Deffers
2017-06-14, 06:45 AM
Hey, Playground,
My friends and I are collaboratively working on a setting for our roleplaying campaign and I'm tasked with a pretty major worldbuilding section of it. I'm here to pick your brains, basically, on what some of the logistics and scale of the following problem would be for a whole world.
The short version: A giant portal opens up in the middle of the North Atlantic. From it, people and technologies from other worlds with different rules can come through, with technology that works and that our world can't learn or replicate easily. They don't mind doing business. Also coming out of that portal? Monsters, armies from other dimensions trying to start an interdimensional empire. The world forms a junta to respond to this and dredges out a city to defend the world and discover/trade new technologies, in that order of importance. The portal is an impossibly convoluted space-- coming at it from a different side chances where on the edge of a vast, impossibly huge and partly flooded city of Atlantis you'll end up. It's an equilateral triangle thirty miles to a side on our end, with a natural atoll on its southernmost tip outside of the anomaly. If you're in control of a global military junta, how do you protect such a space while still trading enough to keep up with the interdimensional Joneses? How big of a city do you build on that atoll? What kind of logistics do you set up? What kind of commerce do you allow? The most habitable and safest side of Atlantis, by the atoll has a relatively peaceful if somewhat criminal society of interdimensional castoffs. How do you deal with these new neighbors, who're willing to trade you for things you *cannot make*?
The city of Atlantis has risen in the middle of the Atlantic! For a rather loose definition of "city." With a cataclysmic seismic event and corresponding apocalyptic hurricane in the center of the ocean that gets everyone's attention, a portal to another world is opened that is an equilateral triangle 30 kilometers to a side on our end. When the hurricane clears, satellite imagery displays a colossally badly warped space, reminiscent of gravitational lensing, only recognizable in certain spots as a partly-flooded city. A crescent-shaped atoll is connected to the southernmost tip of the triangle, while the northernmost end remains wreathed in choppy waters that could capsize a laden aircraft carrier-- other sides of the cosmic tortilla chip seem to shift or be fuzzy until boats are right up on them-- but it's hard to find captains willing to risk their men to cross the threshold. Recon planes sent to photograph the area go silent pretty much the second they pass through the triangle. Researchers are summoned pretty much immediately to the atoll, with accompanying military escort. When they make landfall, they are greeted by... people. Humans! Mostly. Some even speak English, some in strange accents-- more worryingly are the ones who speak it with recognizable ones. Some of them have their own military escorts, even! From them we learn that Atlantis is a city that many worlds converge-- what was once a lake on their side suddenly shifted and became a road-- a road into our world. Such events are not uncommon-- nor is the opposite event. From this space we make first contact with other civilizations-- civilizations with different laws of physics, different technologies, whole different forms of matter. Over the days and weeks that follow researchers discover that they can't really... integrate the new science from other dimensions. Technologies brought over from different worlds function just fine, and the people from these worlds can describe the technologies, but attempts to truly absorb this information seem to slip out of researchers' minds-- the concepts are fuzzy and hard to understand even with primary materials handed over as cultural exchange. This particular crew seems to be representing no single world, but a community of dimensional castoffs-- a sprawling and anarchic coalition that has lived in a relative, albeit lawless, peace where disparate communities and corporations trade and establish something of an informal common law. But they explain that Atlantis is sprawling-- a difficult to navigate city-continent covered in the detritus of multiple civilizations. More than once people from global dictatorships have tried to establish multi-world empires, against often fierce and wondrous weapons. Some of the lifers, who've only ever known their chunk of the continent-city, talk about setting up defense squads against abortive attempts to take over the worlds... and worse things. These are often lethal but necessary endeavors-- probably the reason people don't just slaughter each other wholesale is that there's always a bigger fish, and sticking together seems to be the only way to keep groups like that in check. Some people ask for refugee status, fleeing oppressive regimes from across the worlds. A small camp is set up on our end-- as things get more structured, people ask for trade. Things like food, water, even ammunition and technology. People with psychic abilities offer their services. Nonhumans are persuaded to volunteer for non-invasive biological studies. Things are nice.
