Spotlight: Epona
Sep. 26th, 2010 02:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Spotlights will be an irregular feature on this comm. They will look at examples of world-building, inspiration from real life, and more.
Epona
"The third stone from Taranis, within the star's life-bearing zone, Epona was born with an unusual obstacle for the successful evolution of life. The planet is locked into a deep ice age from which it is released by geologic activity for only 10 million years every 100 million years or so. You have arrived towards the end of the eighteenth warming cycle to find that a wide variety of life forms have exploded into ecological niches carved out in the wake of the freeze. But the ice cycle will return!
Epona is more than a game. It is a challenge that will give you a new perspective of life on Earth. It is an environment that has been carefully crafted to observe known physical laws and arrive at a truly believable alien in a consistent extraterrestrial context. Several stories have already been written using Epona as its environment. On this site, we hope to reveal one way in which a thoughtful alien world has been designed. We hope you will enjoy the experience!"
In the early to mid 90s, a group of men and women at the CONTACT convention decided to collectively build a world. They began with the stars and worked their way up to lifeforms. This website takes you through each 'Act' of the world's creation and explains why the creators made the decisions they did. While the development and thought that went into Epona may be more scientific than some world-builders want or think necessary, the explanations and, in places, discussions are what make this world so fascinating and the website so useful.
(Another benefit of this website and Epona is the development of a podcast series focusing on world-building. The latest podcast came out 7/4/2010.)
Epona
"The third stone from Taranis, within the star's life-bearing zone, Epona was born with an unusual obstacle for the successful evolution of life. The planet is locked into a deep ice age from which it is released by geologic activity for only 10 million years every 100 million years or so. You have arrived towards the end of the eighteenth warming cycle to find that a wide variety of life forms have exploded into ecological niches carved out in the wake of the freeze. But the ice cycle will return!
Epona is more than a game. It is a challenge that will give you a new perspective of life on Earth. It is an environment that has been carefully crafted to observe known physical laws and arrive at a truly believable alien in a consistent extraterrestrial context. Several stories have already been written using Epona as its environment. On this site, we hope to reveal one way in which a thoughtful alien world has been designed. We hope you will enjoy the experience!"
In the early to mid 90s, a group of men and women at the CONTACT convention decided to collectively build a world. They began with the stars and worked their way up to lifeforms. This website takes you through each 'Act' of the world's creation and explains why the creators made the decisions they did. While the development and thought that went into Epona may be more scientific than some world-builders want or think necessary, the explanations and, in places, discussions are what make this world so fascinating and the website so useful.
(Another benefit of this website and Epona is the development of a podcast series focusing on world-building. The latest podcast came out 7/4/2010.)