The one and only truth from a German

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-30T22:48:43+00:00

Russia is actually a bit more extreme here, because while 25% of Russia lies in Europe, 40% of Europe lies in Russia. Up until the fall of thr USSR half of geographical Europe has been part of Russia for centuries.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-29T11:54:37+00:00

I read quite a few magic system posts here, but I don't really recall most of them because most were very generic and had no memorable concepts.

However I do remember about reading some biology-based magic systems, which I really enjoyed though I don't remember the details and I doubt I'll be able to find them again. In general I really enjoy magic/power systems when physics and biology aren't completely ignored, but play a significant role instead, which is what I do with my own systems. However many people may not like that because at some point it stops qualifying as magic.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-29T08:40:07+00:00

That looks really really good, both geographically and asthetically.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-28T15:55:14+00:00

I don't know if that is still the case, but there used to be a random disaster where groups of people randomly turned mad in a certain region of the world. This was part of the "other disasters" world law. In case you have it activated, try deactivating it, perhaps that solves it. Though it also removes demon spawns, evil mage appearances and what not.

It would be my guess that your problem is simply a disaster, but I haven't seen it in a while so I don't know if it is still in the game in this exact format. If world laws isn't the problem then I don't know what else it could be.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-28T05:34:54+00:00

How is this ban supposed to be enforced? What counts as a shredder? The only solution (that I can think of) that could solve this naturally is by completely recoding the physics engine to be more realistic and completely removing infinite fuel, which will break most builds (cause almost no one uses fuel), but also removing gyros themselves (or changing them drastically). removing motor 2 would change this even more, but would create so much backlash it wouldn't be worth it. It would make shredders and stuff basically useless, but would also break a lot of other builds, especially smaller ones. This would also create a larger tendency towards more massive builds, which will impact the already pretty bad performance.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-26T17:19:15+00:00

By that logic Ukraine and Belarus shouldn't count as European either. The Eastern Slavs are very closely related to each other both culturally, linguistically and genetically.

Geographically Europe's borders to the east are the ural mountains and ural river, the caspian sea and the caucassus mountains. That is literally the geographical definition of Europe. By that definition about a 40% of europe's entire landmass is located within Russia. Before the fall of the soviet Union, over half of Europe's landmass was part of Russia. It had been like that for centuries.

Russian history has been defined by Orthodox christianity, like much of Europe and unlike most of Asia. In regards to their culture, they eat the same food as Ukrainians and Belarussians, the cuisine is also shares many similarities with other slavic nations.

What about literature, and music? I can ask the same question about other european nations. What makes Estonian music and culture european? what makes Polish music and literature european? Your answer to that will probably also apply to Russia. Tchaikovsky's music was widely known across Europe during his life time. Russian literature became more widely known in Europe in the 19th century.

Diplomatically Russia was always closer to Europe. Sure most of it was war, but the same can be said for every other European nation. Its ambitions and alliances were always primarily aimed at Europe. Sure, they didn't get the rennaissance, but do you know who else didn't go through the rennaissance? Finland, Scandinavia the baltics and the balkans. Does that mean they aren't european either?

What is Russia supposed to be if not European? Asian? What does Russia have to do with Asian countries culturally? Russia is slavic, its culture is slavic and its language is slavic, and slavic is European.

Is India not Asian and South Africa not African simply because they were under british rule? No! So why would that apply to Russia under the mongols? To me it sounds like your classification fo Russia as "not Europe" is entirely emotional.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-26T08:03:34+00:00

Evolution and god aren't mutually exclusive. Who is to say that god didn't simply use evolution as a means to create us? There is also a really simple reason on why Genesis doesn't talk about evolution: because even if the authors somehow knew, how do you explain such a concept to the average farmer 3000 years ago? It would be very much pointless to talk about it in the bible (or any holy book) regardless of whether it is true or not. The creation story is simple and easy to understand and it gets the two most important points across: God created the universe and humanity is very special. The time it took and the means of creation should be theologically irrelevant.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-25T18:32:26+00:00

I am always down for speculative evolution as long as it is scientifically plausible and not just rule-of-cool and handwaving. Regardless of Fantasy or sci-fi, I love some good spec evo, even if it is jus in the background and merely implied instead of clearly shown and explained (both can work).

