A BRIEF HISTORY OF HOW

ORLANTIA CAME TO BE

I LEARNED FROM MY MISTAKES

My first experience as a Dungeon Master was just after I had finished reading Larry Niven's Ringworld. The "Ringworld" was a fantastic, ring shaped world with a radius of 93,000,000 miles - 1 astronomical unit or 1 AU. It would have a surface area equivalent to millions of Earth type planets. I placed my first campaign on such a construct and I learned a couple of very important lessons.

Lesson One: the world was way too big to fill. A group of adventurers traveling along a linearly accelerating transportation system on the rim could travel their entire lives and never need to see the same place or the same people twice. I had thought this an ideal way to be as creative as I would like to be; with so many different societies and cultures, human and otherwise, both my players and I would never be bored. But it was simply too much. I just wasn't creative enough to come up with that much new stuff that quickly; anything I did do was necessarily very superficial and somewhat shallow. And so the campaign lacked any real depth.

Lesson Two: a whole level of interpersonal relationships with family, friends, and acquaintances was nearly totally absent. Gone were all the possibilities of any stories that might develop along these lines. Without a sense of family, country, culture, or place, the player characters never developed the concern or pride over such matters. This forced the PCs to be shallow as well. What concern would they have if a government or kingdom endured or fell? Just move on; don't stay and fight for home and country. It's not my family or friends being slaughtered; I don't even know those people! And what character would ever want to build a home, a stronghold, or a keep where the rule of their profession was to travel further and further on into the unknown, never looking back? Of course, one could alleviate these problems simply by preventing the adventurers from traveling too much, and thus staying put. But in the long run, that would mean having a lot more possibilities in places to explore than you ever intended to use. I thought it better to simply use a more traditional planet next time rather than curtailing their movements on a Ringworld.

It was with these two lessons in mind that I resolved to do a better job on my next attempt. A couple years later - after the obligations of the outside world forced the players apart and continuing to meet once a week was no longer feasible - the opportunity to create another world came along. It also had the advantage of being populated with college students as players rather than high school buddies. The college types brought a higher level of intelligence, sophistication, and experience to the campaign. They both expected more and brought more creativity and detail to the game. More importantly, they brought considerably more curiosity to the game. I really can't say this would be true of all college students or wouldn't be true of a lot of younger players, but I did notice for the first time that if I spent some time creating an apparent anomaly as a clue, unlike before, it wouldn't go unnoticed or unchecked. More alert than many previous players, these new players were always paying attention to details. It was in such an environment I began to create the world of Orlantia. Ultimately, it was players of such a caliber who were responsible for making that kind of detail necessary or, at the very least, interesting.

THE GREATEST TRICK OF THE DUNGEON MASTER

It was in the college environment that I learned one of the best DM tricks I know. When dealing with players on such an elevated level - those with a higher degree of "sophistication" - it's a practical certainty they will uncover apparent discrepancies and anomalies in your world that even you hadn't planned. It's only natural a DM should occasionally miss this little thing or fail to take into account that little fact or rule. When the mistake became apparent to the players they pounced on it like a cat would pounce on a mouse. "Hey! That's not right, what's the deal here?" Of course, if it wasn't important to the story I would just confess my error, do a little backtracking and move on. That is most frequently the best way to handle it. Sometimes, however, it was important to the story line, so I had to stick to my guns.

At such times, upon the discovery of the apparent anomaly, the group of players would hammer away at it after I refused to own the error. Suggestion after suggestion for a possible explanation would be put forth as to what the DM might then be thinking, frequently treating me like I wasn't even in the room. All the while, under some assumption that I knew what I was doing when I made that little mistake, the players would search for the "answer." I would just sit back and listen to their analysis and brain storming over my mistake, all the while thinking "oops." Of course, more often than not, at least one of them would come up with a pretty good possible reason for the anomaly. Most of the time, frequently while listening to their thoughts on the matter, I would come up with several possible explanations myself. However it eventually ended, before we were ready to move on, and thanks to the feedback I got from some excellent players, I would have decided upon the "reason" for the anomaly and promptly kept it to myself.

