You have decided to give priority to the following proposal for the final map vote:
This particular point is at the northern extreme of the continent, bounded by its coast and containing multiple natural harbours. Although it does not contact either the great desert of 'Amit or the great Icewall, it is in reasonable range of the climates that are contacted by them - if the world were for some incomprehensible reason cut into three lanes, Monsoon Point would be at the extreme end of the middle, presumably temperate one. Monsoon Point is so named because winds that come off of the coast, off of 'Amit, and off of the Icewall contact to create a spectacularly broad storm network which ensures Monsoon Point is constantly lashed with rain - an extremely rainy season dominates nine months out of the year, and then during three months of the year there is what can't be called a dry season so much as a "less rainy season".
The landscape in Monsoon Point itself is surprisingly dramatic as a result - a hilly region has been carved out into a land of beautiful red cliffs, with intense and verdant greenery blooming across the tops of slopes that host streams and waterfalls. Besides making the land itself fertile (although without the heavy plantlife protecting the soil this would not be the case), this has a couple of other effects on the land south from the capital - this half of the continent has much more rain and other inclement weather than the southern half, and streams and drenched water table in Monsoon Point flow down from the hills into a river down south.
It is now time for you to define the location for the second future capital at the opposite end of the landmass from the first. You will have 24 hours to create a description for the region the nation will spread from. Once again, you are only determining natural features, and are not describing the urban environment or any manmade developments.
When coming up with the environment that makes up the Second Future Capital, please address the following:
What sort of terrain makes up the local area?
What kind of weather does the region experience?
What environment sits beyond the future borders of the capital? [The off-map landscape "behind" the capital, typically ocean in the usual arms race]
Are there any interesting features and natural landmarks that would stand out or otherwise provide no effect on the outcome of the map but add flavor to the region?
As the previous future capital contacts no barrier regions, this capital will contact neither of them as well.
Selected Regions:
The desert of 'Amit shrouds the west in heaps of dazzling white sand. The evening winds stir up sharp, stinging sandstorms which scatter the light of the setting sun - an eternally popular subject for landscape artists, who in good weather can often be seen daubing their canvases at a safe distance. Through the heat haze, you can sometimes glimpse the peaks of the Anti-Cholades mountain range, in whose rain shadow 'Amit wallows, grasping at the far horizon.
This particular point is at the northern extreme of the continent, bounded by its coast and containing multiple natural harbours. Although it does not contact either the great desert of 'Amit or the great Icewall, it is in reasonable range of the climates that are contacted by them - if the world were for some incomprehensible reason cut into three lanes, Monsoon Point would be at the extreme end of the middle, presumably temperate one. Monsoon Point is so named because winds that come off of the coast, off of 'Amit, and off of the Icewall contact to create a spectacularly broad storm network which ensures Monsoon Point is constantly lashed with rain - an extremely rainy season dominates nine months out of the year, and then during three months of the year there is what can't be called a dry season so much as a "less rainy season".
The landscape in Monsoon Point itself is surprisingly dramatic as a result - a hilly region has been carved out into a land of beautiful red cliffs, with intense and verdant greenery blooming across the tops of slopes that host streams and waterfalls. Besides making the land itself fertile (although without the heavy plantlife protecting the soil this would not be the case), this has a couple of other effects on the land south from the capital - this half of the continent has much more rain and other inclement weather than the southern half, and streams and drenched water table in Monsoon Point flow down from the hills into a river down south.
While borders can be quite fluid in nature, the easternmost extreme of our land is harshly cutoff by a monolithic wall of pure ice, 3000 meters tall. Although a sparse population has carved out a home within the sheer surface, our ability to project power over them has always been extremely limited, even when the ice box made their home a lucrative trade resource. Few expeditions have dared scale the wall, and none have ever found what must lie beyond it, only an everstretching plane of blinding white.
Big Bog Hell's
FUCK YOU BAY12
IF YOU'RE A DUMB ENOUGH SCHMUCK TO FOUND A CIVILIZATION THIS ERA YOU'RE A DUMB ENOUGH SCHMUCK TO GO TO BIG BOG HELL'S
BAD WEATHER
DISEASE-RIDDEN MOSQUITOES
THIEVES
IF YOU THINK YOU CAN FIND A SPOT OF GOOD FARMLAND IN BIG BOG'S YOU CAN KISS MY ASS
IT'S OUR BELIEF YOU'RE A DUMB ENOUGH MOTHERFUCKER TO FALL FOR THIS BULLSHIT
IF YOU FIND BETTER LAND SOMEWHERE ELSE
YOU CAN SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS
THAT'S RIGHT
SHOVE IT UP YOUR UGLY ASS
BRING YOUR TOOLS, BRING YOUR SOLDIERS, BRING YOUR WIFE
WE'LL FUCK HER
THAT'S RIGHT WE'LL FUCK YOUR WIFE
BECAUSE AT BIG BOG HELL'S, YOU'RE FUCKED SIX WAYS FROM SUNDAY
TAKE A HIKE
TO BIG BOG HELL'S HOME OF CHALLENGE WALKING
HOW DOES IT WORK?
