Modern World STGOD Concept

[Simon_Jester]

Leopards are native to considerable stretches of Umeria, although they are not the same subspecies you'd find on the veldt.

Traditional Umerian medicine holds that a variety of miscellaneous Australisian leopard, mountain leopard, and snow leopard organs have curative properties.

The penalty for traditional Umerian medicine is massively parallel participation in modern Umerian medicine. Body parts not liquidated are used for organ transplants or medical research.

For it is written in the Little Blue Book, the great thoughts of Sunnyside-Swamp of Dawn, Great Uncle of the Umerian people:

Entry #27:
"He who makes medicine should not fear taking it."

Also, Entry #215, which translates loosely as:
"Oh yeah, well let's see how you like it when it happens to you, mister smartypants!"

[Thanas]

I don't want to eat them. They are a national symbol of power.

[Esquire]

Would anybody mind if the Hellas NPC state was replaced by my Apelians? Broadly similar concepts, anyway, and that's sort of where I was picturing being. I'm not really attached to the spot if it'd cause a problem, though.

[Thanas]

Oh, please do. (Assuming Steve/Siege agree, of course).

[Esquire]

Should I be worried? I can never tell if that particular smiley is as ominous as it looks.

[Thanas]

Depends. Does your nation allow whalers to operate within its borders, or has it done the right thing and outlawed whaling?

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Regarding the whaling issue: Fuso officially ended commercial whaling during the Commonwealth period, though an official ban did not come into effect until the 1950s. The Republic of Fuso Navy and Coast Guard's SOP for whalers is largely similar to Cascadia's, and they also cooperate with Rheinland's navy and coast guard in anti-whaling enforcement operations off Ostrheinland. Some of the nuttier ultranationalist groups advocate the return of whaling on "cultural" and "scientific" grounds, though they thankfully do not have any mainstream support. On the other hand, whatever equivalents to Sea Shepherd may exist are classified as pirates by Fuso, with all that entails.

[Esquire]

Let's see... if the Equator is where I think it is (just north of the Omnian continent) then I don't think whaling would ever have been a particularly important part of my nation's culture or economy. We were probably really easy to persuade to ban it, way back when, as a way to stick a thumb in some San Dorado whaling corporation's eye if nothing else - as of now, with the mounting evidence of whale sapience, hunting them is illegal and very strictly punished.

[Simon_Jester]

If whales are sentient, someone in Umeria is trying to figure out a way to institute an effective passport system to control whale immigration and transit through their EEZ.

[TimothyC]

Rogue, Shinn, E_F, & Steve:

Any interest in a Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and a Pacific Severe Weather Prediction Center?

[Siege]

I think I got everyone labeled correctly (forgot to put NPC by Omnia though). If I missed/mislabeled anything let me know.

You missed San Dorado, and you slapped Omnia's text over it in such a way you made it impossible to see...

Would anybody mind if the Hellas NPC state was replaced by my Apelians? Broadly similar concepts, anyway, and that's sort of where I was picturing being. I'm not really attached to the spot if it'd cause a problem, though.

Go for it! Player states take precedence over NPCs.

Regarding whaling: it's not banned in San Dorado (very few things are) but there's not looking to be much of a market for it, so it's not a significant industry. On the other hand, considering the attitudes expressed here if there's any whalers sailing from San Dorado it's a fair bet they've armed themselves extensively.

[Skywalker_T-65]

I think I got everyone labeled correctly (forgot to put NPC by Omnia though). If I missed/mislabeled anything let me know.

You missed San Dorado, and you slapped Omnia's text over it in such a way you made it impossible to see...

Whoops. The colors were similar enough my eyes must have missed San Dorado in there. Sorry about that.

Lets see...



Fixed the San Dorado issue, and added Esquire in place of Hellas.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Rogue, Shinn, E_F, & Steve:

Any interest in a Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and a Pacific Severe Weather Prediction Center?

That seems a perfectly logical idea.

[Thanas]

Timothy, any objections to Hawai'i (sp?) becoming a primary vacation destination of Ostrheinland?

[madd0ct0r]

Champa Backstory - trying to link into Omnia, Dresigond and Umeria backstory.

There is a saying in Champa – “Both your feet are wet”. It sums up existence in this small, densely populated country, wedged between the river and the sea. Although the frequent floods bring fertile soil, it is only three days difference between happiness and sorrow. Tropical storms are a regular occurrence and the two often conspire to leave damage, rot and disease in their wake.
As a kingdom it was obediently independent from Omnia for most of its history. During the age of colonisation, Dreisgond was permitted to establish a trading post at Madbagh, in the heart of the delta. Despite numerous attacks by bandits, the small fortified wharehouses endured. Over the next 200 years, driven by trade, teas and spices replaced subsistence cropping, factories were built and cities began to throw their protective dykes out into the country side. Windmills pumped marchland dry and peat-cutters gradually industrialised as the hungry cities demanded more and more fuel. Railways and roads snaked out over the landscape – their embankments floating on log mats and primitive pilings.
Every year, the flooding grew worse. Constrained and channelized, the mighty rivers responded to rainfall quickly; punching, not pushing, against their bounds. Dykes had closed off many areas but the water had to go somewhere, and always found a way. The drained farmlands subsided as they continued to dry and elsewhere the peat cutters had also gone below the water table, mechanical sauropods chewing out canals and ditches as they grazed the land. Worse of all were the tropical storms that battered the coast line and forced salt water up though channels and over the top of dykes. Dreisgond’s demand for tropical woods and the domestic demand for wood of all types had decimated parts of the delta mangroves. With the forest bands thinning, the energy of the storms stripped the land and the saltwater poisoned farmlands.
‘Grame sabha’ or village meetings had already developed across the delta as a method for farmers to coordinate paddy field schedules. Now, with the new middle class pushing, the Grame scaled up. Regions came together to elect a Ban’ya Sthapati - an architect responsible for designing and coordinating flood defences. The de-facto rulers, the Dreisgong merchants approved of such schemes as they opened a new potential profit source: the Ban’ya Sthapati had the right to impose taxes to fund necessary works.
And so the country muddled along into the 20th century. The church of Om periodically demanded its tithes, the Brutheran missionaries whispered of the great world tortoise and the complicated calendar of the Cham Pantheon marked the seasons. Dreisgond muskets and ships meant the Champa region suffered less in the Cocaine Wars then Umeria. Tea Plantations to the remote south were ravaged by wild eyed mountain men and that area slowly slipped back into subsistence farming. At the same time Omnian forces began training and expanding. Scouts were found loitering near the border. The merchants retreated behind their flood defences and started negotiations to allow Omnian troops safe passage through the deep south into Umeria’s hinterland. Rumours of foreign troops stripping the fat of the land sent some peasants in panic to the cities while others muttered darkly as they planted out the year’s crop.
To be continued

