Jot Powers <books at bofh.com> Sent by: dragaera-bounces at dragaera.info 04/13/06 07:53 AM Please respond to Jot Powers <books at bofh.com> To dragaera at dragaera.info cc Subject Re: Speculative Planetary Statistics for Dragaera (Math help?) >Coming in late to the discussion. > >On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 10:43:08AM -0700, Jon_Lincicum at stream.com wrote: >> 3. In /Issola/ Our heroes go to another world which is noticeably heavier, >> yet has a (somewhat) breathable atmosphere. If this world is, say at the >> 1.2g level, it'd be a very noticeable difference to a Dragaeran, without >> being so far from Earth-normal to make a breathable atmosphere unlikely. > >I don't of Issola in front of me, but my impression was not that it was >heavier, but that the air was less dense, and thus had less oxygen. This >explains: > >1) Vlad had to control his breathing by breathing shallow, not deep. If >it were heavier, it would be more exertion, and deep breathing would be >more likely. >2) Loiosh had a harder time flying. Less generated lift due to less >dense atmosphere. > >I'll re-read and see if there are textevs that show that heavier is more >likely than "higher altitude". Issola, pg 51 (paperback): [cite] The first thing I noticed was that I felt heavier--perhaps the result of a general protection spell against anyone who doesn't belong, or it might also be some natural property of the place. [/cite] I won't dispute that the atmosphere was less dense (which seems likely), but this statement (as well as later statements, which seem to favor the latter theory as the cause of the weight difference) says that there was indeed a noticable heaviness about the place that was separate from the atmospheric conditions (which Vlad doesn't notice until later on). At a guess, I would say the effects of the atmosphere on our heroes maybe less due to a lack of oxygen (which I think would tend to inspire deeper breathing), than to the presence of some other contaminant (CO2?) introducing a mild poisoning effect (which would encourage shallow breathing). Majikjon