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[NW_Kohaku]

Look, as much as I was going to just let this trainwreck be, since watching this get ludicrously derailed rather proves the point of discussion organization I had made earlier, there's a simple answer to this:

Toady made a [MUNDANE] token. Any creature that is scientifically possible has one. Any creature that does not have a [MUNDANE] token is considered "magic" by Toady. 

GoblinCookie entered this thread saying that a walking, semi-sentient pile of rocks was totally the same thing as a car, and that wild leap of 'logic' proves it's not magic. It's clear GoblinCookie is making irrational arguments.  Arguing rational arguments against someone making an irrational argument will never persuade them, as evidenced by how GoblinCookie simply does not recognize the premise of the rational argument being put forth by Expwnent.

As for this:

Well as long as there's oxygen or a similar corrosive agent involved, chemotrophs could feed off of the rock itself by breaking down the surface they're growing on. Assuming this happens on an open wall/ceiling, that could lead to small piles of waste-soil on the cavern floor around such colonies that could then support additional fungal niches.

As already discussed in the previous threads ad nauseum, yes, that exists, but it's nowhere near capable of generating enough energy to be put into the ecosystem for licking caustic slime off of rocks to plausibly sustain a small city, much less the biodiversity of the cavern system.  Nor is there enough decaying material from the surface to support that life, nor does the magma reach high enough for the upper caverns to support life, nor do cosmic rays or any other outlandish energy source (yes, that was proposed) make for any plausible substitute for a magical power source.  Just because a process is "possible" does not make something believable or rational if you completely ignore scale. An ordinary human can lift things with their hand, but then saying that it's totally the same thing if a supposedly ordinary human lifts a skyscraper off its foundations (without tunneling themselves through the earth trying, no less,) with one hand as when they lift leaf is pretending impossibility of scale is somehow "forgivable" when impossibility of concept is not.  Lifting a skyscraper may be conceptually possible, but for a human to do so is no less "fantastic" than a wizard using telekinesis to accomplish the same feat.

For that matter, the very existence of those world-spanning caverns is clearly unnatural.  Real caverns are formed almost exclusively in limestone, (which is soluble in acidic water,) or ice near arctic volcanoes.  There are no giant, horizontal caverns throughout a granite layer.

The caverns, and everything in them shy of bats, cave swallows, and other [MUNDANE] cave creatures are fantasy.  Period.  That's why they are marked as such.

[expwnent]

Well as long as there's oxygen or a similar corrosive agent involved, chemotrophs could feed off of the rock itself by breaking down the surface they're growing on. Assuming this happens on an open wall/ceiling, that could lead to small piles of waste-soil on the cavern floor around such colonies that could then support additional fungal niches.

That sounds good, but why isn't that common in real life if that works?

[Bumber]

...nor does the magma reach high enough for the upper caverns to support life...

The energy can be moved around chemically by creatures and mycorrhiza. The magma sea is large enough that there is a constant influx of energy all over the world's caverns. So long as the energy input is greater than the energy lost to the system, the caverns would eventually (in a time before time) fill with stored energy and life. The upper caverns should probably be less fertile than the lower ones because of the distance to the magma and the possibility to lose energy to the surface.

[NW_Kohaku]

The energy can be moved around chemically by creatures and mycorrhiza. The magma sea is large enough that there is a constant influx of energy all over the world's caverns. So long as the energy input is greater than the energy lost to the system, the caverns would eventually (in a time before time) fill with stored energy and life. The upper caverns should probably be less fertile than the lower ones because of the distance to the magma and the possibility to lose energy to the surface.

I repeat:
Just because a process is "possible" does not make something believable or rational if you completely ignore scale. An ordinary human can lift things with their hand, but then saying that it's totally the same thing if a supposedly ordinary human lifts a skyscraper off its foundations (without tunneling themselves through the earth trying, no less,) with one hand as when they lift leaf is pretending impossibility of scale is somehow "forgivable" when impossibility of concept is not.  Lifting a skyscraper may be conceptually possible, but for a human to do so is no less "fantastic" than a wizard using telekinesis to accomplish the same feat.

