Mapping Scadrial

[Treamayne]

Concur. That Broadsheet quote just strikes me as if they not only can't navigate out of sight of land*, but it almost seems like they don't consider the possibility. I'm probably reading too much into it, but there was no indication of "oh, blown off course - let's try to find a navigational method." Instead it was "sail eastward and hope to find land. . . "

*which reminds me - if we can get map scales, and use those to determine Scadrial's circumference then we can likely calculate horizon drop-off (since it is unlikely share the √(height/0.5736) calculation)

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

but they probably weren't "SoScads" yet.

Of course. I was just using the term because "the peoples whose descendants would eventually become known as SoScadrians" is a mouthful (and far too reminscient of "the artist formerly known as Prince")

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

They may well lack a good North Star (and even for Earth that changes - there was no really good North Star in say Ancient Greek times).

Yeah, until ~300AD is was the pair of Polaris and Kochab (slightly closer to Kochab and that star in Draco during Ancient Greece)

 

Edited February 8, 2023 by Treamayne
SPAG

[cometaryorbit]

23 hours ago, Treamayne said:

*which reminds me - if we can get map scales, and use those to determine Scadrial's circumference then we can likely calculate horizon drop-off (since it is unlikely share the √(height/0.5736) calculation)

Of course. I was just using the term because "the peoples whose descendants would eventually become known as SoScadrians" is a mouthful (and far too reminscient of "the artist formerly known as Prince")

Yeah, until ~300AD is was the pair of Polaris and Kochab (slightly closer to Kochab and that star in Draco during Ancient Greece)

 

1) Scadrial's physical dimensions are the same as Earth's, so horizons will be the same.

2) I just meant that I don't think there would really be anything for TLR to suppress. Anything surviving from pre Ascension times about whatever cultures or nations became the SoScads wouldn't have revealed that TLR had a control group elsewhere. Even if it were possible to determine that those people didn't have descendants in the Final Empire (and I think TLR's changes made that impossible) they'd just be assumed to be extinct.

OTOH, apparently a few scholarly inclined nobility realized they lived on a spherical planet, so the possibility of another habitable region might have been imaginable.

3) Right, but neither was terribly close to the pole then. Thuban in Draco was the pole star during very ancient times (e.g. building the Great Pyramid about 2500 BC) but had moved away well before classical times. Kochab was close-ish but not a really great pole star in late centuries BC and first centuries AD.

[lacrossedeamon]

On 2/8/2023 at 1:24 PM, Treamayne said:

"the artist formerly known as Prince"

 

"The people subsequently known as SoScads" I guess UrSoScads or ProtoSoScads could work but are still unwieldy