Fleshing out the inside of an ancient dyson sphere of unknown origin went better than expected. The entire session was done with a series of Assessment rolls and prompting to get details as to what’s going on inside this sphere.
First, some established facts:
– the sphere is at about Venus orbit (110 million miles from the sun, napkin math says the inner surface area is equivalent to 750 million earths)
– the outer shell is a self-healing silicon-crystalline structure that is unknown to human science. Sustained plasma fire can create a hole but it heals rapidly – the PCs were able to take their shuttle and mech with, so 3 PCs, 2 crew members, and a floating AI orb all entered inside.
The stages of discovery:
1. Racing through the bore-hole, the mech pilot was the first one out. “You exit at speed due to the rapid closing of the hole, what is the first thing your sensors warn you of?” Radiation. And electricity. And magnetism. All sorts of energy, flowing about like a river. They’re in a sort of maintenance tunnel, with a “roof” quite a ways above them – the earth’s moon could probably fit in here. Energy flows around like a river, being picked up and absorbed by tendrils coming up from the outer surface. This appears to be where the power is coming from for the self-healing.
2. Tracing the energy river back to the source, they find a “waterfall” entering the chamber through a porous material different from the surrounding crystal. There are small tunnels dotted around the side, and they ascend. “As you exit the tunnel, the first thing that hits you is the bright light. Everything is light. What’s the second thing you notice?” The light around us is diffuse, spreading through a sort of gas or liquid looking a bit like food coloring spreading through water. In the center above us, though, is an inky black point. Every warning sensor is going off wildly. It’s a black hole. But we’re not affected by any of the forces. Something about this construct is stabilizing or containing the hole. “So it’s like a prison for a black hole? Awesome. But where’s the light coming from?” The corona of the black hole, which is normally x-rays, is visible light. It’s like a lance of light slashing across the darkness above us.
3. So we’re in a contained black hole which seems to have no power here. The space of the sphere is filled with stray gases or liquid or something. “You’re also picking up large solid objects in range, what are they?” It’s hard to tell from here, but they look like islands. Their bottom sides are pointed towards the black hole, and the surface points toward the shell of the sphere. Sensors arer reading life signs on some of them.
I love when collaborative world building goes in totally unexpected and awesome ways.
Nice. The back of the napkin math sounds too low, but your napkin math is probably better than my intuition.
My napkin math was in the Google search bar. I’d fully admit to it being wrong 😉
Sphere 110 million miles from earth has a surface area of 1.52×(10 ^ 17) mi^2. Earth’s surface area is a little under 200 million square miles, or 2 * 10 ^ 8.
That’s a difference of ~ 10 ^ 9, call it a billion. And I ignored the first digit, which’d bring it down to … 750 million.
apparently my intuition is wrong!
Yeah, but the Earth is 93 million miles from the Sun, so 100 million is not Venus orbit. I think you are calculating in kilometers but that’s 108 million kilometers.
I get a figure for a 108 million kilometer radius of 1.466 x 10^17 km^2. The Earth’s surface area is 510,072,000 km^2 so divide sphere area by Earth’s area and you get 287,360,000 Earths.
oh damn, you are right! How did I not recall the measurement of an AU?