Ice age world?

[Kami2awa]

Not sure, but the it looks like the World within the Rift has very big polar ice caps; one almost reaches the equator. This would suggest its in the middle of an Ice Age... possibly it's a world at a more primitive stage than the main OotsWorld?

Perhaps it is the OotsWorld, but at an earlier time?

[Pentegarn]

Is there a star in that rift? Maybe there is no natural heat source and that explains the excess of snow and ice? The natural question to that would be, 'Why isn't it fully covered in ice?' The only answer I could think of to that would be, 'perhaps magic keeps it from freezing completely, but may not be strong enough to keep the ice caps at bay.'

[nihilistic]

This theory seems plausible.

If it was Ootsland in the past, would that make the portal in the Snarl some form of time travel?

Personally, if this was the case, I'd like to think that this was Ootsland (v1) in the past, before the Snarl struck. A possible solution would be for the Order to go through a portal, back in time, to sort out the Snarl before it even breaks out.

However, would that be very cliched?

[Iain]

Why would an ice age suggest a more "primitive stage"? Just a colder stage, surely?

Though I do wonder whether those "stars" are something else, such as material falling to an infant planet as it forms.

[Turkish Delight]

Strange that everyone is seeing that as ice. I saw it as just lots of clouds. After all, it's just a slightly lighter color of green underneath the 'ice.'

[Robert Paulson]

This theory seems plausible.

If it was Ootsland in the past, would that make the portal in the Snarl some form of time travel?

Personally, if this was the case, I'd like to think that this was Ootsland (v1) in the past, before the Snarl struck. A possible solution would be for the Order to go through a portal, back in time, to sort out the Snarl before it even breaks out.

However, would that be very cliched?

If they did this, would they have to revert to an older set of D'n'D rules? That could make for some funny strips. :)

[HealthKit]

Strange that everyone is seeing that as ice. I saw it as just lots of clouds. After all, it's just a slightly lighter color of green underneath the 'ice.'

I agree.

I can see a translucent outline of the land masses beneath what I consider to be the clouds. Especially on the north half.

And if you look at the bottom half you can see a gap of water between land and whatever the white stuff is. If it's ice, I would think that gap would be frozen in with more ice, so I'm inclined to think it that it's clouds.

Just my 2 CP

[ednarimal]

Strange that everyone is seeing that as ice. I saw it as just lots of clouds. After all, it's just a slightly lighter color of green underneath the 'ice.'

i hate seeing people say this looking at the picture because with that arguement, what is that light white stuff hovering over the right side of the planet? a huge flock of white birds all flying horror movie style overhead to scare everyone?

really, it's pretty obviously shaped as ice would for poles on a planet, just admit it, c'mon.

[Xesirin]

This theory seems plausible.

If it was Ootsland in the past, would that make the portal in the Snarl some form of time travel?

Personally, if this was the case, I'd like to think that this was Ootsland (v1) in the past, before the Snarl struck. A possible solution would be for the Order to go through a portal, back in time, to sort out the Snarl before it even breaks out.

However, would that be very cliched?

It might be a little clichèd, but I'm finding that I personally am not yet sick of stories of this nature. :smallbiggrin:

[Mant]

i hate seeing people say this looking at the picture because with that arguement, what is that light white stuff hovering over the right side of the planet? a huge flock of white birds all flying horror movie style overhead to scare everyone?

really, it's pretty obviously shaped as ice would for poles on a planet, just admit it, c'mon.

They all look like clouds to me too.

Besides, if that were ice you shouldn't be able to see what's underneat. Which you do. Therefore, those are clouds.

[jamroar]

If they did this, would they have to revert to an older set of D'n'D rules? That could make for some funny strips. :)

Or maybe the brave new rift world runs off 4e jokes, and the OOTS will have to journey there at some point?

[Astrella]

They are polar caps, because the clouds are the fluffy stuff hovering above the surface.