Consider the open sea.  Energy travels down to the "Twilight Zone" and "Dark Zone" "eventually", but that energy is lost to entropy with every creature standing between the surface and the deep, and life becomes more and more sparse as you go to the point of virtual non-existence with animals increasingly having slower and slower metabolisms to survive the weeks, then months one must go without food in the depths.

The deep sea vent ecosystem, meanwhile, is much more localized, and does not exist as layers of progressive scavengers, just a single layer of animals all mixed together below an empty abyss.

This is not what the game presents.  There are highly energetic "carnivores" and a few "herbavores" all the way through, both of which are somehow MORE massive and capable of expending MORE energy than creatures on the surface.  Somehow, an ecosystem that generates MORE energy than the surface exists down there... off of some residual trickle-up of chemical energy?

Even without that, you ignore that the cavern system as a whole is an impossible existence, and every creature is implicitly marked as magical.

Any answer other than "magic" is simply denialism, as it has been clearly marked as magic.

[Vattic]

It might be entertaining to keep it a mystery and have naturalists come up with different theories about the unusual vitality of the caverns. This would not prevent performing rituals or using fertiliser to help crops.

[cochramd]

It's still important to consider how much life can supported by just magma, though. Presumably, we will see no-magic and/or low-magic worlds where all/most life is derived from magma heat.

[NW_Kohaku]

It's still important to consider how much life can supported by just magma, though. Presumably, we will see no-magic and/or low-magic worlds where all/most life is derived from magma heat.

You mean like the magical fireball-throwing imps? The magical crabs that can somehow move through and breathe molten rock?

No, if there is no magic, there is no magic underground life. A no magic world is a [MUNDANE] world, that's literally why the [MUNDANE] token exists.

Any answer other than "magic" is simply denialism, as it has been defined as magic.

[NW_Kohaku]

It might be entertaining to keep it a mystery and have naturalists come up with different theories about the unusual vitality of the caverns. This would not prevent performing rituals or using fertiliser to help crops.

If prayer produces demonstrable results, a pleased deity produces more crops related to their sphere, and you can actually go to the plane of that god and ask them or their servants whether they're magically influencing crops or not, where's the mystery?

It's like being a theologian in Discworld; Why bother pondering to yourself what the gods believe or want if you can just go down to the bar and ask the gods, themselves what their views of proper human behavior and morality are?

[cochramd]

No, if there is no magic, there is no magic underground life. A no magic world is a [MUNDANE] world, that's literally why the [MUNDANE] token exists.

There is life in our world that subsists off of volcanic heat, and perhaps in future updates such growths may appear in the caverns. It may be extremely limited, but for no magic or low magic worlds it could make a huge difference.

[NW_Kohaku]

There is life in our world that subsists off of volcanic heat, and perhaps in future updates such growths may appear in the caverns. It may be extremely limited, but for no magic or low magic worlds it could make a huge difference.

Already refuted:
The deep sea vent ecosystem, meanwhile, is much more localized, and does not exist as layers of progressive scavengers, just a single layer of animals all mixed together below an empty abyss.

Once again:
Just because a process is "possible" does not make something believable or rational if you completely ignore scale. An ordinary human can lift things with their hand, but then saying that it's totally the same thing if a supposedly ordinary human lifts a skyscraper off its foundations (without tunneling themselves through the earth trying, no less,) with one hand as when they lift leaf is pretending impossibility of scale is somehow "forgivable" when impossibility of concept is not.  Lifting a skyscraper may be conceptually possible, but for a human to do so is no less "fantastic" than a wizard using telekinesis to accomplish the same feat.

Any answer other than "magic" is simply denialism, as it has been defined as magic.

[cochramd]

Already refuted:
The deep sea vent ecosystem, meanwhile, is much more localized, and does not exist as layers of progressive scavengers, just a single layer of animals all mixed together below an empty abyss.

And that works for a no magic or low magic world while still making a difference. While there might be no other cavern life, rare lava-based life would be extremely high value and a good incentive to dig through the caverns. Unless you think that no magic and low magic worlds won't even have caverns, in which case I'd check for Toady's opinion on the matter.

