Terraforming Mars with Magic

[Eldan]

An idea that came to me in the 3 spells/person thread: what would be needed to terraform mars, given DnD magic? So far, what I can think of is this:

-Teleport to reach mars. I think normal teleport would be quite sufficient, since it always seems to drop you on the ground, so arriving a few hundred kilometers off target wouldn't be too bad. Teleportation circles would also be nice.

-A spell that lets you survive without air, and in extreme cold. I think I've seen a spell somewhere that let's you breathe without environmental air, but I'm not sure where.

Now for the terraforming itself:

Create water is a good start. Is there a "create air" spell? Druid spells to create volcanoes might help warm up the athmosphere and fill it with a few greenhouse gases.

After that, bacterial life can be brought in via teleport. I guess a few bulk loads of fertilizer also help. Of course, setting up a working ecosystem, even on bacterial level is incredibly complex, but just some lake water would make a good starting point.


So, what did I forget?

Edit: in the other thread, "making the atmosphere stick" was mentioned. I have a few ideas, but they all seem unreliable and inefficient:

Wall of Force-ing the atmosphere in. Probably not the best course.
Using spells to create metal in large enough amounts that the planet gains sufficient gravity? Would probably also take ages.

[kamikasei]

To survive without air, you can use an iridescent ioun stone if nothing else.

The obvious solution would be "portals to the Elemental Planes of a) Air and b) Water".

You'll need more than a bit of fertilizer - Mars will need tremendous amounts of nitrogen and other trace elements introduced.

You'd also need a way to get it to retain the atmosphere - or go with leaving enough portals open to replenish the air lost to the planet's weak gravity.

[Eldan]

Right. Here I am, writing stuff for a planescape campaign which involves portals to provide necessary resources and didn't think of that. The question is, of course, if our universe is connected to Planescape and the elemental planes

Okay. Gates to Water and Air. And I wasn't necessarily thinking of "a bit of fertilizer", I was thinking of dumping truckloads into teleportation circles. Would still take ages, of course.

[kamikasei]

To be fair, I have no idea if you can, with existing spells, open a permament gate to an elemental plane that will let that element come flooding through. Hmmm. You could use decanters of endless water. You could try to make a decanter of endless air - or is there something of that sort already available?

[Ravens_cry]

There is a bottle of air. Though you would need a lot of money. Calculating from troy ounces per pound, and calculating gold coins per troy ounce, finding the price of gold per ounce, calculating the price of a single gold coin in bullion I say a single bottle of air costs $2,034,205 US dollars.
My Math:
US$962 per troy ounce
1 pound per 14.5833 troy oz.
50 gold coins per pound
0.2916668 troy oz. per gold coin
US$280.58 per gold coin
7,250 gold coins per bottle of air
US$2,034,205 per bottle of air

[Eldan]

Actually, thinking about it:
What about mini-ecosystems until the large terraforming is through? Use six walls of force to create a cube, fill it half with water, add soil, fertilizer, algae... basically a small pond. Still damn cold, but that could probably be changed somehow.

And yes, a handful of decanters of endless water, set on maximum strength would take care of the water problem... also add some weight which would help with gravity.
How long would it take to create enough metal to make mars heavy enough for an atmosphere?


Edit: I bet NASA would gladly pay 2 million dollars for an endless air supply. I bet with some tinkering, it could even be used as a cooling system for spacecraft.

[Ravens_cry]

Actually, thinking about it:
What about mini-ecosystems until the large terraforming is through? Use six walls of force to create a cube, fill it half with water, add soil, fertilizer, algae... basically a small pond. Still damn cold, but that could probably be changed somehow.

And yes, a handful of decanters of endless water, set on maximum strength would take care of the water problem... also add some weight which would help with gravity.
How long would it take to create enough metal to make mars heavy enough for an atmosphere?

So, Paraterraforming then, basically making the world a giant greenhouse, incrementally? Slightly more viable, and would be able to start out as a 'simple' self sustaining colony.

[kamikasei]

What about mini-ecosystems until the large terraforming is through? Use six walls of force to create a cube, fill it half with water, add soil, fertilizer, algae... basically a small pond. Still damn cold, but that could probably be changed somehow.

No need for walls of force - just colonize craters.

How long would it take to create enough metal to make mars heavy enough for an atmosphere?

It's already heavy enough for an atmosphere, just not a very thick one. I'd say a better bet than trying to massively increase the planet's gravity would be constant replenishment. Just leave those bottles of air always on at an appropriate level. (However, looking at the description, apparently you need to breathe out of them in order to extract the air - it doesn't come out by itself like a decanter. You could probably rig up a pump though. Powered by decanters!)

I mean, Mars already has a solid iron core. It's just a much smaller planet than Earth. You'd either have to pretty much coat the surface until it's a bigger planet, or drill to the core and add very, very dense metals.

