Hello all, another in my series of noobie questions. Does it rain in zalanthas? This is probably something that I should find out ICly, but I have never seen it happen since I began playing arm, and I live in an area of the known that has some vegetation that would require at least occasional rainfall. Or that may be a false assumption. or maybe it has been raining, and I never noticed because I dont type weather very often.
To my knowledge it never rains, except for once in recent history which caused a whole lot of badness.
As to the vegitation chalk it up to underground lakes and such. Its what i do.
Quote from: 650Booger on June 13, 2016, 09:42:12 PM
Hello all, another in my series of noobie questions. Does it rain in zalanthas? This is probably something that I should find out ICly, but I have never seen it happen since I began playing arm, and I live in an area of the known that has some vegetation that would require at least occasional rainfall. Or that may be a false assumption. or maybe it has been raining, and I never noticed because I dont type weather very often.
If you see the 'Chronology' page of the Armageddon website, rain did fell once.
But the general atmosphere of the game world is described as a desert-like setting where water is scarce. Maybe there is a water source where you are located at, or maybe the vegatation is used to surviving without rainfall (or a mixture of both).
Quote from: 650Booger on June 13, 2016, 09:42:12 PM
Hello all, another in my series of noobie questions. Does it rain in zalanthas? This is probably something that I should find out ICly, but I have never seen it happen since I began playing arm, and I live in an area of the known that has some vegetation that would require at least occasional rainfall. Or that may be a false assumption. or maybe it has been raining, and I never noticed because I dont type weather very often.
No rain outside of very rare occurrences as was mentioned above. The idea of vegetation without water is just one of those things you have to accept in Arm, assuming they get it some other way. It can be distracting if you dwell on it, so I'd advise just going with the flow and ignoring some of the things that would make no sense in the real world.
Think of Zalanthas as a huge chia ball filled with water. The moisture comes up from inside to keep some things growing, and it gets sucked right back into the ball instead of dissipating into the atmosphere.
Rain isn't a typical Zalanthan event.
Most of the vegetation in the game exists farther north, which makes sense because Reasons. I imagine the vegetation in the south is either regularly irrigated (which should lead to civilization collapse through salinization, eventually, but magick or something maybe) or really hearty desert plants. A lot of varieties of not and dry-type desert plants can suck moisture right out of the air, have very long roots to reach down to the water table, or both, and this is probably what most grassy-type plants in Zalanthas do.
It would have to be an ecological loop. You can't have a water table without rain to replenish it.
Plants that take moisture from the air, utilize it, and then transpire it back into the air is a workable idea but nowhere on the scale of an agafari or baobab tree. Desert plants are designed to seize the rare moisture from rainfalls and then hoard it ... they aren't designed to make do in a situation without rainfall at all.
Do you have a tomato plant in your garden? Beneath that tomato plant is approximately 1 mile of root system with roots reaching down up to four feet. It can transpire up to 34 gallons of water in a single season.
Contrast that to a maple tree which is transpiring 59 gallons of water PER HOUR. For a forest as dense as the Grey Forest is supposed to be, that's about 41,300 gallons of water every hour (per acre) transpired out into the air. It could theoretically then provide moisture in the air that would service grassland plants nearby but not forever.
So there has to be a suspension of disbelief for the ecology of this setting to work. Unless you just say "magic" and leave it at that.
Quote from: Miradus on June 14, 2016, 10:42:09 AM[snip]
So there has to be a suspension of disbelief for the ecology of this setting to work. Unless you just say "magic" and leave it at that.
Try combining the two:
suspension of belief for the ecology of this setting to work, PLUS magic.
Basically - this is a fantasy game. Try not to overthink the "reality" of things.
I'm a fiction writer. I can't turn that part of the brain off. :)
Best I can do is suppress my inner OCD (sometimes outer OCD) long enough to have a good time.
The Flora of Zalanthas does not get its nutrition from water. But rather blood, and the suffering in the air.
To test that theory, walk down Vivadu lane in Allanak and count the plants growing, then compare that to the number of plants growing outside of the dungeon or in the Rinth.
For all we know, silt sucks the moisture out of the air, getc heavy, sinks to the bottom of the silt sea, where the pressure returns the water out into the water table and allows the fresh-squeezed silt to rise again, thus returning the water to its underground sources where springs return it to select surface sources without the need for anything as inefficient as water peppering the dirt after a miles-long fall.
I think you can find plausible explanations without handwavium that don't involve rain. I don't think rain is "necessary" just because it's how things work for our hydrologic cycle works on our water-rich planet.
There is rain, and a water table, and oceans!
Just not in the ;Known World', lol. These things exist far, far, far, far to the North, where the lizards begin to dwarf the saltworms. (totally joking) Also, there are roving bands of magickers that water plants in order to feel good about being a krath-damned abomination. They water the plants, so rain doesn't have too.
Also, all plants flourish more from blood, as it was pointed out above. Blood is how we all thrive, now. There are many, many explanations for things that may or may not make sense. What if, in fact, it /could/ rain, and /should/ rain, if it weren't for defilers literally stealing the clouds from the sky before they even have a chance to form? All that moisture is returned to the ground when a defiler is killed. That's why they're all dragged to the Templar's quarters when before they're executed, so their precious fluids can feed the gardens that keep our most elite happy.
All joking aside, I would like to see a thread dedicated to figuring out stuff like this in a semi-serious fashion.
There isn't an answer to questions like this, most of the time.
In Dank sun it rained like, once every 1-10 years and those days were pretty nice. But this isn't Dunk sun
Quote from: Raptor_Dan on June 25, 2016, 04:50:07 AM
All joking aside, I would like to see a thread dedicated to figuring out stuff like this in a semi-serious fashion.
Zalanthian Science Thread.