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Gleb question: Let's say I use gleb to generate a phonology. Then, I use a word generator to make some new underlying forms from the phonological inventory. Now I want to generate the corresponding surface forms. Is there a way gleb can do this for me, or will I have to use another sound change appl...

(The following is a short summary of „Zanim noc”. I am omitting the descriptions of the life during the war, the protagonist's family life and the titular “night”, when possible.) That's so cool. That's a movie? Or a book? It makes me want to check it out, as a Jew and a 4D conworlder. Well, you co...

Polaco, el wrote:Explored in Jacek Dukaj's „Zanim noc”.

Can you tell me a little about it? I don't know (Polish?).

That said, the fact that wine didn't survive the long sea trip from southern Spain and Portugal to the UK led to a rich tradition of fortified wines. If they're making rum, then they can make fortified pineapple and palm wine (yum). That surprises me. Im guessing the modern phenomenon of wine keepi...

Anyway ,to answer the question at the beginning of the thread, the only real idiosyncracy in my conworld is that in some heavily populated areas of the planet, arctic/subpolar climates are in close proximity to tropical climates, with arable temperate climates existing only much further away. This ...

A neat thing about the donjon maps is that there are many depressions in the terrain that are above sea level which would of course form endorheic basins, often filled with lakes and seas, and of course providing river sources where the basin is filled to its rim, not to mention the exciting possib...

One thing about the "more places of articulation" is that dragons are sometimes given snake-like tongues, which wouldn't be able to block airflow like our broad tongues can. What sorts of sounds can alligators/crocodiles make? They are reptiles with big snouts, and might be a place to start, though...

Another idea for non-human phonemes. You may have heard of creaky voice, which is how you sound when you speak with your vocal cords partially open, as opposed to fully open, during a vowel. In the Zapotec languages, among others, there is a phonemic distinction between creaky voice, breathy voice, ...

They had other sapient races (such as humans) as slaves, and so they developed a language that would have a large vocabulary with specific meanings and magically-generated phones (such as ghostly hums and clicks that sound like fire crackles) used for grammar. This ensures slaves would be able to s...

Interesting. Do you think it's the case that you simply can't make as much honey as you can barley/grapes, or is that just how we choose to use our land/time? That is, if there were more kept bees (or better environments for them to produce honey) could it drive the cost of honey (and mead) down to ...

I personally hate alcohol of any kind, but I suspect the modern fashionability of wine over other alcohols like mead comes from the complexity of its flavors. As a drinker of black coffee, that's something I can appreciate. The taste of mead depends on the type of honey (which depends on the flower...

As far as I can tell, wine from grapes is a popular class of alcoholic beverage because winemaking started in Italy, Romans conquered Europe, and then Europe conquered the world (culturally, at least). Is there some other aspect of grapes specifically that makes them particularly great for fermentin...

Do some reading on Dragon Age ; its magic utilizes a similar (albeit less science-y) concept wherein magic is employed by accessing the world of dreams called the Fade. The Fade is mutable whereas the waking world is static, but mages are individuals who can effect changes in the waking world by al...

How would the creatures be able to communicate though? How would they know how to read the human brain, or for humans to understand their alien speech, (which ether use different sets of elementary particles that can move in four dimensions or some complex string theory stuff) So, the ones who figu...

You should avoid describing the 4th dimension and its deziens because as you said, you and I can't comprehend it. The only things you should detail are that which the three dimensional beings perceive. All of this is assuming you want to make a realistic work, of course. Yeah, good point. So let's ...

You'd basically have to invent an entirely new physics, chemistry and biology for the fourth dimension's interactions. Of course! I hadn't thought of that. What if I just said that there were different physics, chemistry and biology, that neither I nor the people in the 3D version of the world unde...

I came across this YouTube video and had an idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiWKq57uAlk Imagine a world in a universe with a fourth spatial dimension. Three-dimensional folks experience their world the same way we experience ours, but sometimes strange beings appear out of nowhere, beings whos...

So yes women would have the ability to suspend in the growth. Pregnancy is more of an active process due to the biological control, and it can be sped up or slowed down as needed. After a certain point, fetuses are listening to the world outside and learning about their native language to be. If so...

For example, I've read that Venus traces a five-pointed star in the sky every four years. This is the reason the Olympics are held every four years and the reason why five-pointed stars are associated with devil worship among Christians. This smells like massive bullshit to me. As for the associati...

dhok wrote:Might be worth getting a copy of Universe Sandbox 2 on Steam and building a model of your system in it.

Woah, I never heard of that, and it's pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

I came across this tutorial by way of the Cartographers' Guild (if you've never checked out that forum, they're really into all things map-related and have lots of useful stuff): http://oldguygaming.com/realistic-coastlines-revisited I did this to my map several times in sequence with different sett...

and thus will be seeing the winter stars for a few minutes as the sky goes dark during the eclipse That's so cool. It makes perfect sense but I never thought about it. I like all the ideas of other things visible in the night sky. There is an interesting twist you could add to your planetary system...

For my conworld, I want to work out some basic facts about the other planets orbiting the same sun. Not technical data like how long their days and years are, but stuff that is visible from the conworld before the invention of the telescope. Can someone point me towards a resource for coming up with...

Pretty sure this is the right forum for this. Will the more hard-science-minded among you please answer a few questions? I've been googling but can't find exactly what I'm looking for. First, is there a reason that our moon rotates on its axis and orbits the earth in the exact same amount of time, o...

Right, that's why I went with the one with the silly dragon head. I think those wings attach about where he's picturing