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One might wonder, with all of the inhabited planets in the pactworlds system, one might think it's unrealistic. Short answer: Yes, but not nearly as bad as you might think. So far, I've only done the rudimentary math, namely just figuring out their semi major axis to see where they would be spaced out in the system. All values are assuming the sun is equivalent to the earth's sun, and that the days and years are in reference to earth.
All of my equations were taken from Artifexians worldbuilding videos.
Classical Planetary Systems
Orbits For Earth-like Planets
Sun
Class: G
Mass: 1
Habitable Zone (I): 0.95 AU
Habitable Zone (O): 1.37 AU
Inner limit: 0.01 AU (planets will break apart if any closer)
Outer limit: 40 AU (anything outside this boundry would be considered a trans neptunian object, which are typically asteroids and dwarf planets)
Frost line: 4.85 AU (Distance where volatile compounds such as H20, NH3, CO2, & CH4 become solid ice. Gas giants are typically formed out +1 AU from this line)
I have not calculated them yet, so all of these numbers are assuming 0 eccentricity and inclination. Which isn't that bad since only one or two planets even bother to mention those. And, artificial structures such as Absalom station and the Idari are omitted as well as the diaspora since they are not planets. I've extrapolated their worlds distances from the sun based on their orbital periods.
1.0 = 1 AU
Aballon: 0.044 AU - Outside sun's Roche limit. Good. World is appropriately mercury-like and features artificial habitability or robotic lifeforms. Totally works.
Castrovel: 0.645 AU - Too far inside sun's habitable zone. Oceans would have boiled away and become Venus-like or barren.
Akiton: 1.59 AU - Planet is just outside the HZ, but unlike castrovel, it's not by as much, and we got some room for bullcrapping here. It's dark appearance and lack of oceans gives it a low albedo and industrialization means it could have a fair amount of greenhouse gasses in it's atmosphere, making it a good enough heat absorber to just barely be habitable.
Verces: 2.09 AU - Well outside of the sun's HZ, and too far for conventional tidal locking. One could argue because it's tidally locked, it sun facing side should be heated up enough for habitability, but thanks to the inverse square law, Verces gets only ~23% of the light as earth (Absalom station) does. The backside could be cold enough that gases would freeze out of the atmosphere, and reduce the rest of the planet to a barren ice cube. Best case scenario is that is that convection currents keep the heat distributed just enough for dry ice snow and liquid methane rain like titan. (That kinda sounds like a way cooler planet TBH.)
Eox: 2.96 AU - Cold and (un)dead. Makes sense.
Triaxus: Screw Triaxus. It's eccentricity means it would spend the majority of it's time far outside the HZ. Life not possible, and probably screws over all of the other systems planetary orbits if it's not in resonance. That fact it's orbit is unnaturally slow just throws equations out the window.
Liavara: 5.25 AU - Gas giants outside the frost line. Good job. Have not done the research on moon probability. Only mess up here is that it's not the system's largest gas giant, but that's passable.
Bretheda: 9.7 AU - See above, bar last sentence.
Apostate: 39 AU - Barren, and it's wild inclination is justified since it's a captured dwarf planet.
Aucturn: 63 AU - "Planet" is supernatural in nature. No point in judging anything here.
Over all, the only major conflicts are Castrovel, Verces, and the affront on science; Triaxus. And the planets are far enough apart from another they would be in reasonably stable orbits. Except for Triaxus.
Pact Worlds: 7/10, would swarm again.
It is rather implausible that Bretheda has habitable forest moons and such in the forms we see. But yeah, the system is rather more plausible than one might expect... except that Eox is supposed to have once been a verdant world, which doesn't seem likely.
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Catrovel being Venus like is no doubt intentional as not so long ago astronomers speculated that Venus was covered in hot jungles and swamps.
Catrovel being Venus like is no doubt intentional as not so long ago astronomers speculated that Venus was covered in hot jungles and swamps.
Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the Carson of Venus series, a sword-and-planet series set on Venus. At the time he wrote it as an ocean world.
You can always say sunlight does not follow the inverse square law because Saranrae, making Triaxus more viable.
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It is rather implausible that Bretheda has habitable forest moons and such in the forms we see. But yeah, the system is rather more plausible than one might expect... except that Eox is supposed to have once been a verdant world, which doesn't seem likely.
although the catstrophe which decimated it might have knocked it into a further orbit.
just a thought.
anyway MAGIC.
Ok, so... I do understand this is mostly a topic for kicks and giggles, but I think something very important is being forgotten in this discussion. This world is not an analog of the real world. Now you may look at me and say "NO DUH!". Here is my point though, this solar system would be a problem in a Star Trek-like Universe because, while it still does assume FTL travel and alien planets, Pure Sci Fi worlds like Star Trek are supposed to be utterly mundane and anything out of the ordinary is probably made using advanced scientific abilities, whether those means are understood by the protagonists or not.
Starfinder, on the other hand, is a world of wild magic. This would wreak havoc on physics and the viability of planets to support life. To paraphrase how one of my favorite hfy! posts put it, with magic in the universe planets will terraform themselves for free.
