Alitari's page

Good day.

I submit for your interest, entertainment, and constructive feedback, my personal project of the past year or so. The title, 'Ascendency: Numeria after the Iron Gods' is really a placeholder ... but it's the one I've been working with.

For more details, background, and a short list of acknowledgements, go here:
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/12/04/acknowledgements-for-asc endency/

To be clear, I have taken some liberties with the placement of characters, locations, events, etc. partly to ramp up the difficulty for a high level party, partly because I entered the module from a different direction, and partly because I considered things panning out in a different fashion.

This is the entire work, 21 'sections' (although the first 10 'sections' as I've come to call them add up to about the same length as two of the latter 'chapters'). It's just shy of 80K words and covers the events just after the end of the Iron Gods adventure path through the first module of The Wrath of the Righteous, The Worldwound Incursion:
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/category/ascendency-numeria-after-t he-iron-god/?order=asc

Here are the 'sections' in order:
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2016/09/21/the-iron-prophet/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/sparks-of-numeria/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/08/03/the-herald-of-bronze/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/a-shells-anatomy/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/08/18/recounting-the-future/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/09/15/a-short-clarification-on -demonic-invasions/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/10/04/xau-4-un-7-data-log-exce rpt/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/10/26/medal-on-metal/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/10/31/rebuilding-starfall/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/11/06/a-golden-pin-in-the-dark /

Here the 'sections' become longer, what I call 'chapters':
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/11/09/dreams-within-a-nightmar e/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/11/11/finalities-without-end/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/11/15/songs-in-the-ruins/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/11/25/amid-the-ruins-part-1/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/11/25/amid-the-ruins-part-2/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/12/04/the-heart-of-a-defender/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/12/12/a-glimmer-in-the-dark/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2018/01/10/winding-paths/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/dreaming-under-the-stars /
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2018/02/02/a-swallowed-homecoming/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2018/02/18/the-graves-of-three-moth ers/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2018/03/07/gold-in-transformation-p art-1/
https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2018/03/07/gold-in-transformation-p art-2/

Good day!

For your consideration I give you this ... https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/11/28/mendev-kenabres-defender s-heart/

I haven't yet done the floor plans so I'm not entirely sure if it's the right height, but the horizontal dimensions match those in the maps. As I noted in the article, I think the building could also have basement levels, but I suspect that would be mainly for storage; to make sure it could fit 200+ people relatively comfortably, I'd have to figure out how many I can fit per floor, then likely add floors to compensate.

Please do the temples of Obadar and Arastil next!

Did you mean Abadar and Erastil?

Please do the temples of Obadar and Arastil next!

I will take requests! I'll have to look up where they are though ... :P

I think that actually might be the Northgate Market.

In my headcannon I read the entry wrong, putting Northgate Market OUTSIDE the city at the crossroads almost due north of location 9 on the Kenabres map (before things went south). My thinking was that land inside city walls is pricey, so markets would be set outside, with farmers coming from outside the city and tradespeople coming from inside the city.

Now, with your correction, I looked a read a bit closer ... and looking at entry 10, Southgate it says there's also a Southgate Market ... and looking in both the north and south parts of the Gate District there are only two structures that are similar, which I think are the markets.

Between 10 and 8 ... and between 9 and 5 ... there are a cluster of small structures. The one between 9 and 5 looks more like a slum to me, but it's much clearer between 10 and 8, like a square with lots of stalls. So if I had to put money down, that's where I think the markets were intended.

Temples of both Sarenrae and Shelyn are both mentioned but not given locations in the map, as best I can tell.

Yeah the best they say is that ... "9. Northgate: The northern city gate leads into a residential district dotted with small shops and temples, including the temples to Sarenrae and Shelyn" ... seeing as temples to Sarenrae are supposed to be open air affairs (open to the sky/sun) I figured that it might be the small quadrilateral building to the east of where I figured the temple to Shelyn was ... only place that is wide open that isn't either a market or a fountain.

Still pretty cool regardless. It's always cool to have a 3d perspective on a 2d map.

Thanks!

Good day!

For your consideration I give you this ... https://davidthomasdevine.wordpress.com/2017/11/16/mendev-kenabres-church-o f-selyn/

It's a quick work up of a zoomed in section of the pre-destruction Kenabres of the only building of interest in Northgate, which I figured was the Church of Selyn, as they're known for their beautiful architecture.

I suspect the southern two towers should be equal in height/diameter as the other tall towers, with only the towers at north end being shorter, but as I said, it's a first pass.

Good day!

I was looking at the "What if Allevrah Wins?" and wanted to plot out what the impact would look like on a map of Golarion rather than just go by the narrative description ... but I ran into a bit of a snag.

