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 Notes On Mu's Underground World

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Notes On Mu's Underground World Empty
PostSubject: Notes On Mu's Underground World   Notes On Mu's Underground World EmptySun Jul 29, 2012 12:31 am

~Notes On Mu's Underground World~
Full description of the changes to geology and terrain made by Mu as part of excavating his underground world and setting up the moss. Also included here are costs for all the "moss" creatures mu created to run his underground world and a summary of his combat values.

COMBAT VALUES AT A GLANCE:
250 stealth making people summoned by the call seem inconsequential as they travel unless they specifically do something to draw attention to themselves. So people don't really notice the mass migration as a big deal unless something really points it out. An entire town leaving is still going to be noticed!
250 stealth making the entrances to Mu's underground world harder to spot and pretty much uninteresting/uninviting if you do notice them; unless you've heard the call or already know where it leads.
250 stealth points protecting his mountain itself and his cave entrances from direct search by another deity who might be curious about them.
250 stealth making it harder for an enemy deity to directly discover that what looks and acts like normal vegetation is actually part of Mu's underground moss critters.
250 Protection points protecting Mu's mountain and the river basins and deep lakes leading away from it so they aren't chipped away at by miners, worn down by natural weather, or otherwise destroyed by mortal civilization.
250 protection points protecting the main body of Mu's moss creatures from physical damage, he doesn't care if you cut down a "tree" or if a blade of "grass" gets eaten the creature can grow that back, but if your trying to destroy his moss with fire or chop it out with axes he cares about that.
250 Security Points protecting Mu's sacred mountain and the river basins and deep lakes leading away from it so they are harder for enemy spell casters to effect.
250 security points protecting Mu's sacred mountain, river basin, and lakes from being directly altered/destroyed by an enemy deity.
250 security points preventing enemy deities from directly messing with Mu's Moss.
250 security points against spells trying to effect mu's sacred moss creatures.
500 points of power level to the general powers and abilities of Mu's sacred moss. Yes it would be better if he had separate values here, but he can't afford it and hopefully no single critter needs to split it's power to much at one time.

Intro

It's taken me forever to write this birth action up because the player is currently in Afghanistan and I wanted to be sure that I not only fully understood what he wanted, but also that I had the right tools in place to price it. This is after all an early build of the game. One issue was that the player has always been talking about his area being centered on a mountain, and it took me a while to decide that I'd have to build a mountain big enough to count rather than forcing upon him the largest nearby mountain(s) scattered over a truly HUGE area of terrain. This was a personal blind spot.

I also took a while to determine that even though the player was using the previous game's "area of effect" terminology to describe what he wanted he was constantly referring to a creature that generated the effect and the best/only way to really price it was to provide him with a race of gigantic supernatural "moss" creatures to do his bidding. This was a real break through for me personally in being able to get a handle on how to really write up the official description of what I think the god is doing. I'll still probably get it wrong as I often misinterpret what this player wants, but I can say I've done my best and hope he likes what follows.

Initial Geological Changes

The player has centered his entire build around a sacred mountain at the center of his area. At first I thought he was underestimating how BIG his area was, it's 2,560,000 square miles in area, and was thinking on the paltry provincial level we were playing with last game. Yet as I spoke with him he actually once asked for Everest by name, so I knew he wanted the center of his area to be the biggest mountain on earth. Everest was just out of his range so we have to build our own mountain. He also wanted all of his peoples to have fairly easy access to this mountain so we needed to get rid of some mountains that block parts of his people off from the central Tibetan plateau area that covers most of the region.

So first we are leveling off the Longmen Mountains to provide easy access to the Sichuan Basin where the Chang'yang culture has developed, and incidentally open up this part of the Tibetan plateau to the four season environment caused by direct access to the warmer weather patterns of the east that are dominant in said basin. Now a wide but gentle ramp several miles wide leads down into the basin and it's vegetation and animal life have easy access to migrate into the majority of Mu's area should it prove hospitable to them.

Other ramp-like passes are opened up to the southern Himalayan mountains to allow easier passage onto the main plateau for the southern Tsari people. Obviously since he is doing such a massive geological effect MU is getting a better INITIAL overview of what his area looks like and where people are in relation to one another than a god with some different focus. Other players reading this should not expect such information unless it also is completely relevant to the most basic changes being made by their birth action.

Mu's Sacred Mountain

The sacred mountain is built up using the transformed dirt from all the other earth moving operations Mu has going on in his area. It rests at the exact center of his area, on the eastern half of the Tibetan plateau. The mountain is a rough cone ten miles in diameter made from what appears to be a mix of white and green marble amply dotted with dirt covered ledges and pine trees. This mountain rises five miles up into the sky; just barely staying within the Troposphere.