-Beta
I'm well aware that starfinder is more science fantasy than science fiction, and doesn't claim to realistic. Though, as an astronomy nerd, I like someone did their homework, or at least tried to not to completely throw the rules out the window. It's so easy these days to write off any inconsistencies with MAGIC!, so seeing someone putting in the work to make sure their stuff holds up to a little bit scrutiny is always a nice treat.
I wonder if anyone has build the Pact Worlds in Universe Sandbox.
I wonder if anyone has build the Pact Worlds in Universe Sandbox.
I don't have the new one, but I do have the old one from 2011ish. I could totally do that.
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Our concepts of habitable zones, even restricting them to those suitable for Humanoid life, may be too restrictive, based upon our extensive analysis of our own solar system but relative lack of information about other solar systems.
For Castrovel, high albedo (such as Venus has due to its cloud cover) would extend the habitable zone (both inner and outer edges) inwards (however, on Venus, this is far more than countered by greatly enhanced greenhouse effect). It has been suggested that hundreds of millions or billions of years ago, Venus may have actually had liquid water, and then lost it in a runaway greenhouse more recently. Slight tweaks to the planet's physical parameters might allow it to persist with liquid water longer before the runaway greenhouse effect sets in than was the case for Venus.
The habitable zone (both inner and outer limits) can be expanded by increasing the greenhouse effect, although at some point you will have to put so much stuff into the atmosphere for this purpose that Humanoids won't be able to breathe it. This should work reasonably for Akiton and just might be enough for the day side of Verces when combined with the tide-locking; conveniently, the extra greenhouse gases would also keep the atmosphere from freezing out on the night side; whether the required amount of greenhouse gas is compatible with Humanoid life is an open question. Triaxus is the huge problem here -- the year is extremely long, but the summer is long enough for anyone to grow up during that time. The problem is that when you are in a highly eccentric orbit, you move slowly while far away from the central object (the sun) and therefore spend most of your time there, and then you whiz by the central object and therefore spend only a tiny fraction of the time close to it. Most visible comets work this way. Now you could have a planet with a moderately high orbital eccentricity orbit a long orbital period (like Pluto's orbital parameters) that would get you both a usably long summer and winter and even fall and spring -- but for it to be habitable, it would either need to have a super-powerful greenhouse effect (which would not only tend to blunt the seasons, and tend to make the atmosphere impossible for Humanoids to breathe) or be orbiting a much brighter star than ours or Golarion's (such things exist, but introduce their own problems, starting with it actually orbiting Golarion's star). Greenhouse forcing is almost certainly not going to be enough to keep moons of Bretheda warm enough for habitability without making the greenhouse gas concentration too high for Humanoids to be able to breathe, except maybe with artificial greenhouse gases that are especially chemically inert in the short term, but still not expected to accumulate naturally (for instance, carbon tetrafluoride or sulfur hexafluoride -- in the short term, these can sit around without reacting with anything, but in the long term, solar UV irradiation will tend to break them apart and cause them to recombine with other substances to form more toxic and less useful compounds).
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I think the habitability of the moons of Bretheda/Liavara is more plausible than first glance suggests. We don't know how big they actually are, for one. Bretheda could be encroaching up against the Brown Dwarf threshold and be putting out some heat (if not visible light) that makes its moons (and potentially Liavara's) warmer than their distance from the sun would normally allow. In addition, depending on the moons orbit, you could get tidal forces on the planet interior that would cause the planets to heat themselves a bit.
If the square/cube law doesn't work for big living organisms, I don't know why other physics can't be altered. Personally, I blame the Bestiary 5 Elohim for a lot of things.
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I figure the notion of "The Sun also has connections to the elemental plane of fire, and positive material plane' can lead to all sorts of non-IRL-Solar possibilities for life. Like the planets themselves can be different sorts of 'energy magnets' for the stuff being put out by the sun. Plus things like super dragons and gods coming around and going, "Yknow, f#%+ it, I wanna build a house here."
Tidal heating is a possibility, but keep in mind that Io has this in great abundance (making it the most volcanically active world in our solar system), but it is still way below freezing when you're not next to molten lava. Although admittedly it would help if it had an atmosphere (but if it did, the atmosphere would probably be very bad for our health).
I figure the notion of "The Sun also has connections to the elemental plane of fire, and positive material plane' can lead to all sorts of non-IRL-Solar possibilities for life. Like the planets themselves can be different sorts of 'energy magnets' for the stuff being put out by the sun. Plus things like super dragons and gods coming around and going, "Yknow, f%#+ it, I wanna build a house here."
You know the "positive energy sun" idea was somethign I was utilizing heavily in my game before pactworlds came out. Knowing that it's a thing and an actual recorded effect lends some meat to my premise.
Mainly focused on the grave important of a dual star system. "Star" is a loose term as both are simply massive portals into the positive and negative energy planes respectively each effectively fueling the cycle of life and death in the universe.
And the universe could nto exist with only one or the other. With the negative hole everything would just straight up die. With the positive one nothing would ever die. Worse "life" of the strange, alien, and all consuming sort would spontaneously generate near the white star only getting obliterated when coming into contact with the black stars radiation.
