#worldwanderer

[ettawritesnstudies]

braindumping here because @raevenlywrites​ WBW ask got my wheels turning and gave me a cool new idea for why Runaways should exist within the same universe as all my other WIPs and also conveniently fix several small plot holes at the same time.

So grabbing this concept of each planet having a different magical ID, I was wondering what’s the makeup of each of my main WIP planets and why would that explain why the magic is Like That on each world? Yes its influenced in a large part by the people and plants and animals who live there, but the life there also only exists because the planet existed in that place and time with that magical core in the first place. SO WHAT DO WE HAVE?

Laoche: this world has extremely potent magical fields - it’s in the air, it’s in the water, it’s in the rocks, they have anti-gravity metal, the stuff is everywhere. Every person on that planet has the potential to be super-powered by being born in the right place at the right time and having certain events occur as a child before their own magic settles into it’s niche. Luca’s basically a nuclear bomb waiting to explode. He does explode. They have charms that act like radioactive isotopes. Acheran is a charm maker which is this world’s equivalent of making jewelry out of lithium ion batteries.

Runaways: Our world but SLANT. There are fae hiding in pockets of the forest, mermaids chilling in the deep ocean, and ghosts hanging around abandoned farmhouses. Did I have any explanation for this before? nope. Something vaguely about convenient allegory. Now??? Their world is a lot like Earth in how it formed, but the core of the earth includes some pretty serious nullification properties. It’s made of iron. It creates a magnetic field that serves the same purpose as a magic field but effectively cancels it out in the process. Why are fae allergic to iron??? boom, here’s the answer.

Now this anti-magic field isn’t perfectly uniform and there are some patches in the earth’s crust that have the opposite effect and let the magic seep through by amplifying the signal. These magic zones are where the magic creatures live/evolve/immigrate to, and became tinier to better use the limited space they have. The illusions are a natural side effect of the magical/nonmagical barrier butting up against each other. S Faerie realms become kind of like pocket dimensions and other-worlds on their own planet - parts of the map that you don’t even notice are blank.

And because magic is so scarce and spells only work on the magic-side, if they want to influence anything outside of their realms, fae need to have very powerful magic to overcome the planet’s own field. What’s a stronger magic than taking control of a person’s own magical identity? What’s a stronger magic than taking a true name? This isn’t even something that occurs to people on Laoche because they can huck fireballs at you, “power” in magic takes on a very different idea. And when it does happen, Madelyn is a rare rare rare case that’s not well understood and traumatized by the experience because magic is so innate. But fae can strip you of your name and your powers at the same time and most humans wouldn’t notice what they lost, which is horrifying and perfect.

(runaways spoilers ahead)

Why does Cecelia lose her ability to do normal fae magic when she becomes a changeling? The switching spell gives her not-cecelia’s name and not-cecelia’s mundane powers. She’s only able to shapeshift once she returns to the Seelie court!

Why does the Taken only attack Hannah once she steps inside the faerie ring? She doesn’t have any power outside the faerie ring! They had to lure her to it first before they could strike! Why doesn’t the piper mind control Hannah during their first meeting? His power is weakened in the forest! He’s still close enough to fae he has some control but not enough to completely take over.

Why can the Seelie only protect Cecelia if she stayed in faerie? Their power literally doesn’t extend outside of faerie, it’s not even a political thing, they cannot do anything for her as soon as she steps outside again. But Hannah can, because she’s not tied to the faerie world in the first place.

Why do the Unseelie and the Seelie fight in the first place? Competition for survival! A population grows big enough and there’s not enough space for all of them in the magic zones so they start trying to exert their influence over humans too.

Why does Tess finding her name have so much power? How does she know that Tess her her true name? Her lost magic resonates when she first hears it! She doesn’t know why but she knows it fits. Taking it back from the Piper destroys his powers over her because they’re her powers again.

[tartanterrain]

🔹️During our north coast of Scotland roadtrip we stayed in the village of Midtown, overlooking Loch Ewe. ⁣ ⁣ 🔹️I loved how moody the sky looked over the hills at the other side of the Loch. Beautiful⁣ ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ #coupleslovetravel #traveljourney #worldwanderer #travel_capture #traveldreams #travelgoal #traveltheworldwithme #Getlostnow #Travelcaptures #weliketotravel #visualwanderlust #Tblogger #wheretogo #travelbucketlist #reiseblogger #wheretonext #Awesomenature #Beautifullandscapes #Escapethecity #Wondersofnature #Naturelandscape #Explorescotland #northcoast500 #offthebeatenpath #nc500 #travelscotland #discoverscotland #Scottishscenery #moodysky (at Highlands, Scotland) https://www.instagram.com/p/CCc6BsWpQl1/?igshid=5a3e8pc84vt5

[camilladiiorgi]

⛵🌊 I dream of adventures, sea storms and a light from the coast. This is the power of the sea. * * * * * * * * #lighthouse #cliffside #irelandgram #irelanddaily #loveireland #dublin #ireland #traveldeeper #travelgoals #travelmoreworryless #traveladdict #welivetotravel #welovetravel #getlostnow #nowtravel #globelletravel #thetraveltag #worldwanderer (at Baily Lighthouse) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2b-BqtolAQ/?igshid=1mslsq6kx804q