[spargel]

They all look like clouds to me too.

Besides, if that were ice you shouldn't be able to see what's underneat. Which you do. Therefore, those are clouds.

You still shouldn't be able to see what's underneath them if they were clouds.

[Autopsibiofeeder]

Assuming it are indeed ice-caps, and assuming it shows the Ootsverse in a different age, this does not imply that it shows the Ootsverse in an older age per se. Glaciations here on Earth have been cyclic events in the (recent) geological past and we may very well end up in an 'ice age' again in the future. That is even assuming the Ootsverse-world is even remotely similar to ours :smallsmile:.

Just a sidenote :smallwink:.

[Mant]

You still shouldn't be able to see what's underneath them if they were clouds.

Yes, you could.

[spargel]

Yes, you could.

Explain how.

[Volkov]

Clouds don't cover 3/4ths of a planet so consistently, it's a meteorological impossibility. Now let's use Occam's razor, what's more likely, that it's ice and the author simply made a mistake, or that it's clouds and they are far larger than a cloud should be, look nothing like clouds, and are transparent.

[hamishspence]

Or its just more transparent than normal ice would be- not that unfeasible in a fantasy setting.

Clouds seem less likely, due to the sharp edges of the zone (and the presence of normal clouds in the pic). Sometimes you do get very thin, translucent layers of cloud, but you'd expect a fuzzier edge in that case.

[Mant]

Explain how.

Explain why you couldn't.

[hamishspence]

mostly, cloud is opaque. And lumpy. Huge zones of translucent cloud are, as far as I can tell, rare. And it wouldn't have the sharp edges seen.

Though I haven't seen any good pics of "Very lightly overcast" areas of earth from space- maybe there is something that can refute these suggestions.

[spargel]

Explain why you couldn't.

http://www.spacetoday.org/images/SolSys/Earth/EarthBlueMarbleWestTerra.jpg

No transparent clouds.

[Mant]

And transparent ice, there is? :)

[hamishspence]

Its a common trope in art- in the Ice Age series of movies, the ice is much more transparent in some scenes than you would expect.

[RPGAgmJAY]

Holy cow... anyone else look back at the planet from #274?!?!

It looks like the same planet, planet from #672 is just rotated a little to the left allowing us to see more of the eastern continent and less of the western islands...

Just reconstruct the planet like a puzzle... you'll see it!

Good Gaming!
-Jay

[Watcher]

http://www.spacetoday.org/images/SolSys/Earth/EarthBlueMarbleWestTerra.jpg

No transparent clouds.

Yes, exactly! But look at northern Alaska and Canada! It's green and white! Look specifically at the area north of Newfoundland. It looks pretty similar. Please, you can't expect us to believe the stuff on the poles are clouds. And finally, there are such things as evergreen trees and unclean water.

[Mant]

Its a common trope in art- in the Ice Age series of movies, the ice is much more transparent in some scenes than you would expect.

It really isn't.

[Cerrakoth]

Is there a star in that rift? Maybe there is no natural heat source and that explains the excess of snow and ice? The natural question to that would be, 'Why isn't it fully covered in ice?' The only answer I could think of to that would be, 'perhaps magic keeps it from freezing completely, but may not be strong enough to keep the ice caps at bay.'


No star means no gravity or life and is thus a pointless expedition. And i'm sure there was no magic in the original World, which I believe this is meant to be? :)

[Cerrakoth]

Clouds don't cover 3/4ths of a planet so consistently, it's a meteorological impossibility. Now let's use Occam's razor, what's more likely, that it's ice and the author simply made a mistake, or that it's clouds and they are far larger than a cloud should be, look nothing like clouds, and are transparent.

Sorry to double post but it's a webcomic, Rich does not research the movement of clouds this specifically... whether (excuse the pun) or not the clouds could cover 3/4 of the world on Earth is irrelevant, this isn't real life. I'd also like to note that my impression was also ice, but it could of course, be winter, in a world with a different orbit and thus different seasons to oots.