Eventually, in the course of subsequent play, the players would frequently dig out my chosen reason with the use of sages, magic users, clerics, or other Non Player Characters. This had the effect of demonstrating why it was important to the story line and would therefore suggest further avenues of action. This quest for answers to anomalies was usually done after the PCs came in from the field and had access to the resources a town might provide. For a modest price, of course, they might be able to discover some hidden information that would prove to be useful in the future or dig out the reason why the anomaly was important to the current story line in the first place. It would appear as if the mystery had been written into the story, complete with complications, plot twists, and surprise endings. All I needed to do was to keep my mouth shut and watch large sections of the game write itself. Naturally, I would always choose a solution that fit into my world. In fact, these anomalies frequently arose because of a world concept I already had while writing the scenario, and their justifications would eventually become part of my world's standard reality.

The only thing I had to do from that point on was to remain consistent with what ever had been decided or written. As a result of all this, it always appeared I was a better, cleverer, and wilier DM than I actually was. And modesty forbids me from saying I'm pretty clever as it is anyway. The better the players, the better I became. And who is to say that doing this doesn't make one a better DM?

I never really felt like I was cheating when I did those things - not that a DM could technically cheat anyway. Mistakes were bound to be made; I just solved them in a way that ultimately brought a lot of consistency, creativity, interest, and enjoyment to the game for everybody involved. And so, this little DM trick became one of the best ways to harvest the natural resources of my mind and the fertile imaginations of the players around me. Not using it would have been the greatest mistake I could have made during the construction of my world. As such, not using the input, feedback, and creativity of one's players would probably be one of the greatest mistakes any DM could make. So don't.

THE BIRTH OF ORLANTIA

My first step in the creation of Orlantia was simply to draw a map. I purchased some nice hex paper from the local hobby store and drew a very arbitrary continent, complete with mountain ranges, rivers and streams, lakes, harbors, forests, plains, islands, swamps, cities, a network of roads, three major human societies - The Alodarian Empire, The Nahechaian Dynasty, and the Larns Archipelago - an Elven society - The Alderami - and a Dwarven society - The Mostoli. Other things were there, of course, but not shown on the map such as Orcs, Kobolds, Hobgoblins, Gnolls, Hobbits, Gnomes, and all other manner of creatures and non-human societies that could typically be found in an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons setting. Naturally, the map had a scale of distances; this was necessary if you wanted to move around and know how long it would take to get where you were going. It was also this scale of distance that would later come back to haunt me, but I'll speak more of that a little later on.

So, with a map in hand, a campaign arose. The characters were created with family members and every character was given a hometown or village near the major city of Esitte, where it was preordained by the DM they should meet, band together, and strike out into the world. After character generation, the first scenario is always finding a way to introduce the characters to one another and then giving those characters a reason to need each other so they will stay together. It would be a year or two before more than this initial map was even considered or needed since I had already given this new campaign the two things my previous attempt had lacked; a sense of place or home and a sense of family.

I USED MY PAST EXPERIENCE OF OTHER WORLDS

I had been a veteran of my older brother Tom's campaign, the world of Simhar. The name SIMHAR was derived from the SIMple HARmonic motion of the planet, bobbing up and down in a force field tube between two suns. Between two suns, the planet rotated very slowly, maybe only once every couple millennia, and therefore had no nighttime. It was a desert world, many of its ideas obviously being lifted from the novels in the DUNE series, though they were AD&Ded up.

On Simhar, one quarter of the world was irrigated with water brought in from the poles. To each side of this inhabited quarter were vast deserts, each one also accounting for one quarter of the world; here the two suns' rays were too direct for any water or typical life to exists in any lasting way. No life, that is, with the possible exceptions of some deep desert creatures like the terrible sandworms, another good reason to stay out of the desert. On the backside of the planet it was speculated there would be another habitable quarter of the world where, if properly irrigated, life and societies could flourish. But it was impossible to get there since the deep deserts were too vast and dangerous to cross and the gods had apparently erected anti-teleporting and anti-plane shifting measures to keep magic from connecting the two quarters. I still don't know why they may have done such a thing, but I suspect the mystery simply added flavor to the campaign, not to mention less work for the DM. On the other hand, it may have had something to do with the artificial force tube in which the planet oscillated. Perhaps such plane shifting or teleporting might disrupt the tube, or vice versa. In any event, as these secrets were not mine to discover, we were virtually confined to the known quarter of Simhar.

