Toril as a Counter-Earth

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Given the change in constellations and observable planets from Toril, I'd wager Torillians would arrive via magical Gates on Earth far sooner than Terrans would land by spaceship on Toril.

The magic surrounding Toril would probably foil technology, and result in failed space missions or crash landings. If that didn't do it, the gods of Toril might just decide to keep interlopers from the other side of the solar system away.

It'd be something of Toril's arrival heralded a meta-event on Earth akin to the dawn of a Shadowrun-type era.

This is a cool thread.

 

[Derren]

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....

Marines? How and why would you be able to send soldiers on a 6-18 month one way trip to Toril?

 

[Thomas Bowman]

NASA never needed to send an armed expedition anywhere, because it Astronauts were never expecting to encounter any natives, here would be different. The soldiers are all volunteers of course, and also colonists. But the Space Force didn't want to send people who would end up in a dungeon or on a slave market the moment they step off the ship, so it was deemed necessary to send soldiers who can hold their own in a fight. I haven't yet decided whether their guns will work or not. Right now I leaning that they will. As for the Torilians, remember they are on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth, and unlike Earthlings they don't have space probes all over the place that can see what's on the other side of the Sun, they won't even know to look there. The Earth won't be seen in their sky I think Elminster might know where he is, after all he's a sage and he's been here before. When Elminster was last on Earth, he didn't call attention to himself, so I don't think he would do so now.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Given the change in constellations and observable planets from Toril, I'd wager Torillians would arrive via magical Gates on Earth far sooner than Terrans would land by spaceship on Toril.

The magic surrounding Toril would probably foil technology, and result in failed space missions or crash landings. If that didn't do it, the gods of Toril might just decide to keep interlopers from the other side of the solar system away.

It'd be something of Toril's arrival heralded a meta-event on Earth akin to the dawn of a Shadowrun-type era.

This is a cool thread.

I don't know it to be the case that magic would foil technology, that hasn't been established yet. The Marines don't have a lot of heavy equipment, they did bring rifles and ammo, and they hope not to have to use it, especially upon their first contact with the natives.


I think the Waterhavens, if they see the spaceship descending from the sky, won't be overly impressed, they've seen magic vessels before and will just assume that the rocket is another one, the City Watch will be on guard of course, and some soldiers will come out to see the spaceship once it lands.

 

[Derren]

NASA never needed to send an armed expedition anywhere, because it Astronauts were never expecting to encounter any natives, here would be different. The soldiers are all volunteers of course, and also colonists. But the Space Force didn't want to send people who would end up in a dungeon or on a slave market the moment they step off the ship, so it was deemed necessary to send soldiers who can hold their own in a fight. I haven't yet decided whether their guns will work or not. Right now I leaning that they will. As for the Torilians, remember they are on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth, and unlike Earthlings they don't have space probes all over the place that can see what's on the other side of the Sun, they won't even know to look there. The Earth won't be seen in their sky I think Elminster might know where he is, after all he's a sage and he's been here before. When Elminster was last on Earth, he didn't call attention to himself, so I don't think he would do so now.

Again you are completely ignoring how hard space travel is. You can only send 2-3 people over with very limited equipment, if they survive the flight at all. Why would you waste those precious spaces with marines who would not be able to do anything thanks to being very outnumbered and reliant on very limited equipment?
And before they can even plan a manned mission they need probes. Lots of probes. To confirm the spectral analysis that there is indeed water on the planet, to analyze the atmosphere, to analyze the soil and plant life if it is indeed useable for human consumption, to scout potential landing sides, to keep an eye on the natives, etc. And each probe will likely take a year to build and another year to reach Toril and to perform its duties, maybe more.

 

[Umbran]

Marines? How and why would you be able to send soldiers on a 6-18 month one way trip to Toril?

He stipulated it, so I was going with that.

The why is easy enough to manage - unmanned probes have cameras good enough to see cities the size of Waterdeep - so they know the planet is inhabited. They send soldiers because that's how we think about encountering things.

 

[Umbran]

Again you are completely ignoring how hard space travel is. You can only send 2-3 people over with very limited equipment,

What we "can" accomplish is not a fixed thing.

Consider what happens if another Apollo program happens in light of the discovery, and significant resources are put into the development. We currently spend less than 1% of the US budget on NASA. During the Apollo program, it peaked over 4%. Great things can happen if we put our minds to it and money behind it.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

What we "can" accomplish is not a fixed thing.

Consider what happens if another Apollo program happens in light of the discovery, and significant resources are put into the development. We currently spend less than 1% of the US budget on NASA. During the Apollo program, it peaked over 4%. Great things can happen if we put our minds to it and money behind it.

And anything capable of sending people to Mars, which the BFR is designed to do, could also send people to Toril. And getting off of Toril isn't as hard as you might think, though the US Government wouldn't plan for it, if you attach a Spelljamming Helm to the BFR spaceship, and get a magic using character to pilot it, it can go back into space without a lower stage. You could in fact take that spaceship into orbit with a full tank of fuel, and then you could be on your way back to Earth.


