Building a Stone Dome Over a Country?

[unseenmage]

Thanks to Spellclocks True Creation-ing stuff, and other Spellclocks making Constructs out of that stuff I have a limitless, tireless workforce.
More Spellclocks Awakening the Constructs means I have an intelligent workforce.
The DM letting me pick the feats for my creations means I have a competent limitless tireless workforce.

And now I want to build a stone dome over a nation, then use Mythals to make it invisible and anti-gravity (so as not to squash the citizenry).

How long would this take? How much stone? Would i have to hollow out the Underdark?

The game is high powered Faerun, the DM loves the idea, and the country is Aglarond. Character is currently non-epic (but has infinite wealth, usable infinite wealth too) but an epic NPC or two owe him some favors.

Edit: Trying to do as much of this without magic as possible, but magic doing it faster is cool too. magic makes it more of an offensive structure than defensive though.

Thoughts Playground?

[Honest Tiefling]

Not an optimizer, but how would that thing react to dispel magic and the like? Since, yanno, Thay is Agarlond's neighbor and would like to invade at any given moment.

[Malcador]

How big is the country? How thick does the stone have to be?

For example, the area of France is approximately 250,000 square miles. If France were a perfect circle, its radius would be about 500/sqrt(pi) miles. Covering a circle the size of France with a one-foot-thick hemispherical dome of stone would require about 5 trillion cubic feet (34 cubic miles) of stone.

In general, covering a circle of radius R with a stone dome with thickness T (both measured in feet) requires (2*pi/3)*T*(3*R^2 + 3*R*T + T^2) cubic feet of stone. A cubic foot of granite weights about 170 pounds; Wolfram Alpha suggests that the one-foot-thick dome over France would weigh 5 times as much as all the biomass on Earth.

Of course, a one foot thick wall won't stop people from drilling or teleporting through it. Magical treatment might prevent drilling, but would take some time to put into place. I'm also sure you could cover most of the country with dimensional anchors or some such teleportation countermeasure. I'm sure these would be expensive and time-consuming, but someone with more knowledge of magic than I have of physics would have to determine how much money and time it would take.

[unseenmage]

Not an optimizer, but how would that thing react to dispel magic and the like? Since, yanno, Thay is Agarlond's neighbor and would like to invade at any given moment.

The base construction should be completely mundane stone. Perhaps also completely mundane Dwarvencraft even.
Then just apply some irrelevant spell to it at a highest CL as Dispel targets the highest CLs first IIRC.

[Honest Tiefling]

With infinite wealth, that would not be a problem. (I assume your enemies are equally powerful, however.) I wonder if Reverse gravity on the populace would be a problem, as well as chucking in something to kill peasants who will have a harder time of running away. I also thought Agarlond was a trade power on a sea, so how is that going to work?

I mentioned Dispel Magic as I don't know how Mythals work. If their power of anti-gravity can be turned off, then well, Pancake Peasant time.

Also, why not just go under the wall?

I hope it does not seem like I dislike the idea, just trying to be helpful. Also, how does your DM feel about Wall of Stone for the stone itself, rather then mining and building? Then your country can be pretty and not full of holes AND have its wall.

[unseenmage]

With infinite wealth, that would not be a problem. (I assume your enemies are equally powerful, however.) I wonder if Reverse gravity on the populace would be a problem, as well as chucking in something to kill peasants who will have a harder time of running away. I also thought Agarlond was a trade power on a sea, so how is that going to work?

I mentioned Dispel Magic as I don't know how Mythals work. If their power of anti-gravity can be turned off, then well, Pancake Peasant time.

Also, why not just go under the wall?

I hope it does not seem like I dislike the idea, just trying to be helpful. Also, how does your DM feel about Wall of Stone for the stone itself, rather then mining and building? Then your country can be pretty and not full of holes AND have its wall.


Oh this is a defensive structure for Aglarond. My character is more doing it because he can than anything else, kind of combining an Artificer's awesome with Mythals is the idea.

Wall of Stone could work, but the Underdark likely has as much stone as I could ever want too. And I'm trying to do as much of this without magic as possible. i'll add that bit to the OP for clarity.

And hey, no worries about pooping our party. We're-a gonna do it anyway regardless. :smallbiggrin:
But seriously, critique is appreciated. Is valuable feedback.