After using these sites ...

http://simulator.down2earth.eu
https://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/
http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/cgi-bin/crater.cgi

... to figure out the outcome, I was met with two contradictory issues. If the impactor results in 'Kyonin (being) transformed into a massive crater', the overall blast would be immense ... while if it only destroyed 'many of the neighboring nations' (but not all of Avistan), it couldn't simultaneously turn all of Kyonin into a crater.

Apologies in advance for switching back and forth between metric and imperial.

To break down the numbers, for both impactors I used a dense rock (3000 kg/m^3), falling at 30 km/s at a 90 degree angle to the surface hitting crystalline rock (as Kyonin seems to be in the middle of it's plate, unlikely to be sedimentary rock).

For the large crater scenario, we have a crater 127 miles in radius (I assumed that was when all was said and done, not merely transitory). When I worked out the numbers, that meant the impactor had to be about 18 miles in diameter and the crater would end up being about 1.1 miles deep. Everything within 1100 miles would be buried in ash and debris up to at least 10 feet ... if it could burn, anything within 1500 miles would be alight (including people, so if you're this close, you're dead) ... multistory, wall-bearing buildings (bread and butter of castles and stone/masonry construction) collapse within 3800 miles ... and wood frame buildings collapse at 4900 miles.

I tried initially to overlay this over a map of Avistan alone ... but it was too small ... then over Avistan and Garund ... still too small ... so I used this:

Fan Made Golarion Map

And produced this as a result:

Second Darkness Huge Impact

As you can see ... this impact would, in my opinion, be on the scale as Earthfall, wiping out all life not immune to fire on Avistan and destroying all civilization in the neighbouring continents. The earthquakes would likely destroy Zirnakaynin alongside much of the Darklands.

So I put together a more reasonable result:

Second Darkness 'Reasonable' Impact

Here, while Kyonin isn't turned into a crater, it is completely buried under ash and debris (to at least 10 feet), with Druma and Razmiran being completely wiped out and Galt and the River Kingdoms suffering massive damage. Now you may wonder why, while the circles for building construction are similar between the two maps but the ignition radius is quite different ... that's because in the larger impact, the curvature of the planet gets in the way of cooking everyone.

I believe this latter scenario is far more reasonable ... even Nirmathas (and Zirnakynin beneath it) is mostly untouched.

Visable here: Zoomed out Worldwound Expansion map on Alitari's Tumblr

Using this … Worldwound Expansion from City of Locusts … overlaid on this … Large map of northern Golarion … with my own work to add in the 2, 4, and 5 month ranges.

captain yesterday wrote:

Can you over think advanced technology....

Check out Shadowrun 4's hacking rules. You can definitely overthink technology rules for use in RPGs.

There's a difference between overly complicating things, like rulesets, and overthinking things. What I see here is a collision between plausibility and game mechanics, where game mechanics won, leaving implausible things in its wake, thus making it difficult to maintain the suspension of disbelief.

And before you go 'but it's fantasy, magic, and you're complaining about this?' argument, any fictional world has a certain number and kind of conceits, like FTL travel is possible, magic works, etc. but if you either break your own rules or try to make something that doesn't fit that fictional world, like technology that we're familiar with, it strains one's credulity.

Simply put, these batteries are likely using some kind of highly efficient storage system, so that they don't burn out or become useless over the course of years like ours do. They can survive, fully charged, for thousands of years. Recharging them should not be a problem with the right equipment. Their weight should also be comparable to discharged batteries.

So let me get this straight. A silverdisk is a used battery. ... And a battery weighs 1 lb, but a silver disk weighs 50:1 pounds?

Let's do some math here. Let's say that a silver disk is 3 cm in diameter and 0.3 cm in thickness (a bit bigger than an inch wide for those two countries in the world that don't use metric).

2.12 cm^3
453.6 grams = 1 lb
1 kg/m^3 = 0.001 g/cm^3
213.96 g/cm^3 = 213962 kg/m^3

That's a density greater than the core of our local star. If you reduce it to the value of 50:1 that's 4279 kg/m^3 or about that of Titanium (many coins are made of steel or zinc and coated with other materials, and silverdisks would feel like they're lighter than that).

If you argue that the coins are smaller than 3 cm / 0.3 cm, the density goes up ... and if you argue that they are larger, it obviously goes down, but if it's too large it doesn't make much sense that you can 'slot it into a pistol'.

Finally, the idea that a space faring civilization would have batteries that either can't be recharged or break if they're recharged doesn't make much sense. If the argument is that the batteries are 'timeworn', that is breaking down because they're so old, than finding batteries, like my group has found batteries, fully charged, would be worth FAR more than 100 gp each. Those economics suggest that there are 10 discharged / broken batteries for each fully charged battery, so each battery has a half life of about 2600 years ... these things are tough.