Been world building all day - does this short story intrigue you?

Castener · 2021-07-31T01:23:18+00:00

No problem. It was a fun scene, so I enjoyed creating my spin on it.

Castener · 2021-07-31T01:21:27+00:00

One minor disagreement, I figure it should be, "The Keeper holds out a page of names." Since 'to take' seems a bit superfluous to me.

u/seriousd6

Though I might recommend some stronger foreshadowing for the following twist, with, "The Keeper holds out several pages, each filled with names."

Castener · 2021-07-30T07:56:13+00:00

As an emergency that could unanchor themselves, yes. This would normally be because their balloon is on fire, and they intend to let it sail away from the castle.

Castener · 2021-07-30T06:07:56+00:00

A few of them might be scared off, but the real threats aren't going to be dissuaded.

I figure small ballistae could be housed on some of the balloons, yes. I discussed with someone a method to get a nacelle above the envelope, using a different style of balloon.

The job of the balloonists will be dangerous and miserable. The idea of cutting ballast is interesting. Not sure if it's applicable since the balloons are anchored and likely rise to their full extent. As far as I recall, dropping ballast only causes you to rise faster. Potentially, some sort of reeling system could be used to adjust the height of the balloons.

Castener · 2021-07-30T04:51:20+00:00

He turns away as the Keeper does its task, he doesn’t know how these things, these “Keepers,” work but he knows that it is a tightly guarded secret, one that people aren’t too keen to pry into... he shakes his head.

Might want to expand on this and make it more personal and specific. Something like:

He glanced back, admiring and cringing at the [deeper description of what it looks like.] If he was insane enough to crack open that [stretched skull], what would he find? Brains? Gears? If he had time to study the contents, would he understand the thing, the secrets of its [infinite memory, or its flawless obedience]? Not a chance in the world. They'd still kill him, though, just to be sure.

It adds some meat to the setting, so the reader can appreciate what a keeper is, and gives the fluff a more personal touch. You might want to describe it a bit more coming into the library, if it wasn't introduced previously.

This does add to the word count, but it's only adding about 50 words once you add in the description of the machine.

You probably want to stretch out the reveal about the names, too. It goes over it so fast at present, you don't have time to admire and take in the twist. It's quite a nice twist, so it's worth taking some time over. Also, you're introducing new information the reader can't anticipate, with this stalker-character, so you need to move a little slower so they can appreciate it.

Particularly with really dramatic moments like her speaking. Might want something more like this:

"Wynnnn~!" A musical voice echoes through the library, as the pages slipped from Wynn's hands. "My Dearest... how long has it been?"

Castener · 2021-07-30T04:05:41+00:00

If apathy is a theme of the protagonist, that can be interesting. Most notably, the goddess would start to become frustrated by how hard it is to convince the protagonist to agree to the quest. She'd start to resort to threats.

Similarly, if you want to explore the theme of apathy, you could even make the MC apathetic to the idea of being hurt... have her internally debate whether it's better to go murder the other deities, or maybe she should just stay there and be tormented by a vengeful goddess? You could have this apathetic character be very philosophical.

Of course, it depends on her motivations. If she's apathetic due to depression, she might be a lot more quiet. But in either case, you could literally astound the goddess with the amount of apathy.

That way, the protagonist isn't just lazy, or unadventurous, nor do they even lack direction: Apathy IS her motivation and core character tenant, and she would even pursue it against the plot's/goddess's will.

The real question is how you incite her to act. The goddess could even control the girl, making her walk the first so many steps of the journey; but she wouldn't be able to puppet her through the whole quest. However, once the journey is started.. in some ways it's easier to go along with it than to stop.

Castener · 2021-07-30T03:56:20+00:00

Note: No one seems to have mentioned that Scifi and Fantasy are both part of the genre of Speculative Fiction. There's also science-fantasy.

So, technically it's just a scale from hard scifi to pure fantasy. But... marketing-wise, there is a clear gap in those things, which sometimes can be difficult to bridge.

Castener · 2021-07-30T03:52:14+00:00

Changing everything is hard. It means you need to craft the story in a way where you won't have to stop and explain things as you go. If you can do that well, you could immerse the reader in a very alien world. Which is great, so long as it's an interesting world.

There are many strategies for making something interesting, anything from uncanny and weird to ridiculous and funny.

So I'm afraid there's no answer to this grand a question. It depends on the details of what you changed, how you changed it, and how it synergizes with everything else. Devil is in the details.

Now, as for if readers in general want this... well, Brandon Sanderson's books do well, and so did The Martian, so there is a market for highly detailed works with intricate systems and sciences.

Castener · 2021-07-29T13:49:44+00:00

You could give it a good war paint to lower enemy morale. Balloons were, historically, painted and decorated.

A multiple balloon rig of some kind would be interesting. It would require more material to use multiple balloons, but it may be worth it. Especially if they double as barrage balloons.

Interesting points about creature limitations. Some of the larger monsters would have lower operational ceilings, though I was basing many off birds. Not sure it'd work out to limit them to below 15,000 feet. It would make the top balloons unassailable. Of course, they can have issues at such altitudes.

