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ddude987
2016-01-04, 07:22 PM
Hello gianters,

Looking for some thoughts on the following...

In my campaign setting (fantasy dnd setting) there are two 'suns' and one does not illuminate through visible light.

Thoughts on what this would look like? What if some creatures could see the light and others couldn't? What about plants that absorb from the light the second sun illuminates, what would they look like?

Keltest
2016-01-04, 07:26 PM
What kind of non-visible light are you thinking? In older editions, several races had Ultravision, the ability to see in the Ultraviolet spectrum, or infavision to see infrared. Or is it some sort of hand wave magic radiation that "real" science doesn't cover?

ddude987
2016-01-04, 08:25 PM
Unsure. If there is someone who can science it for me, then science. Else, its rule 0 radiation

Keltest
2016-01-04, 08:38 PM
In my opinion, youre better off with rule 0 radiation. Magic radiation allows you to do many more interesting things, like plants that get energy from raw magic instead of light, and creatures that perceive the amount of magical energy a being emits, absorbs and reflects. It can also work underground, because its your radiation, darn it!

Madbox
2016-01-04, 08:43 PM
If the second sun emitted radiation yhat some creatures could see by, it might have an effect on their mindset. There's a story by Asimov (can't remember the name) about a planet that had multiple suns. There was always at least one in the sky, which caused their astronomy to be poorly developed. It also caused most people to have a crippling fear of the dark. And then there was an eclipse. Civilization collapsed.

LibraryOgre
2016-01-04, 08:46 PM
Pretty much, it's going to look like and work however you want. Maybe all the plants that live on magic radiation are purple. Maybe they are, by great coincidence, also green, with magicphyll and chlorophyll producing a similar color in plant life.

One big thing to consider, from a sciency standpoint, though, is orbits. Does your planet orbit both Star and Magicstar, or are the orbital mechanics more complex? Perhaps Planet orbits Star, and the barycenter between Star and Magicstar is such that Magicstar approaches and recedes from the planet on a cycle. When Magicstar is at its apogee relative to Planet, magic is weak, maybe even practically nonexistent. When at perigee, magic is strong.

Can Magicstar be seen, even if it doesn't radiate a lot of normal light? If Planet orbits both Star and Magicstar, or Magicstar's perigee puts it between Planet and Star, you might have an eclipse, where Star disappears and all sorts of weird things happen in the presence of magic and absence of light.

kraftcheese
2016-01-04, 08:54 PM
Hello gianters,

Looking for some thoughts on the following...

In my campaign setting (fantasy dnd setting) there are two 'suns' and one does not illuminate through visible light.

Thoughts on what this would look like? What if some creatures could see the light and others couldn't? What about plants that absorb from the light the second sun illuminates, what would they look like?

Are both suns in the sky at the same time? Are their "days" in line with each other, is one sun's day the other's "night" in that only one is visible at a time on the world of your setting? Perhaps there's a period in the afternoon and/or morning where the combined radiation of both suns makes it dangerous to go outside and requires the world's people to wear protective clothing if they do around dawn and dusk?

I guess it also depends on what you want to world to be like as well; is it temperate, icy, a desert world?

Steampunkette
2016-01-04, 10:02 PM
So let's start talking physical structures!

I don't have time to go into everything on this idea, but I'd like to poke you at a singular concept.

Imagine a perfectly flat plane. An environment which has only 2 dimensions. infinite Width, infinite Length, no depth whatsoever.

Now imagine an apple, a 3 dimensional object, passes through that plane of existence. In relation to that plane only a single cross-section of the apple exists at any given point in time from the moment the apple first crosses the plane to the moment the apple finishes crossing that plane.

Now scale that up to 3 dimensions with a 4 dimensional object.

Have the second Star be a hyperdimensional object with unusual effects on this reality because it doesn't perfectly align with the space it is in. The radiation it gives out has no 3 dimensional equivalent because it travels in waves that move through four different dimensions. Being able to see this form of radiation may allow creatures to see "Through" objects, or around corners, or even into the future.

