Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 niek_dup Jun 17, 2008 20:55:48	It all started during one fateful gym class about a month ago. The rest of the class was, as usual, being incredibly moronic and annoying. It is then when I had the thought: why don't I have heat vision? This started a conversation with my friend as to why it is that superheroes never abuse their powers for personal gain. As an example, I brought up a hypothetical person who had the power to transmute substances into other substances, and asked why such a person would not just create a bunch of platinum and become filthy rich. This started a side discussion on how that would affect the price of platinum, and at which point it would become unprofitable. It was also brought up that our super-powered character would need to have something to transmute, and the first thing that came to my mind was air. We then realized that, given the massive differences in the density of air and platinum, it would require an extremely large ammount of air. We took this to its logical conclusion, where eventually there is very little air left, and it becomes more valuable than the platinum. This leads to our platinomancer being finally brought to justice by the law enforcement (who up to this point were being bought of with platinum). At this point, oxygen becomes accepted as currency. What then happens to treefolk? Well, we figured that the other races would like to have some control over the economy, and that isnt very easy when there is an entire race of people who can't help but produce "Counterfeit oxygen". And so, the elves hunt down the Treefolk and force them into hiding. The Treefolk are noticeably upset with this development, and swear revenge upon the elves. The Treefolk Mafia sneak seeds and saplings into the elven communities, where they work to sabotage the enemy in any way they can. But with so much of the air gone, I thought, how do the elves keep it in high enough concentrations to live? Simple, I thought, they build giant dome-cities. This has the added benefit of allowing the community leaders to have near total control over those in their domes, as they would be in charge of the air flow systems. The elven nobility gets to have lush gardens in the center of the domes, while the peasantry lives in barely-survivable conditions on the outer parts, where their ability to work effectively, and thus earn enough air, is literally a matter of life or death. The Treefolk live deep underwater to hide from the elves, and have altered their normal photosynthesis routine to use carbon from living creatures instead of air. What about outside of the domes, I thought? Well, dwarves are stubborn, and would be unlikely to move from their ancestral homes, least of all to elven-controlled domes. This leads to them all dying of suffocation. The catch is, the dwarves are so stubborn that they refuse to stay dead, leading to a race of highly territorial skeleton dwarves living in the underground outside of the domes. The same fate befell the giants, who need far more oxygen to support their huge bodies and cannot easily fit into elven domes, though they did not become undead through sheer force of stubborness, that was the work of dwarven necromancers. Just three races is boring, I thought. What this setting needs in gnomes! And so I placed gnomes as a sort of slave race to the elves, who build and maintain the domes. But that won't do, having them all be slaves to the elves. And so I introduced a second group of gnomes, who live outside the domes but live in caverns underground, sealed off from the outside to keep their air inside. They must constantly struggle to survive in the harsh conditions, fighting off dwarves and searching the surface for needed supplies. Where do the gnomes get their air, I thought. Magic, of course! This led to a decision that the elves, who need to maintain control over air supplies, have banned the use of magic in their domes. Everything they do is run off of the technology of the slave gnomes, who do all of the work while the elves slack off. Something was still missing... something with green skin. I looked over my scribbled notes, but didnt find anywhere on the planet to put orcs. So I did the logical thing, and put them on the moon instead. I decided that, as a contrast to the planet's lack of air, the moon had a fully breathable atmosphere. The problem there, however, was massive overcrowding, and so the orcs gained a reason to invade the planet to conquer territory. To do this, the orcs have developed some basic techno-magical spaceships. At that point the english teacher told me to put my notesheet away. It had taken all of 2 hours or so to go from that first frustrated statement to all of what I have posted above. I figured that this was suitibly random to warrant posting it on the internet. Comments welcome.
#2 Ramien Jun 17, 2008 21:25:13	So, um... why can't the hypothetical transmuter just transmute things back into air?
#3 wells Jun 18, 2008 21:28:25	Quite frankly, that made my day.
#4 stucktj Jun 18, 2008 23:11:53	Quite frankly, that made my day. I agree
#5 niek_dup Jun 19, 2008 20:11:08	Because he was killed by an angry mob of people who did not enjoy suffocating.