I have an idea for the Captain, his name is Michael Gordon, he is an Air Force pilot who transferred to the Space Force when it was formed. The spaceship was named the Hans Zarkov by Elon Musk, as a sort of reference to Flash Gordon, a sort of in-joke because the Captain's last name is Gordon. The Space Force bought the ship from SpaceX and kept the name. So basically it lands outside of Waterdeep, and there are some agents of other powers, such as Thay that are getting a little alarmed and may try something. I'm using the material in the module Dragon Horde as a source of materials and villains. Any ideas about what they might try, and how it might affect the crew and the ship? Some other powers might get jealous of Waterdeep's dealings with off-worlders, while there is magic, technology still matters, guns and such could alter the balance of power in the region.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

I don't know it to be the case that magic would foil technology, that hasn't been established yet.

The final arbiter is Dungeon Master caveat, of course. Whatever's most fun is what should work.

If we're looking at it from "this is what the Realms is", then yes, you can expect electronics not to function the same, and the deities to either foil or seek to destroy technology they don't want to be present in the Realms (the gods do this sort of thing all the time; there's a reason smokepowder can only do so much and isn't all that reliable).

The Marines don't have a lot of heavy equipment, they did bring rifles and ammo, and they hope not to have to use it, especially upon their first contact with the natives.

I like the concept of US Marines as proto space marines. Might be interesting if they ran into classic D&D monsters (Rust Monsters, perhaps?) on their spaceship.

I think the Waterhavens, if they see the spaceship descending from the sky, won't be overly impressed, they've seen magic vessels before and will just assume that the rocket is another one, the City Watch will be on guard of course, and some soldiers will come out to see the spaceship once it lands.

I take a different view.

Although Waterdeep's defenders do take to the skies to defend the city, magical vessels flying in aren't common. It's very rare for a sky-bound ship to come flying in. By night it's happened (see "The Storm Bird") in Dragon #411, but even this is wrapped up in rumors and half-truths.

There are a lot of things in the Realms that Waterdhavians know about, but have never actually seen. A mighty dragon high in the skies over the city would cause alarm and panic, not, "Oh, it's just another dragon."A spaceship landing within, or just beyond, the city walls would cause a panic too, I figure.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

I think gods aren't the same as laws of nature. The god in question is Gond the wonder bringer, he is the god of technology. he can make technology work or not work. The problem is if the spaceship crosses the boundary at 800,000 miles and all high technology ceases to function then everybody dies, that's not going to work. I would say that the 800,000 mile boundary is where most magic ceases to function, with the exception of a few individuals and goddesses of magic named Mystra. If a high technology spaceship crosses the boundary going the other direction, nothing immediate happens, everything continues to function.

Gond realizes that if he kills all the high technology on an incoming spaceship, he's going to kill everybody onboard, and if they don't die immediately, they are either going to run out of oxygen or they'll burn up in the atmosphere.

Another option is killing the high technology of the spaceship when it enters Toril's atmosphere, and that's no good either, because then the ship either burns up in the upper atmosphere or crashes into the surface, and Gond is not going with that either, as he is not an evil deity.

So the third option he'll exercise is that the technology of the spaceship ceases to function upon contact with the ground, the ship goes dark! But then the ship has already landed, and the hatches and doors of the spaceship open manually, so getting out of the spaceship is not a problem.

Of course there is the problem of unmanned landers going dead upon contact with the ground, this would tip off NASA that this planet has a problem if all of its probes go dead upon contact with the surface, so they don't. The landers and rovers don't go dead immediately upon contact with the ground because Gond doesn't notice them, as those things don't have a soul. Machines are soulless, though they may be intelligent, but as a god, Gond doesn't notice soulless creations unless something with a soul touches them, then their tech ceases to function.


So here is what NASA sees, then send a probe to land on Toril, the probe is a rover, it takes samples and pictures returning data to Earth, if an animal (intelligence 1 or less walks by or touches it, nothing happens, but if a creature with an intelligence score of 2 or greater touches it, the probe ceases to function. So the scientists back on Earth assume the creature destroyed the probe and that is why it ceased to return data. Well it is an active planet, unlike Mars or the Moon for instance, so on the manned mission, they ought to send the Marines with the scientists just to keep them safe from all those dangerous animals and creatures moving about.


So the ship with 100 people onboard lands, and as soon as contact with the ground occurs, the ship goes dark. Mission control loses contact with the ship, and assumes a mishap occured such as the ship exploding, and reasons that everybody is lost. This has the effect of discouraging further missions to the planet, and those 20 scientists and 80 Marines are on their own, their guns don't work, and their radios don't work, they can't contact Earth, so they are on their own, there is no rescue coming. The Marines are fighters however, they know how to fight with their combat knives, that know unarmed combat as part of their training, they can navigate by the stars, and they have star charts and maps better than any native of Toril. Purely mechanical devices work, a mechanical wrist watch works for instance. One can tell the time with a telescope, and the Marines and scientists have one. There is a clock called "Jupiter" all one has to do is look at the planet Jupiter through a telescope, and look at the positions of Jupiter's moons, examine a printed chart and they know what time it is, and then they can measure the altitude of the Sun, and they know what longitude they are at, and by measuring the altitude of the star Polaris, they know what Latitude they are at, then they can look at their satellite maps and they can place their position on the World's surface by looking at those, all without electronics, or GPS, as Toril's north pole points at Polaris just as Earth's does. (This fact does mean however that when its winter in Earth's Northern Hemisphere it is Summer in Toril's and so on.