Toril as a Counter-Earth

[Derren]

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.

The Mars is much more easy to reach when you wait for a good launch window, so no, just because something can reach Mars doesn't mean it would be able to reach Toril. And landing outside of a population centre would be monumentally stupid. You can't account for the reaction of the native, something might go wrong and you destroy the city and it is not even clear if the astronauts would be fit to actually interact with the natives in any way instead of needing to be hospitalized from the intense solar radiation.

Look, if you want a space opera then simply say so in the premise instead of asking what would happen if Toril appeared in the real world and then ignore all real world ramification because you want space fantasy.

 

[Thomas Kalbfus]

So I guess you an on/off person.
Space radiation is a solvable problem! It is not conceivable that they would send people without solving that problem. You can add shielding to the ship's hull. If the bff can be reused to get fuel, it can also get shielding, it might also make sense to send a cargo ship along with one to carry passengers, and use the cargo ship as a counterbalance to the passenger SHIP by tethering them together and spinning them for gravity. If you have 2 miles of tether and spin both once a minute, you simulate 1g.
There are ways to solve these problems. So basically this is an intersection between science and fantasy. Some people can't conceive of science fantasy without dumbing down the science, hello Starfinder, hello Star Wars!
Actually fantasy fits in nicely with hard science fiction, if you assume both are simulated on a computer. The Earth we're talking about here, isn't real Earth, but a simulated facsimile thereof, the people living in the simulation don't realize that however. Toril was never real, although it's inhabitants believe themselves to be. A software glitch could merge these two simulations together, the part outside the 800,000 mile limit continues to faithfully simulate real world physics, so that physics must be dealt with in order to make the trip. Elminster on the other hand can simply hack into the software and teleport himself to Earth with a spell.

 

[Umbran]

So I guess you an on/off person.

No. I think he's a person that sees you as moving the goalposts. You asked a specific question, that implied an Earth of *TODAY*, with current technology.

Space radiation is a solvable problem! It is not conceivable that they would send people without solving that problem. You can add shielding to the ship's hull. If the bff can be reused to get fuel, it can also get shielding, it might also make sense to send a cargo ship along with one to carry passengers, and use the cargo ship as a counterbalance to the passenger SHIP by tethering them together and spinning them for gravity. If you have 2 miles of tether and spin both once a minute, you simulate 1g.

There are some things you can get past by throwing money at it, and some things you can't. Send cargo? Sure, that's just a matter of money. Come up with a couple miles of cable strong enough to do the job, but light enough to get off the ground? That's a materials science question, not a money question. Shielding? All current solutions to that problem are *heavy* - anything you want to go has to be boosted up from Earth, and that starts to get limiting, even if you have near-infinite money.

There are ways to solve these problems.

Some of them are outside the parameters of the OP, as stated. If you want to posit what happens if Toril shows up in 2118, rather than 2018, you get different answers to the question. If, every time there is a technical issue, you deny that it is an issue, your science is not particularly hard.

So basically this is an intersection between science and fantasy. Some people can't conceive of science fantasy without dumbing down the science, hello Starfinder, hello Star Wars!

That is so incredibly aside the point. Star Wars never really was science fiction - it is more properly termed "Space Opera".

He's the one who is trying to hold to current science, not dumb it down. In just positing, "we can solve it!" without considering exactly how far you are fast-forwarding the technical timeline, you are the one being softer with technical details!

Actually fantasy fits in nicely with hard science fiction, if you assume both are simulated on a computer.

Fantasy fists nicely with hard science fiction... if you are allowed to change the science! :/

The Earth we're talking about here, isn't real Earth

The goalposts are now no longer on the playing field - they seem to be out in the parking lot. Toril is not showing up here and now - it is showing up in a simulation that has Earth at an unspecified tech level, in which we will set up whatever technical solutions we need to fit the preconceived notion of the end state.

Sure, you can do that. Authors do that all the time. Nothing wrong with it. But it is far outside the parameters you set in the OP! The result is a sort of bait-and-switch. Don't be surprised when folks don't agree with you when you do that. It comes across as discussing in bad faith.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

The Mars is much more easy to reach when you wait for a good launch window, so no, just because something can reach Mars doesn't mean it would be able to reach Toril. And landing outside of a population centre would be monumentally stupid. You can't account for the reaction of the native, something might go wrong and you destroy the city and it is not even clear if the astronauts would be fit to actually interact with the natives in any way instead of needing to be hospitalized from the intense solar radiation.

Look, if you want a space opera then simply say so in the premise instead of asking what would happen if Toril appeared in the real world and then ignore all real world ramification because you want space fantasy.

Perhaps landing right outside the population center wouldn't be wise, might panic the population that is not used to seeing large flying objects. I do think Waterdeep has seen a few dragons in its time however, there is a resident Gold Dragon within the walls of Waterdeep after all. The Earth people might think that landing a spaceship right outside the walls of a Medieval City might be imprudent. So what would plan B be?

Would it be better to land the spaceship in the middle of nowhere?


Here is a map of the surrounding territory. There appears to be a forest at the northern end of this map. Problem is, if the ship lands anywhere here on a clear day it would be seen.

Here is a larger area map:

There are a few spots here There is the Ardeep forest, however forests might not be an ideal spot to land a spaceship, as it might set fire to the forest.
Any suggestions for a landing site?

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Actually there is some uncleared area on the southern end of this map. The ship could land near the banks of that river.

This is the ship that would have to land, I think that at half a football field high, it would be hard to hide even in the forest, the trees are not that high!

