architect of worlds – Page 11 – Sharrukin's Palace

Photosynthesis on Red Dwarf Planets

September 8, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Artist’s conception of a landscape on a planet in the nearby Gliese 667 star system (ESO/L. Calçada)

Here’s another interesting result that has a strong bearing on the Architect of Worlds project:

Super-Earths, M Dwarfs, and Photosynthetic Organisms: Habitability in the Lab

We’ve assumed for a while that the planets of red dwarf stars are poor candidates for habitability, for a couple of reasons.

The main problem is that any planet close enough to a small, cool red dwarf star to bear liquid water is going to find itself seriously sandblasted during the star’s energetic “flare star” era. Without a strong magnetic field – itself unlikely if the planet rotates slowly because it’s tide-locked – it’s going to have a hard time retaining any atmosphere. If there’s plenty of geological and volcanic activity, an atmosphere may reconstruct itself once the primary star settles down.

The more subtle problem is that red dwarf starlight is lacking in the shorter visible-light frequencies driving the kind of photosynthesis we’re familiar with. A red dwarf may produce most of its energy output in the near infrared, which doesn’t do much for green plants. If photosynthesis has a hard time taking off, you’re not likely to get a breathable atmosphere with plenty of free oxygen in it.

The current draft of Architect of Worlds addresses both of these factors, in such a way that it’s actually quite difficult to generate an Earthlike world circling any but the most massive red dwarf stars (maybe M0 V or M1 V, at most).

The paper linked above, though, seems to indicate that this is too conservative. The authors worked with certain kinds of extremophile photosynthetic bacteria found on Earth. They subjected them to simulated red dwarf sunlight . . . and found that the bacteria carried on photosynthesis quite well. Even some of the more common bacteria they tested were able to carry on some photosynthetic activity under simulated red dwarf starlight.

This may be one of those cases where we need to account for the possibility of “life not quite as we know it” being able to exploit a niche we wouldn’t expect. Assuming a planet can retain (or rebuild) its atmosphere after the primary’s flare-star era, photosynthesis that leaves it with plenty of free oxygen in the air may not be as unlikely as we thought. I think one thing I’m going to do this month is to adjust parts of the Architect of Worlds design sequence to allow for this possibility.

Planning for August 2021

August 1, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Okay, July was something of a wash.

I didn’t completely fail to meet my objectives. I did get a book review published, I got the first few chapters of Second Dawn posted to Kindle Vella before that platform went live, and I did get started writing more chapters for that. I got a little bit of work done on other projects as well. Still, the month was conspicuously short on major milestones. I was distracted by a couple of minor bouts of illness, and my day job soaked up more of my attention and energy than usual. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Even so, the goal for August is to pick up the pace a bit, and have more material for my patrons and readers, both free updates and enough new work for a charged release. I’m also thinking about a shift in emphasis among my second-tier projects – I’m feeling a bit more inspiration for the Human Destiny setting at the moment, so I think I may do some new work on that.

Here’s the priority list for August.

Top Priority (“this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful”):
- Architect of Worlds: Return to improvement and polishing of the Introduction and Design Sequence document, leading to a new minor-version release.
- Human Destiny: Write a few thousand more words of the Cortex Prime sourcebook and setting bible.
- Krava’s Legend: Write a few new chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
- Scorpius Reach: Write, edit, and publish a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
Second Priority (“work on this as time permits”):
- Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
- Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
- Human Destiny: Write a new short story for eventual collection and publication.
- Krava’s Legend: More research toward improvements to my release-and-marketing workflow.
Back Burner (“work on this only if everything else gets blocked”):
- Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
- Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller.

For my patrons, this month’s free releases will probably include a new minor-version release of the Human Destiny sourcebook, and possible a minor-version release of the Architect of Worlds design sequence. This month’s charged release, if there is one, will most likely be composed of new charters from Second Dawn and The Sunlit Lands. As always, I’ll want to complete one or two book reviews for self-published or indie fiction this month.

Watch this space for status reports, and if any of the above interests you, please consider signing up as a patron using the link in the sidebar.

Status Report (28 July 2021)

July 28, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Well, June was really productive, but July is turning out . . . otherwise. Between a couple of bouts of minor illness, and a need to focus hard on some projects for my day job, I just haven’t had the spoons to crank out new creative content at the rate I hoped for. Today’s the fourth day from the end of the month, and it’s looking like I’m not going to hit any of my major objectives for July.

