Talk:Alliance War
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OK. You clearly have a different view of the undersea world than I did. I had a couple of ideas for a hi-tech merman society, one that was fairly militantly opposed to various cultures that used the seas as a dumping ground. One that had the ultimate in submarine warfare and was feared for the potential to deliver short-range nuclear strikes anywhere in the world as a result. I was even looking at the idea of submersible dropships that emerge on a beach unleashing a wave of water-filled tanks (of the military variety, although if we need a fun reason why tanks got called tanks...). I didn't see them as stone-agers at all.
As for Coruvain, I guess a lot of places would try to kick out their kobolds but some lands would take them in (after weeding out the war criminals) and you'd get pockets of them within the Laertian Coast lands. They'd also be able to find themselves a home in the melting pot culture of Keffen.
Oh, as for Draken, when I said Roman/Chinese I only really meant in imperialist attitude. I haven't really decided on a proper 'style' for them yet.
On the other hand I think an planar front is a good idea. Especially if Kalchichi decides to take Riven out of the fight by launching an attack on their infernal dimension.--Alex 13:38, 9 May 2008 (BST)
Yeah, stone age mermen makes sense. I mean, how are they supposed to get further? Underwater you cannot smelt metals, or even fire clay. The only materials you can work with are stone, bone, or coral. Maybe some gold, but its not very useful. Even wood will rot fast or just float away. Maybe they could get hold of iron or bronze from the surface, but it would corrode badly and loose strength. Enchanting metals to resist corrosion? Possible, but just imagine the expense. How are they supposed to advance technologically? They might be good at mathematics, and maybe masonry architecture and magical advance is still options for them, however. They might also be very good at breeding various sea creatures, but I can't see them being able to make tanks or submarines.
I suppose some people in the Keffen empire might regard Kalchichi as an ally, even if the kobolds only helped them for their own reasons. Even if some of the kobolds managed to escape, the question still remain as to what happened to those who didn't. Would the Kaskallians just shoot those who were two slow to get out, enslave them, deport them? Its an important question, because it is going to colour how the kobolds react to them today.
Perhaps I'll write a bit about northen Finrize, and leave its past deliberatley balnk, and see what fits in.
Kalchichi could do that, or Riven could try to make use of its dimensional experience to drop troops behind enemy lines, forcing them to respond. If the merman are experienced at that sort of thing, having an astral war could well pull them into the conflict. Andy 15:47, 9 May 2008 (BST)
Couple of points on our underwater lands. First, minerally speaking the oceans are a mineral 'goldmine'. All those rivers dragging their way across the lands have been drawing particles of mineral wealth for millions of years. If a gold panner can make enough to survive with just a sheepskin in a box and what's coming through the river at any one time how well can a merman do when he finds a point at which the iron particles have been coming to rest for millions of years? And because of their differing weights different minerals will come to rest in 'patches' of a certain mineral across the sea bed. (Yes, chaos theory means some particles will drop elsewhere, but the majority will land next to its own kind.) So our mermen aren't lacking in mineral wealth.
In terms of working it, well isn't it heat, rather than fire, that they need to melt metals? Heat can be created magically, which might mean that in merman culture the role of sorcerer and blacksmith are the same (and the same word is used for both roles, causing some confusion in translations). And that's before we get to the various stone and metal shaping spells. Imagine a merman naval factory just sitting above an iron bed, several sorcerers casting their spells and forming a submarine out of the iron in the sea bed. And if they have the ironwood spell (or its coral equivalent) they can use those substances to make stuff as well. Finally if they need to they can use their air-breathing spell (equivalent to the water-breathing spell) and just come up onto the 'slag islands' to do their smelting.
On top of that is trade. With their mineral wealth they can bargain for a great deal from the surface world (or at least those parts they get on with) and with their realm connecting different continents they would have been able to nab ideas from different lands long before transcontinental communication became commonplace. Five hundred years ago being able to combine an idea from Finrize with something recently discovered in Coruvain would have given them an incredible advantage.
Basically I don't think the mermen have to stay primitive. Give them magic and tie it to smithing and they can create a techno-magic society.
