Differences in climate

[+Oltux72 he/him]

Why was ancient Komashi so hot while UTol apparently is a normal planet? Shouldn't they share a roughly similar climate if they share an orbit?

[Treamayne]

2 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Why was ancient Komashi so hot while UTol apparently is a normal planet? Shouldn't they share a roughly similar climate if they share an orbit?

The heat in the stones was specifically mentioned to be due to the Spirits (splinters) in the stone - and was specifically mentioned to be lessened in the Epilogue beause enough Spirits loved dramas enough to volunteerily become Hion - lessening the numbers residing in-and heating the stones.

Spoiler

Ch 4:

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Here, there was something almost intimate about kneeling. Spirits gathered in warm places. Or rather, warmth was a sign they were near.

Coppermind:

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These spirits came to dwell within the surface of the planet, where they warm the stone ground in some areas, providing energy. This geothermal energy is also responsible for bringing subterranean water to the surface through steamwells.^[7]

Another Epilogue:

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The emergence of the sun didn’t cause an utter catastrophe on Komashi, though they did learn the hard way about sunburns.

Turns out, a number of the spirits liked being hion lines, and were persuaded to continue in that service—with proper payment. That kept the heat of the ground down to something manageable. There were plants in the ruins of Torio City they could use to start new strains of crops, and the old ones would still grow by hion, if kept in the shade.

 

 

[alder24]

4 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Why was ancient Komashi so hot while UTol apparently is a normal planet? Shouldn't they share a roughly similar climate if they share an orbit?

No, the atmospheric composition is the most important factor (Venus is hotter than Mercury), along with reflectiveness of the surface and the atmosphere, atmospheric pressure,  geoactivity and other things. We don't know most of those factors, but UTol is an ocean world, while Komashi is a rocky planet - this is counterintuitive, as water has lower albedo than the land - it absorbs much more heat, but on the other hands clouds can reflect more sunlight (but water vapor is also a greenhouse gas). But if the atmosphere has low amounts of greenhouse gasses, most of this heat would radiate away. Also hot geysers indicate greater geoactivity on Komashi and there are Spirits heating the ground up, so that is additional heat warming up the planet, coming from the inside, not from the sun.

Spoiler

 

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

The heat in the stones was specifically mentioned to be due to the Spirits (splinters) in the stone

Yes, even the place of the ritual, which attracted "Spirits" was described as extra-hot (compared to the normal hot-as-a stove ground). But some places on the planet were even hotter. But it's weird, as those weren't Spirits but the Shourd. I guess the machine used the Shroud to heat up the surface around prisons. Ch 4:

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The place of ritual was a section of extra-hot stone, though not nearly on the level of the outlands.

 

Edited October 4, 2023 by alder24

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

But some places on the planet were even hotter. 

The extra-hot places were the Torio Wastelands - away from the steam geysers, and also away from where Yoki-hijo were removing spirits from the ground by having them become fabrials:

Spoiler

Ch 4:

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Water wasn’t rare in Yumi’s land, but it was concentrated, centralized, elevated.

The air nearest the steamwells was humid, nourishing migratory plants and other lively entities. You often found clouds above the steamwells, offering shade and occasional rainfall. The water that didn’t escape as steam rained down on large bronze trays set up in six concentric rings around the geyser. Elevated from the ground to keep them cool, the metal funneled the water down the slope toward the nearby homes. There were some sixty of those in the town—with room to grow, judging by how much water the steamwell released.

The homes were built a good distance back, of course. Steamwells were vital to life in this land, yes, but it was best not to fraternize.

Farther out from the city were the searing barrens. Wastelands where the ground was too hot even for plants; the stone there could set clogs afire and kill travelers who lingered. In Torio you traveled only at night, and only upon hovering wagons pulled by flying devices created by the spirits. Needless to say, most people stayed home.

Ch 33:

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But I have sent hordelings out. Most of the landscape beyond the cities is wasteland, enveloped in this strange Investiture. Like the slag castoffs of half-refined souls.

Note - the wastelands were no longer hot enough to kill the Hordelings. . . 

With the Shroud in place, the ground was cool - and the Father machine took the shoud from the YH enclosures and used that to heat the ground to maintain the illusion and captivity for the YH:

Spoiler

Ch 40:

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A piece of her broke when she realized even the sunlight she’d basked in and loved—even the sight of the daystar itself—had somehow been fake.

(She was wrong, by the way. The sunlight, actually, was real—the domes over the cities let sunlight through in one direction without allowing light back out the other way. So while what she felt was authentic, those of us surveying the world from above didn’t spot these prisons. In addition, the heat from the ground was real, created by the machine using a concentration of Invested essence.)