Go crazy. :D

Crake
2016-01-05, 12:02 AM
If one star emitted invisible radiation, that radiation could still be seen by something that absorbed some of it's energy and then reflected it into visible radiation (think synthetics under a UV light). This could cause various things in the world to simply glow eerily, especially if just the invisible sun is up. This would only work however if the invisible sun is emitting higher energy radiation, since it needs to lose energy to enter the visible spectrum. The reason this likely wouldn't work though is because suns emit a HUGE spectrum of radiation. That a sun would completely skip the visible spectrum is HIGHLY unlikely (or potentially impossible, i can't say for sure since i'm not an astrophysicist).

As for animals that can see/plants that can absorb different spectrums, that already exists here on earth, because, as i mentioned earlier, our sun emits a huge spectrum. For example, this (http://www.howplantswork.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/merge.jpg) is what a flower looks like to us, vs to a bee, due to the different light spectrums we see.

Lvl 2 Expert
2016-01-05, 04:22 AM
Unsure. If there is someone who can science it for me, then science. Else, its rule 0 radiation

I don't think we can science a lot here, not if this takes place in a universe much like our own. As far as I know all stars that emit some sort of radiation emit visual light as part of the package, except maybe some really weak brown dwarfs, but they're not going to have much other radiation (mostly infrared?) either. One possible way out might be a weird atmospheric composition, with elements that block visible light, meaning life there could have developed to use another part of the spectrum. What they use to see could that way be a whole different wavelength from what we use, and that might get some more stars into the invisible category. Magic is probably still better.

What kind of two suns system were you planning on using? The options (if you want to science it) are basically:

1 two stars orbiting each other very closely with a planet far out. At least one of the stars has to be really big for this configuration to be both stable and habitable, as the habitable zone has to be out far enough to allow for a stable orbit around the wobbling stars. A year is long on this world.
2 a planet around one of the stars, which is much closer than the second one. If binary stars orbit too closely neither of the has stable planetary orbits in their temperate zone. The second star, although far out, is still easily brighter than out full moon, and if the orbits are elliptical its brightness will vary quite a bit, with an orbital period of centuries. Magical radiation could have been getting more or less for hundreds of years now on one of these worlds. This is probably the most common one in real life. Although option 3 is a good contender as well, depending on the execution.
3 one star is way bigger than the other (the other is probably a brown dwarf, less than 20 Jupiter masses or so), the smaller star and the planet are both in a normal planetary kind of orbit around the bigger star, the distance between the planet and the small star varies a lot. Somewhere between ones a year and ones every few years (the closer their orbits are to each other, the longer this period) there is an optimum of second star radiation. So the magic stuff comes and goes like some sort of multi-year seasonal cycle.

Steampunkette
2016-01-05, 04:52 AM
Technically speaking a star cannot emit only invisible radiation because a star, by definition, is a massive ball of highly compressed hydrogen and helium being crushed together by such enormous gravitational forces that it becomes plasma and, eventually, heavier materials due to fusion. The light it produces is a side effect of the massive quantity of fusion reactions occurring across the Star, as well as the plasma that is flung forth into the cosmos.

An actual star conforming to real world physics would never fill the role required for the purpose of the setting.

You'd need a mystical or otherwise fringe science explanation, hence my fourth dimensional object suggestion.

Mastikator
2016-01-05, 05:16 AM
Technically speaking a star cannot emit only invisible radiation because a star, by definition, is a massive ball of highly compressed hydrogen and helium being crushed together by such enormous gravitational forces that it becomes plasma and, eventually, heavier materials due to fusion. The light it produces is a side effect of the massive quantity of fusion reactions occurring across the Star, as well as the plasma that is flung forth into the cosmos.

An actual star conforming to real world physics would never fill the role required for the purpose of the setting.

You'd need a mystical or otherwise fringe science explanation, hence my fourth dimensional object suggestion.

You could go with a brown dwarf, not technically a star though.