IF YOU CAN GO OUTSIDE IN A MOSQUITO SWARM AND NOT GET MALARIA
WE WON'T CHARGE YOU MEDICAL FEES
DON'T WAIT
DON'T DELAY
DON'T FUCK WITH US OR WE'LL RIP YOUR NUTS OFF
ONLY AT BIG BOG HELL'S
THE ONLY TERRAIN THAT TELLS YOU TO FUCK OFF
HURRY UP ASSHOLE
THIS OFFER ENDS THE MOMENT YOU SET UP YOUR TENTS
AND YOU BETTER NOT BOUNCE OR YOU'RE A DEAD MOTHERFUCKER
GO TO HELL
BIG BOG HELL'S
THE ARCHIPELAGO'S FILTHIEST AND EXCLUSIVE HOME TO THE MEANEST SONS OF BITCHES THIS SIDE OF THE ICE WALL
GUARANTEED!
The Painted Land
The river born in the slopes of Monsoon Point reaches its southern terminus in the distant Painted Land. What began as clear streams of babbling rainwater has been transformed into a wide, slow thing laden with sediment. Millions of years of river action have carved a canyon through the country's soft rock strata, sharp and jagged at first but growing as broad as the horizon by the time it reaches the sea. The land is called painted because the bands of rock exposed by the river form such a panoply of color: white limestone, black shale, and sandstones in pink, red, yellow, and every color in between.
The highlands beyond the canyon walls (a distinction less marked as one proceeds southward) are relatively arid, with hot summers and cool winters. The soil in these highlands is rocky, but tolerable for thin forests of cork oak and scrubby grasslands home to herds of kudu. Groundwater is exposed to the highlands by limestone sinkholes, or cenotes. The riverine lowlands are much more fertile, irrigated by predictable cycles of flooding. Papyrus reeds and olive trees grow in abundance here, while alligators sun by the riverbanks. The coastal delta experiences a cooler climate, with sea breeze coming off the ocean to regulate temperatures. Here, temperatures are mild to warm year round, with gentle rains falling in the winter. The waters beyond are a vast inland sea of sun-drenched archipelagos, favored by traders for exotic spices but seldom visited due to hazardous shoals and sandbanks.
The sedimentary rock of the Painted Land bears countless karst caves, connected by underground rivers and home to strange species of eyeless fish and cave-adapted lizards.
With the boundaries of the map decided, it is now time to move inward. Wedged between the Desert of 'Amit and The Ice Wall, and south of Monsoon Point, spreads a vast swathe of territory making up roughly 1/3 of the future warzone. This region will act as the rearmost lines protecting the capital region of Monsoon Point. While the terrain may vary wildly, there is something that can be consistently identified across all the region should it ever be divided into three fronts. When determining what sort of terrain makes up these regions, consider the following:
What sort of terrain makes up the region? Is there any difference across the East, Center, or Western fronts?
What sort of weather occurs in the region? Is there any difference across the East, Center, or Western fronts?
Are there any natural resources, landmarks, or otherwise noteworthy aspects of the East, Center, or Western fronts that'd draw the eye/imagination?
Selected Regions:
The desert of 'Amit shrouds the west in heaps of dazzling white sand. The evening winds stir up sharp, stinging sandstorms which scatter the light of the setting sun - an eternally popular subject for landscape artists, who in good weather can often be seen daubing their canvases at a safe distance. Through the heat haze, you can sometimes glimpse the peaks of the Anti-Cholades mountain range, in whose rain shadow 'Amit wallows, grasping at the far horizon.
This particular point is at the northern extreme of the continent, bounded by its coast and containing multiple natural harbours. Although it does not contact either the great desert of 'Amit or the great Icewall, it is in reasonable range of the climates that are contacted by them - if the world were for some incomprehensible reason cut into three lanes, Monsoon Point would be at the extreme end of the middle, presumably temperate one. Monsoon Point is so named because winds that come off of the coast, off of 'Amit, and off of the Icewall contact to create a spectacularly broad storm network which ensures Monsoon Point is constantly lashed with rain - an extremely rainy season dominates nine months out of the year, and then during three months of the year there is what can't be called a dry season so much as a "less rainy season".
The landscape in Monsoon Point itself is surprisingly dramatic as a result - a hilly region has been carved out into a land of beautiful red cliffs, with intense and verdant greenery blooming across the tops of slopes that host streams and waterfalls. Besides making the land itself fertile (although without the heavy plantlife protecting the soil this would not be the case), this has a couple of other effects on the land south from the capital - this half of the continent has much more rain and other inclement weather than the southern half, and streams and drenched water table in Monsoon Point flow down from the hills into a river down south.
