I'm currently working on the history of a world for a new campaign. The part that is relevant to this question is a world-altering divine war that happened between deities. The world starts with all the Forgotten Realms Faerun deities but shifts and blends into new ones after this war.
At one point, Selune, killed Lolth by tearing a chunk of the moon and throwing it 2 miles through the earth and into the underdark. My question is just how much damage this impact could create. In my world the moon is made of a precious variant of adamantine so it's very dense. Another question I have is how much of the moon would need to be torn off in order to make it that far in the ground?
I understand that this is all fantasy and there are no exact numbers about adamantine weight and it can just happen however I chose, but I'm seriously wondering if this would cause a nuclear winter, like the one that killed the dinosaurs.
Any help with this would be great. I'd even love any ideas or input on my setting.
If you're looking for physics/math? A chunk of adamant thrown with enough force to get two miles underground would be an extinction event. if it was just main force, and no divine aid to piercing through the planet? The impact that killed the dinosaurs didn't get two miles down. Not even close.Rewatched my own video link, and apparently it totally did get that deep and well beyond. My bad.
That would be an End The World For Real-level impactor. Selune (whoever that is) would indeed get Lolth. And all of Lolth's followers. And all of her own followers. And just about everything in existence on the planet more complex than bacteria, or maybe insects.
For a play-by-play on what a significantly less destructive much larger but similar-in-kind impactor did to the dinosaurs, check out this pretty fantastic video by one of the best educational channels on YouTube:
Yeah. Looking at it purely from a physics standpoint it would be cataclysmic. So I imagine Selune, being the Moon Goddess, could have some finer control on the piercing and precision of the lunar asteroid to get a more controlled hit.
Also, as you did, I had seen this video and had forgotten how deep it hit. So I guess it's still possible that a sizable asteroid could impact without wiping everything out. An idea I had was that this crater would become a mine for the Lunar Adamantine, so It could still be a big enough deposit to warrant an excavation without ending the world.
The only way you can get away with that not being a functionally world ending event is to explicitly state it to be a result of divine intervention focusing and containing the force of the impact. "A wizard did it" isn't going to be enough for that, but your players might accept "a god did it," especially if you also write it as causing massive collateral damage, perhaps annihilating a kingdom or two, and maybe even triggering a mini ice age. Since any good war of the gods is expected to be truly cataclysmic and generally slate wiping to the point of a hard reset for most civilization, it could work as long as it's a major highlight of the conflict. If multiple other events of similar scale are also happening your players are going to wonder how there's even a planet left, let alone people living on it.
But seriously, cataclysmic events are sort of on you. You can't "realistically" determine admantine, because admantine isn't real. But if you want to avoid the appearances of an extinction level event, maybe she harvested the adamantine and then teleported or phased shifted or whatever magical handwavium divinity you want the substance into the Underdark without any physics calculation representable action necessary because god.
Or just make Faerum more resilient than Earth, I mean the Sunderings are rarely truly transformative events outside of game mechanics. Sure a peninsula becomes an independent land mass or some countries swap out here and there.
In game and story and world building terms you want a catalyst. In a game like D&D you're not really bound to the physics or chemistry of how real world catalysts would interact with an environment on a massive scale. Because you're playing a game with a story. Why would you want such a fantastic earth shaking event be out of your control? Make the world you want to present to your players, they'll do enough on their own breaking your concept.
I mean I have it on good authority from my on call physicists that the above trailer is horse hooey, but it's gonna make bank.
You can easily get a chunk that deep without causing a planetwide extinction level event...if you kept it small enough. What causes the problems is kinetic energy, which has two components, mass and velocity. There's not a lot you can do about velocity due to gravity etc, but keep the mass small enough that after entry (it's going to lose a lot during entry, depending on the properties of adamantine) then it would cause a lot of damage locally, but you could localise the damage. That's the principle behind the "Rods from God" concept. Of course, if you're going to want the concept of a substantial chunk of the moon coming down on them...that's not going to happen. The asteroid that ended the dinosaurs was 10-15km in diameter (7-10m), and you're not going to get much less damaging than that unless you have engines to slow it down or something. If you want to go with the "Rods from God" concept, where it's just chunks of rock be hurled at a specific point...that's doable. The rods are 12 tons of tungsten, and have a penetrative of a few hundred feet. The rocks from the moon wouod have to be thrown harder to penetrate further and be either larger or smaller than that depending on the properties of adamantine compared to tungsten.