The month hasn’t been a total wash. I got a book review posted early, I successfully got Second Dawn posted to Kindle Vella before that service went live, I’ve gotten a couple of new chapters written for Second Dawn, and I’ve done some small-scale work on Architect of Worlds. Unfortunately, none of it is adding up to something that would justify a major release for my patrons.

So I’m stating now that there will be no charged release for my patrons for July. I might manage a free update for one or two documents before the end of the month, but even that’s not certain. Here’s hoping August will see a bit more progress.

A Change in Plans

July 12, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

I went to set up the first few chapters of Second Dawn in the Kindle Vella platform last night – successfully, as you can see from the image above. However, in the process I also discovered that Amazon is very close to taking Vella live. I’m seeing hints that it may be up and running for the general audience as early as this week, almost certainly by the end of July.

Well. When I started writing Second Dawn, it was under the assumption that it would be a couple of months before I needed to work on the next section. Apparently that isn’t the case. When Vella does go live, I want to not only have those first six chapters in place, I want to have a few more chapters ready for weekly release.

All of which means that I’m changing the plan for July a bit. My main fiction-writing effort, in what’s left of this month, is going to involve building a backlog of chapters for Second Dawn. Ideally, I’ll have six more chapters ready to go within a couple of weeks.

How that interacts with my other plans for the month, I’m not sure yet. I’m probably not going to be working on Krava’s Legend quite as much as I’d planned on. I do still want to get some work done on Architect of Worlds so I can at least send out a free update of that material for my patrons. I’ll probably also produce a free update of the Scorpius Reach setting bible along the way. We’ll see how the next few days go.

Status Report (20 June 2021)

June 20, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

A quick note for my patrons and other readers, at the two-thirds point for this month. Things are going reasonably well, and I’m making good progress on this month’s projects.

As I mentioned at the beginning of June, this was likely to be a month for writing fiction rather than working on non-fiction or world-building projects. At this point that certainly seems to have been the case.

Later today, I believe I’ll reach my objective for getting started on the first “Scorpius Reach” novel – six complete chapters, setting up the main story with some action, a bunch of character introductions, and some world-building.

Rather than spend the rest of June working on The Sunlit Lands, I think I’m going to write the first of several short stories set in the same Iron Age fantasy world. The idea is to write incidents pulled from the back story of my main characters. When I’ve got five or six of those, I’ll pull them together into a “reader magnet” collection that I can use to help promote the series. I’ll also make use of that collection to practice some of the improvements I’m making to my publication process. The idea is that it should be easier for me to share the collection, and future work, more widely.

The first story, I think, will be “Derga’s Tale” – the story of how Krava’s parents met and became lovers. Krava’s father-to-be, Derga, is an ordinary mortal man in love with Tivetha, the daughter of a god. What’s more, Tivetha has sworn a Red-Sonja-like oath, never to become involved with any man who can’t defeat her in a fair contest. Derga knows that several men have tried to meet her condition and failed, and he also knows that he has no chance to defeat her in any fair contest of strength or armed skill. So how does he proceed?

So by the end of June I should have about 16,000 words of new fiction. My patrons will get that as their charged release for June. I’ll also release a free minor-version update to the Scorpius Reach setting bible, and I may release a free minor-version update to the Architect of Worlds Introduction and Design Sequence document. That last item is looking kind of iffy right now – it may be next month before I have enough new work done to justify that release, but we’ll see.

World-Building Exercise: St. Basil

June 2, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Here’s a bit of additional world-building for the Scorpius Reach setting, mostly done with the current draft of Architect of Worlds.

St. Basil is the fourth planet of the A component of a binary star system. Its primary star is named Emmelia. Emmelia is a typical Population I star, somewhat more massive, hotter, and brighter than Sol. It possesses a substantial family of planets.

