Okay, setting update of nifty awesome. This is mostly flavor stuff so if it's scary big you can probably skip >.>
This began when Fen asked me how gravity works and everything sorta followed from there. First of all, gravity will mostly exist in cyllindrical form about islands. The up side pulls you down, the down side pushes you away. This is why people live on the top and put docking stuff on the bottom. The effect tapers off after a short while so you won't fall forever at accelerating pace off the bottom and islands passing over each other won't crash. Aside from these zones, gravity is null. Inertia rules and unprepared people are liable to just keep going forever. Thankfully most people have at least one form that can do something about this and navigate through the atmosphere. Thus wings are a great way to reverse direction and several elementals that don't technically have mass can also change direction in some way or another. Use creativity here.
Then Tvorsk asked me how there can be an atmosphere if there's no gravity. The answer is that there is an infinite amount of air to fill this infinite universe. It just goes on forever, presumably with islands that just go on and on. This of course brings up the issue of lighting, namely stars and the sun. The answer is that they don't exist. Instead light in this universe (while emiting normally from fire and hot metals, etc) is primarily based on dust motes. In particular lite motes which float around everywhere emitting light in the visible spectrum. Light intensity is based on density, but they tend to wander around in groups. When inside such a cloud light is everywhere around you. Objects in the distance get sorta whited out. It's like a fog, but brighter. When such a cloud is nearby, it acts sort of like a sun that has a weird shape. In this universe, scientists aren't allowed to assume spherical shape ;).
Anyway, counter part to lite motes are of course dark motes. These are exactly the same as lite motes except they absorb light instead of emit it. They don't emit darkness so they don't act like a negative sun, but they do have a greater tendency to group together (being heavier) and become more dense which means that when you're in the middle of one of these clouds, it can get pitch black as opposed to a lite mote fog which usually leaves visibility for a while before things get blotted out. It's possible for higher density lite mote clouds or lower density dark mote clouds, but this is what you'll usually find. Dark mote clouds in a distance don't cast darkness, but just blot out all the light behind it, like clouds at night blotting out stars. When both lite and dark motes are nearby, light defaults to a sort of twilight look. Similarly when neither are present, light defaults to a dawn sort of look. As you can imagine these two states are difficult to tell apart.
For the most part this system doesn't throw off states of night and day too badly. Daytime with the 'sun' in the sky still casts shadows and overhead dark clouds will cut off light (okay I lied, they project darkness but only in a roundabout manner) and leave an island in darkness while torches, etc still give off light. Inside the clouds it's hard to escape these motes so torches, blindfolds, etc really don't have the effect they'd normally have, which is why people started collecting these motes themselves. By use of filters, it is possible to collect lite and dark motes and trap them in a jar like so many fireflies. They make excellent safe sources of light and are generally standard fare in most civilizations.
Now since dark motes 'eat' what lite motes create, dark motes like light motes, but lite motes dislike dark motes. This means that they tend to chase each other around the place creating relatively stable night-day cycles. As lite motes are lighter than dark motes, they escape faster than dark motes can chase so they keep fairly spread apart usually. Jars of lite motes in a dark fog will attract the dark motes making the fog less dense and jars of dark motes will drive off a lite fog in the locality. As dark motes are attracted by most lights, it is not uncommon for residue to collect on the outside of lamps and near fireplaces, often called 'dark soot'. This is usually pushed off and kept in bags out of the way until excess can be ejected safely back off the island. Anyway, such collected motes make useful inventions such as (aside from previously mentioned fog dispellers) lamps, shades, glitter, and smoke bombs. Again, use your imagination here.
« Last Edit: July 08, 2010, 09:55:58 AM by Stormkit »
Of the four elements,
None is predominant.
Of the four seasons,
None lasts forever.