EDIT: Infact having looked again, it looks like the world is still being made, or re made or unmade, I say this as there seems to be a strand of 'the fabric of reality' or w,e in the northern part of the cloud/ice

[Trixie]

No star means no gravity or life and is thus a pointless expedition. And i'm sure there was no magic in the original World, which I believe this is meant to be? :)

No gravity?

Do yourself a favor and buy an apple.

And yes, there was.

[Cerrakoth]

My bad I meant there was not gravitational pull to cause an orbit, should have elaborated. My point was that the person I quoted had said, there was the possibility of no star in the scribble universe, and I was pointing out the reasons for this not working

[V'icternus]

Spoilered for "Just in case I'm right and ruin the plot".

Hey, maybe there is no source of heat in that other world... and that's why the Snarl hasn't been reaching through the tears in the universe this time round. It was frozen.
And so was the world. But now that that giant rift has opened, it's letting heat into that new (old) world, and the ice is breaking up. It explains the way it looks, and why the Snarl hasn't been unmaking everything, everywhere.
And, maybe once all the gates are opened, it will all completely unfreeze... unleashing doom on you all! I mean, the next gate is in a desert...

[Autopsibiofeeder]

My bad I meant there was not gravitational pull to cause an orbit, should have elaborated. My point was that the person I quoted had said, there was the possibility of no star in the scribble universe, and I was pointing out the reasons for this not working

Also, without a heat source, one would expect all water to have frozen (there's clearly water in the picture), and not necessarily accumulating at the poles.

I am just joining in on the theoretical exercise, by the way, for fun. I don't think the OP's line of thought makes a lot of (scientific) sense (as far as that is applicable in the Ootsverse anyway), as indicated by my first post.

[spargel]

And transparent ice, there is? :)

I don't believe I was arguing about it being ice.

[Cerrakoth]

Spoilered for "Just in case I'm right and ruin the plot".

Hey, maybe there is no source of heat in that other world... and that's why the Snarl hasn't been reaching through the tears in the universe this time round. It was frozen.
And so was the world. But now that that giant rift has opened, it's letting heat into that new (old) world, and the ice is breaking up. It explains the way it looks, and why the Snarl hasn't been unmaking everything, everywhere.
And, maybe once all the gates are opened, it will all completely unfreeze... unleashing doom on you all! I mean, the next gate is in a desert...


The Snarl is a God killing beast, I'm gonna stick my neck out and say it doesn't need heat, another thing worth mentioning is that it itself is a whole plane/ universe/planet. This implies it can A. Generate it's own heat and B. It must of created this new universe from itself for it to exist, or as other threads have pointed out. Someone lied.

[Mant]

I don't believe I was arguing about it being ice.

Then what were you arguing about?

[Autopsibiofeeder]

Spargel wasn't arguing, Mant. He/she was merely pointing out that clouds, as many other things, are not transparent, and never implied thinking the white stuff is ice.

[Mant]

So, it can't be ice nor clouds.

What is it? :)

[Cerrakoth]

It looks to me like the world is still being either made, or unmade as I said earlier :smallsmile:

[Volkov]

Rogue planets, i.e planets with no parent star, would be extremely close to absolute zero in temperature, and remember Life can't tolerate cold as well as heat, unless said planet is very geologically active, in which case, it'd be too hot for life, unless said life form was Godzilla or something from the godzilla series.

[Berserk Monk]

You know, when I say the title of this thread, I thought it would be talking about a combination of OotS and the Ice Age animate movie franchise.

[Legendary]

Re: ice/clouds: There are definitely clouds over the ice, so it's not clouds. It's probably some sort of weird magical ice.

Re: no star: Impossible. The planet wouldn't be anywhere near so bright without a star to produce light for it to reflect.

[Mant]

"Weird magical ice" sounds a bit too much convenient to me.

