Toril as a Counter-Earth

If a piece of their universe has been inserted into ours, how is it possible that it is effecting gravitational perturbation in the same way? How is an orbital insertion possible into space where different physics apply?


You can’t have your cake and eat it.

Thomas Kalbfus said:

The American expedition will want to affect the political situation to favor themselves and their allies, the Chinese will do likewise for themselves. Aside from the spaceships, the technology they have is not so different from what we have today, this is only seven years in the future after all. You think the Chinese will try to land an expedition in Kara Tur?

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Ooh! Maztica has some . . . issues as a created setting (just once I would like to see a Mesoamerican setting in an RPG that doesn't assume they must be evil, because human sacrifice, without bothering to understand what nextlaoaliztli actually meant, but I digress), but I can only imagine how Mexico and the Chicanx movement in the US might react to extant Nahua-like and Maya-like cultures being found ~ with magic, no less!

Thomas Kalbfus said:

The Earthers will just assume they are dealing with a bunch of primitives that they can impress with their advanced technology.

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I love the image that summons up in my brain ~ Earthers swaggering into a situation being all like "Look at my fancy iPhone" and "This is my boomstick" and "Oooooh, look ~ LIGHTERS", and Torillings being all like, "Booooooring. When do we get to talk to this Yahweh person you keep yabbering on about? Seriously, did you like piss him off or something? Cuz our gods answer our questions."

Speaking of religion, how might it be affected by Terra-Toril interactions? Heathenry, Finnish polytheism, Kemeticism, and my beloved Sumerian devotion (I'm a worshiper of Ninshubur) would prolly all get a boost up, considering qweens like Tyr, Mielikki, Loviatar, the Mulhorandi pantheon, and the Untherese pantheon all have active cultures worshiping them and numerous priests, priestesses, and priestixes that can literally call them up and say, "Hey, qween! Spill the tea!"

But what of Islam? How would it interface with the Law of the Loregiver and the Enlightened Gods (the Torilese "equivalent" ~ it's not really equivalent).

Thomas Bowman said:

Elminster has been known to travel to non-magical planes, so he might be able to teleport himself to Earth and back, the level of magic is lower but not nonexistent. Elminster is one of Mystra's chosen, so he is able to bring his magic with him, as are others of his kind. His ability to scry is limited to areas where magic is prevalent, He can teleport to Earth, but he can't scry there. If he is there, he can scry to see what is happening on Toril, because that place already has magic in it. Likewise the gods of Toril can also transport themselves to Earth if they want to go there, the act weakens them however, so it is not a place they would actually like to go unless they have no other choice. There are other depowered deities on Earth that are living a quite existence, they keep a low profile however. Magic was once more prevalent on Earth than it is now.

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Come to think of it, it's at least demi-canon that Elminster has, in fact, been here before. And as I recall, that's popped in a number of places at a number of different levels of canonicity.

And we've gone there before, too ~ the Mulhorandi and Untherese are literally Egyptians and Sumerians kidnapped into slavery by the Imaskari.

Sepulchrave II said:

If a piece of their universe has been inserted into ours, how is it possible that it is effecting gravitational perturbation in the same way? How is an orbital insertion possible into space where different physics apply?


You can’t have your cake and eat it.

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Sure you can ~ you might have indigestion, though. In fact, the roughest part of sending a ship into Torilspace would likely be navigating that border at 800,000 km. It'll be like when a plane crosses from a cold front into a hot front, only instead of rain and wind, it'll be the laws of physics raggedly throwing the ship around. Who's to say what the knock-on effects down the causal chain will be of that kind of chaos? Different gravitational constants interacting might very well end up pulling orbits in weird ways.

Which I guess you might have considered, since you said "in the same way" in your post >.< D'oh!

I think you overestimate the time required to detect the planet. I suspect for an object that large in the inner solar system, which would perturb the orbits of Mercury and Venus, and spacecraft like the Parker Solar Probe that launched back in August... it would be in weeks, rather than months.

If I read the orbits correctly, if this happens today, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter would likely be able to image the proper area of space in November, using the HiRISE camera. We'd know it was a blue-green world, with moon, pretty quickly.

The sudden appearance of an entirely new planet is... unprecedented. The next Falcon Heavy or other heavy-lift vehicle available would get repurposed with a probe of cobbled-together cameras and sensors. That probably reveals that the planet is inhabited....

All bets are off as to how we respond to that.

Note - You have stipulated that magic works within 800,000 miles of Toril. If modern Earth technology does not work in that space around the planet, we probably never land on the surface - everyone who tried would die.

You guys are vastly underestimating the problems of space travel.
A probe can be send, although to get them to the planet fast likely requires a lot of energy and thus limits what the probe can do. But a manned mission? No way. Especially considering how close one has to get to the sun to get to Toril in just 6 months we do not have a rocket to lift a lander there, let alone infrastructure.

You can of course try to set up a camp over time with multiple launches, but the same thing that make Toril special, breathable atmosphere and life, also makes remotely setting up a camp not feasible because of decay. Also you can't really attempt that without getting more information through probes. The planet might look earth like, but that doesn't guarantee that it is and can support earth humans. And those probes take time to build, they do not come from an assembly line.
You might also need another communication satellite (unless you can repurpose an existing one) as communicating through the sun might cause some issues.

Umbran said:

I think you overestimate the time required to detect the planet. I suspect for an object that large in the inner solar system, which would perturb the orbits of Mercury and Venus, and spacecraft like the Parker Solar Probe that launched back in August... it would be in weeks, rather than months.

If I read the orbits correctly, if this happens today, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter would likely be able to image the proper area of space in November, using the HiRISE camera. We'd know it was a blue-green world, with moon, pretty quickly.