Now, on Simhar, the planet's slow rotation eventually would carry any permanent cities into the eastern desert quarter where they would have to be abandoned. The population usually would migrate inward, to the west, to a newly reclaimed spot of land that had just rotated in from the western desert, thus giving any new city a maximum life span. After all, it's quite expensive to move cities, and you wouldn't want to do it any more than necessary.

During the migration of one's capital city, the government would be particularly vulnerable. It was for that reason the last capital city of Menabold - Men of Old - had used magic to create a permanent source of water out in the desert. They had sought not to move but rather to extend their life in this manner; this was probably because of their current political environment. A move at that time would almost certainly bring about the downfall of their empire. Unfortunately for the Lords of the Flame, the principle protectors of the Menabold Empire, they had a traitor in their midst, one Lord Karkfum. Karkfum had poisoned the magical water supply with a permanent source of berserker rage potion, hoping to gain control of the empire when the remaining Lords of the Flame went berserk. Alas, his plan failed since at least eight lords somehow remained unaffected, and Karkfum's belief he could control the berserked population was somewhat too optimistic. It was this play for power that caused the precariously, politically and ecologically balanced Menabold Empire finally to fall.

However, the legacy of The Lords of the Flame, the now Lich, Lord Karkfum, the recently - a century or so - abandoned capital city of Menabold still within an adventurer's reach out into the eastern desert, and a population of berserkers still able to live out in the desert - for the water didn't effect the plants and could still sustain life - along with the political backdrop the of the new Arrekean Empire all made an excellent setting for a campaign. It was there that I lifted the Non-Player-Character of the mighty neutral-neutral wizard Tranu - a variation of neutron - a neutrally charged subatomic particle.

TRANU

How mighty was Tranu? Well, it was said that Tranu's familiar was a 30th level cleric of the greater god Set. Now don't let an evil familiar throw you. Tranu is as neutral as they come, though he may probably, and only occasionally, lean a little toward good just to compensate for whatever his familiar had gotten him into. Apparently, Tranu had made a deal with the Arrekean Empire to connect them to his interplanetary teleportation network. As I recall, very little was said about it and even less was done with it. I believe in the story it was through this network that my brother Tom transported our PCs. Jilerb, my first character, and Jessica, my brother John's first character, from the world of a starting prefabricated module that Tom had used earlier in his first attempt as a DM. This was also John's and my first attempt at any - professionally made - fantasy roleplaying game as players. I believe the year was 1980 and I had yet to graduate from high school, but I would do so in the spring of that same year. So my first character was transported, after completion of the prefab, to the world of Simhar, Tom's next attempt as DM and his first attempt at a "whole cloth" campaign.

Tranu, in retrospect, must have been connecting worlds that also had some other, preexisting connection of some sort. That is, there may have already been a natural path of least resistance between two particular worlds such that, given the bizarre and many variables involved in planar mechanics, would have resulted in natural accidents already transferring objects from one to the other. For example, if one's teleport spell from Orlantia to Pholar went awry for some reason and you didn't end up where you intended, you may have defaulted to a natural conduit and ended up on Simhar via this natural connection, but luckily, still survived. Tranu may have simply strengthened this natural connection. All this is important for one reason. Due to story considerations involving the Lords of the Flame, there must have been contact between Orlantia and Simhar long before Tranu ever officially joined them on the net. Of course, once a mage discovers a new world they can always deliberately and intentionally make the trip. And if they tell other people about it or show it to them, magic users will begin to make the trip for their own reasons. So this must have been what happened when the Lords of the Flame escaped from Orlantia those many centuries ago and settled on Simhar in their exile. That is, they must have known about the Planet somehow, and it was probably not general knowledge at the time and an excellent choice for people who wanted to hide from something on Orlantia.

The NPC of Tranu became important in other ways as he, and his long dead brother Kaplok, were the last of their race. From what I gathered they were mortal; their longevity may have been on the order of 100,000 years. As such, certain self-imposed restrictions that the immortal gods had to contend with were, in no way, applicable to the mortal Tranu. In any event, a small part of their story was interwoven with our adventures on Simhar. I mention all this for one reason. It provided ideas and experience I utilized in the creation of Orlantia. And Simhar, at least for me, had "set the standard" for the proper creation of a world.