Emmelia

Mass: 1.06 Sol
Age: 5.7 billion standard years
Metallicity: 1.0 standard
Luminosity: 1.63 Sol
Effective Temperature: 5940 K
Spectral Classification: G0V

Mazaka (Companion Star)

Mass: 0.55 Sol
Age: 5.7 billion standard years
Metallicity: 1.0 standard
Luminosity: 0.06 Sol
Effective Temperature: 3850 K
Spectral Classification: M0V
Orbital Radius: 96.8 AU
Eccentricity: 0.25 (Forbidden zone at 24.2 AU)
Orbital Period: 750.6 standard years

Planetary System Summary

Planets and other major bodies in the Emmelia star system are named after people associated with St. Basil the Great.

Orbit	Name	UPP	Notes
0.20 AU	Meletius	Y7A0000-0	Tide-locked world with a hot carbon-dioxide atmosphere. No moons.
0.36 AU	Eustathius	Y8A0000-0	Tide-locked world with a hot carbon-dioxide atmosphere. No moons.
0.62 AU	St. Macrina	Y600000-0	Hot airless world. No moons.
1.28 AU	St. Basil	C645456-8	Primary world in the system, with a thin but breathable oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere tainted by biotoxins, a moderate amount of liquid surface water, and a temperate climate. Colony world. No moons.
1.85 AU	St. Gregory	Large GG	Spectacular ring system. One large moon, many moonlets.
3.83 AU	St. Petros	Medium GG	Moderate ring system. Two large moons, several moonlets.
7.17 AU	St. Naucratius	Small GG	Moderate ring system. One large moon, several moonlets.
11.61 AU	Julianos	YAA0000-0	Dense, bitterly cold hydrogen-helium atmosphere. No moons.

St. Basil

St. Basil is a marginally habitable world. It has a pleasant climate in limited regions of the surface, but the local ecology is somewhat incompatible with human biochemistry and airborne toxins are common.

Orbital and Rotational Parameters

Orbital Radius: 1.275 AU
Orbital Eccentricity: 0.08
Orbital Period: 12260 hours
Rotation Period: 21.50 hours
Local Day: 21 hours, 32.5 minutes
Local Year: 569.13 local days
Obliquity: 24° (unstable)
Satellites: None

Mass and Surface Gravity

Mass: 0.47 Earth
Density: 0.92 Earth (5.08 g/cc)
Radius: 5090 km
Surface Gravity: 0.74 standard

Geophysics

Geophysical Parameters: Mature plate lithosphere with mobile plate tectonics
Magnetic Field: Strong
Hydrographic Coverage: 50%

Atmosphere

Surface Atmospheric Pressure: 0.69 atm
Atmospheric Components (by Mass):
- Nitrogen 75.5%
- Oxygen 22.3%
- Carbon Dioxide 0.4%
- Argon 1.0%
- Water Vapor 0.3%
Atmospheric Scale Height: 11.6 km
Atmospheric Classification: Thin, tainted (low oxygen content, seasonal airborne toxins in regions of plentiful native vegetation)

Climate

Blackbody Temperature: 279 K
Bolometric Albedo: 0.27
Total Greenhouse Effect: 31 K
Average Surface Temperature: 289 K

Native Life

Age of Advanced Biosphere: 1.71 billion standard years
Dominant Life Forms: Sophisticated animals, both aquatic and land-based, including several pre-sentient species
Biochemical Compatibility: Poor

Human Habitation

Human Population: 50,000
Founder Groups: Eosi (100%)
Government Type: Feudal Technocracy
Law Level: 6
Starport Class: C (Routine facilities, repair yard for small ships)
Base Facilities: Scout base
Local Tech Level: 18
Trade Classifications: Non-Industrial

Notes

St. Basil is notable for its proximity to the massive gas giant planet St. Gregory. St. Basil and St. Gregory are in a stable 7:4 orbital resonance. While the gas giant’s influence stabilizes St. Basil’s orbit, it also causes the smaller planet’s rotational axis to undergo wild excursions over million-year timescales.

St. Basil is currently recovering from a mass extinction which apparently took place about two million years ago. The largest native land animals are about the size and sophistication of a domestic cat. The history of life on the planet is full of such incidents – the variability of the planet’s rotational axis means that its climate is also extremely unstable over long periods.

Native life on St. Basil is biochemically incompatible with Earth-derived life – the two can usually obtain no nutritional value from one another, and the very attempt is likely to provoke serious allergic or toxic reactions. Even the native plant life is prone to give off airborne toxins that can lead to serious illness or even death in Earth-derived animal life. The St. Basil colony tends to expand its territory by burning the native ecology to the ground, plowing the resulting carbon under, and then introducing Earth- or Eos-derived life forms. Humans venturing away from the protected colony are advised to wear filter masks and carry supplemental oxygen.

