A problem of gates

[Crake]

Ok, so in my current campaign, the moon is coming to a halt in front of the sun, creating a perpetual eclipse. In addition, the edge of the moon has been lined with faezress, so any light from the sun that does make it to the planet will be significantly dampened. As a solution to this problem, the players have decided to make a series of interlacing ring gates (half hexagons that lock together, are larger, 30ft high to be precise, and span a long enough distance to make it from one side to the other of the moon) to "transport" the light from the sun through the moon without having to actually move the moon itself, or destroy it (the former of which will be hard considering the forces that will be guarding it, and the latter having a devastating effect on the ecosystem of the planet, which the players do not want). So the problem I have is whether they can do it in time.

There is currently one person available to craft things on this kind of scale. They need a total of 65,451,053,276 ring gates by my caluclations. Each of which I'm setting the price of at 200k. With the epic crafting feat, these can be produced in 20 days each, in a timesped demiplane up to 10x as fast, meaning 2 real days each. There are 224 days until the moon slows and becomes a permament eclipse, or 2240 days in the time sped demiplane.

Assuming a starting point of 5 ice assassin duplicates, with 6x9th level spells per day, one of which must be gate to be expended in crafting, with resources and xp for spells/crafting being a non issue (due to acceptable levels of shenannigans, meaning yes, even the ice assassins can cast spells with xp components). Wish spells can add 1/8th progress to the crafting of a gate, this is a static portion, so feats that reduce crafting time/costs do not affect the amount of progress a wish spell contributes. There are 24 hours in a "day" so keep that in mind (ice assassin takes 8 hours to cast for example, and you need 8 hours of time to recover spells, plus 8 hours of crafting for example).

My question is this: Can it be done with these limitations in time?

Before anyone says "just gate chain for infinite wishes haha" Already a step ahead of you, many of the denizens of the planes are already helping out by spending their wishes to contribute, the number above is the remainder amount that this epic caster needs to make, so that's all on her. For the purpose of this thought experiment, assume all the other epic spellcasters in the world are off doing other things important to the plot, this is her job, is it possible?

[Venger]

Given that your players seem to have access to epic level resources, there's actually a simpler solution to this problem:

Hire or ally with a hulking hurler from the planet you're trying to restore sunlight to. If he wants to help so his people can grow crops or what have you, great, if he lives in caves and doesn't care, pay him with some of your simulacrum money.

Protect him from the elements with spells and/or items and loan/give him an immovable rod, or if you want to flex your epic magic muscles, cast nailed to the sky on him. Then simply have him throw the moon out of the way. Use your resources to boost his strength if it's necessary.

If the moon is held in place by DM fiat and can't be moved with cosmic strength then do the same thing but instead have him throw a big rock or osmium sphere mined by your golems from your demiplanes or whatever at the moon and smash it into tiny pieces restoring sunlight.

[Crake]

Given that your players seem to have access to epic level resources, there's actually a simpler solution to this problem:

Hire or ally with a hulking hurler from the planet you're trying to restore sunlight to. If he wants to help so his people can grow crops or what have you, great, if he lives in caves and doesn't care, pay him with some of your simulacrum money.

Protect him from the elements with spells and/or items and loan/give him an immovable rod, or if you want to flex your epic magic muscles, cast nailed to the sky on him. Then simply have him throw the moon out of the way. Use your resources to boost his strength if it's necessary.

If the moon is held in place by DM fiat and can't be moved with cosmic strength then do the same thing but instead have him throw a big rock or osmium sphere mined by your golems from your demiplanes or whatever at the moon and smash it into tiny pieces restoring sunlight.

I did note that removing the moon from orbit would mess up the ecosystem horribly due to the loss of tidal effects, so unfortunately that's not a valid solution.

[Venger]

I did note that removing the moon from orbit would mess up the ecosystem horribly due to the loss of tidal effects, so unfortunately that's not a valid solution.

While that's certainly true, the effects of not having any sunlight indefinitely are also not good. After destroying the moon, you could always replace it with another one that presumably wouldn't be cursed in the same way. You could do it all under the effects of time stop or similar so the latency period would be as short as possible.

[Niek]

Cast epic invisibility on the moon

[Flickerdart]

I did note that removing the moon from orbit would mess up the ecosystem horribly due to the loss of tidal effects, so unfortunately that's not a valid solution.

Freezing the moon in place does a number on the ecosystem already.

[Niek]

Freezing the moon in place does a number on the ecosystem already.

If the moon is locked to always be in a state of eclipse, then the tides are preserved at least. Albeit they will be more severe than usual, as the sun and moon will always be pulling in the same direction.