More simple answer: as already said it's a webcomic, so it can be both, or only one of those.

[Volkov]

Re: ice/clouds: There are definitely clouds over the ice, so it's not clouds. It's probably some sort of weird magical ice.

Re: no star: Impossible. The planet wouldn't be anywhere near so bright without a star to produce light for it to reflect.
Not to mention, all gases and liquids would be frozen if there was no star. Everything would be buried under quadrillions or even quintillions of tons of frozen material.

[yanmaodao]

Then what were you arguing about?

From what I can tell? The "it's clouds!" people were using transparency as a cornerstone of their argument. The "it's ice!" people were not.

Therefore, what has been established here (you can't see through cloud cover, either) is egg on the face of the "it's clouds!" people but not on those of the "it's ice!" people.

It's not complicated...

[Mant]

The question remains: if it can't be ice nor clouds, what is it?

[Cerrakoth]

It could be what I said, which I cba to type agian ;)

[HealthKit]

"Weird magical ice" sounds a bit too much convenient to me.


A wizard did it.

[Dancing_Fox]

I had trouble making out what we were looking at in the big planet frame of strip #672 as well. I wasn't sure what was ice, clouds or planet. It definitely looks "blurry" - but whether that be from ice, clouds, motion, stacking or whatever, I don't know.

Then again, I'm not sure that we're meant to be able to readily identify what it is. I think that it is part of the point.

The big revelation is that there is something planetlike in there. The details will come later. (Slowly eeked out as plot points, no doubt.)


Anyway, most posters seem to saying "We are seeing one planet. What are the white things?"

Whereas I have a more literal problem when I look at the planet picture, and the accompanying text.

Taking Varsuvius and Blackwing at their literal word, the text is:


"A planet? Within a planet?"

To me, that could read that we are looking at literally a planet within a planet. An outer "translucent hollow" planet with another planet inside it. Or two planets sharing the same space.

That would also explain the blurriness, and why people have a hard time of working out what is ice and what are clouds. The features are overlapping.

Or, as already posted, there is a world in formation here. It may look like a planet within a planet - but only because that's how a planet in formation, seen for only a few seconds - looks in the OOTS multiverse.

[Herald Alberich]

Taking Varsuvius and Blackwing at their literal word, the text is:


"A planet? Within a planet?"

To me, that could read that we are looking at literally a planet within a planet. An outer "translucent hollow" planet with another planet inside it. Or two planets sharing the same space.

That would also explain the blurriness, and why people have a hard time of working out what is ice and what are clouds. The features are overlapping.

Or, as already posted, there is a world in formation here. It may look like a planet within a planet - but only because that's how a planet in formation, seen for only a few seconds - looks in the OOTS multiverse.

The quote is "A planet? Within the planet?", actually. And since the rift opens up into a demiplane that was sealed by the formation of the OotS world itself (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0275.html), I think the meaning is pretty clear: the planet Blackwing saw is inside the one the comic is set on.

[warrl]

Clouds don't cover 3/4ths of a planet so consistently, it's a meteorological impossibility. Now let's use Occam's razor, what's more likely, that it's ice and the author simply made a mistake, or that it's clouds and they are far larger than a cloud should be, look nothing like clouds, and are transparent.

I have a better razor than Occam's for this particular beard.

And it says: a sample size of one to three is a bit early to talk about "consistently". (Can't count the other picture in the scribble because you would naturally expect EXTREME abnormalities when a planet is being shattered.)

Also, five planets in the Solar System, plus at least one moon, routinely ARE at least 3/4 covered in clouds. None of them are much earth-like, but then, we don't know if the world inside the rift is earth-like either.

Further, I've seen high-altitude pictures looking down on clouds over ice/snow, and it's hard to tell the difference with actual photographs. I've also been in white-out, where the horizon is not discernible because the snow and the sky look the same. So I think it's entirely plausible that SOME of that area is ice, and SOME of it is lower-altitude thick clouds.

