 October 1, 2011 - 4:31pm | Hard to think of Pale as an Ice world without thinking of Hoth and our own artic and the creatures seen in those locals. Tauntauns, caribou, reindeer, polar bears, arctic fox, wolves and migratory birds as well as marine mammals. I like musk Ox- would like a bad tempered animal like them with horns that can stampede the snow cat in the Bounty on Death adventure. seems fur or feathers and blubber insulation are the best strategies for an ice environment. lichen like plants and a bad tempered herbavore, provide one set of stats to cover 20-30 varieties of fowl, plus a natural predator that is being displaced by the quickdeath and in danger of becoming extinct. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 8, 2011 - 6:35pm | I suppose the reason I like to think of Pale as an Ice/snow world is that I ran across some a PBP game with some CGI picks of Pale, game easily predated the fan zine, but it had some beautiful pics of Point true being snow bound. Place Pale at the outer edge of the inhabitable zone and make New Pale a moon of a gas giant in the next orbit and we get the main planet cold and the secondary as a warm ag moon with large dinosaur creatures. At least thats how I like to view this system. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 October 9, 2011 - 12:02pm | I was actually thinking about this yesterday and today before I saw this post. If New Pale has a more temperate and nicer climate, why wasn't it settled first? If you're coming in to colonize a system, why wouldn't you start out on the nicer planet/moon first? What compelling reason is there to settle the planet that becomes Pale over the other object that becomes New Pale (Since obviously Pale was settled first if you're going to have something called New Pale). Especially if Pale has a harsher climate. In a two planet system, with all other things being equal, the nicer planet will always be settled first if they are not settled at the same time. And to get names like Pale and New Pale, that definitely indicates a chronology. So it had to have been more advantageous to settle Pale first. If it is an "ice world", what makes New Pale worse or makes Pale so compellingly better? One possible issue is the gravity, Pale's is 0.9g while New Pale is 1.4g. That would definitely be a factor. But is it enough to overcome the climate issues. On the flip side, Pale has a 55 hour day as opposed to New Pale's 20 hour day. There has to be a reason the standard day is 20 hours long, namely that that value is close to the average of the natural wake/sleep cycles of the core four. Any planet with a 55 hour day is going to take some getting used to for beings that are used to a shorter cycle. Personally, I think I'd argue that Pale is a more temperate world like Earth. Maybe it has harsher winters, maybe not. Maybe Point True was just built on top of a rich geolgical site (i.e. lots of nearby resources to mine) that happened to be in the northern or southern lattitudes (I like southern just for variety, in fact I think I'll use that for my story I'm writing). So while a lot of the planet is nice, Point True happens to be on the edge of the temperate zone and so suffers from serious winters. I can see it going something like this. Point True started out mining site and they built a mineral refinery that was centrally located to all the nearby resources (This was done by Streele Mining, the forerunner to the Streel mega-corp). The site proved so lucrative that it just continued to grow and expand and more and more personnel were brought in. This was a long term assignment so families came along as well. As it grew it all the support infrastructure began to spring up to support the growing population of the area (schools, shopping, recreation, etc). Various manufacturing enterprises started to set up as well to take advantage of low transport costs since the raw materials were being mined and refined right there. This also fed the population growth with the industrial workers, their families, and the additional infrastructure to support them. After a while you had a large city. Maybe not in the ideal location climate-wise but there were economic reasons for it's location on an otherwise nice planet. Of course that may be the reason for settling Pale first as well, there wasn't anything of apparent economic value on New Pale until they couldn't grow enough food on Pale to support the growing population. That would imply that Truane's Star was orginally explored for economic reasons as opposed to some other reason. I'm not against Pale being an "ice" world, but I would like to know why the nicer planet wasn't colonized first. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
October 9, 2011 - 1:47pm | @Terl Obar: giant robot eating dinosaurs. Actually I thought about it quit a bit and a planet with upper latitudes dominated by snow and glaciers and a more temperate lower latitudes is just fine. Certainly there's been some global warming since the war and the nukes. Natural progress of the ice age has been halted and reversed. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 2, 2017 - 4:45am | Source Data File: "The Zethra" Ed Greenwood Dragon #84 page 76 The Zethra known as Mlaqaq resides in the Truane's Star system and goes by the name Mlaqaq of Truane's Star I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 2, 2017 - 5:51am | Data File Source: "Silver Twin!" Michael Therrian Dragon #102 Tarnath's Realm is a city on Truane's Star from which we surmise on Pale. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