The sudden appearance of an entirely new planet is... unprecedented. The next Falcon Heavy or other heavy-lift vehicle available would get repurposed with a probe of cobbled-together cameras and sensors. That probably reveals that the planet is inhabited....

All bets are off as to how we respond to that.

Note - You have stipulated that magic works within 800,000 miles of Toril. If modern Earth technology does not work in that space around the planet, we probably never land on the surface - everyone who tried would die.

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Well we've got to give them a fighting chance. Didn't say technology doesn't work, maybe some technology doesn't work, like for instance the guns the Marines accompanying the crew might not work without smoke powder. Electronics work fine, and so do the liquid methane powered rocket engines. Some magic works outside of the radius as well, gods, and really powerful mages can work their spells outside of this radius, but it is very costly for them to do so. So basically the rocket can land on Toril, the crew can communicate with Earth via radios and satellites. The satellites also act as GPS satellites, providing latitude and longitude to the crew holding their GPD devices. I think I will land this outside of Waterdeep, perhaps on the beach to avoid setting fires with the landing rockets. A more southerly location means the crew is more likely to catch tropical diseases for which they don't have inoculations for. And anyway the crew is not returning immediately anyway. All of the crewmembers are unmarried, or if they are married they are married to other crewmembers on the ship and there are a total of 100 people on the ship. Lets say about 80 Marines and 20 Space Force Astronauts, basically scientists, one of whom serves as an ambassador. Basically nothing that is a gun works without some magic to enable it, everything else does however. The 80 Marines find out quickly that they need to learn a new way to fight, they have combat knives which work as daggers, they can use their guns as clubs. I'll have to decide on what other modern equipment they bring.

Derren said:

You guys are vastly underestimating the problems of space travel.
A probe can be send, although to get them to the planet fast likely requires a lot of energy and thus limits what the probe can do. But a manned mission? No way. Especially considering how close one has to get to the sun to get to Toril in just 6 months we do not have a rocket to lift a lander there, let alone infrastructure.

You can of course try to set up a camp over time with multiple launches, but the same thing that make Toril special, breathable atmosphere and life, also makes remotely setting up a camp not feasible because of decay. Also you can't really attempt that without getting more information through probes. The planet might look earth like, but that doesn't guarantee that it is and can support earth humans. And those probes take time to build, they do not come from an assembly line.
You might also need another communication satellite (unless you can repurpose an existing one) as communicating through the sun might cause some issues.

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There is another orbit that the ship can use, this one has a period of 18 months and will result in the ship returning to the same point in Earth's orbit but with Toril there instead, this is very similar to a transfer orbit to Mars, which the ship is designed to do anyway. A transfer orbit to Mars will take 9 months, since it is only half an orbit to take the ship to Mars, but if used to take a ship to Toril, a full orbit will be required, the ship will go out to the orbit of Mars and then fall back towards the Sun and will complete an orbit in a year and a half. Now solar shielding is required for this trip, but the crew has to be prepared to be in space for 18 months. This is shorter than a mars mission, as the ship does not stop at Mars during this mission. By this time the US government realizes through its probes that Toril is inhabited by humans and other humanoids, satellite pictures aren't very clear. Perhaps a lander resolves this, sending pack pictures of a human, and elf perhaps, before the characters damage the craft when they collect it. Some flying drones overfly Waterdeep and discover some other large winged creatures as well. Not sure how the Waterhavens would react to drones flying over their city. Enough information is gathered causing the mission planners to decide to land the craft outside of Waterdeep, since I bought the book which has some information on the various NPCs who might be interested in an alien craft landing outside their city.

Some laws of physics are shared, specifically that of gravity and light, most chemical reactions work, except for those that propel bullets from guns. Much of the other technology is for communication and for gathering and storing information. Computers work fine. The ship can also take off again, it just can't reach orbit without its bottom stage.

Toril is surrounded by Wildspace, that means the Earth ship will suddenly develop a gravity plane when it crosses over, the transition zone blocks cosmic rays and some lethal rays from the Sun, but visible light, infrared and lower wavelengths pass through easily, including radio and microwaves. Ultraviolet rays pass through. Past this point, if the ship is ruptured, then its atmosphere will gather into an envelope outside of its hull and stay there. Humans who jump out will have gravity planes of their own and their own personal atmospheric envelope as well, they won't need spacesuits so long as they have a way of regenerating their oxygen. The Rock of Braal is also among the tears of Selune, anyone with a telescope might notice those asteroids look a little funny with vegetation and all. The rocket works fine despite these changes in the laws of physics. People moving within the ship might have some moments of awkwardness dealing with the gravity plane however. This goes away once they enter Toril's atmosphere however.

Thomas Bowman said:

I think I will land this outside of Waterdeep, perhaps on the beach to avoid setting fires with the landing rockets.

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Goodness, no.

You've gotten into Toril-space. You've noticed that local physics has differences - the gravity plane of the ship gives that away. You don't come in hot and land. You go into orbit, and you point telescopes down. You watch. You see iron age technology. You may see some dramatic megafauna (say, dragons) or not, depending if you are lucky.

You have marines on board. They know their guns are at best a holding action against a large enough force, so by no means do you land near a major city that could muster such a force. You land out in the boonies, where you may be able to learn about the local culture and language, but will be under no real tactical threat. To be honest, landing everyone at once is a tactical mis-step, as you have no reserves. You have two forces that go at the same time - one stays in orbit as backup.

This should play out kind of like Stargate, come to think of it....

Sepulchrave II said:

The inhabitants of Toril would use divinations to determine their new cosmological status. Then they would scry us. Then they would teleport here. Then they would dominate our leaders or replace them with simulacra. We'd be toast within hours; they'd know about us long before we figured out they were there.

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Come on, you have to give the Reptilians more credit then that. How would the Torileans even know about the implanted microchips?