World Building Help - Finding the Lost Continent

[Tonguez]

The Auld Grump, considering how long it took for Australia to be discovered there is always the possibility that they never found it to begin with...

What you mean 25000 years ago? There have been humans living in Australia since the last ice age when they were able to walk to it from Asia.

Actually glaciers might be a reason why the continent was lost - it was locked in ice with only a very few pockets of livable land left, now the glaciers are receeding to reveal the ruins of an ancient and highly advanced civilisation

 

[Wystan]

A powerful spell gone awry put it into a bubble of alternate time. It advanced at 1 year every 10 to 100. Now the spell is wearing off and it has come back out into the main plane. However to the people on the island only 1/10 to 1/100 of the time has passed. They might know lost magics and such, or races that have become extinct. Good way to introduce variant core classes and varian races.

 

[der_kluge]

My last campaign was a "lost continent" game. It was crawling with Slaad who were gathering fragments of a shattered artifact (a fist-sized gem) and pieces of a fallen god, which were scattered during a god conflict millenia ago, before the ice age.

Uh.. yea.

Anyway, the world was gripped in an ice age for thousands of years, and in my world, the people were only just beginning to go out and reexplore the lands that were lost to them. So, the idea was to explore the lost continent. After a white dragon came and sunk their ship, they then found themselves stranded there, and quickly got caught up on all the events that were taking place.

Alas, I moved, and we never finished it.

 

[der_kluge]

BTW, that game was a story hour.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=68379

 

[WayneLigon]

There could be a band where lots of powerful storms are generated. That should take care of any airships. Storms at sea can spring up within minutes and be on you faster than you'd ever beleive. Some you can outrun, and if that direction is always towards the known land, eventually airsailors will stick within sight of land.

Always remember: just because someone can do something rarely means they will do it. We had ships capable of oceanic travel long before we thought we did, but people seldom bothered. It was expensive both in lives and materials. If the last two ships that tried to reach across The Great Dark Sea were lost with all hands, it's going to be damn hard to find crew for a third. There might well be mutiny if the captain decides to change plans mid-course as well.

There might well be phenomenon that the sailors know nothing about. Maybe there is a type of flying swordfish that, when it sees the airship drop low towards the water as it's very likely to do, thinks it's prey and attacks it. BOOM goes airship. Yum go the sharks.

We just found out that the 100' ship-destoying waves that sailors claimed existed not only really do exist, but are a heck of a lot more common than we ever thought. We've had space photography and all this other tech and we only just now found this out. Surely there are other natural phenomenon in a magical world that are just as devestating.

If you want them to find out about the lost continent, try this: after a great week-long storm, several clumps of junk are washed up on shore. The local fishermen just ignore it and toss it away but your scholar might notice that the plant samples are like nothing else know, period. There might be a corpse of some strange, but natural, animal.

He could come across a rutter (pilot's journal) from a long-dead pilot who claimed to discover this 'unknown green land' across the Great Dark Sea but was dismissed as a madman when he could not get back there. What he ddidn't know is that he managed to get caught in a current that only occurs under specific conditions that swept him to the other land. Based on the rutter and the information on the storm, the scholar manages to put two and two together and discover the narrow time frame they have.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

What you mean 25000 years ago? There have been humans living in Australia since the last ice age when they were able to walk to it from Asia.

Slight off topic to clear up something...

I believe this is a common misperception. With lowered oceans, humans could walk from southeast Asia to Java or Sumatra, and from Australia to New Guinea, but the oceans have never lowered enough to walk from New Guinea to Java, (Asia to Australia). Look at an ocean topography map and see how deep it is between there in the middle of Indonesia. Thousands of feet deep. This link shows what I'm talking about.

The Land Bridge to Australia couldn't be, the oceans never dropped that low.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

If you want to really generate ideas about why this continent is "lost" you should go way back and identify why it was the target of the great cataclysm you mentioned.

A good point. A cataclysm in itself can be enough. Say, some divine (extraplanar, arcane, ...) curse landed on the continent that was extremely contagious and for a duration maybe even deadly. The other continent could have simply decided to cut contact to prevent the disease from spreading. Maybe even an armada from the untouched continent went to the afflicted continent and sunk even ship they could and shattered every port before going home.

Thousands of years pass who know what is remembered. Maybe there is now a myth of an empire of old having to battle a malicious, malformed, horde that struck from the sea. So, there could be a mis-remembered myth with a kernel of truth...

An idea could come from Red Steel/ Savage Coast, where the land is bathed in a very thin haze (doesn't affect any vision, beyond magic detection) where people can enter the land easily, becomes afflicted by the curse, and can't leave without extreme pain and discomfort. Maybe the cataclysm curses the natives of the continent with some bad effect if they leave (extra-planar wise, or simply sailing across the sea).

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

How about one busy day, the god got distracted and the continent fell behind the gods desk at work and stayed there for the longest time. And the god only found it now because he was rearranging the furniture in his office.

 

[Tinner]

I've always been partial to a runaway comet passing between the earth and the moon unleashing cosmic destruction.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Old orcish insult: "Yo mama so fat, she fell and destroyed the Southern Continent!"