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On the Heavens


Sagwort
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On the Heavens

By Dr. Ambros & Dr. Lorolith Iira, a thesis from the Imperial Phrontistery

12th of Malin’s Welcome, 1623

 


 

Preamble

Herein is the cumulative empirical observations of the Imperial Phrontistery concerning the movement and cosmology of the heavens.  For many a century has the scholarly pursuits of the realm neglected, or perhaps avoided, the nature of the skies, at least in any substantial amount.  By the nature of scholarly inquiry, all conclusions which can be read below are falsifiable and disputable should more inclusive theories arise from different or similar observations.  Beyond mundane observation, cultural inspiration has been drawn from older and more mythological sources which will be described aptly.

 

[[HUGE special thanks to Swgrclan for general lore input.  Lorolith did all of the math, thanks to him we have proofs!]]

 

READ THIS

[[Take note that this is a rather dense piece of literature and was more so written for the furthering of astronomy roleplay and astronomy research type roleplay.  It is not necessary for the wellbeing of the server, and will not change anything about how the world or the realm currently works.  Consider this document more of an elaboration on what is already known about the world through canonical lore as well as making conclusions based upon what we already know, and using it as proof.]]

 

[[Yes, there is a lot of math, but that is what astronomy is, mostly math.  We could have certainly posted this as just a basic roleplay post but we wanted to get it canonized so that more astronomy type roleplay and research could be built off of it since “astronomer” seems to be a fairly neglected job title in the world of LotC.  This lore can be read without taking too much consideration of the math, though it is interesting.  The math is mostly, again, elaboration for the sake of astronomer roleplay. A very short summary is included in the ‘final structure of the cosmos’ section.]]

 

[[We are presenting this as a roleplay post so that it can be referenced and known in-game since, again, we are making primarily for in-game academic roleplay.]]

 

Concerning the Structure of the Physical Plane

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Concerning the Sun and the Movement of the Physical Plane

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Concerning the Moon and its Movement

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Concerning the Stars and Their Movement

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Concerning the Primary Celestial Bodies, Their Influence on the Physical Plane, and the Seven Houses

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Concerning the Lesser Celestial Bodies and Their Movement

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Final Structure of the Movement

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[[For the full experience, we suggest you listen to this and read the document as fast as you possibly can.]]

 

 

[[If you don’t fancy reading or math we have provided a convenient bullet pointed form of the lore to get the main idea across oocly.  For more indepth “proofs” of each section read the actual section provided within.]]

 

Spoiler

 

Concerning the Structure of the Physical Plane

  • The physical plane is a flat “plane”

Concerning the Sun and the Movement of the Physical Plane

  • The physical plane orbits around the Sun
  • The day and night are caused by the physical “flipping” as it orbits around the Sun.
  • One full flip is one day, one full orbit is a year.

Concerning the Moon and its Movement

  • The moon orbits around the physical plane such that it always appears opposite to the Sun from the surface of the physical plane.
  • The lunar phases are caused by a physical dark and light side of the moon.

Concerning the Stars and Their Movement

  • The stars form the Celestial Sphere around the entire cosmos, enveloping all the celestial bodies and the physical plane.

Concerning the Primary Celestial Bodies, Their Influence on the Physical Plane, and the Seven Houses

  • The primary celestial bodies are those which are “fixed” in their relative positions.
  • The cosmos can be divided into seven houses.  A single primary celestial body occupies each house.
  • The amount of time the physical plane is within a house is the length of one month.
  • As the physical plane passes closer to the primary celestial bodies, their influence causes subtle changes on the physical plane resulting in the four seasons.
  • See this section for a more detailed explanation of their distance, their particular influences, etc...

Concerning the Lesser Celestial Bodies and Their Movement

  • Lesser celestial bodies are those which are not fixed, similar to the physical plane.  Due to the difficulty in measuring and tracking them we know little more than this.  Room for more research.

 

 

Edited by Sagwort
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Looks good. They keep changing astrological lore so often at this point that I'm not sure if my telescope is pointed at the stars or if it's pointed at some anguel daemon's beach holiday resort.

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The Lion gets wind of this proposal and contemplates the information being presented. At first he feels hollow, the famous wizard Ambros has been a staple to the astronomical game for many years. The information that The Lion published just a Seed ago appears to be an infant's mock-up of this presentation. Surely, he'll be overshadowed and once again remain the dark shadow standing in the light of common knowledge. Yet, The Lion, unknowing of the advanced skills of mathematics that proof claims in our silly world conjured similar ideas about the skies from his basic mountainside observations. Meaning that with two confirmations of facts, the ideas being presented from both camps are finding truth in this world. Becoming canon law. In that very moment, an epiphany dawns on him. Perhaps he could collaborate with these other Astronomers. He addresses a letter:

To Dr. Ambros,

I see that you've discovered much of what I have and then some. Though, I wasn't aware that our mortal plane being flat was wide knowledge. Certainly in all my years since 1300 when the written record restarted and the modern era began I have not heard these claims. Yet, it doesn't matter now. The proof is all in mere observation to the fact in-play. Now, I do not own a telescope, so I couldn't find these uh... 'primary celestial bodies'. However, I have found and recorded actual star constellations that are actually in our sky at night that you can actually see with your own actual eyes. These two constellations throw a lot of your work regarding seasons and these so called Shaman Zodiacs into question. I've not stared up long enough, but I'm fairly certain the stars are not shifting based on seasons. The stars appear fixed year-round. I'm willing to be surprised and proved wrong. Sol being the center of the Omniverse actually does well to prove that it's origin, the place where the Dead King named God committed pyholtuot and split into celestial bodies to embolden Mortal power. Now... that might just be religious understanding, but I've used a lot of my religious understanding in application with skies thus far and most of it aligns.