[NW_Kohaku]

Unless you think that no magic and low magic worlds won't even have caverns, in which case I'd check for Toady's opinion on the matter.

That is not only what I believe, it's what I've repeated several times until you got the message.

Without magic there are no caverns, and there are no cavern creatures.

Toady explicitly made the [MUNDANE] token to denote which things don't need magic to exist, and almost none of the creatures in caverns have them. That is Toady's opinion on the matter.

A magic-less world will have a few caves (not the same as caverns) with bats and maybe some olms, but they will not have giant, interconnected caverns, it will not have a "magma sea" so close to the surface you can easily dig down to it, it will not support farming any better than real-life farmers exist in mile-underground mine tunnels.  The only real-world underground farming (barring artificial light and hydroponics) is mushroom farming on beds of sawdust requiring decomposing surface trees that rely upon photosynthesis at a fairly significant loss of chemical energy. (Mushrooms have very little nutritional value, and nobody in real life can really survive on just mushrooms.)

A magic-less world would be much more like 0.28 without chasms and the HFS.  About 8 z-levels of solid rock below the surface, (non-magical miners can't dig down too far without much better technology than DF civs possess,) and that's it. Caverns were added to "add magic to the underground". (The 0.28.40d years were when this whole "low magic" meme was started.  Since then, more and more blatant magic has been slopped all over DF.)

A "no magic world" would be Toady trying to make the closest game he could to an actual historical medieval life simulator as DF could be.  No dwarves. No blast-process steel. No mining more than a couple z-levels down. Humans only. Final Destination.

Because he's not even calling it a "magic rating", he's calling it a "fantasy rating". 

Zero on the fantasy slider means zero fantasy elements.  Zero things that are not in the real world.

Everything else is myth and magic.

Any answer other than "magic" is simply denialism, as it has been defined as magic.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

How is there "blatant magic"?

[expwnent]

I guess the question is how much of it is placeholder / plot hole and how much of it is intentionally, thematically magical, and where Toady wants to draw the line going forward. Levers can instantly manipulate mechanisms regardless of distance but they're not supposed to be magical thematically.

[NW_Kohaku]

I guess the question is how much of it is placeholder / plot hole and how much of it is intentionally, thematically magical, and where Toady wants to draw the line going forward. Levers can instantly manipulate mechanisms regardless of distance but they're not supposed to be magical thematically.

Mechanisms and traps are a placeholder, as Toady put it on the devpage to remake them with much more detailed components so that players have to manually build their own traps from moving fortress pieces, for that matter.

Some are also just plain bugs and exploits that are ascended into commonplace practices, like using fake ramps to make "gravity powered" minecarts roll uphill, atom-smashing drawbridges, or perpetual motion device waterwheels.  These aren't thematic magic, just errors in the simulation.

And really, it's fairly obvious which is fantasy and which is reality with Toady.  He puts obsessive technical detail into real science, copying down exact torsion strain numbers of metals and hundreds of types of stones and minerals along with what layers they associate with.  Then he makes fantastic creatures like "blizzard man" which is nothing more than a humanoid chunk of living ice, "feather trees" which are trees that literally have feathers, "quarry bush" is a leafy bush that grows underground and has stone-colored leaves and standard vegetable seeds that just look like rocks, "bugbat" described as "a small bat-like creature with the head of an insect", "elk bird" is literally a bird with elk horns, "flesh ball" is a literal ball of flesh, "magma man" is a literal humanoid-shaped wad of animate magma, etc. etc. etc. 

There is no thorough ecological reasoning behind these fantastic creatures, they're just a bird with elk horns living underground because he had to come up with something to fit in the caverns, and they couldn't all be (giant) cave swallows.

Others still are just references or in-jokes: Plump Helmet Man is just making fun of the favorite and memetic fictional underground food source in the game. Floating Guts is a Dragon Quest slime.  Hungry Head is a D&D Vargouille.

His fantasy creatures are all chimeras of the most literal sort that exist just "because magic", in comparison with his obsessively complex and thought-out realistic elements.