Question of the Week

[ailelie]

Trying the weekly break down this month. If it doesn't work, we'll go back to the previous format for December.

(1) Where are your ecosystems (Note: Climate and terrain will often define these)? What kinds of plants and animals are typical for those zones? Are there any isolated areas that might be sheltering unique and/or prehistoric creatures and plants? (Note: These questions still hold if your ecosystem is a space station with 'artificial' and 'greenhouse' climates.)


The point of this question is to get idea of what is and is not typical for the world you've created so far. If you don't want to make just a list, consider making a clip-book using Evernote, OneNote, or similar. Or, don't worry about anything written yet and just be ready for question #2 next week.

The idea is to get a feel for what does and does not work within a certain climate/terrain. Also, to understand the boundaries for your creatures and plants. That way you'll know if two people may share knowledge of some species or if it'd be foreign to one of them.

Comments

[lea_hazel]

So far I've been working on two different biomes set on opposite sides of a continent. At a certain point I'll have to define something for a few points in between, but one thing at a time.

The start point is set in the foothills of a range of mountains, it's an urban environment and it's land-locked. That's all I know for certain. I have no set myself on the climate specifics yet, because of story-related concerns, but I am looking at different mountainous areas in the world, for comparison. While land-locked, I don't think this area is deep in the continent, so I will probably not give it a polarized climate. I'm thinking more chilly, very rainy winters, and mild summers. The mountains provide certain rare and valuable goods, but I haven't defined the more typical flora and fauna yet.

The end point is a sprawling city situated on a big, rich river estuary. I will probably go with a fairly Mediterranean climate here, because the estuary is relatively shallow and warm, and the river should probably have a delta. Maybe like the Nile delta, but smaller. The land flora is typical of an area that has been cultivated for centuries, with very little wild environment. I haven't yet decided whether to use real crops or make up something relatively similar, but distinct: a type of grain, certain seasonal vegetables, oily seeds, maybe even a dairy animal. All that's come up for certain is that the estuary is rich with kelp.

[annariel]

It's quite tricky isn't it. The worlds are so big and you think there could be all sorts of little niche environments. These sound like good starting points though.

[annariel]

Like last month I'm working on two settings (though two different ones). The first one is a future earth:

I'm using this handy mock up of what the Earth might look like in 50 mya



For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to assume a climate similar to our own but, for whatever reason there are no longer cities (in fact I'm toying with the idea that the human race are extinct and the clone(s) which would appear to be running around (I've already written some drabbles in the world so the clones are a given) are some kind of reawakened emergency mechanims).

That gives me eco-systems for the major landmasses (Afeurasia, North America, South America, Antarctica (looking like it might have some warmer areas than today) and Australia, plus, of course the oceans. There is also likely to gradual changes of eco-system north to south from pole to equator, but these are going to be less distinct than those on the different landmasses).

[annariel]

This is the other setting I'm working on this month:

The twin solar systems of the Free Cities of the Serpents have, between them, 12 planets. However most of these don't naturally support life.

The artificial biosphere created on these planets are going to be either

1. Stationary and Terrestrial - for planets with a regularish day night cycle.
2. Moving and Terrestrial - for planets which are spin-locked. Moving cities will exist in the dawn and dusk zones.
3. Ocean-going - for the gas dwarfs.

I'm going to assume all the artificial biospheres are broadly equivalent but that the stationary and terrestrial ones will be more similar to each other than they are to the ones that move. Each city is distinct so only way for species to transfer between them is by human vehicles and that will have an impact on how species unique to one biosphere (for whatever reason), transfer to the others.

At some point I need to work out what resources are tempting people out to all these hostile environments.

The remaining planet is going to have an ecosystem in the process of recovering from the arrival of humans and their plants and livestock. I don't have a map yet for New Gabarone, but the main place of interest is the city of Landfall and that is in a warm mediterranean climate area.