All that said. We should work together. Free of politics, no strange promises. Pure collaboration. Pure science. I'd like to map your finds like I've mapped my finds. Surely if your primary celestial bodies are real, I will find them in the night sky for all to see.

*he's attached some sketches he's made of chief constellations he's recorded for purposes of navigating a realm without the use of a compass. A technonology he is all too lucky to see in his inhospitalble frozen hell where barely a soul comes to visit he.*



((I'm questioning at what point we abandon the actual physics of the vanilla texture back and start mixing in our IRL knowledge of the sky as it appears you've done. Unless of course I've seriously just never noticed the seven primary bodies. I made this post IC as I like the idea of presenting lore like that too for similar reasons regarding IG relation. It'd be fun to collaborate!))
 

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1 hour ago, The Lion said:

 


((I'm questioning at what point we abandon the actual physics of the vanilla texture back and start mixing in our IRL knowledge of the sky as it appears you've done. Unless of course I've seriously just never noticed the seven primary bodies. I made this post IC as I like the idea of presenting lore like that too for similar reasons regarding IG relation. It'd be fun to collaborate!))
 

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((For astronomical details (such as movement of our own planet, the moon, sun and stars) we mainly stuck to what can be understood from the default mc structure so it can fit easily with day-to-day in-game observations. That's why we had to explain lunar phases using a literal 'dark side' of the moon. Those parts that would be impossible to know about (or, at least, easy to ignore) without crude telescope technology we just designed to be interesting and to fit with what already existing canon lore there is. Useful observations of things like the primary and secondary bodies would have to be roleplayed anyway so those kinds of embellishments wouldn't be hard to fit in. We'd also chosen to ignore the fact that the stars look the same every night since that fact is already ignored in the server's lore with the orcish zodiac. But yeah, I think it's nice to include celestial objects because it gives the universe a sense of daunting scale (even though it's only a heliocentric universe) and gives us something to look at and think about. And over time, RP astronomy methodology and discovery could become more and more diverse, finding more objects and explaining their behavior in different ways and mapping the universe in more detailed ways that seem logically satisfying, writing and elaborating on lore. Astronomy is interesting.))

 

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1 hour ago, Joe_LeeDoktor said:

 

((For astronomical details (such as movement of our own planet, the moon, sun and stars) we mainly stuck to what can be understood from the default mc structure so it can fit easily with day-to-day in-game observations. That's why we had to explain lunar phases using a literal 'dark side' of the moon. Those parts that would be impossible to know about (or, at least, easy to ignore) without crude telescope technology we just designed to be interesting and to fit with what already existing canon lore there is. Useful observations of things like the primary and secondary bodies would have to be roleplayed anyway so those kinds of embellishments wouldn't be hard to fit in. We'd also chosen to ignore the fact that the stars look the same every night since that fact is already ignored in the server's lore with the orcish zodiac. But yeah, I think it's nice to include celestial objects because it gives the universe a sense of daunting scale (even though it's only a heliocentric universe) and gives us something to look at and think about. And over time, RP astronomy methodology and discovery could become more and more diverse, finding more objects and explaining their behavior in different ways and mapping the universe in more detailed ways that seem logically satisfying, writing and elaborating on lore. Astronomy is interesting.))

 

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((This is where it comes to new territory in terms of lore interpretation. According to new creation lore, the sun and stars are basically the bodies of gods that sacrificed themselves. I mean, there's gotta be an answer here because obviously as y'all pointed out; there's seasons which would suggest we orbit. The moon has phases which suggests orbit is going on. How does lotc lore fit in with irl lore? As aptly pointed out above, are we looking at the realms of gods or flickering bodies of light? If you pointed the telescope at the moon would you realise that it's the Soul Stream? I think there's a lot of discrepancies that hopefully can get tied up as a result of this lore proposal.

As far as I'm currently concerned on the nature of LotC's universe, the only thing in orbit is the moon. Everything else looks the same every night because we're not in orbit around the sun or anything except held in-place by it, but endlessly flipping in that place. Maybe there's room to invent some new ideas here that stray away from IRL conventional astronomy since this is a fantasy setting. Like maybe seasons in LotC are caused by the moon which is apparently magic? Who knows. I'm asking questions that may need an LT to be answered.