Edit- Another option could be a black hole, again- not a star. But it could be in a binary system with a star, the star feeds the accretion disk that emits mainly x-rays and gamma rays.

That would probably render any planet sterile. Generally nothing good can come from invisible stellar mass objects.

goto124
2016-01-05, 06:47 AM
You could go with a brown dwarf, not technically a star though.


http://www.venturersofairth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/dwarf.png
http://www.elfwood.com/u/navarro/image/e8e13910-253b-11e4-8293-7393fb7fed06/african-dwarf

Mastikator
2016-01-05, 06:58 AM
http://www.venturersofairth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/dwarf.png
http://www.elfwood.com/u/navarro/image/e8e13910-253b-11e4-8293-7393fb7fed06/african-dwarf

You know... you could actually go with a star sized living organism as the stars. Discworld is on a mega tortoise, why can't this world orbit a ultra giant person?

DigoDragon
2016-01-05, 07:04 AM
hence my fourth dimensional object suggestion.

That really is a good suggestion. I got to remember that one.

GrayDeath
2016-01-05, 07:26 AM
Well, it all depends on a lot of the unsolved questions already asked.

When is the "Invisible Star" in the Sky?
What Orbit around (usually I am assuming its the smaller of the pair) the normal star does it follow"? helps with that.

Also, unless you want it tob e a Radio Star or Brown Dwarf, at least some of the explanation for the invisible Radiation ahs to be magical.

my go would be:

The Magistar is actually the remains of a Dead God.
An incredibly old remnant of the God of Secrets, Darkness and Unseen Danger to be precise.
While it has neither volition nor even remotely the Power of a living God, its Orbit (In that case I would go for a more or less normal planetlike Orbit) makes it appear in the Sky of all other Planets at least some time a "daycycle", although its never seen at day (due to being outshone by the normal star even for those who CAN see the SecretLight).
And its radiation does affect a LOT.

Now I would add its milennia, to be useful for the following and still totally forgotten by todays people I`d say AT LEAST 50k+ years, old Influence as a reason for some members of each species evolving differently (magical abilities of Stealth/Invisibility/Light BLindness in normal Light?), and at least one Species having evolved mainly due to its Influence (always invisible to others unless they have magic like true seeing springs to mind) that thrive on its Light.

Just a few thoughts. :)

Cluedrew
2016-01-05, 07:58 AM
Maybe the second sun wouldn't be invisible, but simply produce less light, sort of like the moon. Or you could have a light producing moon instead.

I like the idea of the "radiation" being nothing more that "magictons" (magic photons). You could even have a creation story about how one star provides the light & heat for the world while the other produces magic for it. You could do something drastic like have penalties during the "magic night" for spell casting, give martials a chance to shine.

goto124
2016-01-05, 08:55 AM
Usually, the moon makes magic stronger.

Daytime is the time for martials to shine like the sun!

Douche
2016-01-05, 09:22 AM
Since most religions are based around Sun worship, I imagine there being two suns would create a giant schism in civilization - way more extreme than anything we see in our world. Magicsun believers and Regularsun believers would irreconcilably hate each other and kill all the infidels non-believers.

Or maybe since there's twice as many suns, they wouldn't think it was such a big deal and worship something else... like, I dunno, the ocean. At the very least, they wouldn't be monotheistic. Their cosmology would probably include two creators (one for each sun) instead of an all-powerful singular God like many world religions believe nowadays.

Quertus
2016-01-05, 09:34 AM
Technically speaking a star cannot emit only invisible radiation because a star, by definition, is a massive ball of highly compressed hydrogen and helium being crushed together by such enormous gravitational forces that it becomes plasma and, eventually, heavier materials due to fusion. The light it produces is a side effect of the massive quantity of fusion reactions occurring across the Star, as well as the plasma that is flung forth into the cosmos.

An actual star conforming to real world physics would never fill the role required for the purpose of the setting.

You'd need a mystical or otherwise fringe science explanation, hence my fourth dimensional object suggestion.

In many versions of D&D, the sun is simply a huge portal to the elemental plane of fire.

