Nothing is Impossible. Just highly Improbable. Please keep that in mind if you wish to join in working out these concepts!!! ^-^

Ok! This is gonna be a place to work out ideas for the 'Great Forest'

The Great Forest is a world that is composed of a Dyson Sphere.

The Shell ~ The SHELL of The Great Forest is roughly the thickness of Earth from Pole to Pole and it rests one AU from it's life sustaining Star. The Shell is mostly Solid and Cold, though there are areas of geothermal activity. There are also areas where the Shell is porous with caves and caverns.

Gravity ~ Gravity of the Great Forest is equal to that of Earths through out most of the lands, but there are areas where it is either greater or weaker. For the sake of Gravity, I treat each section of the Shell as a Plate with thickness similar to the Earth from Pole to Pole. Both sides of the Shell have Gravity that is similar to Earths.

Day or The Great Forest ~ With IN the shell side facing the Star lies The Great Forest, an land of massive tree like structures that take up MOST of the inner plane. The name of this land can also be translated to 'Day' in English.

Night or Outer Lands ~ On the OUTER surface of The Great Forest is a land of Darkness and Ice. The name of this land can also be translated to 'Night' in English. That being said, there IS atmosphere here that is the same as the atmosphere with in the Shell.

Water ~ Though there are great rivers coursing through many areas of the Great Forest, a majority of the available water lies with in the Layers of the Shell.

Places of Interest ~

'Day' - The Inside of the Great Forest, where the Forest resides. This land is mostly covered in massive trees.

'Night' - The outer surface of the Great Forest. This land is composed primarily of stone and ice.

'Star Fall' - A place where a large foreign body nearly pierced the Shell. This land is high in rare materials such as iron and gold. Due to the trauma caused during the impact, the area in and around 'Star Fall' is very geothermal active.

'Dead Lands' - These areas have been fried by recent (hundreds of year ago?) out bursts of Solar Flares that reached parts of the inner shell.

'??? (The Transient)' - This is a large celestial body that once orbited the same star that The Great Forest encircles. It now resides as a part of the Shell and equal parts of The Transient rests with in Night and Day. Due to the mass of The Transient, Gravity is noticeably greater in the area.

Peoples of The Great Forest ~

Creatures of the Great Forest ~

How about sort of butterfly-elfy creatures with wings and antennae?

A very good choice! Also, keep in mind that Oxygen will be VERY abundant in a world like this. That means creatures that evolved book lungs similar to those found in Arachnids could possibly grow to great size in a way similar to those found on Earth during the Late Carboniferous era.

So you could potentially have a feasible giant insect race?

That is a possibility, Yea, . ^-^

Imagine a race of giant intelligent Spiders..?

They could live in the forests or even in the layers between Night and Day.

Spiders would be cool; I actually have read a book series where there was a race of giant spiders that lived in the rings of Saturn, which turned out in a very vaguely similar manner.

I like the idea of giant mantises; they kinda have front limbs they could use to manipulate things (or just murder stuff).

I guess it could be important for an intelligent race to have hand-things of some sort if you want them to have any kind of technology? Both of those could have limbs that function like hands...

Of course, these don't have to be ANYTHING that has ever been seen or created before... But maybe people deal better if you give them things that are similar to what is already around them?

I'm confused about how a naturally occurring, life-sprouting dyson sphere would come about

I'm confused about how a naturally occurring, life-sprouting dyson sphere would come about

Yea, I do not think it'd be naturally occurring. ^-^

so they WERE sent

:B

How does the outer ring have atmosphere if there are no plants there? Why would anyone want to live on the "night" side anyway? The surface area of the dyson sphere is unimaginably big. Without space ships you couldn't get from one side of it to another. Running out of room is really not an issue, even if forests have taken over. So you may need some sort of war or race issues or night-dwelling creatures or something to justify why people would live on the night side. It's possible these could be mining operations? Star-gazing observations? How do you travel from Day to Night, especially if it's as thick as the Earth?

How/why is your shell as thick as the Earth, anyway? What is it made of? HOW was it made? Presumably some advanced civilization (perhaps now extinct?) created it, but how would they have amassed enough material to create an Earth-thick shell in a dyson sphere 1 AU from their sun? I don't believe this. Make it a mile deep if you want lots of caves and depth, but Earth-thickness seems unrealistic to me. I assume you want it Earth-thick to get Earth-like gravity, but that's not necessary. Just spin the dyson sphere at an appropriate rate and you'll have gravity on the "land." (You can have super advanced solar energy powering engines to do this, but really once in motion I think it'll stay in motion in space.)

Presumably if you've incorporated a planet into the sphere it's the planet that the sphere creators originated from? This seems like a reasonable place to have the "cross over" from Day/Night, I guess... But also seems strange to have the planet inside the sphere. Is the planet still rotating on its axis? If so, then it can't be "embedded" in the sphere and thus would have "normal" night and day (except twilight/dusk would be staring at a mile-thick wall...). If it's not rotating and is embedded... how did they do that? Were all resources totally wasted so they were okay with exposing one side of the planet to permanent day and one side to permanent, freezing night? What happened to the oceans/etc after the planet stopped spinning? What happens to seasonal life (hibernating bears, plant life-cycle, etc.) when you no longer have seasons?

Are there any other bodies inside the dyson sphere? For example, if we used Earth in this example, we'd have Mercury and Venus orbiting inside the sphere. (Though the gravitational pull of the sphere itself, especially if it's Earth-thick, would probably cause quite a bit of tug-of-war with the Sun.) This could be cool, though both planets are so far away that they'd probably never be visible in the 100% day. What about our moon/the original planet's moon, if it had one?

I think instead of geothermal activity allowing life on the dark side you should have cracks in the mile-thick crust that lets sunlight leak through. I think if you want thermal activity it should be on the embedded planet that is being tugged on by the sun's gravity and the dyson's gravity, etc.

Over all I like the idea! But I like to be accurate as possible sometimes, too, even when dealing with this sort fantasy-science! Hope it helps you streamline the world, and maybe inspires some additional ideas. I like the idea that the original creators are long dead and sentient trees have evolved and taken over. Perhaps some sort of war or event happened to force some other race to the outer shell. Perhaps they live in domes or something to get air, perhaps they have huge oxygen pumps on the night side, perhaps there is enough plant-life out there that grows in sub-zero temps to create an atmosphere...

thank you for the thoughts. I'll have to think through all of this ^-^

Once I do, This post will be edited. ^_~

I was thinking about this some more. Imagine a soccer ball with hexagonal shapes making up the sphere. Imagine this on a huuuuuge scale where each hexagon was, say, the size of a planet, all linked up to create this enormous dyson sphere. The forests can grow on each massive "disc" and the seams between each hexagon can be lined with solar panels or mirrors or some other sort of arrays (to power the engines/cities/whatever)... but the cracks can "bleed through" and provide warmth and/or light on the dark side? (Maybe even oxygen leaks through?) The giant hexagons would be so massive you'd almost never know they were there if you lived on one, but if you discovered them it'd be a huge life mystery unless you knew who created it. (I'm imagining some new race evolving, trying to figure out their world and discovering that it was all built by a long extinct ancient race or something, and finding signs of things like giant discs, solar arrays, etc. would prove it was built by a superior intelligence vs. evolved naturally.)