Biomes and ecology (unfinished)
The motivation for this document was to explain the mulberry trees in the Tcha valley, and think about why Tchahua is especially a centre for the silk trade
Broader geography
The broader geography of the world is not a matter for this document, but TODO: there isn’t yet a document which usefully describes it, and there needs to be.
Biomes relevant at this stage
1. Steppe
The centre of the continent is the steppe; it is generally too arid for forest growth, and is therefore scrub and grassland. There is one principal river system, which feeds into a marshland in the south, from which the water then goes underground beneath the limestone plateau to become the Tcha and Sind rivers. In late summer there’s little water in the river, and few other waterholes. Antelope, camels, horses, goats, possibly sheep are native to the steppe, and there are probably something like leopards which predate on them, but I haven’t fleshed it out.
Big dragons don’t hunt on the steppe because they can’t take off from flat ground, but smaller dragons may do so.
Settled by the steppe tribes, who are nomadic herders, extremely warlike but not technically highly developed. They are the game world’s principle horse breeders. Basically in the game as I’m working on it at present, the player cannot go north across the steppe because the steppe tribes are too hostile.
A single major road, the Caravan Road, runs north to south across the steppe. There were in the past fortified caravanserrais along the length of the road, established and protected by Hans’hua, but they have been progressively overrun and destroyed by the steppe tribes and are now ruinous. Only one remains: the North Inn, just below the northern slope of the plateau. There is some limited horticulture on land close to the South Inn, supplying markets in Hans’hua.
2. Plateau
The limestone plateau runs along the whole of the southern edge of the steppe, from the western massif to the rim of the crater which forms The Great Place. It is a landscape of clints and grykes, on which nothing grows, and on which there is no water. It is about four day’s journey by fast horse from north to south. The caravan road crosses the plateau from the North Inn to another caravanserrai, the South Inn, located in the north end of the Tcha valley. Because of the dense chaotic pattern of clints and grykes and the lack of accessible water, it is effectively impossible to cross the plateau other than by the caravan road, or by another path to the extreme east of the plateau, where it abuts the mountains of the Rim.
2.1 Hans’hua
There is one city, Hans’hua, on the caravan road about half way across the plateau, where wind-pumps lift water from the underground river. Apart from this one city, nothing lives on the plateau. Migrating birds cross it, and that is all.
The city is small, walled, and run as an extreme neoliberal oligarchy; the city’s main industry is maintaining the wind pumps, and its entire income is from tolls on caravans passing along the caravan road. This has been, and is still, extremely lucrative, but it is obvious both to the long distance merchants and to the oligarchs that the new ships are going to make the caravans too slow, too risky and too expensive to compete, and that as more ships are built, traffic on the caravan road will dwindle.
3. Massif
There’s a granite intrusion which forms the entire western coast of the continent. It’s geologically old and consequently the hills, though high, are rounded rather than jagged; at the southern end of the range (which is the only part that’s in the least fleshed out yet) they’re not snow covered in summer. As the prevailing winds are westerly, this massif intercepts most of the rain, which is why the steppe is arid.
Consequently it’s pretty thoroughly forested, and the southern parts of it are mainly broadleaf forests including high quality hardwoods and many fruiting trees. Understory typical of mediterranean littoral forests, about which I don’t really know enough.
Deer, cattle, pigs, wolves, leopards, badgers, squirrels… masses of birds of all appropriate types.
Because it’s an old granite intrusion, the soil in the valleys is largely clay. There are mineral rich veins with a considerable range of minerals, but, obviously, not all in the same place.
Settled by the Western Clans, a negroid people living mainly in small isolated villages in the forest, with mostly limited agriculture.
3.1 Northern massif
I haven’t yet fleshed this out, but there are probably permanent snows and the forests are probably coniferous. It’s my current working assumption that the new great ships are built from old growth conifers, taken from forests in the northern massif; but as I say this is not yet fleshed out.
The northern culture have developed very high quality ceramics using clay from the massif, including stonewares and porcelaines. I think the same clays also exist in the south of the massif, but the technology for producing high quality ceramics does not exist there. The northerners are also making high quality steels from magnetite and haematite from the massif. Whether these ores exist in the south I don’t yet know.
3.2 Dor
The northernmost of the western clans, the Dor, live in the central massif north of Andale, but apart from the fact that they exist and they’re there, I don’t yet really know much.
3.3 Andale
The river An rises in the east of the massif near the south-west corner of the steppe, west of where the village and market of Dawnhold now stand, and flows more or less due westward. There are two major drops in the river’s course, the upper a day’s travel east of Silverhold, which is an actual fall of at least six metres, and the lower at Anghold. Between Anghold and Silverhold the river is navigable by small shallow draught boats; west of Anghold it is navigable down to the sea at Anmouth.
There are freshwater and migratory fish in the river, and fishing is a source of protein and livelihood the whole length of the valley.
The valley is largely forested. Apart from wild animals, domestic cattle and pigs are herded in the forest. Trees include alder, almond, apple, apricot, ash, beech, birch, cherry, chestnut, hazel, holly, lime, maple, mulberry, oak, orange, pear, walnut, yew.
3.3.1 Dawnhold
Dawnhold isn’t strictly geographically in Andale — it’s east of, on the steppe side of, the watershead, but it marks the eastern border of the lands settled by clan An. There’s an annual market, a village, and a garrisoned fortification to deter raids by the steppe tribes.
3.3.2 Silverhold
Small town serving the only significant silver mine in the world. A tributary flows in from the north here, but I know nothing about it yet. There is a major fortification/refinery/treasury. All around Silverhold, right up to the headwaters of the An and right down to Anghold, the valley is forested with only small clearings round villages, which are mainly close to the river.