So perhaps this invisible sun is simply a portal to a different plane - a plane of magic, or a quasi elemental plane of insert real or fantasy energy here.

OldTrees1
2016-01-05, 09:37 AM
I don't think we can science a lot here, not if this takes place in a universe much like our own. As far as I know all stars that emit some sort of radiation emit visual light as part of the package, except maybe some really weak brown dwarfs, but they're not going to have much other radiation (mostly infrared?) either. One possible way out might be a weird atmospheric composition, with elements that block visible light, meaning life there could have developed to use another part of the spectrum. What they use to see could that way be a whole different wavelength from what we use, and that might get some more stars into the invisible category. Magic is probably still better.

What kind of two suns system were you planning on using? The options (if you want to science it) are basically:

1 two stars orbiting each other very closely with a planet far out. At least one of the stars has to be really big for this configuration to be both stable and habitable, as the habitable zone has to be out far enough to allow for a stable orbit around the wobbling stars. A year is long on this world.
2 a planet around one of the stars, which is much closer than the second one. If binary stars orbit too closely neither of the has stable planetary orbits in their temperate zone. The second star, although far out, is still easily brighter than out full moon, and if the orbits are elliptical its brightness will vary quite a bit, with an orbital period of centuries. Magical radiation could have been getting more or less for hundreds of years now on one of these worlds. This is probably the most common one in real life. Although option 3 is a good contender as well, depending on the execution.
3 one star is way bigger than the other (the other is probably a brown dwarf, less than 20 Jupiter masses or so), the smaller star and the planet are both in a normal planetary kind of orbit around the bigger star, the distance between the planet and the small star varies a lot. Somewhere between ones a year and ones every few years (the closer their orbits are to each other, the longer this period) there is an optimum of second star radiation. So the magic stuff comes and goes like some sort of multi-year seasonal cycle.

Probably the most interesting configuration would be option 2/3 but with the Sun2-Sun1 orbit being in a plane 90 degrees rotated from the Sun1-Planet orbit's plane(assuming the planet's rotation is in/close to in plane with the Sun1-Planet orbit). Then the planet would experience 3 different periods over the course of a long year(Sun2 orbiting Sun1).
1) When Sun2-Sun1 forms ever so slightly less than a 90 degree angle with Planet-Sun1 then Sun2 would always be visible to half of the planet. This would be like the North Star.
2) When the Planet, Sun1, and Sun2 form a line then Sun2 will be visible during the day (brighter days and dark nights)
3) When Sun1, the Planet, and Sun2 form a line then Sun2 will be visible during the night (Sun1 days and Sun2 days)

Crake
2016-01-05, 10:04 AM
Technically speaking a star cannot emit only invisible radiation because a star, by definition, is a massive ball of highly compressed hydrogen and helium being crushed together by such enormous gravitational forces that it becomes plasma and, eventually, heavier materials due to fusion. The light it produces is a side effect of the massive quantity of fusion reactions occurring across the Star, as well as the plasma that is flung forth into the cosmos.

An actual star conforming to real world physics would never fill the role required for the purpose of the setting.

You'd need a mystical or otherwise fringe science explanation, hence my fourth dimensional object suggestion.

Well, to be fair, certain kinds of stars skip different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum (it's how astrophysicists can identify different kinds of stars, and also, using this signature can determine how much redshift is occuring etc etc, physics i don't fully understand), but it could be feasible that the inhabitants of the planet evolved in such a way that they can see one sun's radiation, but not the other. Their visible spectrum does not necessarily need to be the same as ours after all.

Jay R
2016-01-05, 06:07 PM
There's a story by Asimov (can't remember the name) about a planet that had multiple suns. There was always at least one in the sky, which caused their astronomy to be poorly developed. It also caused most people to have a crippling fear of the dark. And then there was an eclipse. Civilization collapsed.

It's called "Nightfall".


Hello gianters,

Looking for some thoughts on the following...

In my campaign setting (fantasy dnd setting) there are two 'suns' and one does not illuminate through visible light.