[Crake]

Cast epic invisibility on the moon

It'd be safe to say that something like that would be quickly dispelled. In case it's not obvious, there is an opposing faction of drow who are orchestrating this, and have been planning this for quite some time. The moon itself is quite well guarded from any attempts to sabotage it directly, which is why this is the plan that they have settled on. It is further cemented by the fact that it was financially backed by the biggest mogul on the planes, which is why the gates are set up as they are, to be usable after the situation is dealt with and the moon is restored. Please note that the epic character here is not actually a player, but rather an NPC helping us out. It can be safely assumed that for each epic force on the side of "not eternal darkness" there is one on the side of "eternal darkness" available to compete on an even playing field. The players are part of a massive, worldwide effort of elite characters in this conflict, not the leading force. They play a vital role, but not the only role.


Freezing the moon in place does a number on the ecosystem already.

That is true, but much less of an effect than no moon at all. Due to the planet's spin, the moon being stationary does still allow tides to function mostly as normal, the only thing affected are things depending on the lunar cycle, something much less impactful than the tides.

[Name1]

It'd be safe to say that something like that would be quickly dispelled.

How about a Knight of the Weave/Sublime Chord Dragonwrought Kobold? He should be able to take Tenacious Magic (Invisibility) and make the moon invisible. Can't be dispelled then.

[Venger]

How about a Knight of the Weave/Sublime Chord Dragonwrought Kobold? He should be able to take Tenacious Magic (Invisibility) and make the moon invisible. Can't be dispelled then.

Or a heirophant who takes supernatural transformation.

[Durzan]

Oh boy; this is a tough one to advise for. Astronomy happens to be one of my casual interests, and I am a huge fan of MatPat's game theory. Both of these facts you are about to hate me for, as I'm about to throw a big wrench in your plans.



That is true, but much less of an effect than no moon at all. Due to the planet's spin, the moon being stationary does still allow tides to function mostly as normal, the only thing affected are things depending on the lunar cycle, something much less impactful than the tides.

Wrong actually, it would have a much bigger effect than you predict, and several disastrous unintended side effects that are quite probably worse than the universal darkness your baddies have been cooking up for the entire campaign.

Even if some crazy group of morons used magic to prevent the moon from moving on its merry way across normal orbit around the planet, in an attempt to make eternal darkness, and it so happens to produce a permanent total solar eclipse like you said, it would only effect a relatively small area of the land at a time, as the moon's shadow is only so big. The rest of the world during the day would be perfectly fine and unaffected by the eclipse, while the areas that are in night time just wouldn't give a crap, cause you know, they are already in darkness. Since you mentioned that your world has a full day equivalent to 24 standard earth hours, that means that we must also factor in the fact that the earth rotates, thus meaning that said shadow would only affect a given area for a relatively short amount of time. In other words, the shadow would stay in place, and the planet would rotate underneath the shadow, causing different areas of the world to be affected at different times. If you also factor in the tilt of the earth and the position of the earth in its orbit, then it means that the areas affected by the shadow, and how long they are affected will also vary according to the seasons. Over all, the group would fail to achieve their original goal: block out all sunlight for the entire world... forever. There are better ways to do that than tidally locking the moon in place at its default distance. (In order for this to be effective, you would have to move the moon extremely close to earth, so close in fact that it would cover at least 80% of the sky, which would kill everyone on the planet, including the baddies, for reasons I will explain later.)

But wait, Theres more! The Moon doesn't actually orbit the Earth, thats just a simplification. Whats really happening is both the Earth and Moon are orbiting a common center of gravity, which shifts closer to the bigger of the two objects. Earth it so happens, is big enough that the center of gravity is effectively the Earth, but not quite, as it still will 'wobble' a bit. By locking the moon in one position relative to the earth, the wizard would be exerting a huge amount of force to keep it that way, so Newton's Third Law of Motion would then come into play. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction: Forces interact with each other, and gravity is a force... Force is energy, and energy can be converted to mass. So by messing with the moon in this way, you are effectively adding virtual mass to the moon, which would shift the center of gravity away from the planet and to the moon, causing the planet to orbit the moon instead of vice versa to compensate. This of course which would defeat the wizard's purpose of blocking out all sunlight. Now this would lead to a rather interesting world, but it would seriously screw up the entire planetary closed system in unpredictable ways. And that is assuming that the magic just doesnt just simply rip the moon right out of the earth's gravitational influence, which would leave the planet without any moon whatsoever... which is definitely established as bad.

