Community Map!

[HoneyBadger]

Inspired by Agrajag's random map efforts, I've decided that it would be very cool to have a map that we all have a chance to contribute to.

This will allow a bunch of ideas that have been floating around, to find a home, and for us to have our own unofficial equivalent of Greyhawk *TM*

Firstly, it's going to be a 1500 province map that will be divided into 6 sections of 250 provinces each. The smaller maps may then be further divided. This will allow for consistency throughout, while still enabling ease of use for the casual gamer and multi-player.

Each of the early ages nations will have a specific starting location on the main map, and will be balanced somewhat by where they start. Early Mod nations will also be included, providing they work, or can be made to work, in the current version. If this becomes successful, then middle and late age versions will also be a strong possibility.

With the addition of a 6th hero slot, I'd like a set of heroes specific to this campaign setting, for the various nations.

Everyone may pick as many or as few provinces as you like-although I really hope everyone will consider making atleast 1 province. It's your chance for a little kingdom or queendom or republic or theocracy or barbarian stronghold, all your own. You may have as many as you like, too, as long as you finish and enter each one, before starting on the next. I encourage, if you do more than 1, to "build" them into a single more or less consistent area for placement on the map, with ties to the other province, rather than scattering them all over the place, but that's up to you.

What's required, to make a province, is the following (so far):
Terrain type (plains, steppe, river delta, hills, mountain/volcano, light woods/thick forest, jungle, swamp, badlands/wasteland, desert, tundra, glacier, shore/harbour, shallow sea/deep ocean, cavern, or special.).

location (give us a general idea, north, south, east, west, central, ocean, or lost world-this may change, due to the rigors of mapmaking).

Population (who lives there? if it's a tribe, what race? what's their technological level? are they farmers? fishermen? nomads? do they live in a central city, or are they spread out? what's their history and culture? what type of gods do they currently follow (that our Pretenders will displace), if any? and what are their rulers like? Provinces might be self-ruled, or lorded over by small groups of monsters/thugs, or a single SC) The poptypes for Early Age are available, and if you want to, you can even invent a new race/culture that hasn't been seen in the game yet, or "import" one of the nations or poptypes already present, and modify it.

Finally, after I have an idea of who's contributing what, and how much, then we'll lay out a map so you can see where your province(s) are located, and who you're next to, and then you'll be asked to help develope the ways in which your land relates to the ones around it, and it's overall place in the world.

You'll be pretty free to do whatever you want-and the more creative, the better-although when it comes to the military strength of your respective province(s), this will be monitored a bit, for balance and consistency.

I'm going to be writing up an overall Campaign Setting for the world itself, to give you an idea of what kind of world it's going to be, but it will be *very* open to interpretation.

I think this will be a fun way for everyone to get involved in creating something for Dominions, that we can all use, and all build on.

[Endoperez]

I suggest taking in extra provinces from SemiRandom if necessary, and adding in good ideas to the SemiRandom as new .gan files. That'd be awesome.


Plains/farm.
Has a central province, and affects at least all its neightbouring provinces. Can easily be expanded by just adding in provinces if necessary.

The central province is a farmland that has a castle (#fort 1, simple hillfort) and strong force of defenders. It's named High Seat. It has strong independent defenders and recruitable EA or MA knights. It also has something that generates Fire gems, not sure what.

Outside the castle:
2 MA Marignonese Initiates with Sceptres of Authority.
Several indy Knight commanders. One of the Knights has fire brand, lucky coin, dragon helmet, blue dragon scale mail, ring of regen, and misc item for reinvig,resistance or something.
Few priests.