On the other hand there's nothing to say that all the mermen are united in one vast empire all at the same tech level. One unusual way we could go with this is that there are several merman societies, but unlike surface lands which divide themselves by borders the merman societies divide themselves by depth. So while they occupy the same sea-area they rarely interact because they work at different depths. Which means your primitive mermen are the hunter-gatherers of the near-surface who spend most of the time following the whale schools, picking off the ones they want while letting the others breed and keep the stocks healthy (and means they hate Draken's whaling fleets). Meanwhile my deep mermen are the rarely seen explorers of the ocean depths who regard the surface world as remote and of little importance until they provoke them (industrial pollution dumping being the best way to annoy them...) and who rarely appear on the surface and cause a great deal of worry when they do, since few people understand their motivations. There could also be a surface society that farms seaweed fields floating on the surface (maybe early medieval level, maybe ancient agricultural level) and possibly another one between the hunters and the deep mermen. That's how I'd go with it.
As for reactions to kobolds after the war I'd go with the following:-
- Kaskalle - Officially expulsion; but several militia groups, mainly hobgoblin and golems, go in for lynchings and murder, and a blind eye is turned to the majority of it.
- Riven - Execution.
- Stornhaven - Deportation to Timur Bay.
- Kelhaven - Offered probationary citizenship, full citizenship after five years as standard. Those not interested are deported to Timur Bay. Kelhaven only had those kobolds captured as POWs so its kobold population remains low; maybe 10,000 at most.
- Keffen - Offered a choice between staying or deportation. More stayed in Keffen than in any other part of Coruvain outside of Timur Bay, but are still only one small part of the great melting pot of Keffen.
- Draken Empire - Enslaved and used for digging uranium and cobalt (which was named after the slaves) in the Carpathis Mountains.
As we detail more lands in Coruvain we can work out more reactions.--Alex 13:06, 12 May 2008 (BST)
I think you over estimate the ability of the sea to perform density seperation. The rate of settling depends of three things - the difference between the densities of the liquid and the particle, the size of the particle, and ambient current. Most metals cannot be dug out the ground as metals, they exists as ores. Ores are not as dense as the raw metal, which slows down settling. Furthermore, we are talking about wear particles, which are going to be small, especially from a hard iron ore like heamatite. The small size slows settling again. Finnally, there are the currents, which will not just move the particles around but also keep them afloat. Even in still water, it can take hours for dirt to settle.
This means that anything that gets swept into the ocean will spread out over a huge area before it settles. The resulting concentration of iron or whatever in the silt will be very low. You would have to process a large amount of muck just to get a few kilograms of iron.
If it where possible to simply scoop up dirt off the sea bed and processes it to get cheep iron, we'd be doing it in the real world.
Besides, the spells needed to get enough heat to smelt iron would be of high level. The heat would have to be very intense - at least 800 C, even for a horrid, slow solid state extraction, and more like 1,100 C. Thats hard enough on the surface, without all that water darwing off the heat. The heat metal spell doesn't melt iron or even bronze. The nearest equilant spell I could find was transmute mud to rock, which is wiz 5, making it a bit beyond the abilities of your average spell caster.
On top of that, you've still got problems with excessive cooling rate (everything is brine quenched under water!), which leads to a host of technical problems with cracking and embrittlement. There is also all that salt in the water, leading to chloride contamination and accelerate corrosion rates. And corrosion is going to be a huge problem at sea anyway. Only at the very depths of the sea, where it is extremely cold, will iron not rust. And you have to go pretty deep for that.
Besides any of that, drawing on sorcerus methods to create a quasi-technological industry is a bit of a contrivance that I don't think the merman need. They can be a significant force in the world with far fewer impositions. Thats why I cam e up with the idea of the dimensional travel.
Look at it like this, the surfacers are new to dimensional travel, but the merman have been doing it for a long time. They can move around on the other planes easily, while the others stumble round, struggling to do anything. Not only can they cross over easily, that can come back with ease too. And they can come back anywhere they like on the Fourth world, dropping either an individual assassin or an entire army upon their enemies at a moment notice. They could open a portal in the middle of a city and rush out to kill and destroy, then retreat before the surfacers army could get anywhere near them. Sure, people with stone spears might not stand a chance against a modern army, but they are very dangerous to unarmed civilians.
The fear of such a thing happening could destroy a nations morale and paralyse its armies, making them too paranoid to move away from vulnerable people.
The other point it the shear size of the under sea kingdoms - their population could be huge, especially, if these kingdoms extend a long way into the other dimensions. Gods knows what they might have found there to throw at their enemies.