Then things aren't so nice. *Something* comes out of the North end of the atoll. It's big. It has a lot of eyes. Psychic individuals from other worlds drop dead when it crosses over. Its roaring tears peoples' minds. It starts making a course towards land-- the US. By the time it's dead, it's taken out two battleships. Environmental crews are rushed to inspect the carnage for... yunno. Anything that could depopulate Earth's oceans. Our contacts tell us tales of such beings are not unheard of from other portals, but the span between their appearances can most often be measured in years, not months or weeks. Things don't look so good on the south side either. By now the outcasts have permitted people to travel into their corner of Atlantis, and a missive is received that another roving army is headed from deeper in the city out to this world. A call for aid is set out. Global response is sluggish during the first few hours but as the enemy forces approach more closely it becomes clear intervention is not optional. A global junta is established and a coalition comes to reinforce the motley crew of militias and defense squads that have held their own. The day is won, but not without major loss of life. Artifacts held by the defense groups were decisive in keeping the fight fair enough in the face of anomalous technology that organization and numbers tipped the scales in our relatively mundane planet's favor.
From there, it becomes clear that things have to change. The Junta is made permanent and official. Treaties are signed permitting dredging of the atoll to expand it outwards. A city has to be made to establish trade with our uncertain allies-- as hard as it is to adopt otherworldly technology, having a decent stockpile is imperative and making an attempt is considered a crucial method of preventative defense, and may help in case another eldritch creature passes through. Decisions are to be made, then-- what kind of city do we create, to stock and maintain a defense force around this hole in our world? How do we deal with the locals, who are helpful but also willful and not quite amenable to unified rule of law? In defending their home, they defend our home, but their series of multidimensional grey markets are a hell of an issue. Keeping our ecosystem from being destroyed is a major concern-- how do we fund efforts to keep that going? What do the logistics look like on a resulting city built on the expanded atoll, meant to support all these activities?
I hope someone can help me figure out what a city designed to be a forward operating base but also trade hub would look like-- the Playground's full of creative people, so hopefully they can give me some ideas of what such a place would end up being shaped like. Since I'm in charge of basically cartography, things about necessary buildings and build area would be useful, as would things like logistics. How seedy would our side of the portal end up being? How strong a grip would the junta have to keep on its populace? Are there any questions I haven't considered for the worldbuilding that I ought to consider? Any help's appreciated. Feel free to be as creative as needed!
My friends and I are collaboratively working on a setting for our roleplaying campaign and I'm tasked with a pretty major worldbuilding section of it. I'm here to pick your brains, basically, on what some of the logistics and scale of the following problem would be for a whole world.
The short version: A giant portal opens up in the middle of the North Atlantic. From it, people and technologies from other worlds with different rules can come through, with technology that works and that our world can't learn or replicate easily. They don't mind doing business. Also coming out of that portal? Monsters, armies from other dimensions trying to start an interdimensional empire. The world forms a junta to respond to this and dredges out a city to defend the world and discover/trade new technologies, in that order of importance. The portal is an impossibly convoluted space-- coming at it from a different side chances where on the edge of a vast, impossibly huge and partly flooded city of Atlantis you'll end up. It's an equilateral triangle thirty miles to a side on our end, with a natural atoll on its southernmost tip outside of the anomaly. If you're in control of a global military junta, how do you protect such a space while still trading enough to keep up with the interdimensional Joneses? How big of a city do you build on that atoll? What kind of logistics do you set up? What kind of commerce do you allow? The most habitable and safest side of Atlantis, by the atoll has a relatively peaceful if somewhat criminal society of interdimensional castoffs. How do you deal with these new neighbors, who're willing to trade you for things you *cannot make*?