Also, James Robert Tiberius Starlight, another one of my subsequent PCs in my brother's campaign, and eventually a veteran of five other campaigns at the time of this writing, got his start on Simhar. Starlight's background, before he became an adventurer, would eventually be retroactively written to give him his start on Orlantia. Apparently, he fled Orlantia to Simhar and struck out as a 1st level fighter hiding under the name of Robert. He had considerable, albeit incomplete magic user training and would eventually become a dual class Fighter / Magic User while still on Simhar. Years later, after surviving a total of six worthy campaigns, I retired him to my world as a prominent NPC. I still keep him there in a quasi-unchanged state so I may someday play him as a "real" PC in someone else's campaign. It was in the writing of Starlight's background that much of Alodarian Imperial history was also written.

Finally, this brings us back to the interplanetary teleportation network. Tranu contracts out this service, in my universe, to the most powerful government on any planet that interests him. Through the Alodarian Empire, Orlantia is a member along with Simhar, Ridile, Zanth, and Megrock. These are the five so-called adventuring planets. These adventuring planets are so-called because their environments and settings are such that they are filled with magic, magical creatures, fallen civilizations, castles, keeps, dungeons, etc., all of which provides a rich and worthy environment for an adventuring campaign. Fifteen other planets are also in the teleportation network, also called the chain. They are Droshen, Sloakia, Ahlalandia, Camby, Zorles, Metros, Michelle, Brrock, Castile, Degaba, Asylus, Trigomagi, Crotarien, Froth, and Gimarian. Gimarian is also, coincidentally, the name of the star in the solar system where Orlantia can be found. Or perhaps there is one of those natural connections between these two planets, and the names are not just a coincidence. In the language of the planet of Gimarian, Gimarian is their word for love, but on Orlantia, Gimarian is Alderian, the language of the Elves of Alderami, for one of their ancient mythological heroes. Who knows, perhaps he is an ancient Elven Sun Deity or god of romantic love.

The fifteen non-adventuring planets in the chain are not particularly remarkable in any magical way. They do, however, provide extra money, adventurers, art objects, cultural oddities, goods and services, raw materials, and other things in the way of trade with the magical planets. Why Tranu decided to include them, only he can say. Of course, nobody I know actually talks to Tranu, and he won't even talk to me and I'm the Dungeon Master!

It is from these twenty planets, and lest you get the wrong idea, twenty different solar systems scattered around the same galaxy, that the annual crop of adventures springs forth. On the average, adventure class people tend to migrate to one of the five adventuring worlds and thus, the population of adventurers on any adventuring planet is about four times higher than one would normally expect. This makes for a great explanation of why there are more adventurers for PCs to interact with than you might normally expect in a world with a particular population. That is to say, though probability would suggest characters of several high statistics would be one in a million, in a population of one million there is frequently far more than one person with extremely high statistics. It just makes it easier to swallow such inconsistencies if we're dealing with the higher population base of more than a single planet.

Further explanations of overly high starting statistics come from an idea found in classical mythology. Characters with high statistics, and PCs in particular, are probably the result of a lineage that started with an amorous encounter of a god with a mortal. In the case of James Starlight, though Jim doesn't know this, Zeus is his great, great, grandfather. Having a deity in one's family tree can do wonders for a character's gene pool and, as such, his or her beginning statistics. But I digress, and a discussion of character statistics may be found elsewhere.

GOOD FANTASY TAKES THOUGHT

When Orlantia was created I was moderately concerned with how a society might develop along magical lines rather than technological ones. I was of course a fan of science fiction, as well as fantasy, and had seen many visions of how a society might develop along technological lines. I very much wanted the same sense of realism found in good science fiction for my fantasy worlds.

Now don't laugh at the thought of striving for realism in the midst of a fantasy world with magic and dragons and all other manner of fantastic, improbable, or seemingly impossible things. What we are simply looking for is a society or world that makes some sense under a given set of premises. Star Trek, for instance, fails in this regard and is therefore - depending on the episode - usually bad science fiction - though I do still tend to like the show. One only need take note of their stated velocities. How fast they can travel from point A to point B. And yet, somehow, by the next show they are halfway across the galaxy, a trip that would take decades even at warp nine. For dramatic purposes of a particular story it becomes necessary the Enterprise is hard pressed to get to the scene in the nick of time. By the next story, where it isn't important or dramatic, they can cover the same distance in a few seconds.