A straight trench one mile deep cork-screws around the side of this mountain catching snow melt and rain fall from where the moist winds to the east hit it head on, and sending them down in a single deep stream that splits into four parts about a mile from the ground, joining to four similar trenches that cut the entire area into quarters. Each of these mile deep rivers ends in a ten mile deep lake near the edge of mu's starting area and the land is contoured so as to channel melting permafrost and glacial waters into these basins which in turn feed off into the natural water systems of the area through lesser streams and rivers. Thus all rivers lead towards the sacred mountain. Fake "seaweed" and other river life artificially allow for fish even where the sun never reaches, and sloping sides allow for regular river life near the edges if the basin before the drop off.

About two miles into the rock the mountain itself becomes hollow providing an interior area five miles in diameter with a one mile wide spiraling ledge that goes all the ways up, narrowing as it goes until it reaches the "top" of the cavern about three miles up. Here an opening leads out into an interior valley one mile around covered in an entire forest of Mu's temperature and gas regulating plants. This valley is covered in a clear crystal dome, and has openings outwards from which Mu's "forest" sends out winds that simulate the natural warming patterns originally caused by the flat surface of the Tibetan plateau and helping the god to somewhat hide the fact that this beautiful mountain hasn't always been here.

On each side of the structure four gateways reached by narrow ramp-like ledges lead into the mountain. Also at the center of the interior space a spiraling narrow ramp descends downward three miles to the underground grid below. The purpose of this is to give Mu a central region he can call people to in the mountain, but also access to a greater underground "world" that can in time be connected to other caves and caverns on the surface and/or in the surrounding mountains. This small downward ramp and pit counts as one of the cave entrances hidden by Mu's combat values, though if an enemy is in here they probably already have pierced this protection at least once before.

From the outside the top of the sacred mountain gleams as the rising sun reflects off the clear top, and the area is constantly shrouded in mist and fog. Huge headwinds come out of small holes in the rock and make climbing or flying closer than a mile below the clear area almost impossible without some sort of supernatural help. From the ground light reflected off the top of the mountain is diffused by these clouds and finds causing the entire area to be surrounded by what looks like a glowing yellow-orange bank of swirling clouds. The entire edifice is impressive and serves as a distraction from the hidden openings and secret underground areas below.

The Underground Grid

About three miles down where temperatures stay at a natural 75 degrees Mu has excavated a long grid of arched intersecting tunnels 1 miles wide, a mile tall (the roof is 2 miles down), and roughly 1000 miles long. These tunnels are fully encased in his fungal creatures and act as a rubbery stabilizing mechanism in an area known for it's earthquakes. Rivers often flow along the central interior of these domed passages fed from "fake" seaweed in the four great rivers and the deep great lakes that bisect the area and the caverns have their own weather systems, ponds, and lakes.

There are about 160 of these spaced at ten mile intervals going in each direction, for a total of 320 long arching caverns deep beneath the surface of the earth. Note that this is still far above the deep elemental field which starts 60 miles down, but it's far enough down that a civilization living peacefully here is likely to remain fairly safe. Every so often over the next few hundred years the settling earthquakes set off by Mu's initial earth moving will open parts of these tunnels up to naturally occurring cavern systems, mostly with them opening up with a hole somewhere in the walls, or in the ceiling of the arching corridors of the grid. Such times will trigger Mu's CALL, and probably give him an interrupt to provide easier access down from wherever the opening first happens once his moss has fully taken over the newly exposed spaces. Total space in the grid is roughly 319,774 cubic miles, each of which holds one of Mu's gigantic moss creatures.

Protecting the mountain & Hiding "The call"

All of this focus on the sacred mountain and caverns means that it's probably going to be something central to Mu's religion, as will the call, and the caves. So first 250 points of protection are protecting the marble and clear looking material of the mountain, deep river basins, and the extremely deep lakes. This protects them from being "mined away to nothing" by people who aren't given "access" by mu in some way, and prevents weather from wearing down the mountain, or someone from blowing it up. Another 250 points of security protects these same things from spells meaning that Mu only has to worry about psionic powers and direct attacks on his mountain/river/lake from other gods or extremely powerful casters.