20 indy longbowmen.
30 indy archers
15 indy Knights
30 indy light infantry
40 indy heavy infantry (EA equipment)
----------------------------------
#owner 23 -- after this, units are owned by special monsters
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Inside the castle

Sleeper with Crown of Command, Rod of the Phoenix named King of the High Seat
mages: one Druid with N3H1, few more Initiates with sceptres, some Priests and a High Priest, couple Sages. They have enough supply items to produce 150 supplies, and some items for casting spells. Perhaps few Staves of Corrosion and a Skull Standard, or something like that.
Two more indy knight thugs with similar equipment to the first and 6 bodyguard knights each.
40 longbowmen
20 archers
50 heavy infantry
Few Wyverns or other fliers, to hopefully slow down the enemy army so that the knights get to the break in the wall in time.


The affected provinces (all neighbours at least) are set to inafntry/archer poptypes and have a knight commander with few knight bodyguards and 10 longbowmen, in addition to their norma defenders. All the affected provinces are plains or farms.



Basically, one of the Sleepers is now a king of his small feudal kingdom. It can be placed wherever feels appopriate, but let's say it's in the western part for now.



Will North be cold place with gnomes, dwarves, vanir and giants? Will West have a sea with some island and Fomorians in there? Will Tien Chi and Yomi be in the East, C'tis and Abysia in South?

[Aezeal]

Honeybadger, is this gonna be a "new" setting or could we use an existing fantasy world. It's always nice to have something to start from. I can't do much but I'd happily create some provinces

[HoneyBadger]

I finally have some time to commit to this, so I thought I'd start posting a little outline of the setting I have in mind:

First of all, the "world" itself will consist of a Dyson structure of the type known as a "Matrioshka Brain". If you don't know what that is, a quick, simple definition is that it's basically a computer designed around a star, in such a way that it's various components each work at their optimal level, at the particular heat/energy level they happen to be recieving from the star they surround, at the position (distance from the star) they occupy.

So we have an enormous, hollow world, many times larger than the Earth, which happens to be approximately 1 1/2 times as thick as the Earth's diameter from North Pole to South Pole. The computer components of the Matrioshka Brain itself are made from nanobots, picobots, and femtobots, each of which-and collectively together-can form themselves into practically any substance of practically any density and complexity. They surround a middle-large sized blueish star (about 2 1/2 times the size of our sun) of unusual stability. Surrounding this nano-substance, to a depth of 250 km, is an insulating layer consisting of a circulating, heat-dampening substance (107 km thick) sandwitched between two relatively thin layers of tungsten-carbide (3 km thick each), followed by a layer of "buckyball" carbon rods (9 km thick), a layer of 95% pure gold, mixed with platinum, copper, and other precious metals (12 km thick) which is also sandwitched between 2 layers of iridium (1 km thick each), followed by a layer of nickel-iron (27 km thick), and finally a layer of mixed rock and minerals, 81 km thick, which is not unlike our own Earth's crust in consistency. This last layer contains tens of thousands of miles of human-traversible tunnels, caverns, and byways-some of which have formed semi-naturally, and others used by regulatory nano-bots for easy access.

These layers are permeated by trillions of industrial-strength regulatory nanobots, which are capable of quickly and efficiently rebuilding it, as needed. The surface is not one solid, consistent piece of rock, or even several Continental plates, but instead (from the circulating layer up) consists of hundreds of thousands of enormous rock "pegs" which can easily move, expanding and contracting fluidly with the gravitational fluctuations from the Star-which flexibility keeps the Brain from being ripped apart by solar tides, and helps it resist impact with any rogue meteorites (It should be noted that the Brain is also capable of-and does-regulate the Star's energies in such a way that it reduces the chance of it going Nova to almost 0%, and that, if necessary, it could replicate itself.). Gravity on this world is problematic, but is carefully regulated, being 1.33 G (+ or - .35) from the surface of the planet, to a height of 6 meters, but then dropping to .25 G for the next 1500 meters. Although almost all energy and light from the Star is captured by the Matrioshka Brain (to 99.997%), plenty of heat for life to flourish is provided by the Brain. Light, and supplimental energy, is provided by 4 artificial "suns"-three of which also function as artificial "moons"-which rotate around the planet in such a way that "days" are 36 of our hours long, and "years" last 729 of our days. Atmosphere contains 5% more oxygen than current totals, and airpressure is somewhat higher.