[peacenlove]

To be fair, I have no idea if you can, with existing spells, open a permament gate to an elemental plane that will let that element come flooding through. Hmmm. You could use decanters of endless water. You could try to make a decanter of endless air - or is there something of that sort already available?

You can cause a planar breach that connects 2 planes and the area has the properties of both of them. The spell (actually a series of them) is found in the planar handbook

[Eldan]

The walls of force would actually be to hold the atmosphere and water in one place until mars has it's own of sufficient density.

So, with air and water covered, what's next? Importing simple life should be easy enough given teleportation mechanisms.
Problems I could see: insufficient sunlight for most plants. I'm not sure how much light mars actually gets, but it's at least less than on earth. Then, the atmosphere would have to be heated up to comfortable levels. Can we make a "Bottle of Warm Air" or a "Bottle of Greenhouse Gases"?

[Xenogears]

The walls of force would actually be to hold the atmosphere and water in one place until mars has it's own of sufficient density.

So, with air and water covered, what's next? Importing simple life should be easy enough given teleportation mechanisms.
Problems I could see: insufficient sunlight for most plants. I'm not sure how much light mars actually gets, but it's at least less than on earth. Then, the atmosphere would have to be heated up to comfortable levels. Can we make a "Bottle of Warm Air" or a "Bottle of Greenhouse Gases"?

Well for sunlgight you could use Hallow to tie a daylight spell to a square for a year. Just have to do updates every so often...

[kamikasei]

They don't have soil, they have regolith. So you'd have to precede any "proper" plants with simpler forms of life, bacteria and algae and lichen and so on, to turn the regolith in to soil and then earthworms and the like to aerate it. These would have to be engineered to a) fix nitrogen (which you'd have to supply) and b) reduce salinity.

Sunlight shouldn't be that much of a problem. Mars is about half again as far from the sun as Earth is, so should have about 45% the sunlight if I'm calculating correctly. I'm sure you can find arctic and mountainous species on Earth that can deal with that. If you want to be able to transplant life from any biome on Earth, then you'd probably have to resort to epic magic to conjure a giant light-amplifying mirror complex between Mars and Sol.

[Ravens_cry]

The walls of force would actually be to hold the atmosphere and water in one place until mars has it's own of sufficient density.

So, with air and water covered, what's next? Importing simple life should be easy enough given teleportation mechanisms.
Problems I could see: insufficient sunlight for most plants. I'm not sure how much light mars actually gets, but it's at least less than on earth. Then, the atmosphere would have to be heated up to comfortable levels. Can we make a "Bottle of Warm Air" or a "Bottle of Greenhouse Gases"?

Mars actually gets surprisingly warm in the summer at the equator. 27 degrees Celsius in fact. With more atmosphere, it would be even warmer. . The amount of light is about a third. There are many shade loving plants, so that actually isn't too much of a problem. And the daylight spell, or an item that provides it, could perk things up as needed. Mars rotates about the same speed, so that also isn't a problem. The longer year might be. This could be simulated indoors to find out.

[Myshlaevsky]

No need for walls of force - just colonize craters.



It's already heavy enough for an atmosphere, just not a very thick one. I'd say a better bet than trying to massively increase the planet's gravity would be constant replenishment. Just leave those bottles of air always on at an appropriate level. (However, looking at the description, apparently you need to breathe out of them in order to extract the air - it doesn't come out by itself like a decanter. You could probably rig up a pump though. Powered by decanters!)

I mean, Mars already has a solid iron core. It's just a much smaller planet than Earth. You'd either have to pretty much coat the surface until it's a bigger planet, or drill to the core and add very, very dense metals.

Is the aim sustainability, or just survivability? Increasing the gravity would be a better bet in the long run because you're just going to constantly run up against the problem of escaping gases.

[Eldan]

The longer year in itself shouldn't be too problematic. There were deciduous plants in the antarctic for much of earth's history, so they can survive a six month winter. It has been simulated, and is possible.

Didn't think of the daylight spell, though. That one is rather obvious.

[Jayngfet]

Decanter of endless water, bottles of air, everburning torches to provide light to plants.

[Eldan]

I strongly suspect that torchlight wouldn't be even remotely intense enough for plants. But a permanent daylight spell would help there.

[daggaz]

God you guys.... You are also going to need space marines. To keep the aliens at bay.

"They mostly come out at night. ...Mostly."

[Eldan]

With a little magic, space marines aren't that difficult. Polymorph a few humans into goliaths and give them adamantium full plate. Then equip them with whatever modern weaponry and magic items.

[Ravens_cry]

Is the aim sustainability, or just survivability? Increasing the gravity would be a better bet in the long run because you're just going to constantly run up against the problem of escaping gases.