St. Basil was originally colonized in 2403, by founder groups of Chinese and Japanese origin. The original name of the colony was Guang. The Guang colony failed slowly after the Silence, with all human inhabitants deceased by 2600. The planet was rediscovered in 2833 and recolonized from Eos in 2840. St. Basil is currently organized as a semi-autonomous province of the Kingdom of Eos, ruled by a consortium of technical and scientific experts, with support from the Kingdom’s interstellar navy and scout service.

The local economy is more or less self-sufficient at a TL8 level. It is centered around scientific study of the native biosphere, which promises to produce a variety of useful pharmaceuticals. Prospectors have also recently discovered prodromoi remnants on the planet.

Planning for June 2021

May 31, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

The last few months have been very productive, and I think this pattern of posting a status report and priority list at the beginning of each month is helping. Not to mention that it’s likely to be useful information for my patrons, and anyone else who’s following my work.

May was a good month overall. I released an update to my Scorpius Reach setting bible, adding a fair amount of material to the initial draft. This gathered some good attention from the Traveller communities on Facebook and Reddit. I also released a minor-version update to the Architect of Worlds Introduction and Design Sequence document. Finally, I wrote and released the first draft of a completely new section of Architect of Worlds: the Working with Astronomical Data document.

I did not get any new fiction written, and I think I need to refocus on that in the coming month. Earlier this year I had a potential project to write and sell several stories, and for a while I was holding time and energy aside for that. Unfortunately, that seems to have fallen through, so I’m turning back to writing in my own original universes again for a while.

One very useful milestone happened this month. I’ve been developing my Scorpius Reach setting, not just as a test-bed for the Game of Empire rules, but also possibly as the backdrop for some serialized fiction to bring to market. Although the stories themselves are going to be entirely original to me, and I don’t plan to market them as anything but original fiction, there was still a potential IP problem there. I’ve been using the Traveller game rules to help develop the setting, and the “bible” for it is framed in terms of a Traveller universe. So I decided to approach Marc Miller, the owner and primary publisher of Traveller, and discuss how best to avoid stepping on his intellectual property. Once I described what I was planning to do, he immediately and graciously granted me permission to proceed without any concerns. So that’s a big potential obstacle out of the way. I plan to start writing the first Scorpius Reach serialized novel in June.

So here’s the priority list for June 2021. I’m reworking the format a little, to organize by a hierarchy of urgency first, rather than by overall project:

Top Priority, or the “this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful” level:
- Architect of Worlds: Return to improvement and polishing of the Introduction and Design Sequence document, leading to a new minor-version release.
- Krava’s Legend: Write a few more chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
- Scorpius Reach: Write the first few chapters of a serialized novel to be published via Kindle Vella.
Second Priority, or the “work on this as time permits” level:
- Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
- Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
- Krava’s Legend: Write the first short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
- Krava’s Legend: More research toward improvements to my release-and-marketing workflow.
- Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules.
Back Burner, or the “work on this only if everything else gets blocked” level:
- Human Destiny: Write a new short story for eventual collection and publication.
- Human Destiny: Write a few thousand more words of the Cortex Prime sourcebook and setting bible.

For my patrons, this month’s free releases will almost certainly include a new minor-version release of the Architect of Worlds design sequence. This month’s charged release, if there is one, will probably be a block of new fiction from the Krava’s Legend and Scorpius Reach settings. I do hope to produce some new Architect of Worlds material this month, but there probably won’t be enough of that to bundle up as a release for my patrons, so maybe look for that in July.

As always, I’ll want to complete one or two book reviews for self-published fiction this month.

Watch this space for status reports, and if any of the above interests you, please consider signing up as a patron using the link in the sidebar.

A small administrative note: I spent some time this morning cleaning up the post tags on this site, merging a few tags and making sure they had consistent format. In particular, I merged all the tags that made any reference to my high-fantasy novel series into the krava’s legend tag. I also merged the tags that referred to the various Bios-series games by Phil Eklund into the bios tag. Might make the site a little easier to navigate.