In other words, the merman do not need steel, guns are submarines to be terrifying. They just need the ability to move unseen in large numbers and inspire fear in the other races who do not understand them. Andy 13:09, 19 May 2008 (BST)
Except your dimensional travel is just as much a contrivance to make them a world power. You say they'd need a 5th level spell to work metals. I don't have my PHB to hand, but isn't the first dimension hopping spell around 7th level? At least? Even a simple one-man teleport is 5th level. You could fudge it so they can do it at lower levels, but how would that be different from fudging it to let them work metals easier? --Alex 21:05, 19 May 2008 (BST)
The difference is that it's only one contrivance. To make them technologically active you need many. You require a good supply of iron ore, a method to extract, refine and shape it, you need away to stop it from rusting away, you need a method for them to put together electronics (including the problems of underwater clean rooms), and they need a method of acquiring and storing fuel (I doubt they leap straight into undersea mining to get oil and gas, and they need to find away to utilise that fuel.
Sure, perhaps you could come up with magical methods for how they did all this, but it all starts to look increasingly artificial. My way, you just need one thing - a methods of crossing the dimensions. I wasn't going to have them do it with spells anyway - that's the inefficient surfacer way. Instead I was going to give them coral gateways which they grow over a period of 10-15 years. Each one links to another dimension and can remain open for a total time of, say, half an hour. During that period it can transport as many people as can fit through it.
Each gate can open up on anywhere in the other dimension, so on the return journey that could unload anywhere on the fourth world, leaving the gate open, do what they need to do, and then step back through before it closes. Andy 12:26, 20 May 2008 (BST)
Hmm, I still say they have the capacity to build hi-tech. Oh, and I remembered the name of those mineral resources I was on about. Manganese nodules. Here's a few bits about them I found on the web.
- Nodules lie on the seabed sediment, often partly or completely buried. They vary greatly in abundance, in some cases touching one another and covering more than 70 per cent of the bottom. The total amount of polymetallic nodules on the sea floor was estimated at 500 billion tons by A.A. Archer in 1981. They can occur at any depth, even in lakes, but the highest concentrations have been found on vast abyssal plains in the deep ocean between 4,000 and 6,000 meters.
...which is where I planned my 'deep' merman culture to live. Each nodule is only about 10cm across, but as those figures above show there's an awful lot of them down there. And you can get a wide range of materials from them.
- The chemical composition of nodules varies according to the kind of manganese minerals and the size and characteristics of the core. Those of greatest economic interest contain manganese (27-30 %), nickel (1.25-1.5 %), copper (1-1.4 %) and cobalt (0.2-0.25 %). Other constituents include iron (6 %), silicon (5%) and aluminium (3%), with lesser amounts of calcium, sodium, magnesium, potassium, titanium and barium, along with hydrogen and oxygen.
Previously you asked why, if there is so much mineral wealth on the seabed, we don't mine it. The answer is a combination of difficulty of reaching it, cost and international agreements to prevent ecological damage to what is considered to belong to all mankind. But for mermen the first is not a problem since they already live there, the last isn't an issue since they already own it and so it's only cost that would keep them from learning how to exploit it. (For more on these nodules visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese_nodule)
But I've had a new thought that combines your idea with mine. And sort of drags this idea back to the Alliance War. The Alliance War is going to have been fought with, for the most part, WWI/WWII levels of technology. Which means it will probably have been the first war to see the full scale deployment of ironclads, dreadnoughts and submarines. And for the mermen these developments are going to be terrifying. With dimensional travel they had previously been able to affect the surface world without the surface world being able to affect them. With the advent of metal ships (much harder than wooden vessels for a stone age warrior to attack) and submarines (actually able to threaten undersea communities) they would now be playing on, if not a level playing field, then at least one not so heavily weighted in their favour.
So after taking a battering from such machines they would want to be able to match them, which would require a quick 'oomph' in their understanding of technology. After finding an ally of some kind (Kelhaven or Kaskalle would be possible, although since Kelhaven is landlocked their meetings would be more likely to have taken place on another plane, perhaps a waterworld where a treaty has given the few islands to Kelhaven and the oceans to the mermen) the mermen's long term plan is to get their new friends to educate a whole school of merchildren (I know, bad pun. But I couldn't resist it...) in modern technology. If we say that the kobolds had the edge in submarine warfare then it could even be a Peenemunde style situation, where the surface allies grabs the Kalchichi brain trust and then gets them to educate the mermen in creating their own submarines in exchange for pardons for war crimes.