Many other metals — certainly inluding lead, tin, and small quantities of gold, probably not copper — come out of the mines at Silverhold.
The An produce enough ferrous metals for their own tools and weapons, but their iron smelting technology is not advanced and they don’t export iron or iron products. They produce eathernware ceramics for domestic consumption. They produce leather and linen, and textiles from nettle fibres. They produce timber, which is their principal building material, but they don’t export it. In practice their major export is silver coinage.
3.3.3 Longwater
Longwater is a long, narrow lake, like Loch Lomond, on a tributary which flows into the An from the south, joining upstream from Anghold. There is no major nucleated settlement on Longwater, but there are sufficient small villages and hamlets on its banks to form an identifiable settlement cluster. Small boats can make it downstream from Longwater from the An and back, probably with some degree of portage around rapids. There’s a pass over from the south of the Longwater valley to Gor territory, but it’s high, difficult, and not much used. The whole of the Longwater valley is broadleaf forest.
3.3.4 Anghold
There’s a small town, market and fortification — Anghold — on the south bank of the An, just above first cataract, where boats are portaged up from the lower river to the middle reach. Downstream from Anghold the river is wider, slower and more meandering, with marshy banks. The valley west of Anghold, especially on the southern side, is also more populated, with more of the forest cleared and more arable agriculture.
3.3.5 Anmouth
The An meets the sea at Anmouth, where there is a deep harbour at a bend in the river just east of a long estuary, There is a bar, making it dangerous to enter the harbour in bad weather, and the whole estuary is pretty exposed to western storms, although there may be some islands providing some shelter for emergency anchorages — I don’t have that level of detail yet. Certainly the big new ships do not yet call in here, but could.
There are farming and sea-fishing villages down both sides of the estuary. There is no tradition of ship building, however.
3.4 Gor
Clan Gor occupy the south-western peninsula of the continent, and the south slope of the massif, east almost as far as the Tcha valley. Their land is forested with a similar mix of trees to Andale. They have no major rivers, but several minor ones. They live mainly in coastal villages, and sea fishing is a major economic activity. They have no deep water ports.
In addition they do mine iron, and they have exported swords, but the market for their swords is being undercut by better crucible steel swords from the north now being imported into the Cities of the Coast by the new ships. Similarly, the Gor used to export earthenware, but that too is now being undercut by stonewares and porcelaines from the north.
Because of a history of being victims of raiding from the Cities of the Coast, the Gor maintain a fortified eastern border along the line of hills to the west of the Tcha valley. Nevertheless they have mostly good trading relationships with Tchahua. In particular they export large quantities of raw and spun silk, and some woven silk cloth, to Tchahua.
I don’t yet have nearly a clear enough picture of the organisation and layout of the Gor lands, but their major stronghold and administrative centre must be to the east. While they traditionally had the communist and democratic culture of the other Western Clans, one family have become dominant and have become effectively hereditary leaders, influenced by the cultures to their east. However the leading family do not self-identify as aristons.
4. Coast
“The Coast” is the name given to the southern littoral of the continent, west of the Great Place and east of the Massif. It’s limestone, with deeply cut, steep sided valleys separated by high, arid uplands, with scrubby vegetation, grazed by domestic sheep and both domestic and wild goats.
The native culture were peaceable, communistic agriculturalists, not greatly different from the Western Clans. However some several hundred years ago they were invaded by a warrior group from the steppe tribes, who established themselves as a military aristocracy — the Aristae — and started to build cities — and impose taxes onto the peasantry, forcing them into a more or less cash oriented economy.
The valleys were once forested, but the central valleys, which were in any case rather dryer and where the Aristae first settled and established cities, are now mostly cleared, and are a mix of pastoral and arable, with considerable viticulture.
4.1 Tcha valley
The Tcha is the westernmost — and largest — river of the coast. It emerges from under the plateau at a pool under the South Tower marking the southern limit of Hans’hua territory and runs south more or less along the divide between the granite to the west and the limestone to the east. It is still largely forested, partly because it is relatively recently occupied by the Aristae, but partly because of the growth of the silk industry. This has led to some forested areas, especially near the navigable reaches of the river, being converted into mulberry orchards. However, there’s still a great deal of mixed forest, and the majority of mulberry leaves for feeding to silk worms are gathered from natural forest.
A road branches off from the main Caravan Road at the South Inn and runs down the eastern side of the valley, to a ferry across the Sind river, where it joins the Tcha as a tributary, at the village helpfully known as Sind Ferry, and thence to Tchahua.
Mulberries, by-products of the silk industry, are used in the production of brandy. Mulberry wine is produced in villages in the forest, and transported down river to a distillery at Sind Ferry, where it is distilled. Some mulberry wine may be sold in Tchahua for drinking as wine (and it is certainly drunk in the villages), but it is generally considered inferior to grape wine.
There is some arable and mixed agriculture, mainly towards the southern end of the valley on the western (less steep) side, although this side is also largely forested.
4.1.1 Tchahua
The city of Tchahua lies on the east bank of the river at the head of its estuary, and has deep water — the only really usable deep water port on the coast, being not only the largest river but also the least silted. Until quite recently it had been a small provincial silk weaving city, nominally independent but in fact paying tribute to both Sinhua to its east and the Gor to its west, in order to avoid being formally conquered by either.
There’s a multi-span bridge here — I think a pontoon bridge — of which the eastern most span is a drawbridge which can be lifted into a fortified gateway on the eastern (Tchahua) shore. There is a fishing industry, but as the eastern side
Industries are silk weaving and dying, and fishing. Very recently, a new deep water quay has been constructed and the first large ships have begun to call. It is obvious that the city is going to become much more important as a strategic market and transport hub, but that has only just begun to have effect.