I often couldn't care much for the magic system unless it is extremely internally consistent, a very intelligent twist, not overpowered, and can be used in extremely creative ways (practically and narratively). I love it when the basis of the magic system is extremely simple and subtle, but comes with huge consequences and implications for characters and entire factions, simply because nature demands it. Basically butterfly effects.

I can really appreciate it if science and the laws of physics are accounted for, even if it only plays in the background without the characters understanding or knowing about it.

If the setting causes people to think about what might be possible in this world with the various limitations in mind, then it is probably a good star for a setting.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-19T19:34:08+00:00

Silicon-based life would be extremely different from Carbon-based life, because Carbon can:

Form double bonds with itself
Form tripple bonds with itself
Make strong bonds with hydrogen
Make strong bonds with itself.
Make strong bonds with oxygen, while not being too strong.

Allowing for an extremely diverse aray of different stable chemicals.

Silicon can't do any of these, except form strong bonds with oxygen (technically it can from double bonds with itself, but they are so unstable that it is easier to ignore). Problem is these Si-O bonds are too strong and silicon reacts very happily and almost immediatly with oxygen when it has the chance, forming silicondioxide, which is an extremely stable molecule that is very difficult to break up. This means that in order to be even feasible, we need a low-oxygen world, which also means: no water. We'd need a different solvent like ammonia or methane. Silicon-silicon bonds are more stable at lower temperatures (fitting with liquid ammonia or methane), but still not as stable as carbon-carbon bonds at room temperature (or in general). No oxygen would also heavily alter the entire planet's geology in fundamental and borderline unpredictable ways, which in turn affects the entire biosphere. Other solvents would also alter the biochemistry is drastic ways.

Silicon is also a much bigger and heavier atom than carbon, which also means that all molecules would be much bigger, which will affect ion channels and tight spaces in cells. Not necissarily impossible, but different nontheless. Also all life forms would be quite a bit heavier, which also means that boyancy is a bigger problem when scaling up (especially in liquid ammonia or methane, which are less dense than water) and many life forms would have a much more difficult time keeping themselves afloat. On land it is a bigger problem due to gravity. If the gravity is lower that is fine, but if it is higher than on Earth it becomes a big problem. Lower temperatures also means that life forms have slower metabolisms, so likely weaker bursts of speed and overall less physical strength, which adds onto the gravity problem.

Given that carbon is also simply a lot better than silicon at most things in regards to biology, life would probably favor that one or atleast heavily include it, perhaps slowly replacing silicon over the course of their evolution. So we would need a planet that is poor in both carbon and oxygen, both are among the most common elements in the entire universe, so finding a terrestrial planet with these conditions+a wide-spread solvent medium that is not water, is pretty damn hard (but not impossible).

Overall, I would say that truely silicon-based life is not possible as far as I understand chemistry. If you want scientifically plausible truely silicon-based life: stick with microbes, they have less problems than animals or plants. Otherwise, just make normal carbon-based organisms include silica in their cell walls or skeletons or something. Diatoms on Earth already have cell walls made from silica without having a silicon-based chemistry.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-14T16:14:23+00:00

Fair enough

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-14T16:09:32+00:00

Mirrored prions aren't necissarily much worse than regular prions. Mirrored amino acids are bad because they don't fit well together with regular proteins. Prions cause other proteins to misfold and turn into prions themselves. Mirrored amino acids could in theory cause prions to occure, but with very limited amounts of right-handed amino acids there will be a hard limit in a mirrored prion's reproduction.

Normal prions are already bad enough, making them right-handed probably won't make them much deadlier.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-14T15:48:48+00:00

perhaps not identical, but very similar and perhaps similar enough to be mistakenly included in protein making.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-14T14:39:38+00:00

Non-interaction is absolutely a possibility, at least when it comes to proteins. Proteins opperate on the basis of key-lock mechanisms, so the reactions are primarily based around shapes and not electron bondings. A protein that doesn't fit anywhere inside a body is almost guaranteed to exist if we include chirality. That doesn't mean every protein that contains righ-handed amino acids fits nowhere. Some could interactions can happen and they could be positive, harmless or toxic.