[Honest Tiefling]

I still want to know what you will do about boats trying to get in for trade/fishing. More constructs to open a gate or the like, perhaps.

As for the underdark, yes, there is a lot of stone. Unfortunately, you could accidentally tunnel in such a way to either weaken the land to Earthquake (which is thankfully not on the arcane spell list, but with the evil gods might be an issue), or just allow under dark critters in or both.

If you can make it invisible, can you make it slightly visible or the like? (I mention this since you mentioned the Mythal). Perhaps in such a way that most people would not immediately understand there is an invisible wall of stone there. It might not stop anyway to trick them into what the shell is, but couldn't hurt. I assume as an artificer you are all about the constructs, so I would add in invisible constructs just to make things more confusing.

[unseenmage]

I still want to know what you will do about boats trying to get in for trade/fishing. More constructs to open a gate or the like, perhaps.

As for the underdark, yes, there is a lot of stone. Unfortunately, you could accidentally tunnel in such a way to either weaken the land to Earthquake (which is thankfully not on the arcane spell list, but with the evil gods might be an issue), or just allow under dark critters in or both.

If you can make it invisible, can you make it slightly visible or the like? (I mention this since you mentioned the Mythal). Perhaps in such a way that most people would not immediately understand there is an invisible wall of stone there. It might not stop anyway to trick them into what the shell is, but couldn't hurt. I assume as an artificer you are all about the constructs, so I would add in invisible constructs just to make things more confusing.

Good points/ideas. And yeah, ports and roads would get giant gateways. Easy. As would known Underdark links.
In this game the entire Upperdark under Aglarond has already been cleared/claimed for Aglarond by the Construct Horde so irritating the Underdark denizens has already happened. Even drained a large-ish lake into the deep deep Underdark to flush out an Aboleth and his army. Technically the army's down there too but they did not survive the fall/flush.

[Honest Tiefling]

Could use the tunnels to your advantage. Have constructs stashed down there to either report back, or to burst out of the ground. They will likely need to patrol it, given you aren't the only one with construct shenanigans.

Should probably do something about rebuilding that lake, if only for PR rather then food/travel/water reasons.

[unseenmage]

Could use the tunnels to your advantage. Have constructs stashed down there to either report back, or to burst out of the ground. They will likely need to patrol it, given you aren't the only one with construct shenanigans.

Should probably do something about rebuilding that lake, if only for PR rather then food/travel/water reasons.

Yeah, the DM gaped at me when I first told him about it. Apperantly there's a fierce struggle for basic supplies going on down where i dumped the lake. I made some deep dwellers very very wealthy in water.

Lake rebuild basically already done. The Construct Horde has already repaired/reinforced every structure in Aglarond and built many a guardtower and seaport besides.

This weekend is gametime and the DM keeps portending that the massive shift in the balance of power is causing the politics of the Realms and even the gods to stir. Should be fun times.

[Phelix-Mu]

There are a couple interesting methods, but the main problem with raising a dome is that it usually requires large amounts of scaffolding. Since normal physics puts a lower limit on the thickness of the dome (the base needs to be thick enough to bear the weight), you probably want to ignore normal physics or set up an energy transformation field with hardening to increase the strength of the stone. Also a useful precaution, in any case.

Most of the best methods that I can come with pose a serious threat to the surrounding countryside and/or involve large amounts of magic.

1.) Flood the country and float the stone. Bad for people, and probably involves lots of wooden stuff to float the stones on. Bad for the country due to water thousands of feat deep.

2.) Make a giant lake of lava and create an Aglarond-sized air pocket. Also bad for the country due to the lava bit. Alternately, create a portal from Elemental Earth to Elemental Fire, shift earth into Fire, and a second portal from Elemental Fire to high in the air above Aglarond. Set up a way to keep the lava in form (sounds like an arbitrarily large number of walls of force), pour the lava out of the sky onto the form, wait to cool, then remove the walls of force. This last bit avoids having to temporarily vacate all of Aglarond during construction.

3.) Riverine form on inside and outside, pump full of lava (or cement/concrete if the DM lets you invent that). You could probably even skip the riverine if used with cement, but, again, weight is a huge problem. Enough reverse gravity or levitate can solve that, but still, a problem. Also, riverine makes a better dome than either the stone or the cement, lol.