Thoughts on what this would look like? What if some creatures could see the light and others couldn't? What about plants that absorb from the light the second sun illuminates, what would they look like?

You left off the information that would help us help you.

Why do you want two suns?

Tell us what your goals for that structure are, and we can help you reach them.

Without knowing your goals, we can only guess.

If your goal is to affect adventuring, then:
1. Some creatures only come out when the second sun is up (or down). Creatures would be diurnal-diurnal, or diurnal-nocturnal, or noct-di, or noct-noct.
2. Perhaps there is a specific magic that is the arcane version of sun worship.

If your goal is to affect weather, climate, and seasons, then when they are both in the sky, you would have days that are hotter than usual. Double-sun summer days might be brutal. Similarly, when they are on opposite sides from each other, winter nights are milder.

Assuming astronomy works like ours (which is a less imaginative way to do it) then days are created by the earth's spin, and are the same length for both suns. The second sun has an orbit around the biggest sun, just like earth does, and its motion through the sky is as unusual as a planet's motion is for us. The solar equivalent of our planetary orbital calculations are very important.

The other sun could be very far away, with a corresponding long "year". Under this scenario, over the course of a year, it goes from lined up with the major sun, all the way around, representing the earth's orbit around the major sun while the minor one moves very little.

One (or both) might orbit the earth, and the day lengths could be unconnected.

I suspect that the second sun is really a moon, but not obviously so because it gives off heat.

There would be two kinds of sun magic, and possibly competing sun gods.

We could develop any of these ideas, or more, but let us know what kind of thing you're looking for.

Lvl 2 Expert
2016-01-05, 06:58 PM
It's called "Nightfall".
And there's a similar planet in Pitch Black, the first Riddick movie. Strangely enough everything living on that planet just loves the darkness.

Premier
2016-01-05, 07:38 PM
Maybe the "magic star" is visible to certain races (it's magic and elves have magic eyes; it's a brown dwarf and elves see infrared). Those races would have an additional moving star on their sky, giving rise to a different and more complex system of astrology than the humans have. And/or maybe they think the star is holy, and the fact that it's invisible to lesser races is proof of their own divine superiority.

Or maybe the "invisible star" is in fact a black hole. The Outer Gods live there, spreading madness and a concept of reality inimical to life. Or the world will fall into in in a few centuries/millenia. Or both.

ddude987
2016-01-05, 11:11 PM
Okay thanks everyone for everything said so far! I have a lot to stew over and I'm on my phone so this will be a quick update.

Goals of the second sun:
1. Adventuring. This setting is an exploration setting designed for players to explore new and fantastic people, places, and things. Figuring out how the world works is part of the exploration.
2. Uniqueness. I love astronomy and think that a bunch of fantasy/sci-fi people do too (which is a bias of course). And it seems the binary star system isn't as unique as it once was, so I wanted to throw in some uniqueness to this once unique and entrancing prospect.

Kane0
2016-01-05, 11:27 PM
All you need to do is decide on how you want it to work, then make sure it follows that logic. It doesn't have to be our science.

For example, you can make your world circled by these two suns (smaller and closer to the planet if you wish, propelled by the deities). One covers red light, the other blue light. Different plants and animals see and operate under different lights, and to an extent life needs both to function. This leads to a lot of color combinations and sleeping patterns we aren't used to, as well as a lot of glowing.
They rise and fall opposite each other, so 'dawn' and 'dusk' are the only two times both lights are present.
I'm using red and blue for my example, but you could use regular white light and octarine for all that it matters so long as its consistent.

Then for extra oddness, try having the moon orbit just beyond the suns at a much slower rate, perpendicular to the sun's path. People use the moon's passing to track years.

Steampunkette
2016-01-06, 01:03 AM
Torus planet.

That's right. Donut world!

It'd be different from most other settings.

kraftcheese
2016-01-06, 06:01 AM
Torus planet.

That's right. Donut world!

It'd be different from most other settings.

