Cartography 0.1

Alex

Cartography is a hell of a learning curve :P And you would be surprised! There are still large areas (the size of Australia/the Sahara in the kiln, and I might put a LITTLE more land there, but it is indeed mostly ocean.

Anastasia

So you're good at cartography AND art? Great stuff! I, too, imagined a bit more land with the Kiln, but it makes sense, given the map, for the Birrin to develop as they did. Great stuff!

Alex

The Kiln is mostly the top of the southern continent, which is about the same lattitude as the Outback of australia

Alex

Within our galaxy

Alex

Actually, most of the kiln is ocean! Superheated and wracked with major storms. Where the Kiln crosses the land, it mainly impacts the southern continent, which is at roughly the same latitude as the aussie outback. The only reason the birrin travel the kiln is to access natural resources, equatorial space launch facilities, and an overland freight route when ships are stuck in port due to superstorms

Spav

But where does the Kiln go?

Is the Chri-irah solar system in our Milky Way, another Local Group galaxy, or a galaxy far, far away?

KM

I have one thought, and it's possible that I'm missing something- but where does the Kiln fit? I got the sense the Kiln was an unavoidable geographic features- that building specialized craft to traverse it was a big deal because it separated big populations, that it was more intense than its earthly equivalents, and so forth. But I don't see a spot where these long, spindly east to west landforms can fit either a big interior desert like the Outback, or a continent "tall" enough to accommodate a big band of land at the trade wind latitudes, like the Sahara. Everything things to be close to coasts, or has a proximate sea route that makes scary desert travel unnecessary. In my head, this planet had something a little more Pangea and a little less Earthsea- really just to fit that desert.

Alex

Intriguing... Did I also hear that having inland seas like the Mediterranean allowed rapid intercultural exchanges through shipping?

Jake Parker

This looks really cool. This bit from Guns, Germs, and Steel always stays in the back of my mind when I'm world building: <a href="https://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/continents.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/continents.html</a> If you haven't read the book, one thesis in it is that the actual shape of the continents determined how societies grew and developed. What's interesting about your design is (assuming Chri-irah's climate is similar to Earth's ) you have both land masses spread out east to west in temperate zones. This gives each continent a developmental advantage because of how much easier it is for societies to spread out in areas of similar latitudes. That's why technology (wheels, bronze, copper, gunpowder) and knowhow (farming, animal husbandry) where able to spread across eurasia with relative ease, but entire cultures didn't even know about each other in the Americas. So on Chri-irah, especially with the two major land masses being connected, I can imagine the world being explored and settled much faster than it happened on earth. That, with the ease of being able to spread technology and ideas would give the Birrin a HUGE advantage in moving from primitive societies, to an advanced spacefaring race. Really cool stuff you're sharing. Thanks!

Alex

Kree-e-rah

Awesome! Quick question, how exactly do you pronounce chri-irah?