Another 250 points of stealth values specifically make people effected by Mu's call seem inconsequential to anyone watching their migration unless they are being super suspicious and trying to evangelize or otherwise get attention. Meanwhile a further 250 points of stealth makes the actual cave entrances plus the four main entrance on the sacred mountain, hard to focus on, they simply are easy to miss and don't seem important if you do see them. A final 250 points of stealth protects both the mountain and all the entrances of these from being investigated directly by divine actions such as the "gather information" effect. The mountain is impressive, it may be sacred, but if you don't have the power to fully break through it's just a big rock and your likely to miss those little cave entrances on each side. lol

The final 250 of Mu's initial free security points is a stealth value hiding the "trees" and other plant looking supernatural outlets from gather information effects. They look like plants, fruit like plants, provide wood if cut down like plants, but if your looking for the fact that they are supernatural creatures with a spell or simply as a deity who is looking around . . . you need to overcome this stealth effect to catch on to the trick.

The Moss Of Peace

The big focus of Mu's action is a bunch of gigantic supernatural creatures who do all the work of making his underground world habitable. Each of these creatures is an energy being who inhabits a square of terrain one cubic mile in area. These creatures manifest within caverns as two different types of "supernatural" moss, and as a ton of "hair-like" growths on the surface that disguise themselves as local plant life.

Inside the tunnels the entire area is held up by a supporting latice of thick rubber like moss growths. This "moss lattice" completely surrounds the inside of the mountain and reaches down into the tunnel grind below. It also connects magically to "trees" and other fake plants on the surface which serve as hidden venting ducts to take out excess water, nasty gasses, and exess heat, while also bringing back in gas and water as needed and pulling up heat from far below to maintain an even temperature in the tunnel/cavern system itself even if the area around it happens to be molten lava or an icy mountaintop near the edge of space.

Inside this rubbery moss are hidden stinging thorns that shoot out in numbers at people who behave or think violently, injecting people with neurotoxin; the amount of the toxin ranging depending on the strength of the hostility varying from simply knocking you out, to paralyzing you, to causing death by suffocation due to palatalization of the lungs/heart. The moss reacts to people knowingly harming one another, so you can still kill a rabbit or a mammoth, or a cave bat, but if you decide to hit Joe with a club and force yourself on his wife . . . it's stinger time!

Inside this "rubbery" lattice naturally grows a smaller more normal "magical" moss that glows with a light like the sun. This moss propagates via airborne spores carried by the wind and grow anywhere that has little light, or lots of shadows, too much light retards it's growth, and actual sunlight destroys it. This moss sends out spores that spread via wind and spread it throughout the connected cavern areas eventually causing a new larger "moss creature" to form where it grows thickest. Below this, wherever the moss grows, there are overlapping cones of peace projected into the caverns.

Within these cones people can feel any harm they do to others and are calmed down, it becomes hard to become really angry, confused, etc . . . and it's easy to think rationally and consider your actions with care. The cones most likely completely cover the smaller caverns and tunnels, though there may be areas not covered in the largest caverns, such as that initial grid Mu placed 3 miles down. It has also been clarified that the peace effect is magical, not a drug, and effects any sentient being. It also is not something that will prevent you from hunting a rabbit or a mastodon, it won't even prevent you from killing another person, it just means you fully understand what your doing and feel that creature or person's pain while doing it. People won't enter the cavern and suddenly become all dopey and not want to leave, or eat, or something stupid like that.

The cones of peace also have two defensive side effects. Hostile Non-worshipers entering the cavern with technological machinery will find that their machinery is prone to constant breakdown via a "gremlin effect" in operation under the moss, and hostile non worshipers holding metal objects will find those objects randomly charged with high voltages of electricity that leap to them from the moss itself. This combined with the toxic spines within the moss lattice serve as Mu's primary defensive system against all forms of attack on his people. Overall the birth action reserve cost for one of these creatures is 112 acceptance and Mu will start out paying around 515 points on turn one for his large population of these things.

Also as part of the deal whenever this moss spreads to the entrance of a cavern touching the surface a call goes out summoning those who don't fit into their society, don't like their god, and are peaceful in nature to come down into the caverns. The call covers Fifty square miles of area around the entrance, and MU can himself trigger this effect at will for 50 acceptance from any one given entrance, if he wants to call people in a larger area, or farther away from an entrance to his mountain he needs to send out missionaries or actively craft a new "call" action to bring in the people.

The Prophet Of Peace

Mu chooses the most peaceful, kind, and generous person from amongst all of his worshipers and stops it from aging while marking it with beautiful glowing blue eyes and Mu is constantly watching this person and gets an interrupt if he should notice anything bad is about to happen to them. If they die or ever cease to be worthy of his favor he then searches out a new "most peaceful, kind and generous" person and bestows upon them this special gift. At this point age descends upon the former prophet instantly.

The First Call

The first call, before any others, echos through mu's area at random intervals throughout turn one bringing in the players original settlers directly to the sacred mountain from all over mu's starting sector. This initial calling is not something that will be repeated, after turn one the player must rely on the smaller calls, or summon people into the earth himself.
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