Planet names of Settings

[Gez]

Also, I would like to hear some of the names of your homebrew worlds and kingdoms. I need to come up with about 12 or so new kingdoms.

In addition to the names in my post above, there are three country names IMC -- Barengar, Chandrale and Massanie (would be Massania in English, I suppose). Other countries span several regions and are named "Empire" or "Confederacy" and thus haven't very exotic names.

I've a whole lot of region names I could dig up, especially given that some are variants. In their Common (language) name, most region names end in -in, e.g.: Lorsin, Chandrin (the region corresponding to the Chandrale country), Vivainin, etc. That was just me trying to get some sort of pseudolinguistical consistency.

 

[Desdichado]

Let's say you had a binary star system with a yellow sun like ours revolving with a black hole. Then you had a planet revolving around the both of them. First, is this physically possible? Would the planet be forced into a highly elliptical orbit? What would it look like from the planet inhabitants point of view if the the sun and black hole rotated? Would the sun and black hole need to be of equal mass (and therefore hole would need to be quite small)?

Physically, yes, it's possible, but it has a number of problems.

• To maintain a reasonably normal orbit around the common center of gravity, it would have to maintain a pretty good distance from the star; probably enough so that it would be frozen and lifeless.
• Stars that are partnered with black holes have short life-spans. The black hole usually sucks material from its stellar partner like a vacuum cleaner. A side effect of this is also a disk of supercharged material that is slowly spiralling into the black hole which end up being some of the strongest sources of x-rays we know of. Again, the radiation from this system would probably render any planets lifeless.
• Black holes are the cores left over from massive stars that go supernova. If the black hole was always part of the system, it would already have blasted any planets lifeless, if indeed, any planets could maintain an orbit following a supernova. Of course, the planet coul have been captured after the fact, which is probably the only option. But that beggars the question; where did the planet come from and how did life appear on it?
• If the black hole is a migrant into the system, it would have perturbed the orbits of any planetary bodies on it's entry into becoming the star's companion.

There's some potentially interesting answers to the questions raised by the last few points there, but that first few points are difficult. You're better off having it not be a yellow, sun-like star, but rather a more massive A or F class star, which will burn hotter, and thus potentially heat a planet at a farther distance. Have the planet be the latest migrant into the system, to explain how it has a stable orbit at a safe distance, give it one hell of a magnetic field to protect against radiation, and an intriguing backstory of alien (or godly, depending on if you want to lean more towards sci-fi or fantasy) intervention on the development of life, and you're more or less good to go.

They don't have to be the same mass, and in fact, I'd find it odd that they would be. A black hole has a minimum mass to even form, and a star like the sun can't do it.

Both would rotate around a common center of gravity. You wouldn't actually see the black hole, but you'd see the big disk of gas, which would probably obscure, although be illuminated by, the stellar companion. The old movie The Black Hole is oddly enough fairly accurate, but make it brighter, have it be out during the day. Heck, given the mass that the planet has to orbit, it's also possible that the planet would be tidally locked; i.e., only one side would ever face the black hole and sun duo, so you'd have a permanent dayside and nightside. That's potentially interesting too, IMO.

The disk of gas and dust can actually be bigger than the orbit of the planet, so the night sky might well be lit by a kind of ambient glow from the lit gas particles all over the system. In fact, and I'm getting myself interesting in this idea now, this could be pretty cool. The gas and dust would probably also obscure the sun during the day; maybe "day" and "night" would be relatively light and dark variations on twilight, without really truly deep darkness or bright day either one due to the ambient glow of the gas in the system.

 

[Alzrius]

I actually wonder what the value of naming the "planet" of a fantasy setting has, other than for convenience of us, I suppose. As near as I can tell, our own planet has never had, and still doesn't have, a proper name at all. "Earth" or "Dirt" not being my idea of a proper name for a planet, that is.

You know, back in college I once went around and tried to find the proper name of this planet, as well as our orbiting satellite and the star this world revolves around; this was based on the idea making proper nouns out of common nouns wasn't really a name.

It was an incredibly frustrating experiment. As it turns out, there is no official body for naming celestial objects. The nearest I could find was some sort of International Astronomical Union, but any authority they have is purely de facto.

As such, it seems they really are just called Earth, the Moon, and the Sun.

 

[DMH]

Earth can be called Terra or Sol 3.

The Moon (which isn't a moon, but rather part of a binary planet) can be called Luna.

The Sun is Solaris (sp?).

 

[Desdichado]

Earth can be called Terra or Sol 3.

The Moon (which isn't a moon, but rather part of a binary planet) can be called Luna.

The Sun is Solaris (sp?).

Errr, yeah, I kinda figured this was coming, so I should have addressed it upfront.

