Fojar

haha, maybe I got a tad carried away with the data and calculations and possibilities (oh my!) I do that sometimes (thanks to 4 years of college specifically designed to make me think that way). Anyway, I would agree that there is more in the sky than what meets the eye. One of the big lessons that we can learn from "real world" astronomy is that if anything moves, everything moves, and the only way I see of the sun's distance from the earth, and therefore the sun's size, varying in any noticable fashion is if one or both rotate around some third object. Perhaps long ago all three (or more?) objects orbited in the same plane, kind of like the system Earth is part of, so that the sun was periodically blocked out by the Dark Object(s). Then, maybe something knocked the world out of plane (like Pluto) and tilted its axis on its side (like Neptune) so it always pointed toward the sun. It could have even been an intentional act. This is all speculation, though. I still don't discount the possibility that the sun is really some dude in a flying saucer who doesn't realize his high beams are on.

Ah, now I see. Well then, ignore the first sentence of my post. One thing that worries me, however, is the change in the sun's size that you noticed. Going back to the "real world," because our sun is so far away, it or us would have to move many millions of miles in the few hours it took for you to see a change in size. This leads to one of several scenarios: 1. Either we or the sun is orbiting some very massive, very dark object, like a black hole. All that gravity would make the orbit very fast, allowing the changes you have observed. Plus, a black hole could distort the light coming from the sun, changing its size and position or maybe even absorbing all of it and making "periods of darkness." 2. MagicDuel's sun is actually very close to us, so it doesn't take much movement to change its size. The sun would also have to be very small to avoid frying us all into oblivion. 3. Something else completely? Perhaps some more data would help. Is the path the shadow of the stick follows an oval, circle, or some sort of flower shape? Is the base of the stick inside the path, or do the shadows always fall to one side? This could help us determine if the movement is caused by rotation, precession, orbit, or a combination of two or three of these. Also, how much does the sun change in apparent size? You mention that it occurs in the same time period as the movement, but do the two cycles start at the same time? If we get lucky, we might actually be able to determine the exact nature of the motions of the celestial bodies, as well as the size of the earth and the sun (at least in units of "the stick" o.O), and perhaps the masses of the sun, earth, and moon if it exists. I hope you don't mind me borrowing the designs of some of the Instruments you used. I might have to imagine in a calculator, too

Maybe you wouldn't have to have a real object to identify before you transpositioned it. There's a bit of writing in my papers about that, though I mix it with the element principle, too.

True, it's tough to come up with ideas not already covered in the principles we have, especially since Manu put a lot of care into crafting them. We have to look for concepts in our own world that need representing. Here are a few suggestions: Principle of Energy - Opposite of Element Principle - Real-world physics places these two as opposites yet connected, with matter turning into energy, and energy turning into matter (Perhaps these two principles could be subbordinate to the Principle of Balance) - we could have four kinds of energy, one for each element (light/heat = fire, gravity/inertia = earth, motion = air, ? = water) *EDIT water could be some sort of dissipation, since it slows down motion with viscosity, cools heat, and stops gravity with surface tension Principle of Space - Somehow opposite to the Principle of Time? I really have no clue where to go with this one. o_O (It may already be covered in Transposition, yet it seems to have so much more potential) Principle of Relativity - Like Einstein's? Again, I'm stumped. Principle of the Soul - Something to help explain life, emotion, and death. Also it could cover the nature of us, the visitors to the MagicDuel universe, and our effect on it. Again, these are just suggestions. Feel free to edit/tinker/go wild with any of it

If you all don't mind going back from the metaphorical to the physical, I would like to correct a factual error: the sun does indeed move, even if it doesn't set. In chapter two, after I fell asleep under the tree, this was written on my magic scroll: " " This tells us that there is, indeed, some form of rotation or orbit to the celestial bodies in this universe. It could be similar to the constant daytime that occurs every year north of the Arctic Circle, for those of you who have sojourned in the Wikipedia universe. Perhaps, then, the world in MagicDuel has a year that spans hundreds of thousands of days, so that long ago there was indeed a time when there were "periods of light" and "periods of shadow." Under the constant sunlight, however, the weather has stagnated, and that is why there are dead trees in No Man's Land. Eventually, the world will return to a time of day and night, followed by *shudder* hundreds of years of darkness. Perhaps then the Angiens will sense the need to reassert themselves and shine their light forth, just as the Shades spread forth darkness now.