As a clue to my players, I am having them find a body with a series of numbers on it. This code is actually a latitude/longitude code (followed by a date). It's up to the PCs to figure out the code and to be at the right place at the right time.
Does anyone have a clue to what the latitued and longitude for Darkmoon Vale is? It doesn't have to be very specific, but I have a couple of very smart people in my group, so if I come up with some numbers that clearly are arctic or sub-saharan, they'll comment on it.
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As a clue to my players, I am having them find a body with a series of numbers on it. This code is actually a latitude/longitude code (followed by a date). It's up to the PCs to figure out the code and to be at the right place at the right time.
Does anyone have a clue to what the latitued and longitude for Darkmoon Vale is? It doesn't have to be very specific, but I have a couple of very smart people in my group, so if I come up with some numbers that clearly are arctic or sub-saharan, they'll comment on it.
Longitude is going to depend on where the prime meridian is drawn. On earth, that's Greenwich in London but on Golarion Absalom seems most likely. Darkmoon Vale is about 250 miles west of Absalom so, assuming an earth-sized world, that'll give you a longitude of roughly -4 degrees.
As for lattitude, it's not clear where the equator is but if you assume Avistan is a similar lattitude to Europe/North America, then somewhere between 45 and 50 degrees north would probably be about right.
Contributor
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Without seeing a map or globe of the whole world of Golarion , it would be tough to give a very exact lat/long for any place in the Inner Sea region. However, here's my guess.
For latitude, assuming climate is somewhat related to distance from the equator, then you might assume that the equator is somewhere in the vicinity of Rahadoum, Thuvia, and Osirion and the Lands of the Linnorm Kings might be in the area around the 60th parallel. A rough estimate for Darkmoon Wood would put it in the area around the 30th parallel.
For longitude, I'd assume that the Golarion equivalent of the Prime Meridian (Greenwich meridian) would pass through Absalom. (They figure the years based on it, so why not the coordinate system.)
If you assume that, at the equator 1 degree equals 60 nautical miles, as it does on earth, then Falcon's Hollow would be just under 3 degrees west of the Absolom Meridian.
So, as long as your coordinates are something within the vicinity of 030 North, 003 East, I think your players should be able to believe the numbers.
Edit: I just saw Phil's response. Guess I got ninja'd. ;) His numbers are probably just as good as mine for your purposes.
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I remember James and Wes once saying that they spent time trying to figure out where the equator on Golarion was and realized that they'd only mapped about 1/12th of the world so far. Maybe they can pop in with a clue.
Well, that is already a big clue, since it would mean that Golarion's total surface is approximately 12 times the surface mapped (a figure which can be deduced from the map available).
It makes it quite easy to determine Golarion's size if the world is a square, a disk or a sphere.
Concerning the OP, I think you are giving yourself unnecessary trouble. Basically, the people who wrote the coordinates could have used any system they wished.
A nice twist is to decide that the origin of the coordinates has changed in the past (an obscure bit of info accessible throught Kn : History, Kn : Geography or even Bardic lore). The PCs might realize this after attaining the first site only to discover that their guess was wrong and that they lost precious time. That is usually when you introduce the crazy-looking pilot of an aerial ship which has obviously seen better days ;)
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Well if you can't stipulate the required information to accurately judge longitude and latitude, what about creating your own coordinate system. There isn't a rule that everyone has to agree on a global system. Pick a location that would be the most important to whoever created the system then select a direction that has meaning for them (that becomes 0 degrees) and create a coordinate system based on degrees from that direction and distance. The Romans had a central "Golden Milestone" in Rome to which all distance measures in the empire were relative.
Then your players have a two-fold mystery to puzzle out; both that it is coordinates and then who's they are and how to read them.
Thanks for the answers. I'm going with Absalom as the "GMT" I think.
Although a crazy guy in an airship would've been cool too.
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I remember James and Wes once saying that they spent time trying to figure out where the equator on Golarion was and realized that they'd only mapped about 1/12th of the world so far. Maybe they can pop in with a clue.Well, that is already a big clue, since it would mean that Golarion's total surface is approximately 12 times the surface mapped (a figure which can be deduced from the map available).
It makes it quite easy to determine Golarion's size if the world is a square, a disk or a sphere.
Concerning the OP, I think you are giving yourself unnecessary trouble. Basically, the people who wrote the coordinates could have used any system they wished.
A nice twist is to decide that the origin of the coordinates has changed in the past (an obscure bit of info accessible throught Kn : History, Kn : Geography or even Bardic lore). The PCs might realize this after attaining the first site only to discover that their guess was wrong and that they lost precious time. That is usually when you introduce the crazy-looking pilot of an aerial ship which has obviously seen better days ;)
This reminds me of the Kevin Costner movie Waterworld. Its mentioned only briefly in one or two lines of text, but there is talk about the coordinates on the girl's back looking like they're backwards(North and South swapped) which the Mariner tells everyone they are, and that's how they used to be. A very subtle reference to a polar shift which theoretically would have caused the flooding by the loss of the magnetic field(which normally disallows certain forms of solar radiation, which in turn melt the ice caps); but I digress. Polar Shift from what I understand is a natural phenomenon which has happened on our world in the past. IF Golarion is the same size as Earth, IF it is spherical, and IF it follows some of the same rules as Earth; then it is easily possible that could be a remnant of a past civilization, or encoded by a scholar who knows that such a thing has happened in the past.
As a side note, if such a shift is the case, then North and Sound definitely change positions, but East and West may or may not, depending on how you define them. If you define East as "to the right of North" and West as "to the left of North", then they do change. If you define them by where the sun rises, then they don't change.