Terra is the Latin word for earth (and also for land, for that matter), Luna is the Latin word for moon, and Sol is the Latin word for Sun, so those aren't formal names, just translations of the same English words we use. Solaris is the name of Sun Microsystem's Unix OS, as well as a novel by a Russian (?) science fiction writer. As to whether or not the Moon is, in fact, a moon, saying that it isn't is a bit forward, since what a moon is is defined by the Moon. The definitions of what is a moon, planet or planetoid are under attack on more than one front (many will now tell you that Pluto is not a planet, but a binary Kuiper Belt Object in 3:2 resonance with Neptune, which seperates it from the more distant "mainstream" Kuiper Belt.) Technically all multiple systems are just that: systems, not just "planet and it's moons." After all, many of the "moons" are quite a bit bigger than other planets like Mercury or Pluto, including all of the Gallilean satellites of Jupiter, Titan, Triton, and our own moon. Personally, I don't think there's much to be gained from saying the Moon isn't a moon because we're a double planet system, since saying so doesn't really imply anything very different about our situation other than the fact that our own is quite massive relative to it's planet than most of the other such systems in our solar system.

 

[dungeon blaster]

The way I feel about it is if our moon is not a moon, then whatever IS a moon needs to have a different name to call itself. Moon is already taken by whatever our moon IS.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

It was. Other continents included Aduria to the north and the cold, arctic Thaele, populated by giants. I think there's also a Basarji homeland somewhere, too, but it's been a long time since I read through the Birthright stuff. (Funny, BR - my favorite setting, one where I own all the supplements, and the one that I never got to game in even once ).

Dang, I love maps. One nice thing about the Birthright setting is that the terrain seems fairly realistic; mountains look like they could be in the right places for plate boundaries, etc. Amusingly, the Anuirean areas where there's heavy Cuiracaen (CG storm and war god) worship mostly seem to be those that would suffer from tornadoes.

Aduria was actually to the SE, and was the original home of humanity. I have a vague memory of the northern peninsula (the one that terminates in Mieres) just jutting north, out of a vaguely South America-shaped continent. At least, I got the idea that the Adurian coastline extends a ways out to the east, off the southern edge of the map. That probably comes from someone's campaign website, as I can't find anything to suggest that in particular in the box set.

Thaele is to the NNW of the Rjurik lands. There are a few Rjurik colonies, but nothing major. It's cold, snowy, and produces firs and furs (heh) by the boatload. Sort of Alaska-like, really.

The Khinasi get the good stuff; their obscure items are well-mapped in the Cities of the Sun box set. There're the Dragon Isles a bit more than 300 miles east of Suirene (SE corner of Khinasi), the Golden Archipelago is a bit over 300 miles south of the Serpent's Island, and Djapar (which may be an actual continent) is (wait for it) about 300 miles ESE of the easternmost island of the Golden Archipelago. Unfortunately, there's precious little written about those; I couldn't find anything. One can assume there's some sort of trade, and it's likely that the Basarji came from Djapar (the Basarji migration routes depicted in the Atlas of Cerilia are from the SE), but I can't find anything official that actually states that.

There's also mention of Anuirean colonies across the Sea of Storms (Atlas of Cerilia, from the main box). There's a reasonable chance that Thaele is actually that continent, just extending farther SW.

I don't recall any astronomical details, other than that the world was named Aebrynis, and it and its moon were roughly in proportion to the Earth-Moon system. And, given that it's 11, I haven't made lunch for tomorrow, and I'm sick, I don't feel like looking through all the sourcebooks to see if I missed anything.

Brad

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Have the planet be the latest migrant into the system, to explain how it has a stable orbit at a safe distance, give it one hell of a magnetic field to protect against radiation.

Adamantine's ferrous, right?

Perhaps the liquid adamantine core of the planet is responsible for the massive magnetic field?

IIRC, a tide-locked world wouldn't be particularly pleasant. While there'd be a thin strip around the terminator that wouldn't be boiling or freezing, you'd get hellacious weather from the movements of the hot air on the side pointing toward the star. If you were far enough out, the part that was stuck towards the star might not be too hot, but then the dark side'd be even colder, barring some other source of energy (super-geothermal activity? A big gas giant?

Brad

 

[reanjr]

Thanks for this. I had no idea about any of this stuff. It does sort of put things in context.That seems strange to me for some reason. These guys are creative fellows; it just seems odd, given the prevalence of worldviews in the past that didn't think in these terms. It just seems to me that if you're writing about a world full of gods and magic that planetary systems would hardly be the first thing you would think of. But maybe it's just further evidence that I'm weird.Again and again, no less; after all, it's turtles all the way down.

Whether or not the world views of ancient people thought the world rested on the back of a turtle, it doesn't change the fact that they lived on a planet. So putting a setting on a planet makes most sense. It doesn't change any world view or really affect them in any way. Not to mention, different cultures in the same setting may have different views on what their world is like.

 

[reanjr]

Ravenloft has different celestial bodies depending on which domain you are in. Soth's domain of Sithicus was taken/based from Dragonlance and has only one moon, Nuitari IIRC. Nova Vassa had something like seven moons in one of the products featuring the domain (though it is the domain with the most changes from product to product).

This caused a little reality glitch as when the mists and domain lords don't keep the borders separated they are physically connected but could have different astronomical features as you crossed the invisible domain borders.

I could be wrong, but I think all the core domains now have a single, shared moon. Any domains that previously did not were either shuffled off to their own clusters or islands or changed (sor instance, I think Sithicus changed after Soth left).