Sun on the inside AND an orbital Sun maybe? There's only ever night on the outer edge of the ring because of the orbiting Sun, and the inner edge is:

a) Endless deserts
b) Molten

OR

c) If the stationary donut hole Sun is the magic one, magic becomes more powerful as you travel toward the centre of the torus, and weakens as you move ringward; societies built on outer rim have less trouble with magical beasts, but also less useful wizardry.

Mages travel to the magic-bathed inner ring of the planet to study magic and make their magic more powerful; maybe there's an economy of bringing magic-saturated stones, wood, etc back from the inner ring to the Rimlands to create magic items, maybe ones that give a localised effect of enhancing magic like the Sun does?

Lord Torath
2016-01-06, 09:04 AM
Torus planet.

That's right. Donut world!

It'd be different from most other settings.Already been done (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_World_Campaign_Set)


Okay, technically it's not a torus, as the inside is concave, not convex. But technically you can ignore any sentence that starts with "technically (https://xkcd.com/1475/)".

Lvl 2 Expert
2016-01-06, 09:38 AM
I think I might put the magic sun on the outside of the donut, circling around it. The whole outer rim is covered in eternal night, and ones every two weeks as the sun passes directly overhead things get really weird.

The inner sun might need a dimmer if they still want to have nights on the inner half of this planet.

Jay R
2016-01-06, 02:12 PM
I'd have the second "sun" actually be a moon that has an orbit of about a day to a day and a half, so that they don't stay lined up even in the short run. It would absorb visible light, so moon phases don't give it away. The fact that it's a moon, and orbits the earth, would be unknown to most sentient beings - either a secret kept by some small but powerful group, or completely unknown. Since it orbits that quickly, it is closer than any "real" moon - and much closer than most people think.

That secret would be tied to some major plot development down the line.


Already been done (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_World_Campaign_Set)


Okay, technically it's not a torus, as the inside is concave, not convex. But technically you can ignore any sentence that starts with "technically (https://xkcd.com/1475/)".

It's not a torus because it does not have any property of a torus. If I ever design a torus-shaped world, it will be to use those properties. Specifically, I'd have the world divided into seven separate regions that all border each other (which cannot be done on a flat world or either the inside or the outside of a spherical one).

LibraryOgre
2016-01-06, 02:22 PM
If the second sun emitted radiation yhat some creatures could see by, it might have an effect on their mindset. There's a story by Asimov (can't remember the name) about a planet that had multiple suns. There was always at least one in the sky, which caused their astronomy to be poorly developed. It also caused most people to have a crippling fear of the dark. And then there was an eclipse. Civilization collapsed.

There's another from Anderson where a pilot encounters people from within a globular cluster... they don't really understand the concepts of "space" and "night" since there are tons of very bright stars in the sky, even if they don't orbit more than the one.

Lord Torath
2016-01-06, 02:27 PM
But.... but Hollow World is open at the north at south poles (the openings to the interior are several hundred miles in diameter IIRC). It's really a torus where they rotated a crescent rather than a full circle. ( )

ddude987
2016-01-06, 03:27 PM
Already been done (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_World_Campaign_Set)


Okay, technically it's not a torus, as the inside is concave, not convex. But technically you can ignore any sentence that starts with "technically (https://xkcd.com/1475/)".

In terms of already been done, I already have a setting where its a torus world and the sun orbits in between the doughnut hole, though its less orbit and more of a simple vertical motion back and forth

Lvl 2 Expert
2016-01-06, 03:30 PM
Mwah, kind of a stretch. Especially since in most hollow world settings the outside is pretty irrelevant, or our own world.

Speaking of hollow worlds, I've had a setting idea in my head for a while with a dwarf planet in which huge halls have been carved out running along the equator. The worlds spin around its axis has been sped up so much that to the inhabitants "down" is towards the surface of the planet. (No, I don't know how the planet stays in one piece, it probably doesn't, in the long run. It would save spaceships a little bit of fuel, as they don't have to lose all of their speed in order to dock. Docking is not an easy maneuver to pull off though...) The result is that the view inside had like some sort of reverse horizon, the ground curves up, like in a ring world, and the distance you can see is limited by the height of the ceiling. The lower you stand, the better the view.

