D&D General Would the oceans of silt in Dark Sun blow up a lot of dust into the atmosphere? Would we be choking on dust or would the sun be blotted out?

[dead]

I had some Dark Sun questions but also some hypothetical questions applied to our own Earth for science-minded folk:

1) Would the oceans of silt in Dark Sun blow up a lot of dust into the atmosphere? Maybe so much so that the sun would be blocked out?

2) Do the oceans of silt in Dark Sun have currents and tides?

3) Dark Sun is a fantasy world infused with magic so many people will say normal physics don’t apply. So then I got to thinking… what if our own Earth was drained of life and became a desert planet? Would the oceans eventually dry up? How long would that take?

4) Would they become oceans of silt or just vast empty basins?

5) Even if they did become big oceans of silt, would the silt eventually compact down and just become solid dirt?

Thank you

 

[Len]

The Sea of Silt in Dark Sun is not geologically plausible on an Earth-like planet. Silt doesn't act like that IRL, even in dry climates.

When a lake or sea dries up, you end up with a layer of salt on top of the sea-floor sediment. I suppose it would be the same if all the world's oceans dried up, but I have no idea how long that would take (if it could even happen).

So there must be some "alternative physics" (ie. magic) at work on Athas. Given that, the details of how the Sea of Silt works are up to the imagination.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's at least more sensible than Primus's Seas of Cheese

 

[humble minion]

As far as I know, the handwaved logic behind the sea of silt in Athas was always - defilers did it. Basically, defiling magic drags lifeforce out of everything around it. But water has this inherent life-giving quality. When you drain the lifeforce out of the sea ... you get the sea of silt. It's not a natural geological phenomenon. Basically it's an undead ocean...

I don't think the sea of silt ever had currents or tides or waves or anything like that. It got blown around a bit by the wind, but that's about all. The only thing it had in common with a water sea was that you could drown in it.

 

[dead]

As far as I know, the handwaved logic behind the sea of silt in Athas was always - defilers did it. Basically, defiling magic drags lifeforce out of everything around it. But water has this inherent life-giving quality. When you drain the lifeforce out of the sea ... you get the sea of silt. It's not a natural geological phenomenon. Basically it's an undead ocean...

Yep, I was thinking something similar. You could say the sea of silt is like some psychic memory of Mother Earth (or Athas equivalent) that won't let go. This psychic memory has stirred up all the silt and now it stands in for the oceans of old in a world without water - ghost seas if you like.

 

[mellored]

Magnets

All the iron in the world is rusted and combined with the silt, and the core of the world has a higher magnetic field, pulling it down with a greater force. Not so much as to be noticed as you lift a sword, but enough to keep the dust down.

It's also how different creatures can dig though it more easily, generating their own subtle repulsive field.

2: yes. Following the shifting magnetic fields.

3: mars took millions of years to lose it's water. Probably the closest thing we can see. Though that's because it has weak magnetic field.

(/Making stuff up).

 

[Staffan]

The original boxed set had this to say about the Sea of Silt and the effects of wind on it:

On a still day, which is so rare as to be almost nonexistent, the Sea of Silt looks like an endless plain of pearly powder. Sometimes, it lies as flat as a table and it seems you can see clear to the other side of the world. More often, the dust has been churned into star-shaped dunes or piled into massive swells. On some days, when the silt lies in parallel, wave-like ridges, the sea looks like a infinite gray lake, frozen in an instant, with the waves all at their peaks.
Usually, however, the Sea of Silt is not even visible. The slightest breeze stirs up a silvery pall of dust that clings to the surface like a fog. It becomes impossible to tell where the silt-laden air ends and the dust-bed beg ins. The sea takes on the aspect of an endless moor, the swirling dust rising off the surface like ash-colored stream, obscuring your vision everything both far and near.
When the wind blows more strongly, as it often does, the Sea of Silt becomes a boiling cloud of dust, the edges tinged with crimson sunlight and the center as dark as a dragon's heart. On such a day, a man standing near the sea cannot see more than a few feet in any direction. The dust coats his clothes, his face, the inside of his nose, and even, it seems, his lungs. He cannot see the ground or the sky, and when he walks his feet drag through inches of thick dust. He grows disoriented and lost, and it becomes an easy matter for him to wander into the sea itself. Sometimes, he disappears forever.
On stormy days, the wind roars over the sea like the howl of a mekillot. If you are within fifty miles of the Sea of Silt, there is nothing to do but find shelter and wait. These are the days when the silt rises thousands of feet into the air, blocking out the sun's light and turning the day to night. The dust is so thick that to breathe without a cloth over the nose and mouth is to choke, and to rest in the open for more than a few minutes is to be buried beneath a drift of gray powder.
The wind may blow for only a few hours during such storms, but the silt stays suspended in the air long after it stops. It may take a day or more before the dust settles enough to allow travel again, and more than a week before the haze totally disappears from the sky.

Note that the "fifty miles" mentioned is basically the whole OG map east of the Ringing Mountains except some areas in the northwest corner.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Just blame it on the entropic Paraelemental Plane of Silt causing havoc with the way physics work. Athas is messed up, and it's just another reason why.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

my headcanon about the silt seas starts back with the Blue Age oceans, how those oceans were an entirely different sea water than our Earth ocean by being the producer of life-shaping bio-matter the Rhulisti used.

The Brown Tide was a mass-kill of the bio-matter in the oceans. The pool in the Pristine Tower was an ancient left-over of the ancient ocean, and as when Sadira defiled that pool it is described that a brown swirl forms.

In my headcanon, the silt of the silt sea is undead bio-matter from the old oceans and it “desires” being the old ocean. While winds might stir up the silt, it wills itself into its original bed out of ancient memory.

 

[Baron Opal II]

I had some Dark Sun questions but also some hypothetical questions applied to our own Earth for science-minded folk:

1) Would the oceans of silt in Dark Sun blow up a lot of dust into the atmosphere? Maybe so much so that the sun would be blocked out?

2) Do the oceans of silt in Dark Sun have currents and tides?

3) Dark Sun is a fantasy world infused with magic so many people will say normal physics don’t apply. So then I got to thinking… what if our own Earth was drained of life and became a desert planet? Would the oceans eventually dry up? How long would that take?

4) Would they become oceans of silt or just vast empty basins?

5) Even if they did become big oceans of silt, would the silt eventually compact down and just become solid dirt?

Thank you

Silt or dust doesn't work like that, but...

Mars does have periodic planet-wide dust storms that block the sun for extended periods of time. I could certainly see something similar happening in Athas.

If, somehow, the silt and dust could flow I could see currents. Tides would be "interesting" with two smaller moons. I would keep them minimized, ignored, or effectively random. All that silt moving, however, would generate massive static electric charge. That would make sailing the silt dangerous in the areas with the strongest currents (hah!). Surely someone has tried to exploit that, somehow. And probably exploded.

It would take a Very Long Time for the oceans to dry up here. XKCD probably has some thoughts, it's their bag. They would become empty basins covered in hard pan salt, much like the Bonneville Salt Flats. Which are so flat you can safely race across them. For certain values of "safe" anyway.