It's doable, it just depends on why you want to do it this way. Is it just because of lore, that Selune is the goddess of the moon? Or because of the coolness of the concept of ripping out a chunk of the moon to kill a god? The former is doable within physics. The latter...not so much.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Kinetic energy is kinetic energy, whether it's derived from a big thing moving slowly or a small thing moving quickly. The energy required to displace two miles of planet to get at a cave system that deep down is fixed, and hitting the planet with that much energy will have Consequences regardless. You could have Selune try to make a deep-strike penetrator, basically just a bigass Lunar Adamantine Space Needle, but honestly that's too much bother.
Just say Selune hurled a chunk of the moon imbued with divine fury to smite her enemy, and if a gee-whiz science nerd in your group asks about it, say "Selune ensured her weapon would not end her own followers". Unless your table is far more scientifically-minded than most, your players will accept "A god did it" just fine, especially if it means cool badass Lunar Adamantine loot for them.
Applying realistic physics to D&D is generally a bad idea. The Underdark is an excellent example:
Rock is not in fact strong enough to support large caverns deep underground. It would just pancake itself.
If there's any way for water to get down there, it's below sea level and the whole thing floods.
So don't. Figure that's a mythic event, not something you have to worry about the physics of (in my campaign, the Underdark is actually a liminal space between the Prime Material and the Abyss).
A couple of things here: 1) why is Selene trying to kill Lolth in the underdark? Both actually reside on planes different from the prime material. At best Lolth might have an avatar in the underdark but that would be it. 2) anything, even an admantite bunker buster needle is going to create a massive impact effect across the planet if it’s going to penetrate 2 miles deep. It may not be an extinction event but it will definitely wipe cultures back to fairly primitive levels and call for an extended recovery period by any survivors. Things like the smithing skills for admantite and Mithral and probably steel if not bronze are going to have to be reinvented. Or will be preserved in rare and lucky locations only. 3) having that spear be a mineable resource is a possibility - we do have deposits we mine from asteroid impacts today. 4) if your starting with Faerun you have a saving grace built in - Ao, who can step in and stop the nonsense salvaging the planet and remaking it to suit your new world as you choose so have fun playing overdeity for a while 😁🤪
I'm currently working on the history of a world for a new campaign. The part that is relevant to this question is a world-altering divine war that happened between deities. The world starts with all the Forgotten Realms Faerun deities but shifts and blends into new ones after this war.
At one point, Selune, killed Lolth by tearing a chunk of the moon and throwing it 2 miles through the earth and into the underdark. My question is just how much damage this impact could create. In my world the moon is made of a precious variant of adamantine so it's very dense. Another question I have is how much of the moon would need to be torn off in order to make it that far in the ground?
I understand that this is all fantasy and there are no exact numbers about adamantine weight and it can just happen however I chose, but I'm seriously wondering if this would cause a nuclear winter, like the one that killed the dinosaurs.
Any help with this would be great. I'd even love any ideas or input on my setting.
Thank you.
If you're looking for physics/math? A chunk of adamant thrown with enough force to get two miles underground would be an extinction event. if it was just main force, and no divine aid to piercing through the planet?
The impact that killed the dinosaurs didn't get two miles down. Not even close.Rewatched my own video link, and apparently it totally did get that deep and well beyond. My bad.That would be an End The World For Real-level impactor. Selune (whoever that is) would indeed get Lolth. And all of Lolth's followers. And all of her own followers. And just about everything in existence on the planet more complex than bacteria, or maybe insects.
For a play-by-play on what a
significantly less destructivemuch larger but similar-in-kind impactor did to the dinosaurs, check out this pretty fantastic video by one of the best educational channels on YouTube:Please do not contact or message me.
Yeah. Looking at it purely from a physics standpoint it would be cataclysmic. So I imagine Selune, being the Moon Goddess, could have some finer control on the piercing and precision of the lunar asteroid to get a more controlled hit.
Also, as you did, I had seen this video and had forgotten how deep it hit. So I guess it's still possible that a sizable asteroid could impact without wiping everything out. An idea I had was that this crater would become a mine for the Lunar Adamantine, so It could still be a big enough deposit to warrant an excavation without ending the world.
The only way you can get away with that not being a functionally world ending event is to explicitly state it to be a result of divine intervention focusing and containing the force of the impact. "A wizard did it" isn't going to be enough for that, but your players might accept "a god did it," especially if you also write it as causing massive collateral damage, perhaps annihilating a kingdom or two, and maybe even triggering a mini ice age. Since any good war of the gods is expected to be truly cataclysmic and generally slate wiping to the point of a hard reset for most civilization, it could work as long as it's a major highlight of the conflict. If multiple other events of similar scale are also happening your players are going to wonder how there's even a planet left, let alone people living on it.