4.) Construct entire dome in space and use magic to lower it to the ground, carefully, of course, because you could accidentally blow a hole in the planet with that much mass. This is actually now my favorite idea. The real trick is the controlled descent. If this is with that same construct horde, assembling the dome in space should be trivial (aside from getting the materials up there...I'd just use spell clocks of wall of stone after assembling a platform). Enough reverse gravity can slow the descent of any mass, but it would have to be placed carefully around the edges, because no one part of the dome would be able to support the rest (realistically speaking...construct parts of it out of riverine/force, and you could get around this).


Furthermore, establish ahead of time that invisible stone lets light through to allow photosynthesis. That would be quite the oversight.

More ideas forthcoming. This is a good enough problem to devote some headspace to working out.

[Honest Tiefling]

This weekend is gametime and the DM keeps portending that the massive shift in the balance of power is causing the politics of the Realms and even the gods to stir. Should be fun times.

Hrm. Depending on how religious your character is, I would make appeals to Gond the Wonderbringer right about now...

Also, why not have constructs farm and put everyone on 'Get the heck out of the way' training? Might help survival rates of others (And given you are protecting Agarlond, I assume your alignment is good).

[unseenmage]

Hrm. Depending on how religious your character is, I would make appeals to Gond the Wonderbringer right about now...

Also, why not have constructs farm and put everyone on 'Get the heck out of the way' training? Might help survival rates of others (And given you are protecting Agarlond, I assume your alignment is good).

Character is a Gestalt Cleric of Gond + Techsmith // Artificer already.
Additionally the Constructs were greater Humanoid Essence-ed into Humanoids long enough to be Diplomancied into obeying for a week and a half AND they now worship Gond too (DM had to decide that Construct worshippers don't count otherwise Gond would have instantly become a Greater Deity because endless stream of worshippers.)
Relevant Diplomacy rolls for making folk worship your god are in the religious leaders section of Power of Faerun book.

Character is True Neutral, as evidenced by his complete and total lack of concern for the political expletive-storm he's stirring up with his shenanigans. He just wants to make cool stuff.

[Phelix-Mu]

Alright, my last idea of the night is to make the dome out of wood (way, way easier with living trees, not to mention less issues with weight), and then use hardening traps or ironwood or some other method to make the trees as hard as you wish, or even maybe petrify them somehow.

Added benefit of being able to awaken the parts of the dome into tree creatures, lol, so they could use items and such.

The ideal method is to find a cheap way to produce tree tokens, but that might take some doing. Infinite trees probably exist on various other planes, and you could always animate them and march them into place to make the dome.

Hmm. Had maybe another idea with those bottle of endless sand items. Hmm. Transmute sand to stone is a thing. But you said as little magic as possible, and this sounds magic intensive.

[Honest Tiefling]

I dunno, I would think giving life to a race of living constructs would encourage them to follow the god that made them (indirectly).

The wood idea might be good if you can get the lazy tree-huggers in the Yuirwood to cooperate with you. You got rid of the Underdark (for now), so they can step up and help now and again, right?

Through the Yuirwood reminds me, you MIGHT want to keep an eye on the Star Elves, given that their home is under attack by extraplanar things, I think. Might be an extraplanar backdoor for baddies to come in through.

[Mellack]

Interesting effect to covering a country with a dome: no weather. No more wind, rainstorms or snow. Sailing ships will be a problem, oars only. No migrating birds or other long distance animals. You may find water issues. It is an interesting idea, but depending on your DM, you could find some major consequences.

[Drachasor]

I think it would be more fun to move the country to a Demiplane or make it fly, personally.

[TuggyNE]

Interesting effect to covering a country with a dome: no weather. No more wind, rainstorms or snow. Sailing ships will be a problem, oars only. No migrating birds or other long distance animals. You may find water issues. It is an interesting idea, but depending on your DM, you could find some major consequences.

Er, nah. Weather forms quite well inside a relatively enclosed space; in fact, there are buildings in existence today with their own weather systems. And they're not transparent, and are vastly smaller in volume.

Not that there would be no impact, but it would be a lot less substantial than you're thinking.

[Phelix-Mu]

Lol, I hadn't even thought of heat transmission!