The river born in the slopes of Monsoon Point reaches its southern terminus in the distant Painted Land. What began as clear streams of babbling rainwater has been transformed into a wide, slow thing laden with sediment. Millions of years of river action have carved a canyon through the country's soft rock strata, sharp and jagged at first but growing as broad as the horizon by the time it reaches the sea. The land is called painted because the bands of rock exposed by the river form such a panoply of color: white limestone, black shale, and sandstones in pink, red, yellow, and every color in between.
The highlands beyond the canyon walls (a distinction less marked as one proceeds southward) are relatively arid, with hot summers and cool winters. The soil in these highlands is rocky, but tolerable for thin forests of cork oak and scrubby grasslands home to herds of kudu. Groundwater is exposed to the highlands by limestone sinkholes, or cenotes. The riverine lowlands are much more fertile, irrigated by predictable cycles of flooding. Papyrus reeds and olive trees grow in abundance here, while alligators sun by the riverbanks. The coastal delta experiences a cooler climate, with sea breeze coming off the ocean to regulate temperatures. Here, temperatures are mild to warm year round, with gentle rains falling in the winter. The waters beyond are a vast inland sea of sun-drenched archipelagos, favored by traders for exotic spices but seldom visited due to hazardous shoals and sandbanks.
The sedimentary rock of the Painted Land bears countless karst caves, connected by underground rivers and home to strange species of eyeless fish and cave-adapted lizards.
While borders can be quite fluid in nature, the easternmost extreme of our land is harshly cutoff by a monolithic wall of pure ice, 3000 meters tall. Although a sparse population has carved out a home within the sheer surface, our ability to project power over them has always been extremely limited, even when the ice box made their home a lucrative trade resource. Few expeditions have dared scale the wall, and none have ever found what must lie beyond it, only an everstretching plane of blinding white.
Evergreen Reach
Evergreen Reach is the broad name for the general area that spills out from Monsoon Point between 'Amit and the Ice Wall - although this is a very large area and crosses distinct biomes, there are some clear commonalities as a result of the intense weather patterns to the north: the presence of heavily forested terrain (usually, go figure, plenty of evergreen pine trees), and heavy inclement weather that lashes across the Reach, albeit usually much more intermittently than in Monsoon Point.
The specifics of the Evergreen Reach vary from West to East, though. In the East of the Evergreen Reach, temperatures drop dramatically and the rough hilly terrain present in Monsoon Point in fact heightens significantly, leading to mostly beautiful alpine forest terrain - except that it is beset by vicious snowstorms for most of the year. A notable landmark out here is a point of the land where the hills flatten out into much shorter, rolling little hillocks with curiously far fewer trees. Though seemingly more hospitable, this area, the Frosthollows, is in fact so much sparser because it is full of... well, frosthollows so cold that they don't let trees grow in them.
In the center, the hills flatten out. The central Evergreen Reach is a temperate rainforest - unbelievably lush, unbelievably green, fed both by brunt of the rainstorms coming down from Monsoon Point and the wide, fast-flowing arterial continental river flowing down from Monsoon Point, central Evergreen Reach is... well, it's wet as hell. The riverine environment leads to plenty of mud, fallen logs, ponds, small lakes, and streams, but other than that it's actually quite a pleasant place to be in, if humid.
In the west, the temperate rainforest grows hotter and transforms into a tropical rainforest, the nature of the forest and species of its inhabitants changing with it (though, somehow, there's even a tropical goddamned pine). The tropical rainforest is, while still most CERTAINLY wet, less wet than the temperate rainforest - you can still expect to get soaked, but it isn't very riverine. Instead, the tropical rainforest rolls across gentle hills, fed by the Monsoon Point rainstorms which gather here and bowl against the Cholades, a short mountain range at the edge of the 'Amit which reinforces it with rainshadow. What you have to deal with in the tropical rainforest is more the underbrush, the fact that the canopy is thick enough that the light is dim, and the many forms of wildlife.
Now that the northern regions of the map have been defined, we will hop over to the southern end for approximately the next 24 hours. Once more, wedged between the Desert of 'Amit and The Ice Wall, north of The Painted Land, sits another large stretch of territory making up roughly another 1/3 of the future warzone. This region will act as the rearmost lines protecting the capital region of The Painted Land. While the terrain may vary wildly, there is something that can be consistently identified across all the region should it ever be divided into three fronts. When determining what sort of terrain makes up these regions, consider the following:
What sort of terrain makes up the region? Is there any difference across the East, Center, or Western fronts?
What sort of weather occurs in the region? Is there any difference across the East, Center, or Western fronts?
Are there any natural resources, landmarks, or otherwise noteworthy aspects of the East, Center, or Western fronts that'd draw the eye/imagination?
Also, just for 100% certainty, keep in mind that the central third of the map remains undefined and the region you are defining now is separated entirely from the northern region in the last prompt by that central undefined region.