Okay, so they land this ship in a clearing in the forest near the river, during a rain storm with thunder and lightning to help conceal their approach, then a few men and women with a marine guard descend to the bottom and make their way towards Waterdeep along the river. I think chances are someone will see them, rocket engines are very noisy, and they do not sound like thunder. The guards at the gate of the city will know something is coming.

So the Marines and crewmen don some medieval garb from their props department, they have a historical expert that has studied the medieval period and they will know exactly what sort of clothes to wear so the Earthmen and women will blend right in!

So they wear something like this, and nobody will know they are strangers from another planet.

 

[Thomas Kalbfus]

How do you mix fantasy with science fiction? One way is to dumb down the science to a point where it doesn't matter anymore, and you end up with giant space slugs living in asteroids and snacking on starship. Another approach is to make the fantasy into science fiction, one of the best ways to do that is to make the whole thing into a computer simulation. This is known as the simulation hypothesis. We don`t know what computer it's running on, As we're part of the simulation, this maybe true of us right now in the supposed real world. It would explain the Fermi paradox for instance, why we haven't discovered any extraterrestrial civilizations. (They are running on different simulations from us, and therefore cannot interact with us until the programmers want them to.
The same could be said of Toril, it is another world with humans on it and other intelligent creatures, running under a different set of rules, and then one day the programmer decides that it is time to allow the Torilians to interact with the Earthlings, so he rewrites both programs so both planets exist within the same simulation. You can call the "programmer" Ao if you like. Ao is just a nerdy programmer who likes to play God with his simulations.
I did not mean to move the goalposts so to speak, if I did, then I'm sorry for the confusion.
How does one reveal that the Universe in a setting is actually a simulation? I think in the first instance you can do what they did in the Matrix and act like what is in the simulation is real, and then you reveal it not to be. A computer can simulate Earth with all of its hard science and Toril with its fantasy and magic equally well.

 

[Eltab]

This is the ship that would have to land, I think that at half a football field high, it would be hard to hide even in the forest, the trees are not that high!

You have got to be kidding. You want to put a flaming-exhaust-spouting rocket down in a forest? Why not scout out a beach or otherwise empty-looking field?

P.S. If I am the mission planner, the first heavy-lift rocket is full of Mars Observer ground vehicles. I want to find out what my people will be getting in to.

 

[Umbran]

How does one reveal that the Universe in a setting is actually a simulation? I think in the first instance you can do what they did in the Matrix and act like what is in the simulation is real, and then you reveal it not to be.

Except, of course, you can't. In The Matrix, the trick is managed by way of having the people have existence *outside* the simulation, and so in part not subject to the simulation's rules. If, however, you are a fully simulated being yourself, you are 100% beholden to the rules of the simulation. How could you then generate an event that isn't part of the simulation, to show that something else exists?

The Simulation Hypothesis is what we call "non-falsifiable". There is no experiment that, even in theory, could possibly refute the statement, "The universe is a simulation." For any evidence you have that we are not in an simulation, there is the answer, "But that evidence is itself simulated."

Non-falsifiable statements are outside the realm of science.

 

[Derren]

No, just no.
If a landing is attempted it would be far away in the middle of nowhere. Probably in a desert as to avoid any damage and to stay of the radar of the natives, especially as after a 6 month trip and a close sun flyby the crew would not even be able to function normally groundside.

But I don't think that will even happen. As soon as it is discovered that there is life down there, especially when they see that it resembles human life all plans of a landing, even a unmanned one will come to a stop as the UN will debate the ethics of landing on a populated planet which always carries the risks of polluting the planet and repeating the mass depopulation of America by pox (assuming people will even consider the possibility that the 'humans' of this planet are somehow genetically similar to us. Just because they look like us it doesn't mean they are).
And without groundside probes there can be no manned landing as they have to gather vital information about what you need to bring.
So for the near future the only thing which will happen is to place observation sattelites around the planet and maybe a relay sattelite around the sun if required while politicans debate and scientists try to figure out where the planet came from and how can it be that life there resembles our fantasy novels while the churches will go nuts. All that assuming that this information will even be made public. The list of entities able to discover this planet is rather small.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

No, just no.
If a landing is attempted it would be far away in the middle of nowhere. Probably in a desert as to avoid any damage and to stay of the radar of the natives, especially as after a 6 month trip and a close sun flyby the crew would not even be able to function normally groundside.

But I don't think that will even happen. As soon as it is discovered that there is life down there, especially when they see that it resembles human life all plans of a landing, even a unmanned one will come to a stop as the UN will debate the ethics of landing on a populated planet which always carries the risks of polluting the planet and repeating the mass depopulation of America by pox (assuming people will even consider the possibility that the 'humans' of this planet are somehow genetically similar to us. Just because they look like us it doesn't mean they are).
And without groundside probes there can be no manned landing as they have to gather vital information about what you need to bring.
So for the near future the only thing which will happen is to place observation sattelites around the planet and maybe a relay sattelite around the sun if required while politicans debate and scientists try to figure out where the planet came from and how can it be that life there resembles our fantasy novels while the churches will go nuts. All that assuming that this information will even be made public. The list of entities able to discover this planet is rather small.

Someone who can make planets appear out of nowhere is not going to be worried about Earthborn diseases. Anyway the natives of Toril are more likely to give the spaceship crew diseases than the other way around, since the crew won't be returning to Earth, the chances of it spreading to Earth's population will be deemed nil. Any way the spell cure disease will cure anything the Astronauts might be giving the natives. Middle ages, horses livestock, people keeping farm animals in their homes, I'd say that environment is more likely to spawn diseases than anything in modern America.