Also, having portions of the planet blocked out by sunlight for hours at a time would have an effect on weather patterns, causing havoc. Areas that receive less sunlight cause the air to become colder and sink due to higher density, while the warmer air becomes less dense and rises. On Earth, this means that warm air rises and flows towards the poles, and cold air condenses and falls towards the equator, and when combined with The Coriolis Effect (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2mec3vgeaI) and other effects, creates our normal weather and current patterns. If you throw in a permanent solar eclipse this would add an additional patch of cool air that moves as the earth rotates, which would effect the weather patterns, and causing screwy things to occur.

Last but not least... the Moon not only produces significant tides, but it also stabilizes the Earth's tilt and rotation speed, which affects Earth's climate as stated in this linked video (produced by MatPat™). (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFPPKz6Y2hY) If the moon is suddenly removed, then the moon's gravity is no longer pulling on the Earth, and its rotation speed may very well speed up, and its tilt would also start changing, possibly throwing the world into a sudden ice age. If the moon is suddenly moved closer, then it would cause similar problems, as the earth would be jerked off kilter by the sudden gravitational forces. Not to mention that the higher tides might very well kill everyone.

And thats not even considering all the other effects that it would have, which I didn't mention, or don't even know about!

The only way you could even come close to getting what you want is by moving the moon close enough to the planet that its shadow would be cast over an entire half of the Earth, and then making sure both are tidally locked to each other as well as tidally locked to the sun as well (A feat that would be nearly impossible, even with epic level magic, I assure you), and even if that did happen, everyone and everything would be killed due to the increased tidal forces alone long before the planet turned into an ice ball due to receiving little to no sunlight.

So yeah, don't f*ck with the moon, unless you know what you are doing, and even then, don't do it. I don't care if your a DM using rule 0, a player, or a crazy wizard... know you stuff first.
_________________________________________

That being said, if you do go through with it anyway, I've given you a number of ways for this plan to bite the villains in the butt with what I described above should they succeed, and a whole lot of fun adventures for your players to go through as a result of this f*ck up. The only problem is that this would also screw the heroes and everyone else over, and make their plan obsolete. Meaning they would have to go back to the drawing board to deal with the end of the world as we know it.

Magic can have unpredictable effects... use it to your advantage.

[Kelb_Panthera]

-snip-

All those poor catgirls. :smallfrown:

[Doctor Awkward]

Darn. Durzan beat me to it with the astronomy angle.

Oh well, I can still ask about the math...


There's a couple of things I want to point out and ask for clarification on:

1) You don't actually require 8 hours of sleep to recover spells. Heward's Fortifying Bedroll (Complete Mage, pg. 132) grants you the benefits of a full 8 hours of rest in only 1 hour, explicitly including the ability to prepare new spells. 1 hour of rest, 1 hour to prepare spells.

2) Per the rules, you are only permitted to spend 8 hours in a day crafting magical items.

3) Efficient Item Creation is only capable of reducing the crafting time to a minimum of one day. Since no other feat or ability I'm aware of gets it down further, that is the quickest you are able to produce a magic item.


Without addressing any of the above, the answer to the question is pretty elementary: You require 65,451,053,276 (Billion, with a capital B if I counted right), and you have a hard and fast time limit of 2,240 days to acquire them.

Therefore the only way that you can make the deadline is by producing a minimum of 29,219,220 ring gates per day, plus one extra one every four to five days.

[Crake]

snip

To address some of your points, I did note that the edge of the moon was lined with faezress, meaning the sunlight that passes near the moon is infact incredibly dimmed and warped, so it is still incredibly dark. We are all aware that the shadow the moon would cast would be rather small. Some of the other issues you brought up do not exist in this world, for example, the planet is not on a tilt, the seasons are global and dictated by an elliptical orbit.

The moon itself is not so much "magically locked in place" as much as it has been slowed down, and with an incredibly liberal use of reverse gravity, had it's acceleration toward the planet slowed enough that it maintains a solar synchronous orbit around the planet. While you may be right, and this may lead to a strange "center of gravity" for the two, it has been done in a way that results in a 360 day (that's the length of a year in the setting) elliptical orbit of the moon that almost perfectly mimics the planet around the sun, resulting in a permanent eclipse (with the faezress as noted several times now to prevent the light not blocked by the moon from actually being strong daylight).

It's well guarded enough and would require incredibly precise engineering to prevent the moon from instead slowly spiralling in to crash into the planet that rushing up there to stop it is a bad idea. Thus an intermediary plan is in place until the enemy force is dealt with and the moon can be engineered to return to it's normal orbit.