Selected Regions:
The desert of 'Amit shrouds the west in heaps of dazzling white sand. The evening winds stir up sharp, stinging sandstorms which scatter the light of the setting sun - an eternally popular subject for landscape artists, who in good weather can often be seen daubing their canvases at a safe distance. Through the heat haze, you can sometimes glimpse the peaks of the Anti-Cholades mountain range, in whose rain shadow 'Amit wallows, grasping at the far horizon.
This particular point is at the northern extreme of the continent, bounded by its coast and containing multiple natural harbours. Although it does not contact either the great desert of 'Amit or the great Icewall, it is in reasonable range of the climates that are contacted by them - if the world were for some incomprehensible reason cut into three lanes, Monsoon Point would be at the extreme end of the middle, presumably temperate one. Monsoon Point is so named because winds that come off of the coast, off of 'Amit, and off of the Icewall contact to create a spectacularly broad storm network which ensures Monsoon Point is constantly lashed with rain - an extremely rainy season dominates nine months out of the year, and then during three months of the year there is what can't be called a dry season so much as a "less rainy season".
The landscape in Monsoon Point itself is surprisingly dramatic as a result - a hilly region has been carved out into a land of beautiful red cliffs, with intense and verdant greenery blooming across the tops of slopes that host streams and waterfalls. Besides making the land itself fertile (although without the heavy plantlife protecting the soil this would not be the case), this has a couple of other effects on the land south from the capital - this half of the continent has much more rain and other inclement weather than the southern half, and streams and drenched water table in Monsoon Point flow down from the hills into a river down south.
Evergreen Reach is the broad name for the general area that spills out from Monsoon Point between 'Amit and the Ice Wall - although this is a very large area and crosses distinct biomes, there are some clear commonalities as a result of the intense weather patterns to the north: the presence of heavily forested terrain (usually, go figure, plenty of evergreen pine trees), and heavy inclement weather that lashes across the Reach, albeit usually much more intermittently than in Monsoon Point.
The specifics of the Evergreen Reach vary from West to East, though. In the East of the Evergreen Reach, temperatures drop dramatically and the rough hilly terrain present in Monsoon Point in fact heightens significantly, leading to mostly beautiful alpine forest terrain - except that it is beset by vicious snowstorms for most of the year. A notable landmark out here is a point of the land where the hills flatten out into much shorter, rolling little hillocks with curiously far fewer trees. Though seemingly more hospitable, this area, the Frosthollows, is in fact so much sparser because it is full of... well, frosthollows so cold that they don't let trees grow in them.
In the center, the hills flatten out. The central Evergreen Reach is a temperate rainforest - unbelievably lush, unbelievably green, fed both by brunt of the rainstorms coming down from Monsoon Point and the wide, fast-flowing arterial continental river flowing down from Monsoon Point, central Evergreen Reach is... well, it's wet as hell. The riverine environment leads to plenty of mud, fallen logs, ponds, small lakes, and streams, but other than that it's actually quite a pleasant place to be in, if humid.
In the west, the temperate rainforest grows hotter and transforms into a tropical rainforest, the nature of the forest and species of its inhabitants changing with it (though, somehow, there's even a tropical goddamned pine). The tropical rainforest is, while still most CERTAINLY wet, less wet than the temperate rainforest - you can still expect to get soaked, but it isn't very riverine. Instead, the tropical rainforest rolls across gentle hills, fed by the Monsoon Point rainstorms which gather here and bowl against the Cholades, a short mountain range at the edge of the 'Amit which reinforces it with rainshadow. What you have to deal with in the tropical rainforest is more the underbrush, the fact that the canopy is thick enough that the light is dim, and the many forms of wildlife.
The river born in the slopes of Monsoon Point reaches its southern terminus in the distant Painted Land. What began as clear streams of babbling rainwater has been transformed into a wide, slow thing laden with sediment. Millions of years of river action have carved a canyon through the country's soft rock strata, sharp and jagged at first but growing as broad as the horizon by the time it reaches the sea. The land is called painted because the bands of rock exposed by the river form such a panoply of color: white limestone, black shale, and sandstones in pink, red, yellow, and every color in between.
The highlands beyond the canyon walls (a distinction less marked as one proceeds southward) are relatively arid, with hot summers and cool winters. The soil in these highlands is rocky, but tolerable for thin forests of cork oak and scrubby grasslands home to herds of kudu. Groundwater is exposed to the highlands by limestone sinkholes, or cenotes. The riverine lowlands are much more fertile, irrigated by predictable cycles of flooding. Papyrus reeds and olive trees grow in abundance here, while alligators sun by the riverbanks. The coastal delta experiences a cooler climate, with sea breeze coming off the ocean to regulate temperatures. Here, temperatures are mild to warm year round, with gentle rains falling in the winter. The waters beyond are a vast inland sea of sun-drenched archipelagos, favored by traders for exotic spices but seldom visited due to hazardous shoals and sandbanks.