Inconsistency is one of the hallmarks of bad fiction. Stupidity is another. Claiming they know how to teleport through shields, or transport antimatter, but don't do it because it will eventually kill you if you keep it up, is no good reason not to occasionally nuke a Romulan vessel from the inside out. Transporting over to recapture Picard from the Borg but not taking the opportunity to leave an antimatter present behind within the Borg's shields, just as a thank you for those assimilating bastards, is another example of poor writing. Of course, many professional writers who are almost certainly not professional scientists write science-fiction television shows. As a result, it is little wonder bad science fiction and major inconsistencies creep into the final product. I can't help but feel many of these types of problems could be avoided if they would simply hire a competent scientist to look over their scripts before going to production. As they would properly point out, however, such corrections would ultimately be appreciated only by a very small percentage of the audience, and therefore the additional expense is not warranted. But I digress. If you continue to read this you will find that I frequently digress and all too often saying things in a round about way. Well, when I say round about way, what I mean is. . . - do you remember those little stories given to us by our capable and well meaning teachers? Well, when I say capable, what I really mean is. . . oops. My point here is simply that one DM, as opposed to many, at least has the opportunity to write with competence, intelligence, and consistency as long as they don't treat the AD&D framework as a straitjacket and instead treat it a the guide lines they were meant to be.

Now, good science fiction must take into account what science already knows. If at any time the writer wishes to violate what science already knows, then they must have an explanation for those violations. Using Star Trek as an example, superluminal travel, or traveling faster than the speed of light, requires an explanation since science currently knows no way an object with a rest mass can achieve this speed. Enter Warp Drive. Exactly how it works is rather unimportant. It is sufficient to know it's one of the basic premises of the Star Trek universe and, as such, can be freely utilized in any story line. So you see, science fiction already has a marvelously consistent and realistic backdrop for its stories - the real universe. All that is required is the occasional explanation of the occasional violation of current scientific knowledge.

Since consistency and good writing were some of my goals, I had to develop a large backdrop that made sense. Like good science fiction, it made perfect sense to use the real universe. But magic? Where does magic fit into the real universe? And on Earth? If I put my campaign on Earth I would have to be a much greater historian than I am. I always have to cringe when some fantasy story line is placed on Earth somewhere in history only to see how many ways the writers can violate my sense of history. If they wanted to write a story in 400 A.D. England, why put in gunpowder, a cannon, and other inventions? Of course, doing so made me want to ROAR with outrage, so perhaps that was the reason for the title of that show. Even worse, for a different series like Sinbad - as opposed to Sindbad - or Legend, why put in a character who naturally invents every major breakthrough in science, without even the benefit of standing on the shoulders of all those scientists that came before him, who then promptly forgets to tell anyone of his inventions? I hate stuff like that! It's even worse when such a remarkable character is not the main character of the story but only a minor supporting role. In short, it's just plain stupid. So you see, it's important not to place your story on historical Earth unless you are a competent historian - lest you make something that will offend someone's olfactory senses. It was with such thoughts in mind I began to develop the backdrop of my universe. Naturally, this would require an explanation of magic. And so, I give you mine.

WE TOO, LIVE IN A REAL GALAXY

In my universe it is a fact that every galaxy has an invisible but real pattern of tendrils or filaments that shoot out from its center. Apparently, these filaments are a natural occurrence in galactic formation, and they would sort of resemble a cracked mirror, but in three dimensions, with lines radiating outward from where the mirror was hit and broken at the center of the galaxy. These cracks would also be fixed to a specific reference frame and rotating with the galaxy. Finally, these tendrils are extraplanar in nature - actually fractures of normal space - with very little evidence of their existence on the prime material plane. Thus, this assumption is sufficient for the purposes of good fiction and the details of why this may be the case are not so important and can be freely ignored the same way we can ignore the question of "why" the gravitational constant has its particular value. It just does. These naturally occurring spidery filaments perhaps encompass one percent of all solar systems in a given galaxy; the other ninety nine percent of all worlds are in areas of space free of these cracks. In the area of these tendrils, the fabric of space is weaker. In such a field, bridging the barrier between the prime material plane, or PMP, and other planes of existence requires considerably lower threshold energy. Therefore, in a solar system that is rotating around the galaxy inside one of these tendrils, even the power of a single focused mind or a single life force may be sufficient to bridge the planes. It is in this way that magic is easily discovered and subsequently tends to quickly develop on such a world.

