Big, beautiful city like this, you need a way to get around, right?
As seen in book 1, there several modes of transportation seen in the scientifically advanced and mystical continent of Mythidria. As with other science fiction and fantasy novels, movies, and television shows; there are the
usual modes of transportation such as cars, flyers, fighters, and starships.
However, as this is also a fantasy novel other modes of transportation include unicorns, pegasi, and other mounts associated with the fantastic.
What makes Mythidria different is that it combines two other travel aspects from other science fiction favorites: teleportation and portals. It may seem overpowered to use both in the same story, but I set guidelines within the universe of Mythidria that makes it both allowable and feasible for their intended purposes. By combining these and the use of subspace, hyperspace, and alternate realities it opens up a more cohesive (and in my personal opinion) scientifically exploitable set of rules that will help keep things "down to earth."
A lot of the previously mentioned aspects of science fiction and fantasy have been used all over in the past and other media within science fiction and fantasy. It's my hope that my use of these will be understandable once I've explained how and when I intended to use them. It's also my hope that once people start to read my books, these rules will automatically be observed by the reader without need of explanation. Here, however, if the need should ever arise, I have it in print so I have something to fall back on the case questions come up.
Now, on with the show...
There's quite a few ways to get around in the magical and high-tech world of Mythidria and Danitrae, not the least of which is the most obvious - walking and self-powered motation. Yes there are bikes, skateboards, the two-wheeled scooters, etc. Some things are, in my estimation, universal, so to see folks running or walking and kids doing a little shredding on their boards and bikes (or their alien equivalents) will be seen pretty much anywhere. It makes for easy description, and as Mythidria does monitor the Earth stratum, some things will carry over. One of the main things to remember is that Danitrae is a member of the Concordance of Worlds, so in that, all sorts of cool things can be seen and experienced from that end of civilisation as well.
There will also be "natural" modes of transportation - horses, tigers (or other large cats), giant canines, elephantine beasts of burden, and the like. Sound a bit like World of Warcraft, does it? Well, yeah, why not? A lot of modern fantasy (including video games) takes cues from old fantasy and scifi, or reality. Oh ho, you think I'm fulla sh*t, do you? Well then why have the folks in countries like India tamed elephants as beasts of burden or mounts for their citizenry? They were doing that CENTURIES before
video games were even a bad idea. So there.
We will not, however, see mounted creatures like dragons or gryphons running about with people on their backs. Anybody that has done even the slightest bit of reading will know that they are sentient beings, highly intelligent, and may take offense to some John Wayne wannabe digging spurs into their sides. They might just wind up as a snack were that the case.
Briefly, while on the subject of magical methods of transportation, yes, people use magic carpets and broomsticks. The whole deal behind the stories of Mythidria is a combination of magic and supercience, so we can't leave out things that have been mainstays of either genre (sci fi and fantasy) since stories like these took shape. That's
just not cricket, plus it could be fun later on for a chase through the high rises of Certi City.
Also, it wouldn't be surprising to see your average John Q. Public tooling around in a sports car, or the Griswolds out in the family truckster - in a sense. Remember, life on Mythidria is taken largely in part from real life so cars, trucks, motor cycles, mopeds, and even trains monorails, subways, and all that are just as commonplace in Certi City as in your average town. And why not? Again, Mythidria has been a civilisation for much longer than modern history has existed. Let's not fuss. The easiest thing to remember, you see this sort of thing in ALL of the most popular science fiction and fantasy properties, so one more person doing it isn't all that whippy to twist your knickers over.
Now then, let's get a bit more science fiction-y, shall we? Flyers. Yes, those. Flying cars, motorcycles, buses, boats, and all that. Yup, think Coruscant, 23rd century Earth Federation space, 5th Element New York, Judge Dredd, Adam Strange on the planet Rann, and all of the wonderful ways people can get around in all of those wonderful universes. Again, it's not all that different. Heck, we've "seen" Mic's car - the sleek black number? Yeah. I took that idea from a pic of a production Lamborghini I found back in the 90's. A few additions and subtractions here and there and I had Mic's flying car. Easy as pie, that was. Being in an advanced society, and being an old as f*ck rich guy with a high standing, why wouldn't he have something a bit overly masculine and sleek? It's the car, chicks really dig the car.
And now we're going to get into the more fun ways to get around...
Starships! YES! Sleek and graceful assemblages of metal, plastic, and other stuff you make starships out of. The shapes of these things are just as numerous as there are in all of the other sci-fi properties out there. There are capital sips, frigates, scout ships, destroyers, battleships, oh so many to play with! And that's just from our pals on Mythidria! If we were to get into alien/non-human transports, ooooh yeah. Descriptions fail with all of the possibilities there. One hint, though, space-faring vehicles are a BIIIIG part of Book # 2, "The Seventh Relic." Not going to say, for fear of giving anything away, but flying around in space is going to factor heavily!
Now there's a couple of things used in book one that are featured in a couple of other popular shows - teleportation and portals. Now both can be achieved using both science and sorcery, but a few rules needed to be set, mainly in the realm of limitations. The main one being, distance. No inter-, intra, or extra-galactic teleports or portals as seen thus far. What's the point of having all of these cool toys to
muck about with when all it really takes it for Mr. Scott to just beam you there?
No fun in that, is there?
