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[Starver]

And yet, ultimately... De Chelonian Mobile!

[Reelya]

I've always thought it was interesting that they balance a flat disk on top of the turtle.

If you think about it, clearly the shell of the turtle was intended to be the Earth by whoever thought of the turtle analogy to start with.

So they were clearly aware of the curvature of the Earth, but they just didn't take that all the way to the idea that the Earth is a sphere, so they made the analogy of a turtle swimming through an ocean, with the shell itself being the ground and the ocean being what the turtle is swimming through.



^ I mean ... this is a traditional depiction. Can you see the redundancy here? I can just imagine the originator of this idea going "no no you people completely missed the point!".

"There's a shell-shaped thing on the back of the turtle, what stops it falling off. I know, we need elephants!" No you don't, because turtles by definition already have a shell-shaped thing on their backs, it's just called a shell. Maybe there were in fact two different traditions here, one that the world was on the back of four elephants, and the other that the world was on the back of a turtle (more accurate in some senses), so they just decided to smoosh both explanations together in the stupidest way possible.

Note, that the ocean must be on the top shell here, otherwise the elephants would drown, so the turtle must be swimming through a different ocean. So now not only do you have two shells, but you have to have two completely different oceans: the Earth's ocean, which is carried by air-breathing elephants, and the turtle's ocean, which is below the level of the elephants. If you just get rid of the elephants then the top plate merges with the turtle's shell, and you only need to posit one ocean, which also keeps the turtle afloat.

[BigUglyWorm]

Butcher the world turtle for all that precious, precious shell.  No more unsatisfied strange moods!

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Butchering the world turtle will cause negative long-term environmental effects, which most dwarves will deny having anything to do with their continued harvesting of its shell.

[King Zultan]

But what if instead of the world being stacked on elephants and a turtle, it is instead stacked on top of every animal ever, then imagine the tower of animals falling over and the world smashing into the ground.

[Bumber]

Butchering the world turtle will cause negative long-term environmental effects, which most dwarves will deny having anything to do with their continued harvesting of its shell.

"I only took one eye!" says Urist, hauling a 9×10¹³ kg prepared world turtle eye.

[Starver]

*mumble mumble* ...the fifth elephant... *mumble mumble*

[BigUglyWorm]

Butchering the world turtle will cause negative long-term environmental effects, which most dwarves will deny having anything to do with their continued harvesting of its shell.

"I only took one eye!" says Urist, hauling a 9×10¹³ kg prepared world turtle eye.

This is a stack of 5.3 x 10⁴⁰ World Turtle Roasts.  The ingredients are minced world turtle meat, minced world turtle fat, minced world turtle meat, and minced plump helmet.

[Bumber]

This is a stack of 5.3 x 10⁴⁰ World Turtle Roasts.  The ingredients are minced world turtle meat, minced world turtle fat, minced world turtle meat, and minced plump helmet.

They only used 1 plump helmet for the whole stack.

[BigUglyWorm]

This is a stack of 5.3 x 10⁴⁰ World Turtle Roasts.  The ingredients are minced world turtle meat, minced world turtle fat, minced world turtle meat, and minced plump helmet.

They only used 1 plump helmet for the whole stack.

They just wanted those subtle, helmet-y notes.  Dwarven chefs can really make an ingredient stretch, even down to the molecular level.

Let's be honest, though: if a World Turtle existed, we'd all ask the same three questions we ask of any animal in this game.  In order:
1--Can we kill it?
2--Can we train it for war?
3--Can we get it drunk?

[IndigoFenix]

--snip--

It's actually more interesting than that.  It is worth noting that much of the elephants-on-back-of-turtle imagery comes from Christian imagery of what they believed Hindus believed in, and Hinduism being less a distinct canon than a collection of often mutually exclusive, and occasionally recombining, beliefs. It is probable that this imagery is simply a fusion of two earlier beliefs, one which imagined the world on the back of a turtle (for the reason you stated) and a different, unrelated myth which used an elephant (probably just because elephants are big).  There is also a possibility that the elephant was originally a snake, as snake and elephant are both called naga in Sanskrit, and world serpents are a fairly common myth.

There is also another description, called Kurma, that depicts the world as the inside of a turtle, with the lower shell as the earth and the upper shell as the heavens, the body of the turtle being the air in between.


As for the terrible suggestion:

The world may be on any animal or plant.  This includes generated or imaginary ones.  If the world generates as a Fire Man, it will instantly combust.

[knutor]

So thats where comets originate from? Turtle turds.

[Starver]

Well, given GA'T is known to manoever to eat comets that threaten those 'above', I'm not sure.

But talking of potential coprophagy, the terrible DF idea I shall suggest is to implement all that stuff that Toady doesn't want to implement, and give it RAW tags that bring it into the same categories as all things currently edible.  I mean, that's what the preference system is for, right?

[BigUglyWorm]

--snip--

--snip--

Yo, legit, that's the most interesting shit I've read all damn day.  I offer you one Dwarven Sugar Biscuit for this cool infodump.

Each world sits on a crumb in the beard of the Cosmic Dwarf.  When they quaff some booze, it floods the world(s) in alcoholic oblivion, spelling the end of days.  This inevitable doom, foretold in the sacred scriptures, is known by the name of Chugnarok.

[SixOfSpades]

Butchering the world turtle will cause negative long-term environmental effects, which most dwarves will deny having anything to do with their continued harvesting of its shell.

"I only took one eye!" says Urist, hauling a 9×10¹³ kg prepared world turtle eye.

If the earth is an animal, and (by pretty much all accounts) nonsentient, and can be eaten, then all Miners are de facto Butchers, carving holes in meat big enough to live inside. Masons and Stonecrafters decorate the meat-house with smaller bits of meat. Gemstones are tumors in the tissue, and are highly prized. But all meat rots eventually, and the smell is horrible.

And then a Necromancer shows up, and reanimates the fort itself . . .