And with bottles of air, it can be constantly replenished. Also the escaping is thought, this is all theoretical mind, to be fairly gradual, thousands of years. Not even an elf would notice over a single generation.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

There is a bottle of air. Though you would need a lot of money. Calculating from troy ounces per pound, and calculating gold coins per troy ounce, finding the price of gold per ounce, calculating the price of a single gold coin in bullion I say a single bottle of air costs $2,034,205 US dollars.
My Math:
US$962 per troy ounce
1 pound per 14.5833 troy oz.
50 gold coins per pound
0.2916668 troy oz. per gold coin
US$280.58 per gold coin
7,250 gold coins per bottle of air
US$2,034,205 per bottle of air

You can't really calculate the cost of something in USD that way, because there's obviously a lot of inflation in the D&D worlds due to gold's use as currency and its prevalence in the world. If you look at commodity prices in the PHB and such rather than coins' weight in gold, to determine the relative purchasing power of a given amount of gold rather than what the gold's worth would be here, 1 gp actually comes out closer to $1-$4. That would put our bottle of end at a nice (and much more affordable) $29,000 at the top end.

[Myshlaevsky]

And with bottles of air, it can be constantly replenished. Also the escaping is thought, this is all theoretical mind, to be fairly gradual, thousands of years. Not even an elf would notice over a single generation.

I was more concerned with bodies of water, but I suppose decanters of endless water solve that problem too. Regardless, even if we skip this particular Martian environmental problem by using magic items forever, there's probably some other problem associated with solar winds & UV light that we are ignoring.

[kamikasei]

there's probably some other problem associated with solar winds & UV light that we are ignoring.

Radiation due to the lack of a magnetosphere. Nothing you can do about that with your atmosphere, though. Well, you could try putting something into the atmosphere that would act as a shield, but it's a completely separate issue from just making the place breathable.

[Myshlaevsky]

Radiation due to the lack of a magnetosphere. Nothing you can do about that with your atmosphere, though. Well, you could try putting something into the atmosphere that would act as a shield, but it's a completely separate issue from just making the place breathable.

Could just zombify everyone?

[SinsI]

How about moving it closer to the Sun? And increasing the gravity by gating all the necessary materials from Elemental plans of Air and Earth.

[ZeroNumerous]

Shapechange: Elder Elemental

Dig to the planet's core.

1) If it exists, Polymorph Any Object to turn it into a denser material like iron.

2) If it exists and it's too small: Wall of Iron.

3) If it doesn't exist: Wall of Iron.

Repeat until you get earth-like density.

Go back to surface.

Gate: Elemental Plane of Air.

Gate: Elemental Plane of Water.

Gate: Elemental Plane of Fire(beside the one with air).

Wait several million years.

Close previous Gates.

Chain Gate: Balors. Tell them to teleport to earth and back, day in and day out, with buckets of bacteria-filled water. Have them dump the bacteria into the existing oceans.

Wait for as long as necessary.

Proceed from there.

[Thant]

This could make an excellent campaign plot in a Spelljammer-like setting: just pick a random desert planet instead of Mars, a fleet of renegade mages jammer ships searching for a new home after their planet was destroyed in a terrible cataclysm, an mind-flayer fleet that pursues the fleeing wizards and some extraordinary cosmic mystery/force behind everything and voila!

OT: Why you just wouldn't employ several epic casters to use Wish several times and finish the job before breakfast?

[Eldan]

Well, I guess there is a certain element of "what is the lowest possible level we can do this at, and with the lowest possible cost".

If we just go epic, research a spell called "Terraform World" and be done with it. Chaingate solars as necessary or get NASA/ESA to train ten million level one wizards for mitigating factors.

[Myshlaevsky]

Well, I guess there is a certain element of "what is the lowest possible level we can do this at, and with the lowest possible cost".

If we just go epic, research a spell called "Terraform World" and be done with it. Chaingate solars as necessary or get NASA/ESA to train ten million level one wizards for mitigating factors.

That's pretty awesome in and of itself, to be honest. Consider the poster above's idea of using it as a plot point in a Spelljammer setting and you could have a race of disenfranchised Illithids (say, put out by the Gith) who are capturing hundreds of thousands of low-level wizards to cast an epic spell and recreate their home planet.

[13_CBS]

Shapechange: Elder Elemental

Dig to the planet's core.

1) If it exists, Polymorph Any Object to turn it into a denser material like iron.

2) If it exists and it's too small: Wall of Iron.

3) If it doesn't exist: Wall of Iron.

Repeat until you get earth-like density.

Go back to surface.

Gate: Elemental Plane of Air.

Gate: Elemental Plane of Water.

Gate: Elemental Plane of Fire(beside the one with air).

Wait several million years.

Close previous Gates.

Chain Gate: Balors. Tell them to teleport to earth and back, day in and day out, with buckets of bacteria-filled water. Have them dump the bacteria into the existing oceans.

Wait for as long as necessary.

Proceed from there.

About the "wait for billions of years" issue...would it be possible to shift the entire planet of Mars to a demiplane where time runs faster?