In fact, it is so relatively easy to bridge the planes that this property becomes an evolutionary force. That is, animals and other creatures may evolve along magical lines due to the weak fabric of space in which they live. Magical creatures become commonplace on such a world. Outside of the tendrils, normal, mundane creatures evolve, and magic, though it will work in such a location to varying degrees, is much harder to discover and develop. As such, it is not a significant force of evolution. In such a normal place, Earth for example, typical non-magical creatures such as bats, bears, dinosaurs, dolphins, spiders, humans, and the like, may eventually arise. Intelligence, and therefore technology, may or may not eventually evolve on such a world.

Inside one of those tendrils, however, even though such mundane creatures may develop, magical creatures also tend to develop. Creatures such as griffins, pegasi, beholders, couatl, and dragons may develop, to name a few. And here, magic is soon discovered. The truth is that magic is discovered long before technology begins to develop; probably long before the discovery of the wheel; maybe even slightly before a formal language is developed; maybe even long before the development of any language.

Tribal shamans and healers would be the first to discover and utilize magic - that's what makes them shaman in the first place. Once magic is discovered, a cultural mindset is developed. People tend to think along magical lines rather than technological ones. The degree to which magic develops depends entirely upon the planet and its history. Elemental driven war galleons might seem natural whereas a steam engine would not. A continual light street lamp is natural; an electric light is not.

Sometimes a planet is partially between free space and tendril space. On such a planet magic works to varying degrees. It has since been retroactively written, as a possible explanation of 2nd edition as opposed to 1st edition AD&D, if a DM wanted to use the new limitations placed on magic spells by 2nd edition - e.g. the limit of a maximum of 10 dice for a fireball spell or other similar limitations - such a world would simply be partially within tendril space, or at any rate, in tendril space where the field density is higher, the fabric of space is stronger, and magic doesn't work quite as well. It's just another choice for your local dungeon master. I only mention it because I clearly prefer the power of 1st edition magic and therefore have placed Orlantia fully inside tendril space.

MAGIC VERSUS TECHNOLOGY

Now we come to the gods. Who are they? What are they? And why are they "the gods?" These questions partially relate to the problems of magic and technology. I imagined, in my universe, the gods are an ancient race of beings. They are perhaps the first race of beings to evolve intelligence and sentience. In fact, they could easily have been one of the first races to develop both magic and technology while managing not to destroy themselves in the process. As such, it would be in their interest to keep that kind of power to themselves. Of course, different pantheons may be explained as either another ancient race or one of several distinct cultures within such an ancient race.

Therefore, as I have it in my universe, the gods take an active hand in keeping magic and technology apart. They primarily do this for two reasons. One, to maintain their monopoly on that kind of power, and two, as I have written it, history has shown them that 99+ % of all societies that develop both magic and technology end up destroying themselves. It was only by sheer luck, and well they know it, that they managed to survive themselves. It is, therefore, perhaps more out of a love for the child races than out of fear or greed that the gods keep magic and technology apart and/or virtually separate. This tendency of the gods coupled with the naturally arising cultural mindsets of a world to "think magic" is usually sufficient to keep the two apart. It is NOT my belief the gods destroy magic users in technological societies or destroys inventors of technology in magical societies. Through portents and dreams they simply encourage a societies' development along safer and more acceptable lines.

HOW DIFFERENT IS A FANTASY SOCIETY?

Now back to Orlantia, a planet that is fully inside one of the galactic filaments. Along with the other four adventuring planets in the chain, Orlantia developed in magical directions. Still, AD&D typically has a distinctive medieval flavor and, as such, so does Orlantia. The Society is primarily agrarian. The bulk of the population is comprised of farmers, craftsmen, tradesmen, and shopkeepers. We have sages, scribes, poets, authors, actors, sailors, bar keepers, inn keepers, black smiths, metal smiths, and all other manner of low tech, low educated, relatively peaceful people whose greatest concern has always been how to keep local monsters from killing them.