Alright, here's a question.

Suppose:

1.) The sun shines on a solid, opaque object. The object blocks the light, the sun heats the object.

2.) The object is made to be invisible. The sunlight is transmitted.

Question: Where does the heat from the sunlight go?

tl/dr: Is invisibility perfect protection from radiant heat via sunlight?

[weckar]

If it's transparent, wouldn't there be birds smacking into it all the time?

Eww, floating dead bird goop in the sky.

[Captnq]

And now I want to build a stone dome over a nation, then use Mythals to make it invisible and anti-gravity (so as not to squash the citizenry).

How long would this take? How much stone? Would i have to hollow out the Underdark?

Edit: Trying to do as much of this without magic as possible, but magic doing it faster is cool too. magic makes it more of an offensive structure than defensive though.


You are over thinking this. Since it's invisible, just have your army surround your nation and have all your minions dress up as mimes and pretend there is a wall. Much easier.

Forever and a day. It's impossible without god like assistance by RAW. You are outside normal rules at this point, mostly because of the restrictions placed on magic in the FR setting. You are getting to the point of DM fiat.

You are going to need magic. Stone is a lousy building material.

Now glassteel. THAT might pull it off. Light weight, transparent, created by alchemy processes that allow you to shape the stuff on site, MUCH better choice then stone.

Here's your problem, Sheering. I just need to get any section to move a few feet (stone is worse then glassteel. GS will at least bend a little) You'll reach a point where the material will sheer, then cracks will form, boom. Flattened nation.

I recommend, if you DO wish to make it out of stone, use the spell stone trap and just cast it over and over with the condition the rocks fall when the sun becomes a small cold chunk of coal the size of a man's head. Here.


You cause a block of stone to turn invisible and hover at a designated point in the air. The stone remains there until triggered, either by special conditions set by you or by a command word you choose. Once triggered, the stone trap turns visible and falls naturally.

Since each rock is floating independent of the others, no sheer force. Now an antimagic field will screw things up, but hey, once the rock falls out of the field it will try to fly back to the original wait point.

So you are left with dispel magic being a problem. Just get the caster level up to fifty milllion or something and you should be golden.

[Captnq]

Lol, I hadn't even thought of heat transmission!

Alright, here's a question.

Suppose:

1.) The sun shines on a solid, opaque object. The object blocks the light, the sun heats the object.

2.) The object is made to be invisible. The sunlight is transmitted.

Question: Where does the heat from the sunlight go?

tl/dr: Is invisibility perfect protection from radiant heat via sunlight?

No.

It's called a greenhouse.

If I am invisible and get hit for energy damage from a light attack, does it go through me?

No.

The energy accumulates inside the dome until you bake and die. It's why I hate that TV show "Under The Dome".

[Tarlek Flamehai]

All the other flying critters will go splat too. Watch out for falling hippogriffs! I think you will have a dragon attack on your dome every hour as well.

[Clistenes]

If you have access to Epic Magic/Mythal Seed...why not just include a Wall of Force/Forcecage effect in the Mythal itself, covering all the country? Or a big ass Prismatic Sphere?

[unseenmage]

A bunch of awesome text...

I copypasted this to my DM in a chat and his response was, and I quote,

Badass!
The last option blew my mind

Thought you'd appreciate that as I appreciate all the assistance and ideas folks have posted. :smallbiggrin: Thanks all!

[TuggyNE]

The energy accumulates inside the dome until you bake and die.

Only to a certain extent. While the dome cuts off convection, conduction and radiation still work just fine, so heat gains will be offset after the temperature rises enough. Exactly how high the temperature would rise is not easy to deduce, though.

On the other hand, spells/traps to chill an area are relatively easy to come by, so there you are.

[SamsDisciple]

When I saw the mime idea I just laughed and thought, hey you have infinite constructs right? Why bother mining when you can build the whole dome with those constructs like a massive trapeze trick! If anyone attacks there is an opening in the wall but you a) have the attack automatically reported. B) an army of constructs to repel any attacks. C) all those things you talked about enchanting the wall with will simply make the construct army wall a stronger fighting force!

[Phelix-Mu]

I'd be eager to hear what earth-shaking developments the DM actually had go down. And whether the whole stone dome idea ever gets implemented.