So with surface people helping with the electronics and education, and the mermen providing the raw materials and a fresh water dimension to build them in (avoiding, or lessening at least, your rust/corrosion problem) the mermen emerge about twenty to thirty years after the war with a small but potent technological strength nobody expected them to have (if you want a real world analogue, US assistance to Japan after the war led to its rise in the 70s/80s). Of course its only a small percentage of their population that gets this kind of education and it would be beginning to create a split in merman culture with the educated class wanting more control over policy, and the rulers wanting to both retain control of the scientists while keeping them part of merman society. What's more the traditionalist side or merman society want to rid themselves of these 'surface-thinkers' and are putting pressure on the rulers to disown the 'surface toys' and return to traditional values.
Of course your gates idea solves a number of other problems as well. For example, who needs fossil fuels if you have a dimensional gate. Attach a gate onto a sub and open it to another place with a greater depth pressure (something mermen would understand much more than surface dwellers). The water on the far side comes streaming out and propels your sub forward without any need for an engine. Such a method of propulsion would be virtually silent, which would explain why the mermen subs would be so feared. Small manouverings would be done with small gates (effectively decanters of endless water, and I think I've just answered who makes all of them on the Fourth World) attached to the side.
I may have to give up on the tanks though... (sigh)--Alex 20:23, 20 May 2008 (BST)
The information about noduals is quite interesting. I doubt the merman would have been able to seperate out the metals themselves, but they might still of had use for them. The Aztecs for example had access to heamatite and found it useful, even though they never extracted iron from. You see, heamatite is particularly hard, so they made hammers out of it and used them to break other types of rock. The merman might have done something similar, perhaps using the heavy chunks of metal to weigh down boyant items they wanted to take down to the bottom.
If there was some contact with surfacers along the coast, then the land dewllers might have seen these odd little lumps then. I suspect that that the merman would be more likely to trade with primitive people whos level of technology (And probably mind set.) was closer to there own. People might not have realised the significance of the noduals for years, until some passing scientist got hold of a sample and realised what it was composed off.
Of the elements found in the noduals, manganese is the most interesting. I've never heard of a magnesium based alloy, but it is an important addition to many alloy systems. Chief amongst these is plain carbon steel, where it is used to reduce the problems caused by sulfur impurities. Without the manganese, sulfur causes the steel to become brittle. This means that large amounts of additional processing has to be do in order to remove it, which slows down production considerably.
This draws another parallel with the second world war, where norway was invaded because it contains magnesioum deposits. If Kalchichi controls, or at least cuts off access to, the nearest source of manganese in coruvain, then it gives their enemies reason to try ang get in contact with the mermen to persuade them to trade a few noduals. It also gives Kalchichi reason to want to stop this from happening.
With contact an exchange of ideas would have occured, as you say. I'm not sure if the anologue with japan is valid - they were hardly stone age before the war. Still, a certain amount of surface technology might have filtered down to the merman. The real question is how much, and how far it has spread.
A place to start answering that question would be to ask what the mermen would want in exchange for the noduals. Even decent stainless steel struggles with salt water (And without the manganese, the surfacers would have been struggling to make it in any event!). Initially, there demands would have been for things that they could readily understand - clay pots, wooden lobster cages, that sort of thing. However, once Kalchichi decided to put a stop to the trade, they would have wanted weapons to fight back with, and their new friends would have been glad to give them the means to attack a mutual enemy.
After the war we end up with a situation in which most of the mermens borrowed technology is military in nature - limpit mines, harpoon guns, that sort of thing. This creates a problem, because suddenly the warriors have ten times more power than before. The warriors take over, creating a military despotism near the coastal regions. Perhaps some of the surface countries don't want to give them weapons any more, but some of them will do - Riven, for example - as long as the supply of noduals keeps coming. Given that they deposits near to the despotism will run out, that means they will have to use their advanced weapons to conquor merman kingdoms further out. It also means that those other kingdoms will want to find people to sell them these wonderful weapons. Kalchichi might have decided that having a few merman allies might be useful, in order to off set their merman enemies!