For teleports, were keeping it simple - planetary point-to-point teleports only. With a satellite network in active service, our heroes can quick jump from Charleston, South
Carolina to Riga, Latvia within instants. Where is the central command hub, you ask? With a society as advanced as the ones we're playing with, and to use another concept to keep in the mode of "exposing the truth" - an alien base on the dark side of our moon. Not just any base - oh no! There is a ship portal station in a station keeping orbit where we will not see it, ever. A little cloaking technology, some common sense, and a great crew can pull that one off with complete ease. Again, using satellites, they can keep in contact with their equipment and monitor the workings, movements, and needs of their toys. I'm rather in a conundrum as to whether these satellites will be
manned (two-man teams) or autonomous. Manned would mean some drama and
situations could arise, needing resolution should the sh*t hit the fan. Main point is, you can't jump across dimensions or further than the moon using teleports.
Portals, on the other hand, are meant primarily for jaunts between dimensions. Again, anyone having read the first book will tell you, Mythidria was once a part of Earth, but whisked away to Danitrae by the Mage Congress to end the Necromancer Uprising and invasion by the nations of Earth (ancient Egypt/Phoenecia/Sumeria, and the like.) To traverse back to Earth to keep the populace safe, they had to devise a way to get back and forth, so portals/wormholes seemed like the most likely choice. I think it's a workable method as they are good for a round trip and that's it. Get to where you're going and then come back when you're done. There's no, "Jaunt here, then there,
then off to Planet Pilderlac for their Festival of Lights, and then home" business. I've worked it, and I hope successfully I might add, that more than one portal can be tied into a network of sorts so if the sh*t has hit the fan, and just keeps coming, our heroes can zip back through the original portal, run across the hall and jump through another one to get where they need to be. I think a device like this adds a bit of tension and desperation if needed in such a manner. So far I have had nothing but praise by friends and other folks who have read book one for doing this. Not to mention that the idea for portals, which I should have mentioned already, is primarily meant for objects and vehicles. Many of the portal chambers I've described are HUGE. That's because you can wheel a contingency of tanks between planes of existence through the larger frames just as easily as you can a quartet of people through the smaller ones. A little more on this in a bit...
As for using magical teleports and portals, the same rules apply. No teleporting across distances vaster than going anywhere on Earth, distance limitations should be a little more stringent. That's not to say that on a planet smaller or larger than Earth you can't do the same thing. To cite a current example, Kepler 69e and 69f are supposed to be planets close to the size of Earth. I think one is 1.5 times the mass of Earth so it could be a bit larger. Yes, you can flash to any point on the planet from any other point - as long as you have been there before or have seen it before. It's pointless to hop somewhere you've never been before to do what you need to do and then do it again somewhere else. Seems a bit much and like cheating. We can't have things too easy now, can we?
Same goes for portals. They are mostly meant for equipment movement between dimensions, but are just as easily meant for the movement of people. The biggest drawback to this is it's VERY draining on the caster, almost debilitatingly so. Magic, in the most simplest description, is the manipulation of matter and energy for a variety of effects. Unless a sorcerer has something else to use as a power source, most of the time, energy is taken from the immediate area to convert into a portal. This is probably one of the most exhausting practices, so it makes things easy to hammer it home that personal portals are not widely used by just anybody. Mic, Locke, and a few others of
that power level can probably throw a few portals out before feeling the effects of it. Again, true believers, the caster has to have been to the destination or have seen it otherwise throwing out a portal to Los Angeles, CA actually leads to the center of the Earth because whoever created the portal has never been to the west coast. Yeah, just slightly disastrous, right?
Finally, FTL (faster than light) travel. Yes it does exist here. Before anybody says anything , nobody is "warping" anywhere. Old hat. This is where I am taking a bit of artistic license with physics, but trying to keep things as believable as I can.
There are 11 dimensions according to current thinking, right? Well, what's outside of that, other than alternate/quantum realities? Well, for Danitrae to exist in a different stratum all it's own, these things have to exist, right? But what is outside of that? Ah, here's our artisitc license.
The universe is constructed as follows, as simply a possible: The "prime" universe, the multiverse (in which our stories take place with "my Earth" and the Danitrae parallel exist, subspace and hyperspace, the astral plane, the higher planes (the latter three are yet to be proven logically or scientifically, but they make for some great storytelling.)
To go faster than light, ships generate a beam or energy that open up a hyperspatial tranversal framework) that will enable the ship to pass from one point to another within instants. The distance depends on how long the trip lasts.
With this method set up with Concordance "hubs" and space stations, a ship can effectively traverse the galaxy in a matter of days, allowing for refueling and resupply stops at the aforementioned hubs and stations. As these facilities are major ports of call along set routes, ships can conserve energy by slipping through the framework generators at these stations rather than creating new tunnels to fly through.
One thing about this is I'm still on the fence about going extragalactic. So far, the netherfiend threat is limited to just the milky way and the nearby large Magellanic cloud, but as for going out as far as Andromeda or other galactic bodies - I'm not too sure about that, leaning towards not, to tell the truth. I want the MAJOR threat coming, thanks to Acheron's machinations to come from somewhere so having it come
from outside the Milky Way is an out I have left myself.
So now we get to the, "How do they do it" portion of the piece. Well, we can go the way of Star Wars and leave the science a bit ambiguous and throw a few bits and pieces of "How" there and yon. Or we can get into the technobabble so popular in Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, Babylon-5, etc. I'm not going to do either. That's part of the fun of it. I can throw out "Magneto-gravitic drives" or "Anti-gravity generators" and all that, but why? We all know these things exist in fiction, so I am taking a Mulligan like everybody else and just having
it as a working part of this universe. Plus, by keeping it loosey-goosey here
means that if I need to get into detail in one of the books, I have that out,
just in case.
Well, that's pretty much it, for this time around. It's a TL:DR, to be
sure, but it's a large part of what needs to be said and more groundwork needed
to be done. For anybody reading, I hope you found this somewhat entertaining
even though it may be a bit dry.
Keep on writing, and never let your dreams
die.