Lore Questions

[Iris]

Also, this might seem a bit random, but what was the last conflict that the Elves were involved in before the fall?

The last war would be the fight between free elves and the elves under Zhangor's orders [...]

The Zhangor war takes place after the Fall.

[Raijer]

Oops indeed. My mistake. But i understood the question as the last elvish war before the complete destruction of Wesnoth, as it's the only interesting war that happens at that time (as far as i know, it's the only elvish war in around 700 years).

[OmnisScio]

I ask about the Elves because I have the ending of my campaign directly involve the third suns fall itself (and the main characters are Elves). If there is a conflict involving Elves soon (~20 years or less) before the fall in the Wesnoth Area, then I can tie my story into that, otherwise I'll have to set it somewhere else (I'm thinking the North East extension of Lintanir Forest, if not there, further East).

[AI]

I think my original question is still not fully understood, but I think I got the information I was looking for out of that discussion.
So, is this correct: The lich from [Descent into Darkness], Mal Keshar, is causing trouble in the north, and efforts to stop him fail. The solution: create a second sun.

I think it wasn't *just* about him, but more an overall desire to eliminate evil that used the night for cover.

They create a new moon that shines (this makes more sense than creating a whole star) in order to remove the night, and succeed. It is day time all the time, and very hot, but the forests and fields are maintained through irrigation and magic, so not much else changes. This second sun however, starts drifting out of its intended orbit, and the night starts to creep back in. They decide to make yet another sun. However this time it fails; it further destabilizes Naia's orbit, and crashes into Weldyn, causing a cataclysm. The resulting explosion has an impact on the entire planet's geography. The chaos from the explosion also impacts the inhabitants of the land, and the lack of order means that no longer are the forests and fields maintained, so some areas become deserts.

Actually, I would guess that the impact mainly had local effects. Perhaps dust and such caused global cooling for a few years, but probably not much more than that.

Discussion on orbits

As for Naia's orbit, "sun-synchronous doesn't mean what you might expect it to: it does not mean the thing rises in perfect opposition to the sun, such an orbit isn't actually possible. (well, the Sela-Irdya L2 point would work, but taking sun-earth L2 as a reference, that puts it about 4 times as far away as the moon. A full moon gets to use the light of the sun to illuminate the earth and that doesn't do very much to eliminate the night. The power required to "eliminate the night" from that distance would be absolutely immense, even if you only want to produce a similar amount of light as dawn or dusk. (and then there's the fact that L2 points are unstable))
A sun-synchronous orbit would merely ensure that wherever the thing was, it would locally be midnight. You could configure the orbit so that it would frequently pass over wesnoth, but it would not be there at all times. (and it wouldn't stay very long)
A tundra orbit would provide a night's worth of hangtime at a distance of at most a quarter of that of the moon (still high power requirements) and then make a short and VERY LOW pass over the opposite side of irdya, which would do some serious scorching. (this is actually similar to my plan for the post-fall schedule for wesnoth)
A possible circular orbit would be 16-hours long and brighten the morning of the first day, midnight of the first night and the afternoon of the second day, while not helping with the second night. This would be at a tenth of the distance to the moon.

Conclusions:

• I'm not quite sure about which orbit was used for Naia originally.
• Naia probably didn't do much more than turn night into dusk/dawn.
• It may not have done this every night, or the entire night long.
• The power required for this is quite immense, even at a fairly efficient distance.
• If such an object has an eccentric orbit, it will cause deserts wherever its perigee falls.

[OmnisScio]

Another question: Is the fairy world (Silida right?) involved/influenced in any way at any time after the fall?

[Iris]

Another question: Is the fairy world (Silida right?) involved/influenced in any way at any time after the fall?

It is probably worth noting that vultraz’s description is a hasty extrapolation of things from AtS. At no point it is stated that Silida was the origin world of the faeries. In the IftU/AtS canon, influence from Silida exists, but it is extremely limited in extent.

Additionally, there are references to the plane/nature of ‘Faerie’ (with capital F) floating around in mainline. While it is easy or even convenient to conclude otherwise, Silida was not conceived as the answer to that riddle and it is definitely not Faerie.

(Also, I just moved this to Writers’ Forum.)