The sedimentary rock of the Painted Land bears countless karst caves, connected by underground rivers and home to strange species of eyeless fish and cave-adapted lizards.
While borders can be quite fluid in nature, the easternmost extreme of our land is harshly cutoff by a monolithic wall of pure ice, 3000 meters tall. Although a sparse population has carved out a home within the sheer surface, our ability to project power over them has always been extremely limited, even when the ice box made their home a lucrative trade resource. Few expeditions have dared scale the wall, and none have ever found what must lie beyond it, only an everstretching plane of blinding white.
The Solaran Arroyo is the name given to the landscape around the Painted Land that receives some benefit of the river that flows from Monsoon Point to the south but is a stark contrast to the relative greenery of the capital region and generally divided into three distinct zones.
To the West is the Great Dry Sea. Believed to once have been an ancient inland ocean the Dry Sea is a massive salt flat that exists in a depression stretching from the edges of the Painted Land and out into the 'Amit desert where the ground begins to elevate once more and transfers from salt into sand. While outwardly unremarkable the Dry Sea holds a unique characteristic of being regularly flooded by distributaries of the river flowing from Monsoon Point during the rainier season up north. While this outwardly doesn't change the region more than being a bit marshy a month or two out of the year to unwary travelers it presents a grave hazard. While most of the water simply evaporates away over time some of it gathers in rocky depressions and gets trapped under a thick layer of salty crust that prevents its complete evaporation. This resulting in turning the Dry Sea into an invisible minefield where one false step can send a man plummeting into a thick brine pool if he's lucky, or a many dozen foot drop to his death if unlucky. The reprieve for these hazards is the rises in the flats that ages ago were once islands surrounded by water but now are encased in salt, dotted across the Dry Sea like freckles and few in number these little hills covered in vegetation provide landmarks for navigation in the flat expanse.
In the Center is the Sandoras Thornsea, the many mile wide valley entrance to the Painted Lands is host to many myriad of cactus families that take advantage of the presence of water. Here a thousand species of cactus can be cataloged ranging in size from as small as a child's fist to taller than a man interspersed among a splattering of cork oaks and stunted juniper trees. Not impassible but certainly unappealing to cross without proper precautions, the cactus mainly sticks to the banks of the river and the distributaries that break off from it to flow into other parts of the south creating thick bands of cactus that form the main hazard in crossing this region.
To the East stands the Motoro Conelands where volcanic energy is just powerful enough to breach the surface before running out of energy and forming the squat towers of basalt known as splatter cones that give the region its name. Ranging from only one meter in height to over twenty these miniature volcanoes pocket the land in the thousands with many of them still active and needing only a slight disturbance to ooze molten rock from the ground. Despite the danger the Conelands have long been a source of intense mining efforts as the splatter cones have the unique quality of having high amounts of metal in them ranging from common industrial metals to vast quantities of gold. Recent years have seen the innovation of forced eruption where the splatter cones found to be under sufficient pressure are breached and allowed to erupt depositing mineral rich lava to the surface, this done typically during the winter months when the cold winds coming off of the Ice Wall are the strongest allowing for a more rapid cooling of the lava. Besides this in the portion of the region populated by less active and even dormant volcanic vents there is a large coverage of greenery that feeds off the rich volcanic soil and distributaries from the Monsoon Point river that allow for a floral bloom rivaled only by the Painted Lands in its abundance.
For the final prompt, you have 25ish hours to define the center third of the map. The region is bound to the east and west by the Ice Wall and Desert of 'Amit and to the north and south by Evergreen Reach and Solaran Arroyo. While describing the center of the map be sure to answer or address the following:
What sort of terrain makes up the region? Is there any difference across the East, Center, or Western fronts?
What sort of weather occurs in the region? Is there any difference across the East, Center, or Western fronts?
The center of the Center contains a very distinct natural feature that should stand out enough to influence but not inhibit combat in the area, and must be in some way desirable enough (strategically, economically, aesthetically, spitefully) for some hairless apes to kill each other over in the future. What is it?
Note that a river is described as passing from north to south in the previous two prompts, implying but not necessitating a contiguous waterway. If you decide to place a river through the center, that is enough to qualify as the distinct feature but is not extraordinary enough to bar the inclusion of another feature if'n someone gets inspired.
Selected Regions:
The desert of 'Amit shrouds the west in heaps of dazzling white sand. The evening winds stir up sharp, stinging sandstorms which scatter the light of the setting sun - an eternally popular subject for landscape artists, who in good weather can often be seen daubing their canvases at a safe distance. Through the heat haze, you can sometimes glimpse the peaks of the Anti-Cholades mountain range, in whose rain shadow 'Amit wallows, grasping at the far horizon.