The city of Atlantis has risen in the middle of the Atlantic! For a rather loose definition of "city." With a cataclysmic seismic event and corresponding apocalyptic hurricane in the center of the ocean that gets everyone's attention, a portal to another world is opened that is an equilateral triangle 30 kilometers to a side on our end. When the hurricane clears, satellite imagery displays a colossally badly warped space, reminiscent of gravitational lensing, only recognizable in certain spots as a partly-flooded city. A crescent-shaped atoll is connected to the southernmost tip of the triangle, while the northernmost end remains wreathed in choppy waters that could capsize a laden aircraft carrier-- other sides of the cosmic tortilla chip seem to shift or be fuzzy until boats are right up on them-- but it's hard to find captains willing to risk their men to cross the threshold. Recon planes sent to photograph the area go silent pretty much the second they pass through the triangle. Researchers are summoned pretty much immediately to the atoll, with accompanying military escort. When they make landfall, they are greeted by... people. Humans! Mostly. Some even speak English, some in strange accents-- more worryingly are the ones who speak it with recognizable ones. Some of them have their own military escorts, even! From them we learn that Atlantis is a city that many worlds converge-- what was once a lake on their side suddenly shifted and became a road-- a road into our world. Such events are not uncommon-- nor is the opposite event. From this space we make first contact with other civilizations-- civilizations with different laws of physics, different technologies, whole different forms of matter. Over the days and weeks that follow researchers discover that they can't really... integrate the new science from other dimensions. Technologies brought over from different worlds function just fine, and the people from these worlds can describe the technologies, but attempts to truly absorb this information seem to slip out of researchers' minds-- the concepts are fuzzy and hard to understand even with primary materials handed over as cultural exchange. This particular crew seems to be representing no single world, but a community of dimensional castoffs-- a sprawling and anarchic coalition that has lived in a relative, albeit lawless, peace where disparate communities and corporations trade and establish something of an informal common law. But they explain that Atlantis is sprawling-- a difficult to navigate city-continent covered in the detritus of multiple civilizations. More than once people from global dictatorships have tried to establish multi-world empires, against often fierce and wondrous weapons. Some of the lifers, who've only ever known their chunk of the continent-city, talk about setting up defense squads against abortive attempts to take over the worlds... and worse things. These are often lethal but necessary endeavors-- probably the reason people don't just slaughter each other wholesale is that there's always a bigger fish, and sticking together seems to be the only way to keep groups like that in check. Some people ask for refugee status, fleeing oppressive regimes from across the worlds. A small camp is set up on our end-- as things get more structured, people ask for trade. Things like food, water, even ammunition and technology. People with psychic abilities offer their services. Nonhumans are persuaded to volunteer for non-invasive biological studies. Things are nice.
Then things aren't so nice. *Something* comes out of the North end of the atoll. It's big. It has a lot of eyes. Psychic individuals from other worlds drop dead when it crosses over. Its roaring tears peoples' minds. It starts making a course towards land-- the US. By the time it's dead, it's taken out two battleships. Environmental crews are rushed to inspect the carnage for... yunno. Anything that could depopulate Earth's oceans. Our contacts tell us tales of such beings are not unheard of from other portals, but the span between their appearances can most often be measured in years, not months or weeks. Things don't look so good on the south side either. By now the outcasts have permitted people to travel into their corner of Atlantis, and a missive is received that another roving army is headed from deeper in the city out to this world. A call for aid is set out. Global response is sluggish during the first few hours but as the enemy forces approach more closely it becomes clear intervention is not optional. A global junta is established and a coalition comes to reinforce the motley crew of militias and defense squads that have held their own. The day is won, but not without major loss of life. Artifacts held by the defense groups were decisive in keeping the fight fair enough in the face of anomalous technology that organization and numbers tipped the scales in our relatively mundane planet's favor.
From there, it becomes clear that things have to change. The Junta is made permanent and official. Treaties are signed permitting dredging of the atoll to expand it outwards. A city has to be made to establish trade with our uncertain allies-- as hard as it is to adopt otherworldly technology, having a decent stockpile is imperative and making an attempt is considered a crucial method of preventative defense, and may help in case another eldritch creature passes through. Decisions are to be made, then-- what kind of city do we create, to stock and maintain a defense force around this hole in our world? How do we deal with the locals, who are helpful but also willful and not quite amenable to unified rule of law? In defending their home, they defend our home, but their series of multidimensional grey markets are a hell of an issue. Keeping our ecosystem from being destroyed is a major concern-- how do we fund efforts to keep that going? What do the logistics look like on a resulting city built on the expanded atoll, meant to support all these activities?
I hope someone can help me figure out what a city designed to be a forward operating base but also trade hub would look like-- the Playground's full of creative people, so hopefully they can give me some ideas of what such a place would end up being shaped like. Since I'm in charge of basically cartography, things about necessary buildings and build area would be useful, as would things like logistics. How seedy would our side of the portal end up being? How strong a grip would the junta have to keep on its populace? Are there any questions I haven't considered for the worldbuilding that I ought to consider? Any help's appreciated. Feel free to be as creative as needed!