Summerlands Before the Breaking

[Lathorien]

And here i thought I a broken Discworld was an original idea... yours is no doubt going to turn out better than mine.

I did find this great inspiration to get back in the saddle on my discworld, thanks Gidde, and good luck dont let yer man spoil you too much in bed
After a car accident a few months back, my wife let me have my touch screen computer next/on top of the bed for a week (for the same reason) before she wanted her husband and bed back.. lol

[Gidde]

And here i thought I a broken Discworld was an original idea... yours is no doubt going to turn out better than mine.

Ha! No way, just different. As far as originality is concerned, this is my turn-off-the-censor project. I've been paralyzed in writing and mapping for a while because i had to come up with something BRAND NEW! But this time, I'm letting myself use the tropes, use the cliches, and hopefully tweak the whole thing into something that does end up wholly mine. "Broken discworld" may not be original, but it's what we DO with that broken discworld that makes it special! Glad to be some help in getting back into yours, I'm excited to see how it turns out!

[Naeddyr]

This is some really good stuff. Flat worlds banzai! Mythological common sense banzai!

Some questions:

Any seasons?
Is there a night, and is that night as long as the period during which all the torches are lit?
What do the sundered pieces float on - space, air or ocean?

[Gidde]

Thanks!!

I'm working on the seasons part. My original thought was no, but I'm exploring some ideas for how I might make seasons work, as part of my "how do you measure a year? how is it segmented (months etc)? How do people know it's a festival day?" work. There are eight major gods of light, and eight major gods of shadow, so I'm leaning toward base-8 or base-16 numbering of everything, which lends itself to a 8-day week, 4 or 8 week month, 8 or 16 month year, with each god influencing the weather and/or activities for "their" month. This is actually my main focus as I figure out how to measure time and space with my astrolabe I'm designing.

Night is easier. There is a night, and it lasts the same amount of time as daylight, but I don't think it's signified in any way (ie. during the day you can look up and see how many torches are lit, but night is for rest. who cares what time it is?). Anyone who really needs to measure time at night can use candles/hourglasses calibrated by daylight timespans, which work beautifully. I'm setting the torches in a ring, like gemstones in metal, I think, and the ring will glow softly at night, rather like a moon somewhat dimmer than ours.

The sundered pieces are separated by ocean, which flooded in from the primordial seas when the land was broken. So the world which results is very dominated by marine technology. Most trade is by ship, and probably half the population has at least a rudimentary knowledge of boats and how they work. Most of the civilizations that have developed since the breaking are coastal, with much of the inland areas of each landmass remaining quite wild and ruined -- and riddled with entrances into (and out of, unfortunately) the underworld. The denizens of the abyssal planes have made it very difficult for the mortal races to rebuild great civilizations, so the world is dominated by tiny kingdoms and city-states.

[Gidde]

Sorry for double post, but I actually have an update, yay.

This is the first pass at the astrolabe's back panel, an engraved overview map of the world as it now stands. The center islands aren't included, as they'd be covered by the center pivoting fixture, which I'm planning to make a stylized version of the ring and torches which sit above them. The circle cutting through the center is the edge of full sun; the edge of the engraving is the edge of twilight. Any land that is cut off is a shadowed land in permanent night.

I haven't started labeling, obviously; I'm trying to decide whether to add a bas relief of geography onto the islands or not, and whether to use latin numerals or create numerals for the base-8 system of dividing the circle that's on there.

[Diamond]

If it was me, I'd create a unique numbering system for it. Adds character.

[Gidde]

Thanks, that tips the scales, because I was leaning that way already

[Lathorien]

more land mass total area compared to water maybe? I looks more like a circular area of islands than one piece fractured. It was mostly land with just rivers before right? where did all the water come from or is that just "void" space in between

[Gidde]

Well, the goal was to create an archipelago in the first place; we wanted a swashbuckling, high-seas sort of world to play in. The original was a very large island in the center of an endless sea, so when it broke, the sea came in and filled the area between. I spread it out as much as it is in order to fill the twilight zone (haha no pun intended, but that's what it is) and have at least a few pieces of island in the dark zone, and also to have some nice, big, dangerous oceans to sail upon.

Next update: Created and incorporated the base-8 angle-numbering. The last two pieces of this side of the astrolabe are the inset torch-ring for the center and a distance marker that can spin, so that any point on the disc will have coordinates: an angle and a distance from the center ring. A navigator using this will be able to get the distance and angle of his current position from the other side's tools, so this will pinpoint him on the map. (It's not as precise as gps, but precise enough to get around. I'll have an idea exactly how precise when I get the math on the other side going.)

[Gidde]

Sorry for double post, but the back plate is now done! The pointer has distances measured in Ells, which in this world are each 8 leagues, not the arms' length of historical tailor shops.