The reason this isn't (exactly) science fiction is because of the function of the Matrioshka Brain itself.

Humanity had finally reached the point of Singularity. They had altered themselves, their bodies, their culture, their place among the stars, so much, that they were moving beyond that which-for good and bad-could be called "human". It was evolution, simply and inevitably.
So, before they no longer cared to, they set up a magnificent museum to themselves-to each and every human who had ever existed-as they once were.

The Brain's original purpose was to duplicate, physically and mentally, down to the very electrons orbiting the atoms which make up the cells of our brains, every possible human being who ever lived or could have lived, at every possible point in their hypothetical lives-every cell, every memory, every life and lifetime-and then to duplicate a world in which those humans could live, at several points in time, based on their own recreated memories. It then deduced, as well as it could with limited information, which of the humans had actually lived, and at what time, but with limited information (seeing as how this is occuring atleast a thousand years in the future, and a lot of historical data has been misplaced, if not lost), some of the humans that got "recreated" had never actually existed, and the ones that had, had their own ideas and notions of how their world had actually been (for them, "myth" had been their reality)-only some of which were based on science, or fact, or a clear view of what was actually going on in the world while they lived their lives (some people just don't follow the news, especially when most means of communication hadn't been invented yet). And so, the World was built by Committee.

To complicate matters, humans of this time had the ability to easily and painlessly alter their bodies into new forms, and to create new lifeforms, and they often as not did this based on their own myths, legends, fantasies, heroic stories, and whatnot. And with the help of the Matrioshka Brain, those humans which in the past had been sickly, or diseased, or mentally/physically disabled, or just very unhappy with the way they looked, were allowed to reform themselves into new beings, and live new lives in what amounted to a relative paradise. Unfortunately, those humans which were mentally *disturbed* also were granted the same power, and thus were born monsters and nightmares.

Along with humans, other forms of life were created. All the animals and plants that had still existed, or evolved while humans were present on the Earth-atleast the ones the Brain still knew about-were recreated, from 7 million years in the past, to the year 3001. And to this were added many beneficial and useful creatures that had either been created by humanity, dreamed up by the confused humans and reproduced mistakenly by the Brain, or discovered among the stars-and a few alien life-forms here and there, that had somehow become stranded on the Dyson structure. And even though some of them can be argued to "not belong" in the great museum of humanity, the world is big enough-and the Brain is generous enough-to contain and provide for them all.

The Brain had also been programmed to eliminate much of our potential to destroy ourselves as a race-and in the process, destroy this "museum of humanity" that was the Dyson Brain itself, and so it eliminated our ability to create explosions greater than that of a low-power steam engine. All other energy above this was absorbed instantly back into the Brain. To compensate for this, and to provide a means for this ancient Humanity to progress, the Brain provided regulated energies that humans could create and manipulate at will-carefully monitored and controlled by the Brain, to ensure that they couldn't destroy the body of the world around them-but far more versatile-if ultimately less powerful-than an atom bomb or a fusion reactor. Only certain humans were granted this ability, to give them something to strive for. The "keys" to unlocking these powers were placed inside of repositories known as "magic gems". These "gems"-purely symbolic, but no less necessary-could be used by those with enough knowledge of the Brain's incredibly complex language (which it had also set up, specifically to *be* complex, and hard to understand, as an exercise in various mathematical and other disciplines, for their minds) to command fantastical powers of transformation, formation and manipulation of matter and energy, teleportation, even the very act of creation of other sentient beings-with personalities drawn from the Brain's almost infinite storage of possible but unrealized humanity. As an ultimate prize for the most ambitious of humankind, power unlimited by available gems, was offered-godhood, in other words. And the god-the Pantocrator-would reign for as long as the Brain felt would benefit humanity.

