[OOC] Concordance

[Labster]

Notes for Luminis Labyrinthus

Just so you know, the Anime Fan Wanted ad is targeted advertising, looking for anime fen.  It's not meant to imply that the whole story will involve only anime girls and anime cats, though that's definitely how mine is starting out.

The place and time of this were a bit hard to figure out.  First of all, place: Aria takes place on a shallow sea lagoon, but with definite seasons and temperate climate.  This presents a problem, as the areas below Martian datum are: the far north of the planet (virtually everything >40°N, omg the storms up here would be vicious), the large, deep crater Hellas Planitia in the south, and the equatorial Noctis Labyrinthis canyon system.

So, um, not a lot of great choices.  But on the lee side of the Tharis Plateau, that would make a decent place for a shallow inland sea.  So my best guess for where Neo Venezia is is around the Sacra Mensa (lit. sacred altar), on the immense Kasei Valles outflow channel.  At least the "Kasei" part would make Akari feel at home.

On the date: This story takes place subsequent to The Marriage of the Sea, which takes place on Ascension Day, which is May 15, 2303.  

In the manga, they say that Aqua (future-Mars) will have a calendar identical to Earth's, but with exactly 2 years on Earth compared to 1 on Mars.  A 24 month calendar.  However, that's just not what the orbital period is, which is 686 days (672 sols).  So I get to thinking -- would changing Mars' gravity to roughly 1g at the surface (as depicted) change the orbital period?

TL;DR: not really.

Boring math stuff

Setting Mars' acceleration of gravity to Earth's value:
    g♁ = 9.8 m/s² = G M♂' / r♂²
So Mars would have an effective mass (with those thingies the gnomes have) of 1.687e24 kg -- still only 28% of Earth.  But is does this mass doubling effect the orbital period?  The orbital period is T = √(τ² a³/μ) where μ = G ( m1 + m2 ).  But if you leave it in the same orbit, the ratio reduces to
    T' = T♂ * √( ( M☉ + M♂ ) / ( M☉ + M♂' ) )
    T' = 686.971 days * sqrt( (1.9885e30 + 6.4171e23) / (1.9885e30 +  1.6870e24)) = ~15 seconds longer
 
Which is so small of a difference, the change is almost a rounding error.  The Sun's gravity dominates, even at these scales.  Which means Aria's nice calendar is still a fantasy.  Oh well.  I'll do a slight offset from Earth for year 2303.

There could be another effect reducing the length of a sol by transferring mass towards the poles.  It's just the same as an ice skater moving their arms inward to increase rotation speed, it's conservation of angular momentum.  This has been observed on Earth, when large dams transfer water poleward.  But I'm guessing that even making a large ocean on Mars' north is not enough mass to get more than a few minutes of sol reduction, if any, based on the millisecond-scale changes we get from Terran water projects.

The whole Tharsis province would be full of basalts, so those should be common.  The main question about the Stone of Misfortune is: WTF is limestone doing on Mars?  Follow-up question: what did they build Neo Venezia's buildings out of?

Giovanni Shiaparelli is the astronomer who discovered and named the canals of Mars.  He was, however, entirely wrong about which hemisphere of Mars could be an ocean.

It took a really long time to figure out what Maetel's hat is called, but prereader and all around nice guy Rob Kelk informed me it was a toque.  Just for the record, that's not a Canadian toque, which is knit, but a brimless hat.

It's a safe assumption that Mars has no fossil fuels, even if it does turn out to have fossils -- I doubt they had a Carboniferous period there.

Nieuw Amsterdam is at least somewhat inspired by https://what-if.xkcd.com/54/ as well as by my recent visit to A'dam.  It would make a great city for a neighbor to Neo Venezia, aquatic and charming, and I can't think of a people more interested in a massive terraforming project than the Dutch.

Galaxy Express special abilities:

• Flying through open space
  
• Interdimensional transport
  
• Automatically adjusting its wheels to the local rail gauge
  

Ulthar is supposed to lie beyond the river Skai, so I considered setting it near Skye, but, like, there's no rail on the island itself.  And per The Ancient Magus' Bride, we need a decent sized-mountain; per the Lovecraft tale, we need somewhere a caravan might go through.  So, why not Wales?  It's only a few hours back to the Phantomhive estate in the home counties, anyway.

In particular, it looks like the Phantomhive estate is in Kent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotney_Castle

Anyone surprised that I'm using a sanitized version of Lovecraft for a slice-of-life story should note that Aria is a sanitized version of Venice.  Let's just say that the Doge spent more time reading Machiavelli than investing in Dogecoin, and that the city is so OG it actually invented the ghetto.