I hope that clears it up a bit for everyone. I did some preliminary calculations, and it seems that even if every ice asassin makes only 1 extra ice assassin each day, it could easily be completed in the alloted time, and the ridiculous number of ice assassins left over can double up as guards for the gates in the meantime. What they will be useful for afterwards is a mystery, though the character in question abhores them, so they will likely be destroyed except for a few for personal use.

[Durzan]

To address some of your points, I did note that the edge of the moon was lined with faezress, meaning the sunlight that passes near the moon is infact incredibly dimmed and warped, so it is still incredibly dark. We are all aware that the shadow the moon would cast would be rather small. Some of the other issues you brought up do not exist in this world, for example, the planet is not on a tilt, the seasons are global and dictated by an elliptical orbit.

The moon itself is not so much "magically locked in place" as much as it has been slowed down, and with an incredibly liberal use of reverse gravity, had it's acceleration toward the planet slowed enough that it maintains a solar synchronous orbit around the planet. While you may be right, and this may lead to a strange "center of gravity" for the two, it has been done in a way that results in a 360 day (that's the length of a year in the setting) elliptical orbit of the moon that almost perfectly mimics the planet around the sun, resulting in a permanent eclipse (with the faezress as noted several times now to prevent the light not blocked by the moon from actually being strong daylight).

It's well guarded enough and would require incredibly precise engineering to prevent the moon from instead slowly spiralling in to crash into the planet that rushing up there to stop it is a bad idea. Thus an intermediary plan is in place until the enemy force is dealt with and the moon can be engineered to return to it's normal orbit.

I hope that clears it up a bit for everyone. I did some preliminary calculations, and it seems that even if every ice asassin makes only 1 extra ice assassin each day, it could easily be completed in the alloted time, and the ridiculous number of ice assassins left over can double up as guards for the gates in the meantime. What they will be useful for afterwards is a mystery, though the character in question abhores them, so they will likely be destroyed except for a few for personal use.

Oh dear heavens, you just dug yourself into your pit even more.

So basically, the moon is no longer orbiting your planet at all? If thats the case, then the gravitational interaction of both of them would quickly result in one or the other having its orbital trajectory altered (IE one gets flung completely out of the way of the other), or would result in the moon falling back into a more regular orbit of your planet anyway, or at worst crashing into the planet like you mentioned earlier. Either way, this action would destabilize the planet's rotation, which is a problem your group or the baddies will have to deal with. If your planet does not have a tilt, it will be getting one very soon then... and said tilt will be constantly changing as well. As far as the orbit would go, it would slightly change due to having the moon altered.

As for reverse gravity, there is no such thing. All you would have to do is apply a certain amount of force on the moon in the exact opposite direction of the moon's orbit to get it to slow down. To get it to stop orbiting the Earth, you would have to push it away from Earth and towards the sun, and then like you said, precisely engineer its orbit so that it is constantly between earth and the sun. Which of course makes it harder to do the thing that you wanted to do... as orbital speed is a function of how far a body is away from the object it is orbiting, meaning that even if the moon is closer to the sun but still close enough to earth to cast a shadow on it, it will move slightly faster than the earth and race ahead of it given enough time, and its shadow is also consequently smaller b/c you had to move it far enough away from earth that its gravitational effect on it is not strong enough to pull it back into orbit... which as stated above would result in a slight but significant change in orbit for your planet AND your moon. In other words Your baddies would have to be constantly babysitting the moon AND your planet to keep them on course, keep them from crashing into anything, or from getting drawn back together. IE more work than it is worth, when say, you could simply put a worldwide cloud into place over the planet using significantly lower level magic.

As far as seasons however, they wouldn't really be affected by the elliptical orbit all that much. Literally ALL planets have an elliptical orbit. But it might, MIGHT effect the average global temperature of your world at any given point in the orbit, especially if the orbit is extreme... and if its an extreme orbit, then your planet wouldn't be able to support life at all, quite frankly. A planet's seasons are affected by the concentration of sunlight in a given hemisphere rather than the shape of the orbit. Saturn and Pluto have seasons, b/c they have a tilt, not because of the shape of their orbits. If the planet doesn't have a tilt, then the temperatures for each respective latitude will remain fairly constant year round, meaning no summer or winter for each hemisphere... just a constant temperature, that may only vary slightly based on how close they are to the sun at any given point during their orbit.

And that fake atmosphere you keep talking about wouldn't do jack sh*t at the distances were talking about.

[Crake]

So basically, the moon is no longer orbiting your planet at all?

That's.. not what I said at all. The moon is orbiting very slowly.

As for the elliptical orbit, without going into too much history of the world, it wasn't always like that, the gods came and perfectly engineered the orbit to just the right amount to allow it to be just hot/cold enough to emulate seasons, though certain types of environments, such as tropical jungles, become quite impossible without other environmental effects to cater for them, which is all kept in mind.