[Thanas]

Rogue, Shinn, E_F, & Steve:

Any interest in a Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and a Pacific Severe Weather Prediction Center?

Rheinland would be interested in that as well, what with Ostrheinland being at risk.

[Beowulf]

Rogue, Shinn, E_F, & Steve:

Any interest in a Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and a Pacific Severe Weather Prediction Center?

Similarly, anyone else interested in a Joint Atlantic Typhoon Warning Center?

[madd0ct0r]

Rogue, Shinn, E_F, & Steve:

Any interest in a Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and a Pacific Severe Weather Prediction Center?

Rheinland would be interested in that as well, what with Ostrheinland being at risk.

I'm pretty sure Champa would be on that like a hot plate of grilled crab

[Thanas]

Rogue, Shinn, E_F, & Steve:

Any interest in a Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and a Pacific Severe Weather Prediction Center?

Similarly, anyone else interested in a Joint Atlantic Typhoon Warning Center?

Rheinland doesn't get Typhoons, but would be interested in it because Rheinland likes getting weather data.

[Esquire]

Similarly, anyone else interested in a Joint Atlantic Typhoon Warning Center?

Sign me up, depending on what the weather patterns are in this world severe storms could be a major problem for Apelia.

EDIT: fixing quote tags.

[Siege]

Similarly, anyone else interested in a Joint Atlantic Typhoon Warning Center?

The Mayor ought to have some people there, yes.

[madd0ct0r]

I've been wondering about weather patterns.

This is the larger ocean currents as I think they'd be laid out, assuming earth equivalent size density, rotation, Coriolis forces ect.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/641 ... Oceans.png

I've thrown on typhoon markers basically where the big circulatory currents start turning away from the equator. I'm also not quite sure what would happen in the ocean below UOCRS, the Coriolis force gets weaker towards the equator. In long thin areas, currents generally tend to squareish layouts of alternating direction (like a sequence of cogs), but these are all driven by Coriolis in the same direction. I've gone with a similar effect to the current below India in real life: http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/8q_1.html
(the larger area works as normal, this drives the equatorial counter current as normal which then forms its own tiny loop)
Beneath Granadia I've assumed the two much larger currents would drive a small tight gyre between them (note this would be an excellent fishing area since it would collect algae like anything)

This is without looking at atmospheric winds, el nino or anything actually complicated.

Without Greenland, Rheinland might get a reduced gulf stream effect, lucky Arcadia.

[Force Lord]

We're not gonna show you how to build your own rockets, because that would we're putting ourselves out of business. We can launch your stuff for you, and we can contract with this space agency, but that's about it.

Regarding Omnia, Granadia tried to conquer the whole of it during the Second Great World War, but it had other fronts to deal with and in the end was forced to pull back.

The other day Steve and I were throwing around some ideas. One I came up with was that the last time somebody made a genuine effort to conquer all of Omnia one PMC whose divisions were about to be overrun took a cargo ship, fitted it with radio controls, crammed it chock full of explosives, sailed it into the offending party's harbor and detonated the whole shebang, causing a frankly obscene amount of devastation. As a warning shot, you see. One that could be heard all the way back in San Dorado.

Unfortunately I haven't found the right target yet to have subjected to this Fireship Deluxe. Might you be willing to volunteer?

Well, it does sound spectacular. I'm game.

[Force Lord]

Siege, they weren't trying to conquer all of Omnia, they were simply counter-attacking into Omnian territory when Omnia tried to take some or all of their land. Get it straight.

And FL, is that really when you want your anti-Omnian effort? Given how things were laid out, it could mean you end up on Britonia's side of the war. Aka the Losing Side.

Well, considering Granadia's first action is to take back Jilbratar from the Britonians, I think that the Britonians wouldn't be keen on having the Granadians as allies. Granadia's more on its own side.

Besides, Granadia's focusing first on Britonia's colonies, so it can put the half-plausible excuse that its fighting on the side of the "good guys".

EDIT: Sorry for the double post.

[TimothyC]

That seems a perfectly logical idea.

Rheinland would be interested in that as well, what with Ostrheinland being at risk.

Nice.

Timothy, any objections to Hawai'i (sp?) becoming a primary vacation destination of Ostrheinland?

No objections at all. All four Kingdoms are tourist friendly.