Semi-sensible thousand-year plans?

[MarkB]

That’s true but I was thinking of the bottle dropped somewhere in the Pacific abyss. I haven’t bothered doing any math, but my visualization of the Cosmic All suggests that the flow wouldn’t produce anything especially noticeable at the surface, that any significant halocline or thermocline would smear it around, as would currents between sea floor and surface. But my sense of scale could be hideously wrong.

The water from the Decanter gushes out as though from a high-pressure hose, but what if it's sunk so deep that the external water pressure is even greater? Would that effectively stopper the bottle?

 

[Autumnal]

I figured it’d be more fun to assume not.

 

[Quartz]

It makes no sense to plan to build a great tower over a thousand years, when in only 100, a horde or dragon or something is going to come along and bust that plan so smithers.

Lorgalis is a BBEG. Even the dragonlords fear him. Arguably only Shrek and Ondoval are more powerful.

 

[Quartz]

It started out as an online joke but you could do it as a real plot: Open a decantur of endless water under an ocean and have it slowly flood the world over a few thousand years.

Isn't a Decanter of Endless Sand (or similar) the source of one of the deserts in the Forgotten Realms?

 

[Cergorach]

An 18 year old might 'plan' for retirement, but that's not a detailed plan for the next ~50 years. To many unknowns for a detailed plan over that much time.

Maybe a very long lived individual with high intelligence and a LOT of resources (information) can make detailed plans for a 100 years, like we plan for the next 10. But thousand year plans can't be that detailed. Maybe build a large country, erase species/culture, raise a new continent, colonize the moon, etc.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If your species is NOT naturally long lived, you might want to plan on the inevitable forced move to avoid lynching.

“Run, rabbit run
Dig that hole, forget the sun
And when at last the work is done
Don’t sit down, it’s time to dig another one.”

 

[Umbran]

Lorgalis is a BBEG. Even the dragonlords fear him. Arguably only Shrek and Ondoval are more powerful.

If he is that powerful, like unto a god, why does he have to wait a thousand years for anything?

No plan survives contact with reality. A thousand years is a long time to survive such contact. Stuff happens. Volcanoes explode. Earthquakes occur. Tarrasques wander through. Or... adventurers wander through. The world does not sit still for a thousand years for that plan to complete. Entropy is more powerful than any BBEG.

And, like, how are the PCs expected to deal with this crumbum if nobody in a thousand years has so much as nixed one of their plans? Asking a bit much, in terms of credulity, if you ask me.

 

[Bohandas]

*Creating a new kind of animal through selective breeding

*Exhaustively reading ALL subject matter available on a given subject

*Becoming a millionaire purely through hard work and saving

 

[Dioltach]

A nap sounds pretty good.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

If he is that powerful, like unto a god, why does he have to wait a thousand years for anything?

No plan survives contact with reality. A thousand years is a long time to survive such contact. Stuff happens. Volcanoes explode. Earthquakes occur. Tarrasques wander through. Or... adventurers wander through. The world does not sit still for a thousand years for that plan to complete. Entropy is more powerful than any BBEG.

And, like, how are the PCs expected to deal with this crumbum if nobody in a thousand years has so much as nixed one of their plans? Asking a bit much, in terms of credulity, if you ask me.

I love that the implication here is that adventurers are more destructive than the Tarrasque, earthquakes, etc.

*Becoming a millionaire purely through hard work and saving

It would take more than a thousand years.