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[applewatcher]

This may seem an odd question, but events and discussions here have made me curious:

What are planets, according to your homeworld? Where do they reside in relation to your home? Both seem quite different here than what I was always taught. No talk of gods or Oblivion, just rocks with vast tracts of nothing between them. It's quite fascinating but seems... rather sad, to be perfectly honest.

Comments

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[flightforfreedom]

Don't really need to go by whatever 'according to my homeworld' might mean - I've been flying my whole life. There's a lot up there but a whole lot more of nothing.

Honestly, though? It isn't sad. At all. You get out of a planet's atmosphere and you start being able to see everything. The stars we see down here? No where near what you can see, even just up in orbit.

There might be a hell of a lot of space, but it isn't empty.

[applewatcher]

I suppose I used the wrong word for it. To refer to only the mortal realm as the world unto itself would be arrogant for us. But it's not seen as so universal a term for others, isn't it?

And I've read a little on this, but it all seems too strange. Stars are spheres here, aren't they? And other worlds are set around them?

[flightforfreedom]

Yeah. But when you say 'spheres', you have to understand that they aren't small. This planet? You could fit hundreds of it into the sun - which is the star for this system. And this one isn't even a big one, compared to most.

And planets aren't 'set' around them, exactly. [He pauses. How does he explain this?]

You know anything about gravity?

[applewatcher]

Whereas for my home, the sun is--not the biggest, what's the word, it has the most--magnitude, it's the hole left by the passage of a god that tore the most meaningful hole in the Mundus. ...Or something like that. I have elder siblings who are more well-versed in the particulars than I am.

I suppose you mean the force that makes things fall, and not the concept of seriousness. [Either way, he's interested to see where this goes.]

[flightforfreedom]

Your star is a hole? [What?] You mean like a black hole? They don't tend to give off light...

[ He's confused enough that he's set off from his train of thought, and has to shake his head to get back into it.]

Uh - no, not the concept of seriousness. And it doesn't make things fall, exactly, though that's what it looks like when you're planet side. Gravity it more like an attraction. Everything has it, technically. Even you. But the amount of gravitational pull you exert is so infinitesimally small that neither you, or the most precise instruments in this universe - would be able to tell it was there anyway. But once you get to things that are really big, or really dense - like this planet - it pulls on everything around it. Pulls it toward itself.

The sun is so massive that it exerts that force over anything that gets near it - and 'near' is a pretty broad term, in this sense. And I am - I am way, way oversimplifying it, but basically all the planets are kind of falling past the sun, then being tugged back toward it and falling past it again.

[applewatcher]

A hole through which one can see Aetherius, the source of light and magic. I don't believe we have any black holes, though I suppose they would provide a permanent view of the Void. [Which he would certainly be in favor of, but he's equally certain very few others would be.

And... he's having trouble visualizing this, honestly.]

So, am I to assume this is something like the curve of an arrow's flight? [Because he made it sound rather more like a ball rolling down a staircase, and he would hope to never experience that from the ball's perspective.]

Will they ever fall into the sun?

[flightforfreedom]

Has uh - has anyone actually been to this hole of yours? [ Because maybe they just didn't know what they were looking at. ]

Not in this system - far as I understand, they're all in stable orbits, now. They exert force on each other, too, as well as on the sun itself, so.

Sorry, I'm not a scientist, I'm just a pilot. I know how to find an orbit and keep it and I know how to use the gravity of planets to slingshot myself using their gravity, but trying to explain the mechanics of it is sort of like trying to explain how I breathe or walk around. I just kind of do it.

[applewatcher]

Aetherian realms are not easy for mortals to travel to. I'm not sure anyone has and returned to tell of it. Other realms, certainly, but not those of Aetherius.

[That still sounds like complete nonsense, but he's willing to entertain the idea. Maybe this is how worlds that follow more stringent order are formed.]

Everyone has their natural inclinations and specialties, of course. Yours seems terribly complicated. I'm quite impressed, to tell the truth.

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[knaval]

Depends. How much do you know about star systems and such?

["sad" isn't the word riptide would use for it. boring, maybe.]

[applewatcher]

I've seen talk about this idea, where stars are burning spheres with planets spinning around them. I'm certainly open to believing this is true for worlds unlike mine, but there's no such equivalent for us. The stars are holes through which mortals can see the realms of some of the gods. They don't have planets circling them, the planets wander over the mortal world alone.

I'm sure this sounds just as outlandish to others as this whole spheres thing does to me.

[knaval]

You have a sun, right? Suns are stars. Maybe there's some crazy god shit going on for you guys, but... yeah.

[riptide hums.]

I'm trying to be better about not being judgemental about this? It's simple stuff to me, but then I'm also three and half million years old and spent most of that time in space. So.

What's the tech level on your planet? Is it like this one?

[applewatcher]

We have one, yes, and it is essentially a very big star that blots out the others in the daytime sky, but the world rotate around it.