Of course, that setting does not have much use for a sun, let alone two of them.

Steampunkette
2016-01-06, 06:54 PM
To qualify as a Torus a world would have to be obligate as well as "Hollow", and have an internal area that is convex rather than concave. It's a very different thing.

http://hevria.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/D-Zucconi-TORUS.jpg

And it could, theoretically, form in the accretion disk of a star under very -very- specific circumstances.

ddude987
2016-01-07, 06:43 AM
Well Toruses (tori?) aside.

I've decided to go with magi-radiation and I figure heck why not have things that absorb it have some weird glow in the visible spectrum.

The question I have now is, what would the area in the sky where sun 2 is look like to one who cannot see its spectrum? Perhaps some sort of whirl in the sky as it warps the atmosphere or something

Lvl 2 Expert
2016-01-07, 06:54 AM
Well, to begin with the sun is probably going to reflect some light from the other sun, so it might look a bit like our moon. A bit dimmer perhaps if the distances are larger. If the second sun absorbs all light like some sort of black hole it's probably just invisible, both against the night sky and during daytime. Some sort of warp effect on the atmosphere would look pretty cool, definitely an ominous sign something is up. Doesn't even have to mean other magic in this world becomes visible in the same way, the effect only happens when the radiation is this concentrated. Another possibility is that the radiation (Maglight? Consisting of magitons?) not be visible in the sky, it only becomes visible by its effect on certain surfaces, some types of rock and sand sparkle faintly whenever directly exposed to sun 2. Or maybe certain small creatures like some kind of moth only appear during sun 2 daytime. Or there are trees with two kinds of leaves, and the small purple leaves roll up whenever sun 2 is not around (warning, do not go near these trees just as sun 2 is setting, they're fully charged at that point and it makes them really grumpy).

goto124
2016-01-07, 08:38 AM
Best if it's essentially invisible. Trying to describe it to the players would mark it as suspicious, because something not normally mentioned is mentioned.

Keltest
2016-01-07, 09:01 AM
Best if it's essentially invisible. Trying to describe it to the players would mark it as suspicious, because something not normally mentioned is mentioned.

Not sure I follow. The game world is different, certainly, but unless he specifically doesn't want it to be known that there is a magic star that does magic stuff in the sky right off the bat, telling them about something that is readily apparent to anyone with eyes wouldn't be particularly noteworthy.

Cluedrew
2016-01-08, 07:38 PM
Well if the characters come from this world they would know that it has been there for a while and so is probably not an immediate threat.

I like the idea of the "whirl" in they sky. Sort of like a soft edged rainbow* patch of sky. (* or white or whatever colour you want associated with general magic.) It is not bright per say, however it is noticeable and often shifting slightly.

Cealocanth
2016-01-08, 08:13 PM
Unless sun 2 is ridiculously close to the planet's surface, then you probably wouldn't actually see much atmospheric distortion. An invisible and non-reflective object in space would look pretty much like a new moon, with a black disk that obscures objects behind it. If you want to go for a more mysterious phenomenon that people can observe, then you might have planet-like objects that orbit star 2, and thus move in highly erratic patterns in the sky. You could also have the magical radiation react with the atmosphere and the planet's magnetic field somehow, creating an aurora that moves further south the closer the star gets to the planet. Another option is to have the "light" of the star react with the atmosphere rarely but relatively reliably and cause a mystical glow when the light is diffracting through at extreme angles. This could make the star, or possibly some sort of swirling magical maelstrom, visible only when star 2 is just above the horizon. Barely noticeable at the equator, but more and more common the further north or south you go.

Edit: Another idea. If you're okay with something that seriously stretches our understanding of gravity, then you could say that the star is massive enough to cause gravitational lensing. (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/A_Horseshoe_Einstein_Ring_from_Hubble.JPG) That could be pretty neat. Can't see the object itself, but can see distorted images of stars and galaxies lightyears behind it.