(There are also high-altitude really-wispy clouds, although the altitude is somewhat exaggerated in this drawing. In fact for a while I suspected them of being auroras rather than clouds, but that notion fails for several reasons.)

[Cire II]

Does it seem to anyone else that the light is comeing from the rift?

[Flag_Pole_Sitta]

Hey, maybe there is no source of heat in that other world... and that's why the Snarl hasn't been reaching through the tears in the universe this time round. It was frozen.
And so was the world. But now that that giant rift has opened, it's letting heat into that new (old) world, and the ice is breaking up. It explains the way it looks, and why the Snarl hasn't been unmaking everything, everywhere.
And, maybe once all the gates are opened, it will all completely unfreeze... unleashing doom on you all! I mean, the next gate is in a desert...

Well, if this is the case, and the other people are correct in that the planet is an earlier version of the main OOTS planet and the Snarl is a time warp, doesn't that mean that the snarl needs to consume the current planet so that the old planet has enough heat to grow into the current planet. Which means they're stuck. If they don't stop the snarl everything is destroyed, if they do stop the snarl everyone ceases to exist. :cool:

[AshDesert]

It may seem unlikely, but, I don't see why everyone is assuming that we're looking at the equator directly. In all likelihood, we are, but, what if the reason we're seeing more ice in the north is because we're looking down at an angle.

Also, has anyone else noticed that the light is coming from the rift? What if the rift is the Snarl-world's star? Again a theory that's probably wrong, but whatever.

[snafu]

Clouds don't cover 3/4ths of a planet so consistently, it's a meteorological impossibility.

Venus and Titan beg to differ.

Mind you, I think it's ice. What's this about not being able to see continental boundaries if they're under ice? There's a clear difference between ice on land and ice on the sea. Take a look at Antarctica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Antarctica_6400px_from_Blue_Marble.jpg), where the boundary between the ice on land and the floating ice of the Ross Ice Shelf is clearly visible. Despite large amounts of floating ice attached to the sides, the outline of the underlying continent is not hidden.

[hamishspence]

the dramatic colour difference (blue ice over sea, green over land) and the colour difference between pure white over the pole, and green near the edge, suggests the ice is quite thin (or more tundra than ice layer).

[David Argall]

Taking Varsuvius and Blackwing at their literal word, the text is:


"A planet? Within a planet?"

To me, that could read that we are looking at literally a planet within a planet. An outer "translucent hollow" planet with another planet inside it.
I suspect this is a mistake. The inside [an entire universe?] appears distinctly bigger than the outside [just a planet?]. I will let the math boys explain the exact details, but the rifts lead to an infinitely large area, in some sense not that different from a black hole. While from a OOTS world view, this can all be viewed as "inside" the world, it is not limited by the world.

[Zolkabro]

You know how Bags of holding are bigger on the inside than on the out? What if Ootsworld is like that too, and as people have said, and entire universe is inside there. People also seem not to be notcing the stars in plain veiw inside the rift. It is obviously not just a planet, and probable a whole universe, maybe a whole multiverse.

My other theory is that the world in the rift is identicle to the world outside the rift. The people in the world inside the rift also have problems with rifts, but for them, the snarl's claws, that shoot out and kill people, come from Ootsworld. If someone looks into a rift in the riftworld they would see Ootsworld. Maybe everything is completely identicle in both worlds, and the riftworld also contains an Order of the Stick with Roy, Belkar, Durkon, Elan, Haley and Varsuuvius, and it also contains Xykon and his minions, and so on. They are sort of parallel multiverses.

[Cire II]

My other theory is that the world in the rift is identicle to the world outside the rift. The people in the world inside the rift also have problems with rifts, but for them, the snarl's claws, that shoot out and kill people, come from Ootsworld. If someone looks into a rift in the riftworld they would see Ootsworld. Maybe everything is completely identicle in both worlds, and the riftworld also contains an Order of the Stick with Roy, Belkar, Durkon, Elan, Haley and Varsuuvius, and it also contains Xykon and his minions, and so on. They are sort of parallel multiverses.

