the oxygen for the planet. It has yet to be seen if the darkness is permeable, but I assume it is.
• What is the point of having many cities?
  • There's probably a couple reasons related to logistics and infrastructure that would make a megacity more difficult to sustain, but probably the most significant reason is that having that many people together would mean that there'd be a constant flow of many nightmares, and that the city would be so complicated that patrolling and defending it from them would be exceptionally difficult if not impossible.
• Why isn't the planet covered in ice? How does thermoregulation work?
  • ILuvHats provided an excellent explanation for this. Especially since this planet seems to share a system with Yomi's world, and thus the sun seems to be very hot, which might offset the coolness caused by the darkness. Further, the darkness might have an insulating effect, again going back to its permeability, which would possibly then cause the opposite issues with heating, but I'm not sure how that would work out over such a massive scale.

Edited March 18, 2022 by HSuperLee

[teknopathetic he/him]

Is anyone else assuming that the two worlds were split in half 1500 years ago? Sure seems like one is a Dark Sphere and the other is a Light Sphere. We also know the languages are related by having High and Low forms of vocabulary radicals (and hoid says they are related explicitly). 

The Dark World suddenly is thrown into chaos as shadows overtake it post-split. 

Edited March 18, 2022 by teknopathetic