By the way, I've archived some of this page, because it was getting so large that I was getting the "page to fucking big" warning while editing it. Andy 11:41, 23 May 2008 (BST)
I was starting to get the warnings too.
You just gave me an idea for another possible parallel, one that does seem to work with the mermen. After WWII the big nations didn't want to go into direct conflict with each other. So they fought proxy wars in other countries, supplying 'military advisors' and only occasionally sending their own men in. It happened in Africa, in South America and most famously in Asia; in Korea and in Vietnam. If the threat of nuclear war has the same effect in this world then the mermen could easily end up as the 'Vietnamese of the Fourth World' helped by 'friends' on both sides who exploit any divisions and get their mermen to fight the other sides mermen. Vietnam, but with more water. Many of these Asian countries (at least outside the cities) were medieval at best so the parallel with the mermen is a valid one I think. Both sides will end up designing lots of underwater technology and magic to help 'their' mermen, making this one area where the Fourth World may be slightly ahead of Earth. And modern Vietnam and Korea (South Korea at least) are reasonably well-educated societies, showing that it is possible to move a culture forward at an accelerated degree in such a short space of time.
Thoughts?--Alex 17:46, 24 May 2008 (BST)
Sounds like an interesting idea. In any event, we seem to have decided where the merman start off in the alliance war, which is what is talk page is supposed to be about! I think any other ideas regarding where the merman should be now can go on a page dedicated to them! Andy 11:37, 25 May 2008 (BST)
Role of the golems in the aliance war
Ok i kind of sore the golems defecting out of the armys as there indvidulaity developed and then seeking protection from wotever nation would shelt these rebals. once there was anouth of them they start a risitance movement with in the sistem caring out terist stricks and smugling out prisoners of war and the like much in the way of the french resistance but also simalar to the role of the black slaves of the amercan Civil war.
The analogy I was thinking of when I wrote that idea out was Poland in WWII, where Jewish fighters, like Mordechai Anielewicz, teamed up with Polish nationalists to rise up against the Germans. Neither side really trusted each other, but united against a common foe. They operated in much the same way you're describing there. I was just giving the golems a happier ending than the Jewish fighters in Poland. (As the Red Army advanced into Poland the Jews and the Poles launched a massive uprising. Then the Red Army, under Stalin's orders, halted its advance long enough for the Germans to crush the rebels. Then they moved in, the Germans having killed all those most likely to cause problems for the Communists.)--Alex 16:24, 28 May 2008 (BST)
Important quest: Who dropped the A-bomb?
In the real world, the war was already coming to an end. Even without it, the Japanese would have been defeated eventually. This might not have been the case in the Fourth World. Considering Kalchicih's huge population and massive industry, it could probably win a war of attrition through shear brute force. This puts the onus on the other side to be inventive.
Who would be a likely candidate for our version of the manhatten project?
- The Drakken Empire? They sound a bit too stuck in the past to do anything that inventive.
- The Kaffen Republic? At this point they are just a bunch of very determined rebels. I would seem unlike that they would have the required resources yet.
- Kaskalle? Same as above really.
- Riven? Perhaps. Alex would know better, but I think that if the rulers of Riven got hold of nukes first the world woulf tremble.
- Kelhaven? Possible. Again, I don't really know enough.
Andy 13:18, 1 June 2008 (BST)
Hmm. Kelhaven are probably a nuclear power, but would probably only deploy if they were threatened themselves. Riven, I think you're right. While they would favour a first strike option, I think they should only get nukes after someone else has them so they are in a mutually assured destruction situation from the off.
Keffen is an option, just because they have close to a billion population (maybe about 750,000,000 at the time of the Alliance War) and in all that mass they should be able to come up with a genius capable of devising a nuclear program. It all depends on how organised they became when they split from Draken. If it was a bit disorganised then they probably wouldn't have been able to organise such developments.
I think my money would be on Stornhaven. Despite being partially occupied by Kalchichi at one point they (with Kelhaven's assistance) were able to drive back the kobolds and retain a certain degree of their infrastructure. And with their anger at being invaded they would certainly have the political will to strike out at Kalchichi. It would probably have been a joint Kelhaven/Stornhaven project, but Stornhaven were just far more willing to use it...--Alex 15:51, 2 June 2008 (BST)
I think I favour the Kelhaven/Stornhaven idea. Andy 21:04, 2 June 2008 (BST)
