Skill speculation

[MeTekillot]

Cooking being difficult and Zalanthas having giant bugs means that high oxygen content makes fire more unpredictable. The science is unassailable.

[Eyeball]

Which raises a question: where is all the oxygen coming from?

It's not like the Known has that much plant life, or a large body of water with plankton.

There must be an ocean out there somewhere beyond the Known.

I like the idea that Zalanthas is a planet with a huge axial tilt and an orbit that takes thousands of years. It explains why the day is so much longer than the night, yet that never changes. It explains where all the water went (froze out at the sunless pole). Eventually, when Zalanthas moves far enough in its orbit, there will be a great rush of melting water and a wet period, then the water starts freezing out at the opposite pole and things go dry again. Most of the oxygen is generated only periodically.

[Miradus]

Or IS enough oxygen being produced?

Ok, this is totally non-canon but I'm going to throw it out there ...

Zalanthas is a post-apocalyptic landscape. Sorcerers devastated the world, breaking the ecosystem and sending the planet into a downward spiral. Soil fertility, oxygen production, etc. are all on the decline. EVENTUALLY the planet will no longer sustain human life, or maybe not even life at all. By that time the sorcerers may have transformed into demilich form (or whatever they're plotting) and couldn't care less about having a functional planet. Or maybe they're just so short-sighted and power hungry that they can't see past immediate power versus sustainable power.

[Dar]

The giant silt leviathans inner digestive "factory," with its enormous concentrations of aldehydes and acids, is a giant source of oxygen. A medium specimen discharges into the atmosphere as much oxygen as ten square kilometers of green-growing photosynthesis surface.


Points to whomever guesses where I stole this from.

[sleepyhead]

I don't even think of Zalanthas as a planet in the modern scientific sense. I kind of think of it as having something closer to a very ancient conception of cosmology. I think I might be totally alone in that. I don't think about it having chemicals like oxygen, either. After all, this is a world in which the classical elements ARE in some way fundamental. For all I know Zalanthas sits on the back of a giant bahamet. I don't try to make it fit into our modern scientific reality because that just makes me focus on inconsistencies.

[Rat]

It is thesable that the life evolved for low  oxygen. 

[Grogerif]

The science of Zalanthas is Will.  Things happen because somebody or something willed it so.  The elements have their own will, as do animals and subhumans.  Things fall not because of gravity, but because Whira's will is stronger then the objects.  The silt sea has a stronger will then Whira, so there is no air in the silt. 

[boog]

 

Y'all are crazy.

[LucildaHunta]

Zalanthas exists on a diff plane of realty. All rulez n lawz do not apply, that's y giant bugs n such nihilistic pessimism n ppl. Letz call it the pessimistic pln. The rsn u can't cook iz cause if you fail at cookn a piece of meet, how can u fix the world. Gd food makes evry1 happy itz the pessimism plane remember? Can't have ppl being happy cause food. Itz one of the lawz of the plane.

Dzeda-One of teh council of kingz ppl

[nauta]

So hear me out on this... it's a bit heterodox, but in my view Zalanthas is just a computer simulation designed by humans from another world entirely (Earth), and Zalanthans are just living in that simulation.  I've seen signs of the matrix on my characters --- the occasional glimpse of a constellation that is outside my character, failure to contact my partner via the Way except during certain VERY peculiar days.  It has even seeped into how we talk: we talk of seeing someone 'next week' when really when mean 24 hours later on this other earth, and not an actual week, although its rough enough that only those who NOTICE will notice.  But my ultimate proof: the inch.

[Miradus]

So hear me out on this... it's a bit heterodox, but in my view Zalanthas is just a computer simulation designed by humans from another world entirely (Earth), and Zalanthans are just living in that simulation.  I've seen signs of the matrix on my characters --- the occasional glimpse of a constellation that is outside my character, failure to contact my partner via the Way except during certain VERY peculiar days.  It has even seeped into how we talk: we talk of seeing someone 'next week' when really when mean 24 hours later on this other earth, and not an actual week, although its rough enough that only those who NOTICE will notice.  But my ultimate proof: the inch.

Shit. That would explain EVERYTHING.

[chrisdcoulombe]

slow clap