This particular point is at the northern extreme of the continent, bounded by its coast and containing multiple natural harbours. Although it does not contact either the great desert of 'Amit or the great Icewall, it is in reasonable range of the climates that are contacted by them - if the world were for some incomprehensible reason cut into three lanes, Monsoon Point would be at the extreme end of the middle, presumably temperate one. Monsoon Point is so named because winds that come off of the coast, off of 'Amit, and off of the Icewall contact to create a spectacularly broad storm network which ensures Monsoon Point is constantly lashed with rain - an extremely rainy season dominates nine months out of the year, and then during three months of the year there is what can't be called a dry season so much as a "less rainy season".
The landscape in Monsoon Point itself is surprisingly dramatic as a result - a hilly region has been carved out into a land of beautiful red cliffs, with intense and verdant greenery blooming across the tops of slopes that host streams and waterfalls. Besides making the land itself fertile (although without the heavy plantlife protecting the soil this would not be the case), this has a couple of other effects on the land south from the capital - this half of the continent has much more rain and other inclement weather than the southern half, and streams and drenched water table in Monsoon Point flow down from the hills into a river down south.
Evergreen Reach is the broad name for the general area that spills out from Monsoon Point between 'Amit and the Ice Wall - although this is a very large area and crosses distinct biomes, there are some clear commonalities as a result of the intense weather patterns to the north: the presence of heavily forested terrain (usually, go figure, plenty of evergreen pine trees), and heavy inclement weather that lashes across the Reach, albeit usually much more intermittently than in Monsoon Point.
The specifics of the Evergreen Reach vary from West to East, though. In the East of the Evergreen Reach, temperatures drop dramatically and the rough hilly terrain present in Monsoon Point in fact heightens significantly, leading to mostly beautiful alpine forest terrain - except that it is beset by vicious snowstorms for most of the year. A notable landmark out here is a point of the land where the hills flatten out into much shorter, rolling little hillocks with curiously far fewer trees. Though seemingly more hospitable, this area, the Frosthollows, is in fact so much sparser because it is full of... well, frosthollows so cold that they don't let trees grow in them.
In the center, the hills flatten out. The central Evergreen Reach is a temperate rainforest - unbelievably lush, unbelievably green, fed both by brunt of the rainstorms coming down from Monsoon Point and the wide, fast-flowing arterial continental river flowing down from Monsoon Point, central Evergreen Reach is... well, it's wet as hell. The riverine environment leads to plenty of mud, fallen logs, ponds, small lakes, and streams, but other than that it's actually quite a pleasant place to be in, if humid.
In the west, the temperate rainforest grows hotter and transforms into a tropical rainforest, the nature of the forest and species of its inhabitants changing with it (though, somehow, there's even a tropical goddamned pine). The tropical rainforest is, while still most CERTAINLY wet, less wet than the temperate rainforest - you can still expect to get soaked, but it isn't very riverine. Instead, the tropical rainforest rolls across gentle hills, fed by the Monsoon Point rainstorms which gather here and bowl against the Cholades, a short mountain range at the edge of the 'Amit which reinforces it with rainshadow. What you have to deal with in the tropical rainforest is more the underbrush, the fact that the canopy is thick enough that the light is dim, and the many forms of wildlife.
The Solaran Arroyo is the name given to the landscape around the Painted Land that receives some benefit of the river that flows from Monsoon Point to the south but is a stark contrast to the relative greenery of the capital region and generally divided into three distinct zones.
To the West is the Great Dry Sea. Believed to once have been an ancient inland ocean the Dry Sea is a massive salt flat that exists in a depression stretching from the edges of the Painted Land and out into the 'Amit desert where the ground begins to elevate once more and transfers from salt into sand. While outwardly unremarkable the Dry Sea holds a unique characteristic of being regularly flooded by distributaries of the river flowing from Monsoon Point during the rainier season up north. While this outwardly doesn't change the region more than being a bit marshy a month or two out of the year to unwary travelers it presents a grave hazard. While most of the water simply evaporates away over time some of it gathers in rocky depressions and gets trapped under a thick layer of salty crust that prevents its complete evaporation. This resulting in turning the Dry Sea into an invisible minefield where one false step can send a man plummeting into a thick brine pool if he's lucky, or a many dozen foot drop to his death if unlucky. The reprieve for these hazards is the rises in the flats that ages ago were once islands surrounded by water but now are encased in salt, dotted across the Dry Sea like freckles and few in number these little hills covered in vegetation provide landmarks for navigation in the flat expanse.
In the Center is the Sandoras Thornsea, the many mile wide valley entrance to the Painted Lands is host to many myriad of cactus families that take advantage of the presence of water. Here a thousand species of cactus can be cataloged ranging in size from as small as a child's fist to taller than a man interspersed among a splattering of cork oaks and stunted juniper trees. Not impassible but certainly unappealing to cross without proper precautions, the cactus mainly sticks to the banks of the river and the distributaries that break off from it to flow into other parts of the south creating thick bands of cactus that form the main hazard in crossing this region.