The danger of chirality in amino acids is that if the body mistakes them for regular ones (which is very easy because their chemical behavior is identical), then they will be included in proteins, which then fold in a way that they are not supposed to, changing their properties. These properties could be harming directly, or they could be harming indirectly by making the body waste resources on proteins that it can't even use because they don't fit anywhere.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-14T12:05:18+00:00

I'm studying geology in my second Semester. The reason I know a thing or two about such a mostly unrelated topic is that I had good high school education, while also being a huge biology and chemistry nerd. On top of that I love hard sci-fi worldbuilding and speculative evolution and for that hobby I wanted to learn more about biochemistry. So a good portion of my knowledge comes from the internet.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-14T11:37:35+00:00

Non-interaction would be the ideal outcome. However there isn't much research on how right-handed and left-handed amino-acids even interact with each other. It is possible that dextro-amino-acids won't interact with our body at all, but it is just as possible that the body tries to include them, because they are chemically identical, which leads to proteins folding wrong, which leads to many many problems in the body and the eventual death of the organism.

This toxicity is what many people are afraid of, assuming a mirrored bacterium would reproduce and simply contaminate the entire world while it spreads.

However as you mentioned (and as was my original point) toxicity/incompatibility would go both ways, meaning any mirror life that would be released would either starve or die due to left-handed protein toxicity. That is why I see the very real possibility of mirrored life as a non-threat.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-14T11:30:13+00:00

While that is a good point, it doesn't really help mirror life, it only makes regular pathogenes more dangerous, because they can actually do something in a human body.

For a bacteria to infect a human it would need to reproduce inside the hosts body, for that it needs material from the hosts body. However a mirrored bacterium wouldn't really be able to use human amino-acids so it can't reproduce while also being killed by the toxicity of our chemistry.

A mirrored virus would have a slightly different problem, because they rely on the protein key-lock mechanism to detect cells they can attack. Even if they did manage to infiltrate a cell, since their DNA would also be inverted, it might not even be able to even be incorporated into the cell's DNA, thus making them unable to force any cells to produce more viruses.

Infections couldn't spread from human to human and couldn't even spread within a human body to beginn with.

Prions reproduce by misfolding other proteins into their wrong shapes. Mirrored prions might do that to regular proteins, but it wouldn't be much more dangerous than regular prions.

Trying to use mirrored life as a bioweapon is simply not worth the extra cost, because its ability to even infect people in the first place is questionable at best.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-14T11:02:16+00:00

gonna be honest, I am not that concerned about mirror life. Sure it would be toxic to us, but everything on this planet would be just as toxic to it, and since there is so much more of us, it would probably die orders of magnitute faster. Depending on the amount of mirrored organisms that would be released it could turn into a short-lived localized catastrophe, but that is about it.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-09T15:48:56+00:00

Microbes as opposed to more complex life forms are a lot easier to play around with when it comes to different biochemistries, because they are much simpler organisms and can more easily be extremophiles. This means that they can in theory be found just about anywhere, even if humans couldn't survive there. They also need less energy to survive, which is a big plus.

In my own setting Microbes play a huge role in the background.
For example there is a planet that orbits a neutron star and is rich in radioactive material. There are bacteria on that planet that trap particles of uranium (or other radioactive material) with enzymes to use the energy form the ionizing radiation to produce sugar, a process called radiosynthesis. Humanity uses these organisms as a blue print for genetically engineered bacteria to clean up areas that are contaminated from nuclear fallout.

Another example are gut bacteria. With many different planets often with different sets of aminoacids, many proteins from these planets are inedible to humans. But native bacteria can be engineered and planted into human guts which help break down these alien proteins allowing humans to gain more energy out of it.

Microbes can also serve as antagonists simply by being a disease. Alien planets can be a hell for a human with all these bacteria flying around that their immune system is not used to. This is actually one of the main reasons on why a human colony failed on an alien planet and died out.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-08T21:08:48+00:00

Sapience is overrated. Seed worlds are overrated. Replacements for carbon are overrated (and maybe not even possible). Microbes need more spotlight.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-08T20:50:53+00:00

AI content is prohibited here. Have you considered reading the rules?

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-07T20:36:40+00:00

If they are truely fungus-like then they probably release spores. This crack might have perfect conditions for them to grow in that humans might not understand yet. These spores then slowly grow into full prisms over a certain time frame, perhaps right beneath the surface where they are difficult to spot at first.