But seriously, cataclysmic events are sort of on you. You can't "realistically" determine admantine, because admantine isn't real. But if you want to avoid the appearances of an extinction level event, maybe she harvested the adamantine and then teleported or phased shifted or whatever magical handwavium divinity you want the substance into the Underdark without any physics calculation representable action necessary because god.
Or just make Faerum more resilient than Earth, I mean the Sunderings are rarely truly transformative events outside of game mechanics. Sure a peninsula becomes an independent land mass or some countries swap out here and there.
In game and story and world building terms you want a catalyst. In a game like D&D you're not really bound to the physics or chemistry of how real world catalysts would interact with an environment on a massive scale. Because you're playing a game with a story. Why would you want such a fantastic earth shaking event be out of your control? Make the world you want to present to your players, they'll do enough on their own breaking your concept.
I mean I have it on good authority from my on call physicists that the above trailer is horse hooey, but it's gonna make bank.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Fair enough. DM will can transfer to Divine will, to canonically shape the world how I want it without freezing the entire planet.
Wait, how big a chunk are we talking?
You can easily get a chunk that deep without causing a planetwide extinction level event...if you kept it small enough. What causes the problems is kinetic energy, which has two components, mass and velocity. There's not a lot you can do about velocity due to gravity etc, but keep the mass small enough that after entry (it's going to lose a lot during entry, depending on the properties of adamantine) then it would cause a lot of damage locally, but you could localise the damage. That's the principle behind the "Rods from God" concept. Of course, if you're going to want the concept of a substantial chunk of the moon coming down on them...that's not going to happen. The asteroid that ended the dinosaurs was 10-15km in diameter (7-10m), and you're not going to get much less damaging than that unless you have engines to slow it down or something. If you want to go with the "Rods from God" concept, where it's just chunks of rock be hurled at a specific point...that's doable. The rods are 12 tons of tungsten, and have a penetrative of a few hundred feet. The rocks from the moon wouod have to be thrown harder to penetrate further and be either larger or smaller than that depending on the properties of adamantine compared to tungsten.
It's doable, it just depends on why you want to do it this way. Is it just because of lore, that Selune is the goddess of the moon? Or because of the coolness of the concept of ripping out a chunk of the moon to kill a god? The former is doable within physics. The latter...not so much.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Kinetic energy is kinetic energy, whether it's derived from a big thing moving slowly or a small thing moving quickly. The energy required to displace two miles of planet to get at a cave system that deep down is fixed, and hitting the planet with that much energy will have Consequences regardless. You could have Selune try to make a deep-strike penetrator, basically just a bigass Lunar Adamantine Space Needle, but honestly that's too much bother.
Just say Selune hurled a chunk of the moon imbued with divine fury to smite her enemy, and if a gee-whiz science nerd in your group asks about it, say "Selune ensured her weapon would not end her own followers". Unless your table is far more scientifically-minded than most, your players will accept "A god did it" just fine, especially if it means cool badass Lunar Adamantine loot for them.
Please do not contact or message me.
Sounds like a plan then. Thank you all. :)
Applying realistic physics to D&D is generally a bad idea. The Underdark is an excellent example:
So don't. Figure that's a mythic event, not something you have to worry about the physics of (in my campaign, the Underdark is actually a liminal space between the Prime Material and the Abyss).
A couple of things here:
1) why is Selene trying to kill Lolth in the underdark? Both actually reside on planes different from the prime material. At best Lolth might have an avatar in the underdark but that would be it.
2) anything, even an admantite bunker buster needle is going to create a massive impact effect across the planet if it’s going to penetrate 2 miles deep. It may not be an extinction event but it will definitely wipe cultures back to fairly primitive levels and call for an extended recovery period by any survivors. Things like the smithing skills for admantite and Mithral and probably steel if not bronze are going to have to be reinvented. Or will be preserved in rare and lucky locations only.
3) having that spear be a mineable resource is a possibility - we do have deposits we mine from asteroid impacts today.
4) if your starting with Faerun you have a saving grace built in - Ao, who can step in and stop the nonsense salvaging the planet and remaking it to suit your new world as you choose so have fun playing overdeity for a while 😁🤪
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.