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Post by Pawel on Jun 11, 2023 18:15:03 GMT
Haha, Allie, I love your newest entry! Keep cooking them up, they are all so awesome and you truly are on a roll. I've always enjoyed everyday themes and obstacles in ttrpg settings and quite like to keep the lens focused on the street/household level problems rather than world saving problems. But somehow, you've managed to combine both of these in a single Undercurrents article - beer shortage on Poseidon. A very small scale, cute wee adventure hook AND a world-ending problem for so many!  |
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Post by allie on Jun 11, 2023 19:01:38 GMT
En Haven no hay cerveza que beber,
Por eso ando tomando noche y día,
Porque ya cuando ya se me llegue el día
En el mundo seguirá la perrosquía.
In Haven there is no beer (no beer!)...
—traditional Port Horizon drinking song
Honestly RBD Schwarzer Walfisch is less than 18 hours old; I discovered "Im schwarzen Walfisch zu Askalon" last night and was like "this needs to be a place on Poseidon and I know where to put it." (Apparently it's already two or three places and a gin brand in Germany? That's what the internet says at least.) I've got a bunch of ideas about Walfischia GmbH's secrets but they'll need a bit to polish into an Access Denied.
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Post by allie on Jun 16, 2023 6:31:28 GMT
Since I've had Catholicism on my brain today, it strikes me that Alderberg has a similar issue: grapes don't grow in the tropics, you need pure grape wine to celebrate Mass, and Alderberg has a lot of men whose job involves celebrating Mass.
Since the number of people who need wine is "several hundred clergy" rather than "50,000 Incorporate personnel at minimum," though, it's a much easier problem to solve. Alderberg probably leads the world in hydroponic viticulture, producing the fine red wine NOT FOR SALE: Sacramental Use Only or something like it.
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Post by Pawel on Jun 16, 2023 7:38:13 GMT
Since I've had Catholicism on my brain today, it strikes me that Alderberg has a similar issue: grapes don't grow in the tropics, you need pure grape wine to celebrate Mass, and Alderberg has a lot of men whose job involves celebrating Mass. Since the number of people who need wine is "several hundred clergy" rather than "50,000 Incorporate personnel at minimum," though, it's a much easier problem to solve. Alderberg probably leads the world in hydroponic viticulture, producing the fine red wine NOT FOR SALE: Sacramental Use Only or something like it. Hmm, I am so uneducated in the topic of alcohol... And religion too, so yeah, just completely unqualified to have an opinion! So instead I'll go for a question: is "pure grape wine" a necessity in Catholicism? Or do you think the religion would evolve in some way to overcome this - like when Muslims on other planets find Qibla by simply praying towards Earth. Would Catholics be okay with some sort of synthetic wine or a local wine-like product? |
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Post by michaelsd on Jun 16, 2023 11:05:18 GMT
Yes, RC law does require "pure grape wine" for Mass. Quote from RC Canon Law. "§3 The wine must be natural, made from grapes of the vine, and not corrupt." Wikipedia has a nice summary: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacramental_wineBut, there are exceptions, none resolving the pure grape issue though. I am quite sure that somewhere is place to grow grapes, as not every island is tropical. Hard to say where RC will go, it usually depends on the actual Pope. But the pure grape requirement is central to RC theology, Protestant churches could more easily use artifical wine. |
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Post by allie on Jun 16, 2023 11:34:32 GMT
So instead I'll go for a question: is "pure grape wine" a necessity in Catholicism? Or do you think the religion would evolve in some way to overcome this... Would Catholics be okay with some sort of synthetic wine or a local wine-like product? Necessity isn't half of it. The elephant in the room is that grape wine in the Eucharist is apostolic tradition, and was settled on before the Gospels were written down. Trivial as it seems, that's a change on par with adding new books to the Bible. Catholicism did face and overcome this exact problem once before; the solution turned out to be "plant grapes in South America and California," and more than paid for itself. |
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Post by Pawel on Jun 16, 2023 11:56:29 GMT
Goodness me, I certainly learned new stuff today! Well, having such topics present in a sci-fi setting 40 light years and 200 calendar years away is a good example of Blue Planet's overall range.  |
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Post by lupmet on Jun 17, 2023 15:26:55 GMT
What bothers me is why grapes, barley and hops won't grow on Poseidon? Long John solves a lot of issues I would guess?
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Post by michaelsd on Jun 17, 2023 17:45:35 GMT
I am quite sure there are places to grow grapes. Possilby not in the "detailed" area of the book.
