Is Zalahantas Globe or Flat?

[Carnage]

I think a Zalanthan hour is just 60 minutes. Same as a standard earth hour. It'd be confusing to make it some odd time and would basically throw off every other discussion.

If 9 hours = a Zalanthan day, then it takes 9 hours for the planet to fully rotate. This says nothing about the size of the planet, just that it has a quick rotation speed. For comparison, it takes Jupiter, the largest planet, nearly 10 hours to rotate.

Edit: Where does it say that a Earth year = Zalanthan year?

[Gorobei]

Edit: Where does it say that a Earth year = Zalanthan year?

It doesn't, but as AC said, an 18 year old human is in the same stage of development on Earth and Zalanthas.  Of course, Zalanthan humans could develop at a different rate.

I believe that Zalanthas is smaller than Earth.  I think that gravity must be lower on Zalanthas.  How else could giant insects survive?

Well, if Zalanthas were to be the same size, and the spin was quicker like someone mentioned was possible, I think the centripital (sp?) force would somewhat counteract the effect of gravity, making it seem lesser.

[Lazloth]

Astute. Calculate the magnitude of the centrifugal force due to our curved path as Earth turns and compare that to the force of gravity at Earth's surface.

Take the radius of Earth to be 6.37 million meters, the circumference is 2*pi*6.37e6 or 40 million meters. We cover that distance in 24 hours as Earth turns so the tangential speed (Vt) of a person on Earth's surface is 4e7/(24*3600) meters per second. This comes out to be 463 meters per second.

Centrifugal force Fc is given by Fc=m*Vt^2/R where m is the mass of the object at Earth's surface and R is the radius of Earth. In our case lets take the mass of a person to be 100kg so Fc=100*463^2/6.37e6. That is Fc=3.365 Newtons.

The force of gravity on this 100kg person is his mass times the acceleration of gravity at Earth's surface. That is 9.8*100 or 980 Newtons. Centrifugal force then reduces the force holding the person to Earth's surface by about 0.34%.

You are correct in theory that centrifugal force marginally reduces the effect of gravity.

[Xanous]

I believe that Zalanthas is smaller than Earth. I think that gravity must be lower on Zalanthas. How else could giant insects survive?

It's either that or the people of Zalanthas are really, really tiny.  

Either way, it's the only way to explain things.  Insects can only get to the size of a dinner plate - and even those are very sluggish compared to ants and flies.  It's very hard to imagine being eaten by elephant sized centipede like a Gaj, or even a man-sized beetle.  They'd be crushed by their own weight.

It's also possible to survive falls off the shield wall, while a normal human on earth couldn't survive a fall off a 2 story building.  You can see 60 stone humans wield 15 stone bone greatswords (that's a 120 lb person wielding a 30 lb weapon).

[Bestatte]

>Bestatte hurls.

[Drayab]

I would have to go with globe, simply because if I was going to try to build a world that seems realistic and coherant, I would build one that is similar to the world I am used to. Deviate from that, and you always have to think about how something would look in the world you're building and question what you know from your real life experiences.

For example, on a flat world, what would you see very far in the distance on a flat plain? Would you see the edge of the world? A wall of mountains? Haze? In our world the distance we can see is limited by the horizion. There would certainly be a limit to how far you can see in a flat world, but what determines that distance would be different in some circumstances than in the real world.

And what about gravity? We can thank the spherical shape of the Earth for giving us a (nearly) uniform gravitational field that points DOWN. If the world was flat, we wouldn't have that. Standing near the edge, you would feel gravity pulling you down and to the side! Near the center of the world you would feel much less gravity than elsewhere. If the world wasn't very thick, you might not feel much gravity at all! Then you start wondering how such a strange world was formed in the first place if indeed gravity was the culprit.

Of course, you could always just ignore all that scientific stuff and do as you like. But I like to think that my physical concepts that I am familiar with from everyday life will, for the most part, hold on Zalanthas. So, I pick the sphere.

[House Rising Sun]

Zalanthas is as flat as my cousin's head.

We're assuming that stars in the game sky are other suns, that the horizon is due to a curve in the planet, and the sun rises and falls because the world turns just like ours. However, keep in mind that magick does not exist, half-giants are in fact figments of our imaginations, and our rulers aren't quite as immortal as Tek and his pen-pal Muk Utep.

From a logical perspective, there's nothing in the game world telling its inhabitants that there's more than a flat chunk of rock with some fancy crap overhead. In fact, the presence of magickal elements only reinforces the belief that the whole known world is being serviced by the heavens. Krath fights off the darkness, whira cools their backs, and so on.

But from the fantasy world angle, remember that physics doesn't exactly apply. That's the nature of a fictional setting. Like when Baron Munchausen sailed to the moon. That was cool. Different type of fantasy, but the same rule applies. So until someone leaves the known world from the east and arrives in the west, or plants a flag on lirathu in the name of Tektolnes, or... something... I think it's best to let perception dictate reality. That's all there is.

By the way, I still firmly believe Earth is flat. Keep that in mind also.