[allehsu]

#boats #monet #claudemonet #france #1868 #1800s @fcgulbenkian #lisbon #portugal #museum #art #artmuseum #latergram #july #travel #instatravel #travelgram #worldwanderer #passionpassport #europe #iphonexsphotography #nofilter (at Museu Calouste Gulbenkian) https://www.instagram.com/p/B1SC5w6JJY0/?igshid=1sc28tvpn7o7w

[wegocab]

Petra, Jordan 🇯🇴 ❤️ Life‘s a climb. But the view is great. • • • 📸 Credit @ciiiinaa ➖➖➖➖ #jordan #petra #temple #ancientruins #ruins #traveling #roamtheplanet #globetrotter #worldwanderer #backpacker #backpacking #travelblogger #traveladdict #traveltheworld #travelmore #travelasia #lifeisbetterinthesun #naturelovers #solotraveler #girltraveler #passionpassport #hiking #explore #adventure #wanderlust #fernweh #sheisnotlost #ladiesgoneglobal #postcardplaces https://www.instagram.com/p/BrwjKRjl7eh/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=65bf197qf5m7

[ettawritesnstudies]

Space dragons!!!! I'm curious, how do you think they'd navigate? I'm thinking about birds and magnetic fields, or sailors and stars, but both those things have complications when you're in literal space (aaaahh I'm so excited by this idea! Congrats on the very cool concept)

thank you!!!! I am very excited about it too. I have been yelling at @siarven about it nonstop for a week I'm sure they're sick of me by now (thank you quinn <3).

quickly googles magnetic fields because I got a B minus in E&M a year ago during quarantine and don't remember any of it

ok disclaimer all of the ahead is magic-technobabble and only somewhat-plausable theorizing on the part of a chemical engineering junior who should really be doing their mass separations homework.

The earth's magnetosphere is caused by the dynamo effect because the inside our our planet's outer core is made of molten iron and nickel alloy that's spinning really heckin fast and creating an electromagnetic field that encases the planet. It functions as a shield to keep our planet from getting blasted with UV rays and solar winds, which is quite useful for enabling survival and makes pretty auroras whenever they hit near the poles.

The catch is that asteroids don't have cores, much less molten ones. They're too small for gravity to make that happen. But what I am wondering is if the movement of the asteroids themselves (if enough of them were made of metal instead of rock) would generate a magnetic field in kind of a donut shape around the entire asteroid belt following the right hand rule, where the "current flow" isn't electrical flow but the movement of asteroids... If the magnetic field plausibly existed, I could then handwave that the dragons could have the ability to sense it and follow it home. Let me go bug one of my physics friends and get back to you on that.

“Real science” aside, my magic system is already loosely based off electromagnetism. There are 6 main kinds of magic that fall under two groups. External magic means you can effect the world around you but don’t hold any energy/power inside yourself, and includes manipulation, amplification, and nullification. Internal magic means you struggle to control what the magic does once it leaves your body, but you always carry a store of power, and includes generation, storage, and release. Everything has a magical “fingerprint” - most people have one favored type but can dabble in the others in their group with effort and training, while plants, animals, rocks, ect. all default to a “natural state.”

I could also say that each world has it’s own magical fingerprint that’s an average/accumulation of everything living on it’s surface + the makeup of the rock/metal in the asteroid itself. (and oh hey that gives me an idea for my universe as a whole...and names in runaways... maybe this could fix my connection issue)... Memorizing a planet’s magical signal would be kind of like like memorizing a song based only on the frequency waves without hearing it ever. But things that are born on that world share a part of that waveform in their own magical DNA. A dragon could find their way home by finding which planet resonates with their magic!

And of course constellations would be a way to navigate - just because you leave the planet doesn’t mean the whole sky changes so long as you stay in your same solar system. Yes the perspective would move, but bouncing around the asteroid ring would be the equivalent of our sky changing from summer to winter or the northern to southern hemispheres. It would be a lot to keep track of, but anyone who can can memorize/bring along a star map and a good sense of direction and they’d probably be ok.

[ettawritesnstudies]

do the riders live on the asteroid ring? are there cities there? or are they from the planets in that solar system? how many planets support life and if it's many, are the societies connected/do they know about each other? (ive got lots of questions lol)

thank you for all the questions! I'm going to start from the bigger ones to explain the space reasoning and then work inward to societies and riders.

TL:DR: Yes* they live on the asteroid ring, yes there are many planetoids that support life and have cities (actual planets not so much), yes they do know about each other, but only because of the dragons, *riders are a small/rare segment of the total population and they’re more nomadic than most residents of the solar system.

So the habitable zone of a star is the radius that is capable of supporting life - any closer is too hot, any further away is too cold. You can see that in our solar system, Earth is in the sweet spot, Mars is in the “maybe habitable almost too cold” zone, and the asteroid belt is too far away. Every solar system is different depending on the star and a bunch of other factors that are also needed to support life, which all contribute to the fermi paradox about “why haven’t we found other life yet?”. (TRAPPIST1 is cool because it makes music. This is a TED talk about it. 10/10 recommend) That’s mostly irrelevant because this is speculative fiction and we can handwave the science, but it’s cool, and for the sake of argument, lets say my fictional solar system had the asteroid ring form in the habitable zone. There are other planets, but they’re much more hostile. Instead of Earth being an oasis in the desert of space, this system has an island chain in the ocean of space.