Like a camera recording a television recording the same television all live.A never ending cycle.Like the tayto packet.the man is holding the packet with the same picture of the man holding the packet so technicaly there is an infinite amount of pictures.

sooo,back to my main point, there may be an infinite amount of ootsworlds each within each other and each as real as the last.Is that what you are saying?

[Zolkabro]

That's a very valid idea as well, but what I origonally meant was two universes. Ootsworld and Riftworld, I've been calling them. This is going to sound a bit like
:thog: "nale nail not-nale, not nale", but here we go!

Ootsworld thinks Riftworld is Riftworld, but Riftworld thinks Ootsworld is Riftworld. Really, both worlds are Ootsworld and Riftworld.

Am I talking dragon poop here, or does that make sense?

[Ozymandias9]

Clouds don't cover 3/4ths of a planet so consistently, it's a meteorological impossibility.

No, it really isn't. It just requires a planet with a different atmospheric makeup than earth. Really, you just have to make water vapor a more significant portion of the atmosphere-- with other elements of the atmosphere removed, it would fill that niche naturally on a world with enough water. You could also do it with significantly increased temperatures, but the temperature and pressure would probably make the world uninhabitable to any recognizable species. (A high pressure, high temperature system would also cause us to expect more complete could cover really.)

All things considered, though, it wouldn't be a very pleasant world. Assuming that the world didn't reach this atmospheric setup by virtue of significantly higher temperatures, it would instead be significantly colder: the cloud cover would vastly increase the net albedo (portion of incoming light directly reflected) of the planet. These clouds cover vast portions of continents: we should expect a drop of 20º F at least for the global average, with significantly more severe effects in the areas closer to the center of the continent sized cloud systems (and that's assuming that the effects are mitigated by the fact that water vapor is a better insulator than most of the gasses in our atmosphere).

The increased albedo would also make it very dark for the portion of the planet under the clouds: night would be much darker than even a regular cloud covered night. Days would be much like twilight.

Pretty much any wether system you can think as a storm would last longer an be more severe. Despite being cold, the world would also be very humid, with all the difficulty that entails for overland travel and such (though its effects on organic decay which also rely on high temperature, would be ameliorated). All and all, if you wanted to put Ravenloft on a planet rather than a plane, one like this would be a good choice.


For the record, though, I too find large ice caps to be a better explanation.

[Grolm]

Mhh. So the Snarl, destroyer of gods and bringer of the end of an entire civilization is in fact the creator of a new universe?

Or in other words, a single entity is taking the place of the former pantheons (by force) and becoming the one (true/last) god of a new world?

Jahwe anyone?

Or, as a different interpretation: Might the Snarl be an equivalent of enlightenment? The priests and believers seeing the end of the world coming, only to find out that its just the gods that go away and the world, after all, stays the same...

Enough of Darwin, sorry for that ;)

[Lecan]

Clouds don't cover 3/4ths of a planet so consistently, it's a meteorological impossibility.

Oh, hi there, Venus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus).

[Zolkabro]

Also, with climate change and global warming Earth is becoming more like Venus. If global warming carries on the Earth will be like Venus, with 80-90 percent CO2 and acid rain. So, (although I really doubt it), that could be Future Ootsworld, with global warming REALLY bad.

But that idea is terrible, and my previous idea is much better.

[hamishspence]

unlikely- at the height of the Mesozoic era CO2 levels and heat levels were much higher than they are now.

Which is not to say such a world is a good thing (when you think about how many cities lie close to sea level) but "Earth becomes like Venus" is a a bit far away from the probable worst-case scenario.

Getting back to the topic- I'm inclined to thing the stuff over the poles is more likely to be mostly pack-ice, tundra, and ice cap, than clouds.