Status Report (29 May 2021)

May 29, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

A very quick note: I’ve just finished the next section of the Architect of Worlds draft, titled “Working with Astronomical Data.” This is about 13500 words on where to get authoritative scientific data about real-world stars and exoplanets, and how to marry that information with the Architect of Worlds design sequence, so you can build plausible planetary systems.

That section is available for my patrons only at this point. If you’re interested in that material, or in Architect of Worlds in general, please consider signing up for my Patreon at any level: https://www.patreon.com/Sharrukin.

An “Architect of Worlds” Teaser

May 22, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

I’ve been working on a new section of the book, with the overall title of “Working with Astronomical Data.” Here’s a list of topic headers for the material I’ve produced over the past week or two, about 7000 words in all:

Star Names and Star Catalogs
- The International Astronomical Union (IAU)
- The VizieR Catalog Reference Service
- Traditional Astronomy
  - The Ptolemaic Constellations
  - Proper Names for the Stars
- Bayer Designation
- Flamsteed Designation
- The Durchmusterung Catalogs
- The Henry Draper Catalog
- The Gliese Catalogs
- The Hipparcos Catalogs
- The Gaia Data Releases
- Other Data Sources
  - SIMBAD
  - NASA Exoplanet Archive
  - Wikipedia
Developing Inputs for Interstellar Maps and the Design Sequence
- Star Positions
  - Equatorial Coordinates
  - Deriving Cartesian Coordinates from Equatorial Coordinates
  - Galactic Coordinates
  - Deriving Cartesian Coordinates from Galactic Coordinates

Lots more to work on in this section. I’m not at all sure whether I’ll have the whole section finished by the end of this month, but if there’s enough there (say, 15000 words or more) then I’ll make the interim draft a charged release for my patrons, after which they’ll get free updates while I keep working on and adding to the material.

Once this section is finished, there will be only two more chunks of the book that need to be written: the “how to generate random maps of interstellar space” and “special cases that don’t fit neatly into the main design sequence.” I’m beginning to think I’ll have a complete pre-layout draft for Architect of Worlds by the end of summer 2021 . . . which means the first edition of the book may be ready for release late this year or early in 2022.

Status Report (16 May 2021)

May 16, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Since the beginning of this month, I’ve returned to my day-job office on a mixed schedule that allows for a couple of days of telework per week. It’s been an adjustment, but so far the results have been pretty good – I’m continuing to be productive on my creative projects. So here’s the state of things as of mid-month.

Biggest push right now is to write a completely new section of Architect of Worlds. This is a section titled “Working with Astronomical Data,” and it’s intended to document most of the tricks I’ve learned over the years for taking real-world data and turning it into plausible star system designs and maps of interstellar space.

So far I’ve got about 4500 words down on how stars are named, what the best data sources are for information on stars, and where on the Web one might go to lay hands on useful star catalogs. That piece is about finished. Then I’m going to start working on material describing how to read star catalogs and other data sources, and translate those data into inputs for the main Architect of Worlds design sequence. I’m hoping to have this whole section finished in rough draft by the end of May, at which time it will probably be this month’s charged release for my patrons.

This is a big deal! This section is one of the three blocks of material that still needs to be written before I can seriously start thinking about laying out Architect of Worlds and getting it ready for release. (The other two blocks are “how to design maps of interstellar space” and “special cases that aren’t explicitly covered in the main design sequence.”) I still have no clear idea as to when the book will be ready for its first-edition release, but I’m increasingly confident that will be either late this calendar year, or early in 2022.

Meanwhile, I’m continuing to investigate improvements to my process for publishing new fiction. Right now I’m focusing on finding a reliable source for book cover designs – the cover I designed for The Curse of Steel was okay, but it didn’t pop, and I suspect it’s one reason why sales have been a bit disappointing.

I’m also continuing to work on development of some serialized fiction to be published through the new Kindle Vella outlet, based on the Scorpius Reach setting. I had a big step forward on that a few days ago – more about that once things come closer to fruition – and I suspect I may be in a good position to have a story in place once the platform is released to readers.

Finally, of course, I’m continuing to work on The Sunlit Lands as time permits. That might be a back-burner project for what’s left of May, since I released a few chapters to my patrons last month and I’m focusing hard on Architect for the moment.

Sharrukin's Palace

Building fantastic worlds of the mind

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