And that fake atmosphere you keep talking about wouldn't do jack sh*t at the distances were talking about.

Sorry, I suppose I assumed people knew what faezress is. It's underdark radiation that, when it interacts with light, turns it into dim, weak, blue-ish purple light. Because it's radiating out from the moon, unimpeded, it's affecting all the light coming from the sun, so it is in fact making it pratically perpetual darkness, as the light is a very sickly, dim color. During the "day" it will be brighter than the night, but it would be closer to the light of a full moon than anything resembling "daylight"

For the purposes of this argument though, assume that we, in real life, have people of all different professions (biologist, physicist, mathmetician etc) to have been able to at least somewhat competently predict the effects and scale of a lot of this. Much of what I've written here has been extremely simplified, because it's, you know, not the point of the thread.

[Endarire]

TO DO:
-Add a link in my signature to the quote, "cast [epic] invisibility on the moon."

Also, well stated, everyone!

[Telok]

I have two thoughts on this. First, just genocide the drow. They're busy fooling around with Reverse Gravity spell arrays and whatnot. Just start wrecking infrastructure, terrain, and magic in that area. Kill all the drow you can find. They get to stop fooling with the moon and stop you or enjoy a Phyrric victory.

Second is that your celestial mechanics are gravity based. So orbital distance is a function of speed, or vice versa depending on your frame of reference. Even after allowing for magic to keep the planet/moon system in place and not collapsing the moon is so far away that it blocks almost no sunlight. The argument for magic light blocking fuzfuz (I can never spell that crap) means that the radius of your light blocking magic is going to be several times the radius of your planet if it's going to block any significant amount of light. Unless whatever does the magic light blocking is required to be on the moon it will be easier just to keep it at ground level and work from there since it's radius is larger than the entire planet. Plus, if the fuzfuz is around the moon then letting light through the moon is useless as the whole moon is covered in the stuff.

[Crake]

I have two thoughts on this. First, just genocide the drow. They're busy fooling around with Reverse Gravity spell arrays and whatnot. Just start wrecking infrastructure, terrain, and magic in that area. Kill all the drow you can find. They get to stop fooling with the moon and stop you or enjoy a Phyrric victory.

Second is that your celestial mechanics are gravity based. So orbital distance is a function of speed, or vice versa depending on your frame of reference. Even after allowing for magic to keep the planet/moon system in place and not collapsing the moon is so far away that it blocks almost no sunlight. The argument for magic light blocking fuzfuz (I can never spell that crap) means that the radius of your light blocking magic is going to be several times the radius of your planet if it's going to block any significant amount of light. Unless whatever does the magic light blocking is required to be on the moon it will be easier just to keep it at ground level and work from there since it's radius is larger than the entire planet. Plus, if the fuzfuz is around the moon then letting light through the moon is useless as the whole moon is covered in the stuff.

Since the moon is tidally locked, it's just a small band of circumference around the moon, not the whole moon itself. Part of the point of reverse gravity is to reverse the acceleration of a significant portion of the which would reduce the orbital distance required to maintain an eclipse locked orbit to the point where it is maintaining the same distance it was at before. The DM is also ruling that faezress radiation through a vaccuum travels until it interacts with light or an object. Obviously the further away it travels the more dispersed it becomes, but the drow have made it dense enough to affect all the light making it to the planet.

[Starbuck_II]

If the moon is locked to always be in a state of eclipse, then the tides are preserved at least. Albeit they will be more severe than usual, as the sun and moon will always be pulling in the same direction.

This would work as long as it is relative. But it can't be locked in place due to the fact that the sun isn't stationary (yes, they discovered this recently, it was relatively stationary, but then they found the universe moves so therefore the sun is moving too).

The sun is similar to a comet traveling through space but everything revolves around it in our galaxy.

But relative lock is feasible with magic (though I am not sure how it would work).

[Kelb_Panthera]

As for reverse gravity, there is no such thing.

Oh, you're new then...

Reversed gravity very much -is- a thing in D&D. See reverse gravity (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/reverseGravity.htm). This spell creates a localized field of reversed gravity. The drow in the OP's circumstance are likely using an epic spell(s) based on that one.

I get where you're coming from, with the physics and all, but the fantasy setting(s) D&D assume only have a passing aquaintance with such things. If you start to look closely, things start to break down pretty quickly.

Sometimes it's better to just suspend your disbelief and roll with it. Just sayin'.

Edit:

Come to think of it, real physics also have negative gravity, in theory. It requires exotic particles, from what I recall, but it's at least theoretically possible.