To the East stands the Motoro Conelands where volcanic energy is just powerful enough to breach the surface before running out of energy and forming the squat towers of basalt known as splatter cones that give the region its name. Ranging from only one meter in height to over twenty these miniature volcanoes pocket the land in the thousands with many of them still active and needing only a slight disturbance to ooze molten rock from the ground. Despite the danger the Conelands have long been a source of intense mining efforts as the splatter cones have the unique quality of having high amounts of metal in them ranging from common industrial metals to vast quantities of gold. Recent years have seen the innovation of forced eruption where the splatter cones found to be under sufficient pressure are breached and allowed to erupt depositing mineral rich lava to the surface, this done typically during the winter months when the cold winds coming off of the Ice Wall are the strongest allowing for a more rapid cooling of the lava. Besides this in the portion of the region populated by less active and even dormant volcanic vents there is a large coverage of greenery that feeds off the rich volcanic soil and distributaries from the Monsoon Point river that allow for a floral bloom rivaled only by the Painted Lands in its abundance.
The river born in the slopes of Monsoon Point reaches its southern terminus in the distant Painted Land. What began as clear streams of babbling rainwater has been transformed into a wide, slow thing laden with sediment. Millions of years of river action have carved a canyon through the country's soft rock strata, sharp and jagged at first but growing as broad as the horizon by the time it reaches the sea. The land is called painted because the bands of rock exposed by the river form such a panoply of color: white limestone, black shale, and sandstones in pink, red, yellow, and every color in between.
The highlands beyond the canyon walls (a distinction less marked as one proceeds southward) are relatively arid, with hot summers and cool winters. The soil in these highlands is rocky, but tolerable for thin forests of cork oak and scrubby grasslands home to herds of kudu. Groundwater is exposed to the highlands by limestone sinkholes, or cenotes. The riverine lowlands are much more fertile, irrigated by predictable cycles of flooding. Papyrus reeds and olive trees grow in abundance here, while alligators sun by the riverbanks. The coastal delta experiences a cooler climate, with sea breeze coming off the ocean to regulate temperatures. Here, temperatures are mild to warm year round, with gentle rains falling in the winter. The waters beyond are a vast inland sea of sun-drenched archipelagos, favored by traders for exotic spices but seldom visited due to hazardous shoals and sandbanks.
The sedimentary rock of the Painted Land bears countless karst caves, connected by underground rivers and home to strange species of eyeless fish and cave-adapted lizards.
While borders can be quite fluid in nature, the easternmost extreme of our land is harshly cutoff by a monolithic wall of pure ice, 3000 meters tall. Although a sparse population has carved out a home within the sheer surface, our ability to project power over them has always been extremely limited, even when the ice box made their home a lucrative trade resource. Few expeditions have dared scale the wall, and none have ever found what must lie beyond it, only an everstretching plane of blinding white.
In the center the terrain slowly fades from Thornsea/Rainforest, to fairly fertile land. It has been fed by constant rain and monsoons flooding the river, and the geothermal vents in the area cause a number of hot springs to form, providing heat on even cold nights to the area. Within the center of this fertile land lies the Great Lake, from which water passes and collects, and during the monsoons swells to new pockets. Here is a plentiful place, where many farms could be built, if only it weren't contested territory and a point of major contention for the to countries.
I'll leave this here. My supprt would be for Savvanah on the desert side TBD, A Great Lake/Farmland area rich and worth fighting for, and Tundra TBD.
(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1202793597011763200/1204953777422073896/8e7e4bf1e0e3ebb8c61e09402ce3bffb-1354228506.jpg?ex=65d69ba7&is=65c426a7&hm=a617d3b8d233f78eba311bed65f68f1d56d5b9d446165c580a7a841d640363a4&=&format=webp&width=564&height=423)
Will get to it in the morning.
The Great Lake, the Atsuiyama Mountains and the Measured Steppe
In the center of the central swathe (halfway between Monsoon Point and the Painted Lands) is the Great Lake. The Great Lake is a massive navigable lake with several sheltered bays and plenty of fish.
To the east are the Atsuiyama Mountains, the tallest of which is a stratovolcano called Takaiyama. Takaiyama is technically still active, but hasn't erupted in centuries. Down below, the slopes of the Atsuiyama Mountains are very fertile, an a little further up (especially around mount Takaiyama) one can find a number of hot springs.
To the west is the Measured Steppe. The Measured Steppe is a vast plain with many shrubs and lots of grass, but few (if any) trees. Still, there are many animals here (and even some very beautiful flowers in the spring). Curiously, the Measured Step is dotted with a number of hills. When examined more closely, these hills turn out to be salt domes that have formed above deposits of oil and natural gas.
Edit: Fixed some formatting and spelling.
Edit2: Apparently, SMF won't let me user the bold tags with the center or size tags...
Edit3: Removed references to man-made structures and human activities.