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Post by allie on Jun 17, 2023 19:16:12 GMT
What bothers me is why grapes, barley and hops won't grow on Poseidon? Long John solves a lot of issues I would guess? It wouldn't even need Long John; agro-biotech has been a huge part of humanity's economy since the post-Blight reclamation began. But biotech isn't magic and can only fix the plant's problems. It doesn't solve, off the top of my head: - The weather. If you have a good place to farm and it's on an island in the Storm Belt, no you don't. The single place on Poseidon with large-scale grain farming is southern Prime Meridian, in the storm shadow of the Drakensbergs.
- The weather. Even if cyclonic storms aren't a thing, the Pacifica Archipelago gets a lot of rain; "too wet to grow" is a problem as old as farming. It also means erosion is a problem; those beautiful grainfields don't have a lot keeping the dirt in place.
- Soil quality. Poseidon's seawater is even saltier than Earth's, and its land gets exposed to more of it. How salinated is the soil? How sandy? How deep? All of this affects what can grow where.
- Poseidon's ecology. We don't know about soil bacteria, or earthworms, or plant synergies (I don't know the scientific terminology but vegetable gardening has a lot of rules about what you can and can't plant next to each other.) Poseidon's got fast fungus, but does it have grape rots or grain rusts? Not even the natives know! Have fun finding out!
- Economics. I'm still working on Access Denied: Walfischia GmbH, but Hanover isn't focusing too seriously on their beer supply because their resources are going toward stuff like "achieving food security for Poseidon's future third-largest city" and "preparing for a possible war against the GEO in less than 24 months." The solutions also take time (especially non-hydroponic viniculture); "we'll have beer in 7-8 years, maybe 4-6 if there's no war with the GEO" is a nice medium-term goal that does nothing to address morale problems in the meantime.
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Post by lupmet on Jun 18, 2023 11:56:32 GMT
What bothers me is why grapes, barley and hops won't grow on Poseidon? Long John solves a lot of issues I would guess? It wouldn't even need Long John; agro-biotech has been a huge part of humanity's economy since the post-Blight reclamation began. But biotech isn't magic and can only fix the plant's problems. It doesn't solve, off the top of my head: - The weather. If you have a good place to farm and it's on an island in the Storm Belt, no you don't. The single place on Poseidon with large-scale grain farming is southern Prime Meridian, in the storm shadow of the Drakensbergs.
- The weather. Even if cyclonic storms aren't a thing, the Pacifica Archipelago gets a lot of rain; "too wet to grow" is a problem as old as farming. It also means erosion is a problem; those beautiful grainfields don't have a lot keeping the dirt in place.
- Soil quality. Poseidon's seawater is even saltier than Earth's, and its land gets exposed to more of it. How salinated is the soil? How sandy? How deep? All of this affects what can grow where.
- Poseidon's ecology. We don't know about soil bacteria, or earthworms, or plant synergies (I don't know the scientific terminology but vegetable gardening has a lot of rules about what you can and can't plant next to each other.) Poseidon's got fast fungus, but does it have grape rots or grain rusts? Not even the natives know! Have fun finding out!
- Economics. I'm still working on Access Denied: Walfischia GmbH, but Hanover isn't focusing too seriously on their beer supply because their resources are going toward stuff like "achieving food security for Poseidon's future third-largest city" and "preparing for a possible war against the GEO in less than 24 months." The solutions also take time (especially non-hydroponic viniculture); "we'll have beer in 7-8 years, maybe 4-6 if there's no war with the GEO" is a nice medium-term goal that does nothing to address morale problems in the meantime.
Economy is an interesting beast; it can make the most silly thing a good investment and make society to forget the most needed thing. If there is a replacement to beer, not a substitute mind but something different, then beer making will be a thing for the hobbyist, but if there is a sufficient demand there will be investors willing to spend the money. Eva Ekeblad is usually credited with being the first female (honorary) member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences because she found out how to distill potatoes into spirits (the English Wikipedia makes this statement but the Swedish Wikipedia points to that it was her work to use potatoes for bread making that earned her the membership). The legend states that this would mean that less wheat, barly, and rye were used for spirits and more of it was used for food, with less starvation (when choosing between making bread or spirits the 18C Swedish populations knew their priorities). My point with this story is that it can be so that the grain has other properties useful to the Poseidon farming economy – it might thrive in the compost of unused or discarded kelp or help reduce the saltiness of the soil. The beer is a byproduct and we know from Earth that people are willing to pay a lot to get drunk. The weather can be a real problem, agreed, and that is one of the things I like with the setting – nature itself is a character – but greenhouses can quickly become profitable. |
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