Old Tree Stump With Grass Growing Over It On The Faroe Islands Kind Of Looks Like A Unicorn
smack
Tumblr moots are the realest.
We’ve seen the wars together; watched the polls invade. I’ve known you for years. We don’t even remotely have the same interests. Well, except that one time. Oh this is your new blorbo? Never heard of him but he looks gay. Excellent. Let’s be friends forever. No we have never talked. You are a permanent part of my existence now. I love you.
uphillsky asked:
Hi Gallus, I'm doing some worldbuilding and you seem like you could be connected enough for me to find an answer to the problem of dwarven agriculture. Many problems are created by the requirement of no sunlight, as even the common response of mushrooms still need light to break down decomposing matter as a primary energy source. Currently, we're thinking that they use a special type of mushroom that breaks down rocks in an energy-producing reaction, giving them enough energy to absorb nutrients and grow - this would serve a second purpose in explaining why building a massive hollowed-out mountain fortress doesn't produce an equally large amount of gravel.
Any thoughts? We're grasping at straws kinda lol
gallusrostromegalus answered:
Well, some thoughts:
- There’s plenty of cave systems (especially Karst Systems) that are at least partially open to Sunlight- especially the kind that have rivers running through them, which is something else that’s really helpful for agriculture.
- For Example: This Cool AF Sinkhole cave in china that has an entire Forest in it
- Now There’s a view to put outside the city Gates!
- Karst specifically is a landscape where underground rivers hollow out the limestone underground and then the cave roofs fall in. This kind of landscape answers your gravel question nicely: the hollowed out mountain does produce an equal amount of gravel, but the gravel turns up as the sandy banks of the river system hundreds of miles away.
- So, there’s your sunlight that can be used directly, or reflected or magically transferred deeper into the cave system.
- Or they just put more holes in the roof! Unless your dwarves are also vampires, there’s no reason for them to not hollow out a few Skylights into the mountain too.
- But let’s talk some other cave ecology and agriculture!
- For starters, your dwarves could be sitting on top of a literal gold mine that would allow them to trade for a lot of needed materials and crops.
- And by gold mine, I mean Salt Mine.
- Historically, salt comes out of hollowed-out mountains and is worth more than gold.
- Also something the humans have historically fought a bunch of wars over, so there’s some free political tensions if you needed that!
- I can also mean the possible fucking enormous piles of bat guano that accumulates in Karst caves, which is the world’s most insanely good fertilizer, and ALSO something that has been worth more than it’s weight in gold.
- Speaking of Gold, another thing that often lives in sinkhole caves in abundance is BEES. turns out, limestone stalactites are a terrific place to build a hive that is difficult for predators to reach, stays dry and the stone substrate means the hives can reach many tons in weight before they start having structural issues. That sweet, sweet insect-derived liquid gold is already important to Dwarves in a lot of folklore- it’s really hard to have a Traditional Dwarven Mead Hall without the honey to make the mead, you know?
- So you got your mushrooms, you got your sunlight-grown sinkhole crops, you got your traded goods and you got your source of alcohol- the only thing really missing from an ancient food pyramid here is a staple carbohydrate. To that end, may I propose our good Peruvian Friend: The Potato.
- Grain crops aren’t actually all that nutritious and were kept around in ancient societies more as legal tender that kept the peasants busy, because wheat or rice takes months to grow, an enormous amount of labor to harvest, and wheat also needs to be milled before it can be turned into food- all enormously time-consuming processes that keep peasants busy and easy to rule tyranically over.
- Potatoes though? Pop one in the ground in spring and you can dig up fingerlings all summer, and if you make potato towers, you can harvest up to 40lbs of delicious, easy-to-prepare-and-store carb out of a single plant- a real space-saver for the limited sinkhole skyspace.
- If your dwarves have cheese, the potato makes even more sense, because Potato+dairy is the easiest, most nutritionally complete survival food there is.
- Finally, consider: Dwarven Vodka.
This post is open for anyone to comment suggestions on, but that’s my take: put your dwarves in a Karst-sinkhole cave system, give them a highly in demand resource like salt or guano, bees, and taters. Boom. Whole agriculture, economy and political scheme starters.
love reading late 90s/early 2000s scholarship on the potential of the internet. "hey we shouldn't let venture capitalists get in on this" And Then They Did
this was published in 2001
Oooooooof the crushing weight of people who were right but could not prevent the future they saw coming
quotes taken from the source
(the 4th one is Bumpus wanting dinner, friends can back me up on this)
Ten and some odd years later, these are going off to print!! Will have them at ZineFest Houston, and more in my BigCartel store later
All behavior is perverted, except for sex, which is violence.
All art is pornography, except for pornography, which is a complex form of geography.
There is no power, only kinks in the divine orgy.
this is what finnegans wake is about
What do you mean geography
OH YOU KNOW
clockworkrevenge