HYPERBOREA / Flat, Concave, or Convex?

**Posted by BinaryTortuga** 2/07/2018 4:07 am

I'm only a couple of days into my study of Hyperboria and most of that time has been spent studying the map and cosmology. Brilliant, beautiful, stuff! Of course I have a few ideas of my own and I'm already scheming on how I'll modify it... but I'll save all that for future posts. This is what's on my monkey brain at the moment:

"Hyperborea is a flat, hexagonal plane, though men of learning who measure the stars suggest the realm to be somewhat concave." - from the Gazetteer

Concave like a bowl? It seems more logical that the the shape of Hyperboria would be convex, like a dome. The dome model would better fit the hours of daylight / darkness data presented, assuming the long days and nights are modeled after the the phenomena in Earth's arctic. I'm envisioning a dome shaped realm, as if the Arctic (everything above 66 degrees latitude) had been sliced off the top of the Earth and set adrift in the void.

Thoughts?

Last edited by BinaryTortuga (2/07/2018 6:49 pm)

**Posted by Handy Haversack** 2/07/2018 8:36 am

I think the idea is that it's concave with an eccentricity to its rotation, which causes the sun to dip above and below the edge of the world. Though, for all that, you could just say Helios is literally dragged around the world on traces of silver fire that sometimes slacken and grow long and allow Him to dangle over the edge and cool His fiery feet in the aether. You know, as you wish.

**Posted by Blackadder23** 2/07/2018 9:29 am

If Jeff says it's concave, then it must be concave, at least officially. I believe he explained the reasoning behind this once, although I confess I don't remember what it was.
Of course, an individual referee can decide it's really convex, or whatever shape he pleases.

**Posted by Ghul** 2/07/2018 10:46 am

Imagine a towel draped over the top massive beach ball. Now imagine that the towel is cut to the shape of a hexagon. Now imagine that at each of the six points of said hexagon, there is a pin affixed to the fabric. Now imagine an invisible hand pinching each of those pins, carefully lifting up the hexagonally-shaped towel from the big beach ball. As the towel is lifted from the ball, it goes from convex to concave.

**Posted by BinaryTortuga** 2/07/2018 11:20 am

Ghul wrote:
Imagine a towel draped over the top massive beach ball. Now imagine that the towel is cut to the shape of a hexagon. Now imagine that at each of the six points of said hexagon, there is a pin affixed to the fabric. Now imagine an invisible hand pinching each of those pins, carefully lifting up the hexagonally-shaped towel from the big beach ball. As the towel is lifted from the ball, it goes from convex to concave.

Ah... now that's interesting! Presumably it would provide a lip at the rim that keeps the oceans from completely draining into the black. And it provides a real challenge for OCD cartographers who would like to make accurate, low-distortion maps of Hyperboria's various regions Will have to ponder this...

The provided map is beautiful, and I intend to stick to using the broad strokes of it. I do find myself wishing that the landmass of Hyperboria were larger. It would be easy enough to scale it up a bit. I was thinking about using 36 miles per hex instead of 24. Crunching a few numbers shows that this 1.5x upscale would cause the size of the setting to more closely match the surface area of the Earth's Arctic. I'm not sure why that's important but the OCD cartographer in me finds it pleasing.

**Posted by mabon5127** 2/07/2018 1:19 pm

Ghul wrote:
Imagine a towel draped over the top massive beach ball. Now imagine that the towel is cut to the shape of a hexagon. Now imagine that at each of the six points of said hexagon, there is a pin affixed to the fabric. Now imagine an invisible hand pinching each of those pins, carefully lifting up the hexagonally-shaped towel from the big beach ball. As the towel is lifted from the ball, it goes from convex to concave.

But what color is the beach ball?

**Posted by Handy Haversack** 2/07/2018 2:45 pm

mabon5127 wrote:
Ghul wrote:
Imagine a towel draped over the top massive beach ball. Now imagine that the towel is cut to the shape of a hexagon. Now imagine that at each of the six points of said hexagon, there is a pin affixed to the fabric. Now imagine an invisible hand pinching each of those pins, carefully lifting up the hexagonally-shaped towel from the big beach ball. As the towel is lifted from the ball, it goes from convex to concave.
But what color is the beach ball?

And what color the towel?

