(urth) the wall and baldanders

[Jeff Wilson]

> I assumed Nessus was really really big. It's very old, still expanding,
> and
> yet there is a bunch of real estate inside the wall that is rural.
>
> How big in diameter does the Whorl need to be? Fifty miles?

They might have similar diameters, but the Whorl is similarly long or
longer lengthwise, and is visibly (from the outside) made from an
asteroid. The Wall is overtly artificial and there's just not enough room
for miles of height extending into the sky or depth below the soil.


The best-sounding guess I've heard is that the great Wall surrounded the
world's primary spaceport in some earlier age, partly for controlling
ingress and egress and partly as a protective berm in case of an accident.
The towers of the citadel are the grounded ships of course, and the
citadel's curtain wall was added in a later but still antique age to form
a redoubt within the Wall. The curtain wall is generally masonry, but the
Great Wall may also be an atom smasher or otherwise serve a third purpose.