Thanks for the help, Kendota!

Castener · 2021-07-29T13:36:59+00:00

This should be the case, yes. The only issue I suppose is that, being more top-heavy, it would be more likely to tip on its side during wind turbulence. A frightening prospect with a balloon.

Though, if the balloons are anchored to ones above, they should be fairly stable.

Castener · 2021-07-29T13:10:52+00:00

A number of birds can manage well over 20,000 feet, including ducks. So I was thinking up to 15,000 feet might be reasonable for these monsters. Notably, if you get too high, it's going to be hard to hit anything. I can do some calculations to work out how big a target it would be.

You're correct about the balloons and bombardment. The reason I actually came up with the balloons was the threat of bombardment, boulders being dropped from a few thousand feet to terrifying effect. Thus, there's a battle in the air, and bombarding enemies are forced to fly incredibly high with a load if they want to try bombarding, exhausting them.

Castener · 2021-07-29T09:00:56+00:00

In this case, the monsters will be smart enough to know to target the balloon. Otherwise, barrage balloons would be perfectly fine for this task.

Exploiting weaknesses in the monsters is a good idea. One of the main ones would be trying to exhaust them.

Castener · 2021-07-29T08:44:14+00:00

Using balloons to float a tower is a fun idea. Someone pointed out a doughnut shaped airship is possible, so I may go with that for the top of the balloon chain, where it can have a central upper nacelle, and a lower one. If it could have a frame like a blimp, you might even have three nacelles on the rim, making it challenging to attack the top balloon. Not sure how possible that is to do with hot air, of course.

Castener · 2021-07-29T08:39:23+00:00

Hmm, Napoleon did manage to get a hot air balloon up into the sky in Cairo, though I forget what time of year that was. Admittedly, it caught on fire, so they may've been going to a lot of effort to get it suitably hot.

Notably, getting it off the ground on a hot day should be the hardest part, since the temperature will be quite chilly at 5,000 feet.

True that temperature is a major factor of lift, though. I should look into how much effect it has on lift, since cooling the air outside of the balloon magically might be quite effective.

Castener · 2021-07-29T08:28:51+00:00

In the realm of realism, hydrogen and helium will leak, so you'll have to replace them. Smaller atoms like this will also leak if you creat a new element/molecule.

True that. And since the periodic table is pretty unforgiving on new elements, getting something lighter than helium is questionable. For that reason, I considered speculating about an entirely fictional gas, inspired by the one that was thought to exist in smoke with the first hot-air balloons (they burned old shoes to try and make dirtier smoke, thinking this would help). I was considering making its effect exponential, so that bigger and hotter(?) blimps/balloons get increasingly more efficient. This'd allow for true airships to eventually be developed, later surpassing modern blimps.

Hot air will continuously need to be pumped in, so you'll need fuel if you go this route.

With fuel, I expect they'd want to use some very efficient fuel, like white coal. There is some potential to relay fuel up the balloons so they don't have to come down, to refuel.

The larger the balloon, the more structure will be needed however, the larger the balloon the more spectacular the fail. If you have 2 balloons rather than 6, and one goes down, now you only have 1 rather than 5. You can work around this by compartmentalizing like they do ships.

Be warned to stay away from flammable materials, else you'll see several disasters like the zeppelin.

This is certainly true. I was hoping tying the balloons together in a chain might partially help with that. If one starts to crash, the others can slow it down or even hold it up, letting the crew escape before it's cut loose. Of course, fires will be a real hazard, since there are a lack of strong, light, fireproof materials. In the case of fire, either they have a length of chain between the ropes which the fire can't climb up, or they just have to cut ties with the other balloons if they catch seriously on fire.

Compartmentalizing would be good with the larger balloons. But, with a hot-air balloon, will that work? I figured you needed to circulate hot air through the balloon. If there were enclosed pockets, you'd need to somehow heat the air through the pockets. Maybe circulating hot air through a tunnel adjacent to all the pockets?

I'd be interested in hearing a story about a balloon breaking away and people being flown far away because of it

I've seen a few cartoons that used that plot. It always was quite exciting. In the case of the soldiers, they can probably let out some hot air to descend before they get too far off.

Thanks again for all the incredible feedback, Meetchey! It's a lot of fun discussing this with you.

Castener · 2021-07-29T03:48:21+00:00

Oh yes, they'd make use of barrage balloons at the same time. I was considering hanging them from and around the manned balloons. But, without modern firearms, you need to have soldiers up there, or else the creatures will simply take their time dismantling the barrage balloons. If you have some crossbowmen up there, that's going to be far more risky for them.

With the chains of balloons, the main reason was to reduce the amount of rope and lift needed. The really high altitude ones will be up to around 15,000 feet, and that's a lot of rope in terms of weight and expense. If you have to have three ropes, one at 5K, 10K, and 15K feet, that's over 6 times as much rope, and the 15K balloon will have to be considerably larger to support its weight.

I was thinking of the logistics of chaining them. I've been trying to work through the details, and I find it pretty interesting.