The humans have naturally banded together for their common welfare, and being human, have developed a nice human society of trade and commerce. The major differences are:

: Magic exists and is evident through its practitioners, the magic users.
: The gods exists and are evident through the power of their representatives, the clerics, as well as the rare but occasional personal appearances of their avatars. As such, the afterlife is not a matter of faith but is instead real and guaranteed, even though one's destination in it is not.
: It is a fact we humans are not the center of the universe. The naturally occurring arrogance of being the only known intelligence species on a planet, let alone in the universe, has never plagued the human societies of Orlantia. It is a fact that Elves, Dwarves, and a plethora of other races are sharing the planet, giving rise to a more humble mindset with far reaching consequences.

Keeping these three factors in mind, more than any others, I have tried to shape and move Orlantian cultures in a logical, and consequently, a remarkably different direction than the cultures of Earth. And it was my desire for consistency and good fiction that has always made me consider these things above all others when I ask myself the whos and whys of Orlantia.

ORLANTIA IN THE GIMARIAN SYSTEM

Picking up an earlier thread of this narrative I am reminded of the scale I placed on the first continental map. This map contained the world's major populations.

The Elves - The Alderami just off the continent, laying to the west on a collection of rather large, heavily forested islands.
The Dwarves - The Mostoli, situated in the north across the Scale Mountain Range and sufficiently isolated from everything.
The Humans - The Alodarian Empire - centrally located - and The Nahechaian Dynasty - to the east, where society is generally more chaotic - and The Larns Archipelago - A lose collection of island states far to the northwest.

As such, it was sufficient for a long while and no more of the world was needed or written. One day, when I had way too much time on my hands, I decided to create the world maps of the twenty planets in the chain. No great details were required, just the happily random outline of all the major continents. It was during this process that I also gave Orlantia its final shape by drawing in the rest of its oceans and continents. They still didn't require any great detail, but now, even though I didn't consider it at the time, the size of Orlantia had become fixed. The scale on the original continent, when transferred to the world map of Orlantia would determine the size of my little world. And when I say little, I mean little. I had no idea of what I had let myself in for, and it would be years before the problem became apparent.

As it turned out, the equatorial circumference of Orlantia worked out to be about 3695 miles, and the radius of the planet would then be only 588 miles. Compared to Earth's 25,000-mile circumference and its 4,000-mile radius, Orlantia was a very small place indeed. Even smaller than Earth's moon. Perhaps it was too small.

I had always imagined the surface gravity of Orlantia to be slightly larger than Earth's 9.8 m/s^2. I did this for two reasons. First, I wanted the pride of knowing a typical Orlantian native was stronger than a typical native of Earth was. Why? I guess it was just nice to know my characters could be stronger than the fictional heroes of Earth could be. Growing up in a stronger gravitational field would do that, and so it was done. Second, I simply wanted a cleaner number to work with. Using 10 m/s^2 made gravitational calculations in my head just a little easier to manage. Particularly the equation of Distance = 1/2(at^2); 1/2a is simply 5 on Orlantia, but a cumbersome 4.9 on Earth. But the problem now became apparent. How could such a tiny world have such a strong surface gravity? You may think this wouldn't be a problem, but it is. Many sci-fi stories actually have populated moons with atmospheres, and characters casually going around at what appears to be one standard gravity - for them. I guess this is possible if that moon's gravity - and probably the moon itself - orbits another equally big planet, but this is unrealistic. Or perhaps it orbits a gas giant, which is actually a pretty neat idea - but no help for me there - though it would be later for the world of Quiddity - not discussed here.

Anyway, most moons are small and therefore would have little gravity compared to a planet the size of Earth. And without such a gravity there is no way a moon can hold onto its atmosphere since the sun can heat up the air molecules past their escape velocity for such a low gravity. This is why Earth's moon has no air, and why most moons, necessarily smaller than their primary, would be devoid of air and a bit light on gravity. Even placing air on such a moon via magic, for example, wouldn't do it since the air would be stripped away by the sun's warmth. So I knew I had a problem with reality and my world of Orlantia, unless I could fix it.

Given its dimensions, Orlantia's mass would have to be 1.344541 x 10^26 grams in order for its surface gravity, a function of its mass and its radius, to be 10 m/s^2. Dividing this mass by the planet's volume gives Orlantia an average density of 37.88 g/cm^3. GULP! That's nearly two times denser than gold or platinum, and it's certainly inconsistent with other things I had already written such as the average make up of the planet's crust. Even a world of pure gold wasn't massive enough. I was now faced with a huge problem. Either I had to scrap Orlantia and start again, or I had to confess to a major mistake and retroactively rewrite much of the games history - this was an option I would do nearly anything to avoid for it involved scrapping years of story lines - or I had to justify such apparently impossible numbers. The latter option certainly needed to be explored, and I started walking down that path to see if it could be done. As it turned out, happily, it could. And when I saw how it could be done, the unusual circumstances even appealed to me. So I did it.

