Geography of Terraell
PAGE: Template:Bible
The Known World is one continuous landmass, about eight thousand miles east to west and three thousand north to south, with a scattered archipelago in the southern sea off its western half. Fewer than a million and a half people live on several million square miles of it, and nearly all of them live inside six city walls.
The shape of the world
The land narrows sharply in the middle, at The Neck, where Forgegate sits. West of the narrowing are the western reaches; east of it the eastern reaches; south lie the mountains and the tropics.
The western reaches run from the rugged cold of the northwest — Stormharbor's coast — down to a broken southern shore. A major range runs southwest through the interior, dividing the northern forests from the southern coast. Forgegate sits at the eastern end where two rivers meet and holds the approach to the Neck.
The eastern reaches are larger and wetter. Shining Reach holds the north, surrounded by the most arable land in the world. A great range runs southeast from there, and Clearhold sits high in it. South of the mountains the land turns arid, then opens into the tropics and the finest natural harbor in the world, where Eldershore stands.
The Iron Coves are a volcanic archipelago in a corner of the southern sea, within easy reach of every major sea lane.
How far apart everything is
Neighboring cities are fifteen hundred to two thousand miles apart. A Dorath caravan makes fifty miles a day in ideal conditions, so any two cities are four to six weeks apart by road. Ships are faster in fair weather and slower in foul. A merchant can realistically make two or three round trips a year. News travels at the speed of the fastest rider or the luckiest sailor: a thing that happened in Eldershore happened a month or more before Stormharbor hears of it.
Climate
Two bands mark the temperature shift. The Academy of Shining Reach and the Registrars of Clearhold both publish them in Deigr as the eighteen and forty-four bands, from tables that do not entirely agree — Clearhold's exact and narrow, the Academy's broad and reliant on correspondence the Registrars will not trust. Each considers its own the standard; merchants use whichever is to hand. Outside the two institutions nobody calls the lines by a number.
- The Frostline
- Runs east to west across the center of the Known World and marks where winter stops growth for part of the year. North of it, long winters, lush dark evergreen forest, and staples of root crops and hardy grain. Stormharbor is well north of it; Forgegate and Shining Reach are north of it too, with harsh seasons and some of the best growing land in the world.
- The Greenline
- Far to the south, marking where growth never stops. Eldershore stands on it, its territory running south into the country where the season never changes.
Between the two is a warm temperate belt: the dry interior of the eastern reaches, Clearhold's mountains, and the seas of the Iron Coves. Clearhold is south of the Frostline but high enough to have a winter anyway.
Terrain
- Northern coasts
- Rock, cliff, and moorland. Poor land, harsh winters, and a living that has to be earned; fishing makes up what farming cannot.
- Forest
- The great dark forests cover most of the temperate latitudes and are the reason overland travel is dangerous. Not inhabited by people, and never empty.
- River valleys
- Forgegate grew where the river deposits make some of the most farmable soil in the world.
- The mountain spine
- The backbone of the eastern reaches, enclosing Clearhold's high valley — the most defensible ground anywhere, with few narrow passes.
- Dry interior
- Sparse and arid, south and east of the mountains. Crossed, almost never inhabited.
- Tropical south
- Humid and extraordinarily fertile; the growing season is endless, and so are the plants working at Eldershore's walls.
Why the cities sit where they do
Every city stands on defensible ground with fresh water and workable soil, and each holds something the others lack: Stormharbor the only good harbor on the northern coast; Forgegate the river crossings and the Neck; Shining Reach the best farmland; Clearhold the passes; Eldershore the finest harbor in the world; the Iron Coves the sea lanes and nothing else. The Frontier permits no city without a reason.
How empty it is
Beyond the agricultural rings, the waystations, and three roads, the land outside the walls is not settled at all — not for lack of trying. Every attempt to hold ground away from a city wall has failed. See The Frontier.
Beyond the Known World
North of Stormharbor and south of Eldershore the land is so cold that every expedition has failed. The Academy and the Registrars alike hold that exploring it would gain nothing and it is best left alone. The interiors of the landmasses are unmapped in any detail; surveying the Frontier requires surviving in it long enough to do so.
See also
- The Neck · Roads and Sea Lanes · The Six City-States
- Weights and Measures — the Deigr and the mile