Oudeland
Centerpoint: The Great Lakesides
In the center the terrain slowly fades from Thornsea/Rainforest, to fairly fertile land. It has been fed by constant rain and monsoons flooding the river, and the geothermal vents in the area cause a number of hot springs to form, providing heat on even cold nights to the area. Within the fertile land lies the the three Great Lakes fed by the central river, from which water passes and collects, and during the monsoons swells to old riverbeds. Here is a plentiful place, where the land is rich, the waters warm, and there are many fish.
West Point: The Shifting Savanna
To the West lies a place forgotten by time. Once a thriving floodplain filled with life in the ancient past, a harsh drought came over the land. The rivers that once fed it dried up, the desert encroached upon it's soil, eventually forming oil as life was buried by sandstorms. The rains came again, sediment built up, and new life came to the to the place. What it is today is a place filled with long grasses and few trees, adapted to the shifting seasons and holding on to all the moisture. It's an area with fauna and flora from the desert, and animals adapted to living in this place such as sand cats and meekrats. When the rains come, the old paths are washed away, and new life sprouts after.
East Point: The Shrouded Pingu
To the east lies an area of spiritual significance. Hills of ice-cored permafrost offer watch over a land that melts during the summer, the tundra. During most of the year the shallow rivers are frozen over, and the grasses covered by snow .The shadow of the Ice Wall blocks the light. A flat land broken up by flat hilltops and bumps of ice. But during spring the area comes alive, and the light over the Ice Wall as the sun passes through brings to mind divine providence.
Savanah only has lakes during rain season. Water can be said to flow from the ice wall, flood the rivers, and go out to the savvanah. And it all dumps into the old Salt, the resting place of all ARs.
The Great Lake, the Atsuiyama Mountains and the Measured Steppe (2): Quarque, A_Curious_Cat
Oudeland (1): TricMagic
Your final decision was to prioritize the following:
In the central band of the country is a lowland defined by the retreat of ancient glaciers. Scattered from East to West are kettle lakes, ice-scarred promontory peaks, and low ridgelines of deposited sediment.
In the east by the Ice Wall, the freshest remnants of glacial activity can be identified; gravel beds, moraines and the like. This land is a tundra of warmly-colored shrubs and sedge grasses, grazed by herds of caribou that alternately can be found migrating to the evergreen forest Northwards in the Evergreen Reach. In summer, multicolored wildflowers blossom from the earth, areas of which are warm enough to tolerate agriculture. The morning sun lights the crags of the Ice Wall like a bonfire, and sends a glut of meltwater to swell the banks of a river heading west. Beneath the permafrost are vast beds of anthracite coal and petroleum.
To the west in the shadow of the Cholades and ‘Amit, the land is a savannah of tall wildgrasses and scattered acacia copses. The climate is warm here, but not prone to drought due to a high water table fed by geothermal heat. When one spots a little hillock on this savanna, it is a geyser as often as it is a termite mound. The biodiversity in this region is staggering: giraffes and dwarf elephants in the patches of thin forest, great wildcats and wildebeest patrolling the grasslands. The place is fit to make a zoologist (or a hunter) twitch with excitement. A river cuts this land too, fed by the water table and rare torrential downpours: west to east, this one. The geological activity here has left behind kimberlite pipes, the source of elusive diamonds and other precious gemstones, as well as a fair few rare earth metals.
In the center of the Vale of Waters is a merger of all the rivers on the continent fit to name: North from Monsoon Point, West from the savannah, East from the tundra, all emptying their burdens to the South and the distant sea beyond the Painted Land. A great lake sits here, relatively shallow but broad. Its waters are flush with freshwater fish and waterfowl. The terrain beyond the lakeshore of brown sand and clay beds is some of the most supremely fertile earth in all the world, a temperate country of low hills and beautifully green grass. The summers are warm but mild to crops, the winters thinly blanket the land in snow for a month or so before melting. Little of the wildlife is dangerous; foxes, burrowing rodents from shrews to beavers, hares and the like.
As the selections for the map were made with extreme amounts of consideration for their surroundings, and because there is a healthy spread of authors, I've opted to toss a single map into the ring.
(https://i.imgur.com/3oJ1zlP.png)
MP - Monsoon Point
CR - Choladaic Rainforest // ER - Evergreen Riverway // FH - Frosthollows
WS - Wild Savannah // VW - Vale of Waters // GT - Glacial Taiga
DS - Dry Sea // ST - Sandoras Thornsea // MC - Motoro Conelands
PL - Painted Land
The environments will largely remain untouched, with a little work to blend the borders somewhat (although you did most of that work for me, and for free).
I will continue working on the map as it is now, with the young Cholades mountains as the westernmost grey line and the rivers in blue. River is definitely not to scale and will almost certainly look smaller in the final result once there are more colors and junk, but I wanted to clearly illustrate it here. If you have any complaints, concerns, or changes you want, talk them over with your teammates. If another idea or a change gains significant traction I might consider providing an alternate to choose from, but I wouldn't guarantee it mostly because youse already did some solid work. Smile. You did good.
(https://i.imgur.com/8zIaGQO.png)