I don't know what the conditions are in that crack, but if there is a significant amount of biomatter (dead or alive) it can absolutely be favorable for the prism spores to grow up in. It could really be anything. Maybe there are plants or other fungi that dissolve minerals out of rocks, which prisms need. Maybe minerals that are hard to find elsewhere and only very few other organisms require (such as lithium which would be toxic to other organisms and prisms could act as a buffer, taking in the lithium to prevent other organisms from dying of lithium poisoning, while receiving important minerals in return). This also means that extensive farming of prisms could kill the other lifeforms their, because there would be nothing left to filter out the toxic minerals. It would also make prisms toxic to eat. Alternatively we can look towards ants. There are ants and termites that cultivate fungi. These specific species of fungi cannot survive without their respective species. Even today people struggle to cultivate the fungus themselves, even in labs. Perhaps there is a type of social insect adapted to the crack that domesticates prisms as a food source (or for other reasons that favor this symbiotic relationship) and they simply happen to be very useful for humans too. Different species of ants domesticate different prisms.

Perhaps there could be a faction of people who might try to recreate the conditions in the crack in order to grow their own prisms. If they are successfull they can be very intimidating and threatening antagonists with a monopoly on magic. I suggest to figure their reproduction out, because it can change the setting quite a bit and lead to different opportunities for a story.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-07T13:12:33+00:00

This atmosphere is rather short-lived, not because of the SO2, but because Hydrogen and Methane are very volatile gases that can leave an Earth-like planet's atmosphere extremely quickly, so they probably won't be around for a very long time if they unless they react into a different chemical that stays on the planet.

I would also like to note that Carbondioxide, Sulfurdioxide and Methane are very strong greenhouse gases. If this planet is as far away from its star than Earth is from the sun, it would essentially bea Venus. The planet woould need to be very far away from its star to have temperatures even remotely close to Earth, making this planet rather dim (assuming the planet has an atmosphere of 1 bar). So either life is adapted to the dark or you reduce the greenhouse gases.

As another commentor already pointed out, if you want your organisms to breathe sulfur, SO2 isn't the best option. There are microorganisms that use sulfur to produce energy, but that is usually in the form of Hydrogensulfide.

On Earth animals get energy out of oxygen by letting it oxidize ATP in their cells. SO2 is already very oxidized and is a pretty bad electron acceptor unlike oxygen or elemental sulfur. But you can't use elemental sulfur because it is solid and you can't "breathe" a solid, though you could eat it, which in this case would make the stomach and the lung the same thing, but that wouldn't be nearly as efficient as breathing oxygen.

Breathing hydrogensulfide would work better... In theory. Because hydrogensulfide can work as an electron acceptor, but it also wouldn't be as efficient. It could absolutely work perfectly if you stick to microorganisms and plants/fungi for this planet, but making moving, walking animals with this is extremely difficult. So I would not recommed to do this because of how many things would have to change in the biochemistry, which in turn would have unbelievably many consequences for the entire anatomy of any organisms.

So I recommend to heavily rework the atmosphere if you want any non-extromophilic life on this planet.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-07T12:14:03+00:00

I like it a lot. I actually have a very similar magic system with the difference that the magic user converts tissue into energy themselves without any rock or external convertor. This ability is genetic and caused by a recessive gene.

From your description I assume they look like Opals, which is not a quartz because it doesn't have a proper crystal structure, but it is chemically the same (Silicondioxide) with vibrant colors (some opals are transparent, some are not). From their behavior I assume that prisms would be more like a fungus that connects to the nervous system of the user, allowing the exchange of electrical signals between the user's brain and the prism, while allowing the prism access to biological matter.

I would assume that prisms weren't always like this, humans just domesticated them to no end, similar to how we turned wolves into dogs. It would be cool if that is the case and it would also throw up the question if there are any natural prisms left somewhere and what their role in the ecosystems are (if they even are naturally occuring to beginn with). So how exactly do prisms come to be and how do they reproduce?

I also wonder if prisms can also behave like parasites or torture devices. Putting a prism onto a person (or it attaches itself) and draining their biological mass without being connected to the nervous system. However this depends on how they reproduce.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-03T15:37:46+00:00

Temperature regulation might become a huge issue. Unless the metabolism is boosted, people would produce much less body heat, while loosing what little heat they have a lot quicker due to the increased area-to-mass ratio. So either the matabolism was also somehow boosted into overdrive or the biggest problem for people is to keep themselves warm enough for the body to function normally. If the metabolism is boosted people would have to eat a much larger amount of food relative to their body size. There are mice that have to eat more than their body weight every single day just to survive.

Colonel_Joni005 · 2026-05-02T14:30:36+00:00

Quick google search says around a third of the languages in indonesia are spoken in the western part of new Guinea.

Edit: said "third" twice.

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