New answers tagged transportation
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Take the word "dimensions" literally.
This explanation is easier to understand if you're familiar with linear algebra.
If your realm and it's n demi-realms are three dimensional spaces perpendicular to one another inside an 3(n+1) dimensional space, the realm could be situated in one of those spaces near the intersection of all of them, whereas the ...
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Portal Casting is WILDLY Inaccurate.
When you create a portal you put one opening next to you and have aim the spell to determine where the other end goes. Because the distances are so great you need entire colleges of mages and massive amounts of mana. Hence the spells are wildly inaccurate. I mean hundreds of miles off target on a good day.
If a satellite ...
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In space no one can hear you gasp for air
Ever seen the cosmology of the Middle Earth? Arda is a WEIRD planet! It was originally flat, but was transformed into a proper planetary shape at some point. It is still connected to another planetary mass by a sea, to the despair of everyone trying to understand gravity while living there.
Source: the wikipedia ...
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Gravity-like effects, especially if they aren't easily mapped.
The large planes exert such an effect on travel between the demi-planes that it's effectively impossible to travel from one to the other. Your path would be too warped by the presence of the large plane. Only a direct route from the large plane can be "straight" enough that you can ...
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Assume that for a portal to exist, one end of it must be connected to something with enough mass/energy/magic/technobabble to keep it stable, or even form at all. So realm-to-realm travel is simple, because each on its own is large/powerful enough to keep portals stable. Realm-demirealm is fine, because the larger realm is able to sustain the portal by ...
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(Magical) Tidal Forces
The boundary between the realms and demi-realms is filled with dangerous warped magical fields that make travelling between any two of those problematic. The smaller the place, the more intense the warp around, sort of like tidal forces around heavenly bodies. As such, going from one demi-realm to another is exponentially more ...
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Navigation
Traveling through the ethereal nothingness between realms is a rather daunting task, even for skilled mages. It's best done very slowly and methodically, and with the expectation that a good day is one where you're not eaten by beings from beyond space and time, rather than one where you get where you were going.
Since this is an awful state of ...
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Customs, tariffs, and taxes.
Entry to the minor realms is only possible if you've gone through the correct application process, gotten the visa, filled out the forms, gone through the background check, and paid tariffs / duty / etc on anything you're carrying.
Entry through other means is technically possible, but illegal due to unpaid taxes, etc.
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The Nexus is a Giant Train Switchyard:
Given the nature of portals as commonly portrayed, I'm assuming they are relatively small, and that it takes energy to keep them open. The real chokepoint is right at the portal, and beyond that, the limits are no different than open spaces.
While raw speed may be helpful for your system, what you really need is a giant ...
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These continents sound as though they exist in a highly advanced, dimensionally-complex world, so how necessary is it to have a supranational organization attempting to centrally plan its functionality? The nexus could, instead, be described as a complex adaptive system utilizing basic tenets of complexity theory for traffic mitigation. This study might ...
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You're basically taking global travel and forcing them through 5 bottlenecks. That's going to make it tricky. You can't fly planes too often through the same airspace, wake turbulence will rip them out of the sky. Trains and ships are your best bet, however you'll need to run dozens of these in parallel to avoid bottlenecks, making your portals very large.
...
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What you need is the actual infrastructure of seaports, airports and whatever the equivalent is for land between countries. Some customs, security and logistics personnel in place and you're good to go.
Each gate nation will have staff on both sides. You can issue visas to people from other gates, and have agreements with other nations so that as long as ...
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I think you are seeing a false problem when looking only at the three dimensional aspect.
Think of two rooms connected by a corridor. This is the 3D equivalent of your realms connected by the portal. However, since they belong to different dimensions, there will be at least a fourth dimension along which the realms are located.
This means that in a ...
answered Sep 22 at 12:45
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Centipedes typically have 42 legs, 5.5 lbs per leg is the rough limit for most arthropods, so your centipede can weigh up to about 231 lb, which would make it 11.5 ft long and about 17 inches across. If people are going to be riding it, it would be 8.5 ft long by 13 inches wide to carry one person comfortably. This is also assuming that the centipede isn't ...
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In your story there're a lot of possible evil person that have this ability.
The Merchant, he can trade or steal technology and resource in a dimension with low defense for selling in his dimension to a Criminal Organization or other person.
The Assassin, is mind is corrupted and kill persons in any dimension for money or other stuff.
The Leader of Crime ...
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GET RID OF PEOPLE
When criminals or corrupt politicians or corporations want to 'vanish' people, what better way than having them removed to another dimension? They will literally be gone without a trace. It wouldn't be anywhere as near as bad as murder, since the victim would be able to survive (and possibly even thrive) on the other side of the portal. ...
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Price arbitrage
Find pairs of commodities that have different price ratios in the various worlds, then trade them. This might be considered good or evil, but it's certainly greed, or it can be used to finance evil acts elsewhere.
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Sell the access
Allow criminals to escape the police. Other possibilities are debtors, or other people with reason to flee. (The last can be ambiguous, morally, or turn on the extortionate price). This can be temporary or permanent.
Enable smuggling. This might be from dimension to dimension. Only if the portals are situated right can you smuggle from ...
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By being an arms merchant
In any war between two sides, the one who always profits are the people selling weapons. (Assuming, of course, that the ones producing the weapons are independent of the ones fighting.) And, if you can be the person selling weapons to both sides - well, that's mountains of profits for as long as the war goes on, and you have all the ...
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