Tuesday, November 1, 2022

...and undead bunnies

The Venus thing isn't leaving.

Would really make a sprawling setting for a number of stories. Especially since you have to make the science pretty rubbery in order for the idea to work at all, you might as well take it that one step further; floating shoals, deadly sulphuric-cloud weather systems, floating trees, giant deep-atmosphere predators...

And of course a huge mix of cultures. And an overall shape that is up-for-grabs late colonial/Napoleonic (yes, I'm still listening to a 50-hour podcast history of Napoleon) with the Great Powers in near-constant skirmishes, changing coalitions and gaining and giving up colonies as concessions.

The cultures and technologies can vary by as much rubber as you are willing to add to the science. Floating wood, so an atmospheric Sargasso for one culture? Possibly primitive and hostile and mostly uncontacted c.f. Sentinel Island? Or a savage largely un-policed marquis/bayou?

And why stop there? Magitech left by humanity when they were actually capable of flying to Venus. Whatever remains of the original terraformation efforts (a huge available hand to wave over the floating trees and space whales and whatever). With possible factional disputes, meaning avian super-predators or leviathan terraforming creatures in the deep or intelligence; bred, robotic, accidental, even alien.

***

Yeah, I already had a setting in mind for the fantastical, science-adjacent mix of multiple weird cultures for the protagonists to adventure through.

Two, you could say, except that in the case of Tiki Stars, I've sort of decided that the intent is pastiche. Instead of trying to make a plausible western or alien-on-a-spaceship or whatever out of a single coherent world, I was just going to openly tweak/re-imagine the world as needed. Like, even the nature of Old Earth/Lost Earth/Mythical Earth changes from story to story, even though most of the cast continues and their back stories remain intact...

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