I started by calculating the average densities of the various gross layers of stratification of Orlantia. I gave the crust, that naturally had to be similar to Earth's, - lest I be saddled with remarkable differences to be taken into account every time someone took two steps in any direction - an average density of 2.75 g/cm^3 with a thickness of about 32.13 km. It is here practically all adventuring takes place. From the surface dwellers, to the depths of the oceans, and all of the subterranean, Underdark cultures can be found on or within the crust. And so, the crust would account for 9.6254 x 10^23 grams of the planet. Next, the mantle at 5.5 g/cm^3, 550 km in thickness, and a mass of 1.6518 x 10^25 g. This was followed by a layer of iron that worked out to 7.86 g/cm^3, 195 km thick, and a mass of 1.4424 x 10^24 g. Next, since it was sufficiently removed from the surface and would almost certainly never come into play, I put a layer of very heavy elements consisting mostly of things like gold, platinum, iridium, osmium, and other dense elements. It worked out to have 20.54 g/cm^3, 294 km thick, and 2.6125 x 10^23 grams as its relevant statistics. Also, such a core might have unusual and usable properties. Finally, this left a spherical area of about 125-km in radius at the center of the planet. There, I placed, or that it to say the gods placed, a permanent spherical wall of force 125 km in radius. At the very heart of this sphere, a quantum black hole with a mass of 1.152699 x 10^26 grams would give Orlantia the proper total mass.

Naturally, there had to be a reason why the gods would go through the trouble and effort to create such an artificial planet. So this too, had to be written. You see, in an AD&D world, magic is almost by definition something that exists on more than one plane of existence at the same time. Usually this is a channeling of energy from the positive material plane to the negative material plane via the prime material plane. Here, the prime material plane is, in all respects, what we would typically call the universe, or even Einsteinian space-time. That is, the collection of all the planets, stars, solar systems, and galaxies, parallel universes not withstanding. It is by connecting the positive and negative material planes that energy flows through the prime material plane where it powers the desired effect, such as a magic sword or a continual light rock. This is how most magic works. Naturally, it's a bit more complicated than that. Many more planes are used for many specific desired effects. For example, the elemental plane of fire would probably be involved in a fireball spell and the ethereal or astral planes may, or may not, be involved in the channeling of energies to the prime material plane. My point is that interplanar activity is the basis of all magic. In fact, I believe a detect magic spell is designed to simply detect these interplanar properties. On the other hand, producing a useful flow of energy while confined to the prime material plane and might be considered a good or workable definition of technology.

It is assumed there are times or occasions when it isn't convenient, desirable, or perhaps even possible to achieve one's goals using magic. For such occasions it would be necessary to have access to a large amount of energy while confined to the PMP. A quantum singularity could be used in just that way. Simply by throwing regular, everyday matter at the black hole one could produce an amount of energy nearly equal to mc^2, as in E = mc^2. The details of how this is done and how the energy is collected are unimportant as it is sufficiently removed from game play, as most things the gods do are. Placing a planet around your PMP power source is simply just protecting it. Having a base of worshipers near at hand could be useful too. And so, that is what the gods did. At least I think it was the gods, wasn't it?

In any event, it is sufficient to know there is an underlying consistency to Orlantia. Besides, it would be a rare player, indeed, who would even notice such apparent anomalies and seek out their explanations. He or she would probably have to be a physicist or astronomer in real life to even care. My only other concern is that a 6-foot man would observe the horizon a mere 1 mile away, as opposed to 3 miles away on Earth due to the smaller sphere of Orlantia. But this works to my advantage as well, for it's always nice to surprise the group of adventurers and it's far easier to do that when they can only see 1/3 of the distance one might normally expect.

And thus, with these various considerations, Orlantia was born and has evolved into its current form. It's a nice place to visit. In fact, I wish I lived there.

As a related part of this story, you may wish to follow the link immediately below.

Pre Historical Orlantia (How And Why The Gods Made Orlantia)