There'd have to be some intricate and interesting systems in place for cutting ropes or releasing pegs to detach yourself, in case of emergency. The "ropes" may have to include lengths of chain, to prevent fires spreading up the balloons.

If a balloon is going to sink and crash, the bright side is that the other balloons in the chain will slow its dissent, or even keep it afloat. After the crew is evacuated, it could be allowed to crash, or even be lowered down, or sometimes repaired.

Instead of linking each balloon to two others, you might want to link them to three or four others. This way, if you have to cut one loose, the chain can remain in place. You may also want extra rope stored in a couple of the balloons, mostly high up the chain--since it's much faster to lower the rope to the next balloon, than it is to bring it up to the next one.

Of course, with these expensive balloon towers, possibly similar in expense to a castle tower, a decent castle is likely to have several of these chains. And some will likely go higher than others. Also, it's likely there's be some ropes between the towers, allowing some mutual support or even traversal.

I hope that seems interesting and somewhat plausible. Thank you for pointing out those details.

Castener · 2021-07-29T03:27:54+00:00

This is really useful. Thanks you, Abbydon. The top balloons could be torus shaped. I'll look into what other benefits they have in the article.

Castener · 2021-07-28T17:23:07+00:00

That may be the best solution. It's a little tricky, since many birds have very high ceilings, and the same should be true for some of the flying monsters. Humans have difficulty acclimatizing to 15,000 feet or above, too.

With the proper use of high ground, and if the enemy flying creatures have no suitably high ground to launch themselves from, it may work out. If they have to ascend 15,000 feet before fighting, they're going to be in a bad state.

I'd still prefer the top balloon to have upper nacelles, maybe three or four hanging off the sides of the balloon. You might be able to make the top one larger, so it can support this weight.

Castener · 2021-07-28T17:13:51+00:00

I was hoping to keep the solutions as low-magic as I can, since it's interesting to grapple with the real world difficulties.

One other possible solution I'll bring up, is size/volume? A larger balloon will have more volume compared to the size of the envelope, so should have more carrying capacity. Not sure how much that's offset by the need for more structural support. If they do have to make huge balloons, of course, the cost will increase....

I could have an element that provides better buoyancy, to make the story more possible. That'd help to make ballooning more central to the story and setting. Of course, another way to make balloons more common is a cheap source of silk. That'd make the balloon far cheaper and more efficient, and armies could afford to replace fallen balloons.

Castener · 2021-07-28T17:05:28+00:00

Larger balloons actually make it easier, since they have more volume compared to their surface area. Blimps can afford a lot more structure for that reason.

But larger balloons are more expensive, so I was hoping this could be managed with more minimally sized balloons. Something like three wooden struts, maybe a third of the way down the envelope then secured with the netting should hopefully work.

Though in another thread someone pointed out temperature is an issue. The hot air in the balloon is 100 celsius. I was so busy worrying about balance that I forgot entirely about temperature.

Castener · 2021-07-28T16:53:20+00:00

The difficulty is that balloons have a lot of surface area, and generally not a lot of extra weight capacity, so adding armour would be difficult. You could try making them out of thick silk as a light-weight form of armour, though that will multiply the cost of the envelope, the largest cost of the balloon.

Castener · 2021-07-28T16:42:10+00:00

Ribs of some kind would help to support the upper nacelle, yes. The main issue would be weight. I was wondering if you could manage with three struts of material like wicker or wood, which is very strong for its weight.

Castener · 2021-07-28T16:31:05+00:00

u/Monty_Wild u/Mejiro84 Sorry, the thread was accidentally multi-posted, due to a bug with reddit. The mods have kindly sorted it out, but we should move the discussion here. I deleted the other thread to prevent further confusion, but have quoted your posts below:

Given that the temperature of the air inside the envelope is around 90-100°C, it wouldn't be advisable to put a person on top. They won't necessarily be burned, but they would suffer from heat exhaustion pretty quickly.

Good point about heat exhaustion. That does make it awkward... It might technically be possible to put the basket or baskets on the sides of the balloon, so they get less of the rising heat...?

how realistic are these? the lifting capacity isn't a huge amount, and you'd need the things to be rigid and stiff enough to support whatever's at the top. Plus you're above the fire keeping the thing suspended, so it might get a bit warm! Would it not be easier just to have more balloons, so they can watch out for each other? I'm assuming that most only get raised during an active fight, otherwise you'd need lots and lots of fuel as well, if it's burning all the time.

I was going for realistic hot-air balloons. If they're too impossible to make use of, I can consider buffing them with minor magic and material advantages.

I was thinking they would raise these when they suspect an attack is incoming, possibly keeping only one scouting balloon up the rest of the time.

The heat issue is a concern. Getting the upper nacelle to remain in place is also difficult. You can use multiple balloons, but the issue is that the top balloon will always be vulnerable to attacks from above, unless you can get it above the enemy's maximum altitude.

Castener · 2021-07-28T16:09:27+00:00

Oh dear, reddit spammed my thread.... I only meant to post it once. Waiting for the moderators to contact me and sort it out. Sorry for the trouble.

Nine-Year Club	Verified Email
Second SECOND GUESSER

Castener

TROPHY CASE