Fun stuff, right up until someone started building a dyson sphere around the negative hole...
I'm pretty sure the Sun of the Golarion System - if not all stars in the PF/SF verse - being connected to the positive energy plane was established in Distant Worlds. I know the Burning Archipelago & elementals swimming through the sun's plasma was mentioned back then.
A note on Verces; more recent models of tidally locked planets suggest that if they were able to maintain an atmosphere then air currents would actually keep both sides of the planet pretty close to habitable. Though it is true that tidally locked worlds are generally much closer to their stars.
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MIRACLE:
School evocation; Level cleric/oracle 9;
CASTING Time 1 standard action
Components V, S; see text
Range see text
Target, Effect, or Area see text
Duration see text
Saving Throw see text; Spell Resistance yes
DESCRIPTION
You don’t so much cast a miracle as request one. You state what you would like to have happen and request that your deity (or the power you pray to for spells) intercede.
good stuff
So one of my primary campaign settings assumes a positive energy linked star Central to a system sized negative energy dyson sphere dragnet.
The planets are artificial with onyx cores that prevent souls and energies from "sliding off" out to the sphere (basically providing a magical equivalent to the magnetosphere).
The planets are each tied to a school of magic with divination being tied to the system as a whole.
The interactions of the energies between the system prevents interaction with the Divine.
Mythic level creatures/NPCs provide a "natural law" equivalent maintaining the system.
Being caught between planets lower background magic availability and heightens the danger of becoming undead/ having something nasty happen.
/CSB
dotted.
Not to mention the river running through the asteroid belt.
...
I mean, the asteroid belt itself makes sense...
Okay, my copy is out of reach at the moment, but doesn't the river specifically say that it was formed with magic? It's no worse of a breach of reality than habitable domes in the Sun.
I think that for my campaign, I'll stick with my initial thought of separating the Pact Worlds out with no more than two, maybe three worlds max in a single star system. I can enjoy science fantasy, but the science-y parts need to be reasonably science-y.
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If the square/cube law doesn't work for big living organisms, I don't know why other physics can't be altered. Personally, I blame the Bestiary 5 Elohim for a lot of things.
The inverse square law isn't really a physical law that just "could be different," unless you're willing to alter the number of spatial dimensions of the universe. It's actually a consequence of geometry, so if it doesn't exist, then math itself doesn't work, somewhere along the same lines of now 2+2=aardvark. Best just to handwave the planetary temperatures as magic. The Sarenrae explanation works for me.
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If the square/cube law doesn't work for big living organisms, I don't know why other physics can't be altered. Personally, I blame the Bestiary 5 Elohim for a lot of things.The inverse square law isn't really a physical law that just "could be different," unless you're willing to alter the number of spatial dimensions of the universe. It's actually a consequence of geometry, so if it doesn't exist, then math itself doesn't work, somewhere along the same lines of now 2+2=aardvark. Best just to handwave the planetary temperatures as magic. The Sarenrae explanation works for me.Rule of Cool. Genre expectations.
I'd rather just not think about it too much than force explicit in-universe Magic explanations - which often fall apart or have unforeseen consequences if examined too closely. This isn't hard science fiction. It's science fantasy and pretty wild even as science fantasy goes.
To me, there's a big difference between handwaving "it just is" and trying to come up with a pseudo-sciencey explanation. I'm fine with "it just is;" if you tell me "the inverse square law doesn't apply" then wow, suddenly there's a lot of side effects to that simple statement. Sometimes a bad explanation is worse than none at all. I'm pretty sure if I start with the axiom that the inverse square law is false, that I can mathematically prove that circles don't exist, and possibly even the concept of distance as we know it can't be.
Better to just handwave it at the "this is just how it is" level.
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It's still interesting and fun to try to come up with plausible workarounds.
So I'm reading the Codex of Worlds entry from Dead Suns 5, about the planet Urrakar, and it has this to say;
"Urrakar is even farther from its star than Aucturn is from the Pact Worlds' sun, which places the planet well outside what would normally be the system's habitable zone (where water can exist in a liquid state on a planet's surface)."
Goes onto say that the planet's extreme density, tidal heating, and decay of radioactive elements in the core allow Urrakar to maintain a temperature just above water's freezing point, anyway.
Way they feel the need to point out that orbiting further than Aucturn is outside a habitable zone, which is kind of the equivalent of saying "Living in London, England, he existed well outside the borders of Hong Kong", makes me think that the habitable zone in SF is just bigger than it is irl. Want to call that Sarenrae's influence, want to call that "that's just the way it is" style plot convenience, either way works, but that's my takeaway.
I'm given the impression that a lot of planets have something like microgates to the positive material plane and maybe also other elemental planes (or just a tight connection so they're getting 'fed' from them).
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If I go by reign of Winter, there is a very good chance that Triaxis is the way it is because of 'dragons did it'. Meaning that some very powerful magical beings enjoy the slow erratic orbit and the whole planet is something created that way. We have literal gods interacting with the universe. So ya, logic, door, bye!