Although there's plenty of real-estate to occupy (1200 or so times as much liveable, interesting, relatively comfortable Earthlike land, as the entire Earth itself provides, there are also a multitude of virtual worlds, set up by the Brain to occupy the mental energies-and to provide simulated physical bodies and lives for-the vast legions of possible humans that the Brain filtered out. Each of these virtual worlds runs on it's own timeframe (at first much faster than "realtime", but gradually running more slowly as they increase in complexity, via the actions of it's residents), and may be very similar in nature-or very far removed from-the real physical Dyson Structure. Each of these can be accessed either through use of the "magic gems" (generally 1 way access, to summon a being from a virtual world, and into this one, for a limited time), or through various structures that allow interface between the worlds.

Dwelling among these virtual worlds may be found residents who embody the absolute limits of intelligence, creativity, morality, wisdom, even savagery and evil. Creatures that are closer to gods, or devils, than any that ever walked the Earth. And the Brain allows them more flexibility, when it comes to manipulating their virtual "bodies", than it does to real humans. Even aliens-ones too dangerous or too different from humans to allow to walk among them, on the physical Dyson structure, are contained here, virtually, their bodies dropped into the nearest black hole, but their essence, consciousness, and sense of self, preserved and remade-as true to form as is not a danger to the Museum's existence-as evidence of their contact with humanity. So anything can be found here.

[HoneyBadger]

I have to give some credit of inspiration to John Ringo's Counsel Wars series-which has a fantasy setting that's actually set in the future, under conditions that could possibly exist, and with "magic" and fantasy races actually the product of highly advanced technology.

The idea for a "fantasy" world that was actually existing on a Matrioshka brain, as a museum for humanity that's a bit "off", but well-intentioned, with the fantasy elements actually being somewhat unintentioned byproducts, is all mine though. Someday, maybe I'll write a novel or something.

[Endoperez]

Interestingly enough, I have only heard about the idea once, when I extrapolated a side-mention into what is pretty much your theory in there. There were few differences due to my AI being less powerful than your Matrioshka brain, but your idea or creating potential human beings works better, IMO.

[HoneyBadger]

I'd like to hear more, Endoperez. Did you have anything written down?

Ultimately, every idea is recycled. I certainly didn't come up with the idea for a Matrioshka Brain-I heard about it from the Orion's Arm website, and they got it from somebody else. If I contributed anything to the idea-and somebody has probably already beat me to it-it would be the suggestion that a Dyson Sphere might become stable, if it's component parts were capable of great and fast flexibility. Otherwise, it gets ripped apart by gravity waves.

As far as the use for one, I think it could provide us an Afterlife, someday-one that isn't dependent on religion. That's the basis for the setting-merging the idea of the Matrioshka Brain, with the idea (also not mine) of a computer powerful enough to calculate every human being that could ever exist, along with their memories, thoughts, lives, etc. But also powerful enough to filter out the ones that certainly hadn't existed, to a greater or lesser degree of accuracy.

Someday, we're going to make our myths. As long as we survive as a species, relatively intact, we're going to create what will amount to all our dreams come true-for better or worse, but probably better.

[HoneyBadger]

Humans come in two types on the Dyson Sphere. If the Brain is confident enough that they actually existed-if they can be tied to an historical record, if others remember them, if there's enough evidence that the Brain has a "real one", then they are reborn as young adults-around age 25 or so-with the memories of their entire lives intact. They know who they were, what they accomplished, where they came from, etc. If the Brain isn't quite certain, but it's probable that they existed, then they're reborn as children to likely "real ones", matched up based on compatibility with the parent and within the society, with a mild emphasis on how well that child's personality could benefit that particular parent, and the greater society the parent lives in/has come from. This has a psychological effect on many "real" humans, causing many of them to believe they are living in some "Afterlife", or atleast to increase the spirituality of many of them.

For those who have changed themselves into other forms than human, the babies are ensured physically and mentally healthy, but otherwise left alone (random personalities).