[Ah. He'll just take that claim in stride, it might actually be true here.] Well then. You're older than the entire history of my world by at least... five hundred times, I think. Congratulations. [Technically, at least. The Dark Brotherhood has its own texts on the Dawn Era, and the state of timeless chaos it embodied. But honestly, he struggled to grasp some of these concepts. Attempting to practically conceive of a world where time did not yet exist might be beyond any mortal, three million years old or no.]

No, though I suppose the Dwemer might have once challenged them in that field. We've far more magic than Earth, however. Those with interest in building things the world's never seen before tend to become mages rather than engineers.

[knaval]

Thanks? It's just my race. We're all long-lived, but that doesn't make us wise old ancients. I, for one, am an incredibly stupid bitch.

[you gotta know yourself.]

Ahh. I think I know what you mean-- so all the stuff here is super new, then?

[applewatcher]

[He laughs.] I won't pester you with philosophical questions, then.

Essentially, yes. I've done what I can to learn, but I will admit to the occasional spectacular mistake or misconception. [And a continuing unease around cars.]

[knaval]

Alright.

[how to explain this...]

It's hard to explain, if you don't know anything past your own planet. There's literally an untold amount of space in existence and trillions of different species that inhabit it.

If you think it's sad-- ah. Google what a nebula looks like.

[applewatcher]

[[ooc: augh i accidentally a word back there. The world doesn't revolve around Nirn's sun. It's literally just a great big hole in the sky. ...Which is perceived the way it is because mortal minds can't comprehend what they're actually looking at when they stare at the cosmos. The Elder Scrolls is a goddamn trip once you get into the really gribbly lore.]]

There are nine planets that circle Nirn, but no, I can't think of any stories of anyone visiting them. But they're inhabited, of course. Just not by mortals.

A nebula? You mean like a clou--ah! I see. Quite stunning.

[knaval]

((it's chill-- both me and riptide are ignorant of the canon anyway... i'll remember to retcon if its ever mentioned directly))

Yeah. See? Lack of life isn't always bad. It's just... how it is. Sometimes it's for the better. We'd be good and stuffed if you were likely to bump into someone every time you went between planets.

[applewatcher]

[[tl;dr on canon: druuuugs]]

Oh, I'm quite aware of that. [More than he's willing to admit in public.] I more meant the nature of those planets themselves. They don't have... souls, I suppose. They aren't inherently alive themselves.

[knaval]

I don't think it's fair to say that until you've actually stood on one.

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[neverdied]

Some think the Earth is flat. That God created it all for humans.

[He's not saying it's true.]

[applewatcher]

And which god would this be?

[neverdied]

God.

[THE MOST HELPFUL.]

[applewatcher]

I can think of at least thirty beings who could claim that title, but I suspect I'm not familiar with the one you're referring to.

[neverdied]

Mostly depends on the religion. One I'm talking about just has the one god, aptly named God. He goes by many other names too. You don't have that where you're from?

[applewatcher]

Not that I'm aware of. I suppose the other gods might take offense if one among them began claiming ownership of the title.

[neverdied]

Makes sense. Only one religion?

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[tenofswords]

Planets are gigantic masses out in space. Some are solid, some are not, and they are many light-years away from each other. Our system used to have nine, but the farthest away, Pluto, was reclassified as not actually being a planet more than ten years ago.

[applewatcher]

It all seems such a sterile way to put a world together. But what a coincidence, our world has eight planets as well. Though now that I think on it, I wonder if there's another out there we've just never found. [Or worshipers of Talos are just putting on airs, in a way.]

Forgive me, but what is a light-year?

[tenofswords]

Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet, because science is constantly updating thanks to new information and discoveries.

A light-year is a unit of distance that astronomers use. It equals about six trillion miles.

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[livesfastdiesung]

That's how we define it, but it ain't as sad as you make it sound. Some planets don't have life on 'em, but then you just can't help but think of all the ones you do! Tons of stars that you can see from here might have people livin' and stuff. There's tons of life out there, and the universe ain't as lonely as it might seem.

[applewatcher]

I suppose you're quite right about that. I'm simply used to the idea of... well, a more connected universe. Smaller, maybe, but every plane can see the rest, maybe even reach them in some way. To put so much space between them is strange.

[livesfastdiesung]

We have all kinds of ships back home that go really fast, so it was always easy to visit other people! But it ain't the same for everyone, and we don't really... have different planes or anythin'.

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[patchricide]

I can't say I've heard of other definitions for planets. But I don't think it's sad at all. You just need to look at things from the right scale.

For example, if you were to take a look at an entire galaxy, at the incredible number of stars and the planets orbiting them, the 'tracts of nothing' would probably be the last thing on your mind.

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[recommendations]

There are eight planets in our solar system-- both the one we are currently in, and the one I am from, as I am from a version of Earth. They are named Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. There is also Pluto, which used to be considered a planet, but is now classified as a dwarf planet.