That all said, I totally am on-board with the lore proposal and love what you've all created here. I just think that there's some observable facts IG that shouldn't be ignored because it's easier to explain in-terms of a creating lore posts (like the stars not actually changing at night and there being legitimately fixed star constellations). Where mechanics meet lore, new ideas come through. I'm really just wondering how observable constellations fit-in with the lore proposed.

Despite whatever answers come and what is made canon and what is not-canon at the end of the day. Astronomical lore is being fostered here! I'll live with whatever I get and move accordingly in RP cause like WOOOO ASTRONOMICAL LORE! FINALLY.

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2 hours ago, The Lion said:

Like maybe seasons in LotC are caused by the moon which is apparently magic?

In the lore we state that the seasons are caused by the physical plane passing closer to the primary celestial bodies.  So, as the physical plane's orbit comes closer to the celestial bodies of Medeis, Lychnus, and Securis the seasons are summer.  As the physical plane passes near Virgam the season changes to fall.  As the physical plane passes near Hiem and Ceryx the it becomes winter, and as the physical plane passes near Alvus it becomes spring. 

 

We initially ran into some problems changing the season because the orbit of the physical plane is uniform and there is no "axis" like there is for irl earth so seasons are not caused by the sun in our lore but by the primary celestial bodies.

 

Also, I'd like to point out that our "names" for the planets need not be canon since we came up with them in rp.

 

Thanks for the support.

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We were told in the most recent Ascended rewrite by the lore team that the Soulstream, aka the Realm of Aeriel exists on the moon. Hence why I made the comment about the AnguelDaemonic Beach resort on the sun. Because it was certainly news to us that Aeriel's Soulstream is on the moon.

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Just now, Blundermore said:

We were told in the most recent Ascended rewrite by the lore team that the Soulstream, aka the Realm of Aeriel exists on the moon. Hence why I made the comment about the AnguelDaemonic Beach resort on the sun. 

Yeah,

Swgrclan mentioned this in the early stages of the lore.  However, we wanted all of the information within the lore to be things we could observe from the physical plane... we were not sure how we could conclude that the moon was limbo just by staring at it and math.

 

That being said, our observation that there is a physically dark and light side of the moon may shed some light on that, should this lore be accepted.

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3 hours ago, The Lion said:

((I just think that there's some observable facts IG that shouldn't be ignored because it's easier to explain in-terms of a creating lore posts (like the stars not actually changing at night and there being legitimately fixed star constellations). Where mechanics meet lore, new ideas come through.)) 

 

I totally agree, though I think the idea of constantly visible stars has little place since (as far as I know) established orcish zodiac lore says that they change throughout the year since the ancients (specifically orcs) used them to tell time/navigate and the likes. 

Edited by Joe_LeeDoktor
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1 hour ago, Joe_LeeDoktor said:

 

I totally agree, though I think the idea of constantly visible stars has little place since (as far as I know) established orcish zodiac lore says that they change throughout the year since the ancients (specifically orcs) used them to tell time/navigate and the likes. 

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Aye. I suppose that piece of shaman lore has been around long enough to be common knowledge, but sometimes a few eggs need to be smashed when reality comes knocking. I think your model is still sound even with the stars not moving, but if we're gonna say there's planets (which would make a lot of dope RP like dwemer stuff) then we have to take account of what that entails. I think that it's really awkward to say there's objects we can't actually see in vanilla, but I suppose it's the essence of RP to imagine scenes that don't actually have a mechanical representation. Moving objects where the texture pack does not move. Perhaps some Dev could make it possible to have a mechanical representation of at least the 7 planets?

I only say it's awkward because I'll always see the F above the moon when it rises and know that when its setting, the F is below the moon. Despite what shaman tells me IG about a Constellation drawn in the skies above my head on tuesday, but not on thursday lol

Cool stuff tho guys. I hope to see where this leads!

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4 minutes ago, The Lion said:

I suppose that piece of shaman lore has been around long enough to be common knowledge, but sometimes a few eggs need to be smashed when reality comes knocking. I think your model is still sound even with the stars not moving, but if we're gonna say there's planets (which would make a lot of dope RP like dwemer stuff) then we have to take account of what that entails. I think that it's really awkward to say there's objects we can't actually see in vanilla, but I suppose it's the essence of RP to imagine scenes that don't actually have a mechanical representation. 
abc

 

 

Yeah, I agree at least that it's irritating that they don't fit with the actual mechanics. But positions of specific stars in the night sky is quite a small mechanic to have to ignore somewhat. The night sky would be much more detailed than what we see mechanically anyway. Also, our model has the stars fixed with the mortal plane moving about (but that's just a duality). 

 

And with the 7 primary bodies, like I said, they'd only really be visible in an important way with telescopes. From the ground with the naked eye, planets look like stars. And the use of telescopes has to be RPed either way. So all that has to be discounted is the specifically mechanical placement of stars in the mc textures. And I'm pretty sure star placement changes from texture to texture anyway, so using mc texture mechanics in that respect isn't too helpful. 

 

But yeah, many thanks for the commenting and hopefully we can work on some more lore in the future (depending on the response to this).

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