**Posted by BinaryTortuga** 2/07/2018 3:15 pm

Handy Haversack wrote:
mabon5127 wrote:
Ghul wrote:
Imagine a towel draped over the top massive beach ball. Now imagine that the towel is cut to the shape of a hexagon. Now imagine that at each of the six points of said hexagon, there is a pin affixed to the fabric. Now imagine an invisible hand pinching each of those pins, carefully lifting up the hexagonally-shaped towel from the big beach ball. As the towel is lifted from the ball, it goes from convex to concave.
But what color is the beach ball?

And what color the towel?

And does the trim on the sandbox match?

**Posted by Brock Savage** 2/07/2018 4:10 pm

Hyperborea is a cosmic petri dish for Yog-Sothoth and defies man's childish attempts at making sense of it with his monkey brain.

**Posted by francisca** 2/07/2018 5:21 pm

Imagine if you will....that it's concave, because the author said so.

**Posted by BinaryTortuga** 2/07/2018 6:46 pm

Brock Savage wrote:
Hyperborea is a cosmic petri dish for Yog-Sothoth and defies man's childish attempts at making sense of it with his monkey brain.

Yet it is the curse of the monkey brain to eternally strive to fathom what it cannot.

**Posted by gizmomathboy** 2/07/2018 6:51 pm

francisca wrote:
Imagine if you will....that it's concave, because the author said so.

Hey man, I'm like..not a slave to canon.

I may however be an indentured servant.

**Posted by BinaryTortuga** 2/07/2018 8:12 pm

Canon makes a fine servant but is a poor master. Or was that fire? Or canonfire? I don't know, man. I get 'em all mixed up sometimes.

**Posted by Brock Savage** 2/07/2018 9:26 pm

BinaryTortuga wrote:
Canon makes a fine servant but is a poor master. Or was that fire? Or canonfire? I don't know, man. I get 'em all mixed up sometimes.

In all seriousness, the beauty of Hyperborea is that there is just enough evocative description to fire up the imagination but things are left vague enough to ensure every DM will have their own vision of just exactly what Hyperborea is like. The creator encourages DMs to make the setting their own. I find this attitude is very much in line with the DIY spirit of old school D&D which seems to have been lost in the publish or perish days of the 90's and 2000's. Welcome to the boards.

**Posted by BinaryTortuga** 2/07/2018 11:36 pm

Brock Savage wrote:
...there is just enough evocative description to fire up the imagination but things are left vague enough to ensure every DM will have their own vision...

Yessir, that's it precisely. It's one of the huge draws of AS&SH for me. It's a relatively young setting, it's not over-developed, and plenty of breathing room has been left for the DM's creativity.

Thank you kindly for the welcome

**Posted by jcstephens** 2/08/2018 2:03 am

Every time I try to visualize the orbital mechanics of Hyperborea I get as headache, so I try not to think about it too much.

**Posted by grodog** 2/09/2018 12:24 am

Handy Haversack wrote:
mabon5127 wrote:
Ghul wrote:
Imagine a towel draped over the top massive beach ball. Now imagine that the towel is cut to the shape of a hexagon. Now imagine that at each of the six points of said hexagon, there is a pin affixed to the fabric. Now imagine an invisible hand pinching each of those pins, carefully lifting up the hexagonally-shaped towel from the big beach ball. As the towel is lifted from the ball, it goes from convex to concave.
But what color is the beach ball?

And what color the towel?

And the number of mi-go that can charleston on the heads of the pins?

Allan.

**Posted by Handy Haversack** 2/09/2018 1:07 pm

grodog wrote:
Handy Haversack wrote:
mabon5127 wrote:

But what color is the beach ball?

And what color the towel?
And the number of mi-go that can charleston on the heads of the pins?

Allan.

Seven, Allan, come on. It's in the book.

**Posted by BlackKnight** 2/09/2018 1:18 pm

It we go with the Beach Ball/Towel, then we could also look at it as a Hollow earth with a void field surrounding a section of it.

**Posted by BinaryTortuga** 2/09/2018 6:23 pm

I'm sold on the hexagonal cloth / beach ball model. Or as I've come to think of it: The six-headed tailless flying squirrel model. If the squirrel is fuzzy enough, the turtle will enjoy a deep sense of appreciation for having a warm shell.