NOW, lets still use our own asteroid system as a model because I’m lazy and refuse to do more math than I have to. I’m a chemical engineer not an astrophysicist. Most asteroids are lumpy but we’re going to pretend they’re spheres for the sake of simplicity. According to Wikipedia the vast majority of asteroids are TINY. (SA = 4*pi*r^2) The smallest ones have a surface area of 0.03 km^2, so those are basically parks and wildspace. I’m from Pennsylvania in the US, so I’m going to use a city the size of Philadelphia as my metric. That would roughly fit on a 6-7km diameter asteroid, but it would be a tight fit so you’re probably going to find cities/ on 10km diameter and higher. These would be mono-cultures, since there isn’t enough room to have more than one settlement. Your proper “worlds”, capable of supporting a country or two, would be the major hubs of trade and settlement. Those are called “Planetoids” Our solar system has four: Ceres, Vesta, Hallas, and Hygeia.

Most of the people come from those worlds, but you get your smaller settlements on smaller rocks too. That’s a pretty big population, but consider that they’re spread out around the entire ring. They’re all moving relative to each other at roughly the same pace, but it would still be difficult to reach them in any reasonable amount of time without traveling very fast. Most societies have figured out some spaceship-type way to hop to their next door neighbors so you get segments of city -> suburb -> rural as the size decreases, centered around a larger asteroid, but your average person rarely gets as far as the next city/country/planetoid to interact much.

THAT IS WHERE THE DRAGONS COME IN

dragons are rare, giant, magical creatures that can survive longer journeys through the depths of space thanks to their special adaptations (which I explained here), but they aren’t born and they don’t live in space. They go back to their home planetoids to rest and raise their young, but spend a lot of time moving around to hunt and explore. They’re an intelligent society all of their own, not dumb animals, but you can imagine that the larger habitable planetoids drew the attention of both the humans and the dragons so they had to learn how to live together to survive. Each world only has a small handful of dragons. Even for the largest of the planetoids, I can’t imagine something smaller than Pluto could support more than 2 or 3 dragons plus a human civilization. Hell, even our MOON is bigger than Pluto.

The dragons trust the humans to raise their young until they’re old enough to venture off-world, and they bond with chosen humans to keep tabs over the process. It’s usually a generational thing - a kid who grew up raising a dragon would be old by the time the dragon was an adolescent and ready for space flight, but their kid or grandkid would bond the dragon when they’re ready. (I explain the bond here~) There are only as many true riders as there are dragons, but the large inter-generational families are often looked to as leaders of the society. Riders orchestrate trade runs between the other planetoids, defend their home from any interlopers, share stories from their travels, and their grounded family members run things while they’re gone on trips.

Generally speaking, since there’s such a strong emphasis on symbiosis and working together to survive a pretty tough environment, the planetoids don’t fight often. Each of them have totally different ecosystems and resources, so they need to cooperate and trust each other. That’s not to say it’s completely without conflict because I need a plot, but the societies interact on a pretty regular basis through the dragonriders. They also serve as an official class of storytellers and keepers of the ring’s history. Many of them are trained as bards and storytellers.

I hope that answered your questions! sorry it got so long slfkjsflkjsdflkj. feel free to ask me if any of that was confusing I’m not quite sure if I explained it well.

[ettawritesnstudies]

How do the space dragons and the riders bond?? (For WBW)

Thanks for the ask!

I'm thinking this would have to tie into the magic system? The one I built for Lachoe would fit the underlying mechanics of the universe, so I'm going to run with the idea of every living thing basically having a magical "fingerprint". Forging a bond would be an intentional choice on the behalf of two compatible beings to each change that piece of themselves for the other until they match and their very souls are in sync.

Dragons are intelligent but they cannot speak the same language as humans purely mechanically speaking. Outsiders know that the dragons and riders have Something Going On, but to them it would look like a one sided conversation where the human talking go themself/to the dragon and is just really good at reading the dragon's body language in reply. But the bond would allow them to understand each other, share the magic that allows them to survive in space, know where each other are if they ever got separated, and give each other cool magic power up abilities. It would be a symbiotic bond, like how the dragon population as a whole has a symbiotic relationship with the plants that grow on them, and with the human settlements that help raise their young. Both the human and the dragon would get and give something tangible from the relationship.

There's a passage from The Little Prince where the fox talks about taming, and I imagine that's how the dragons would approach it - not that they're animals who need to be tamed but that they want the companions.

"you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! ..... “But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince. “Yes, that is so,” said the fox. “Then it has done you no good at all!” “It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the colour of the wheat fields.”

And the humans would be a bit set apart from the others - they're tied to the sky, they're guardians and explorers and keepers of knowledge. They get to grow wild and dangerous in the defense of their home.