Verse:Eventoa

Revision as of 13:23, 27 March 2022 by Lili21 (talk | contribs) (→‎Continents)

Eventoa is an earthlike planet, setting for the conworld including, so far, only the conlang Dundulanyä.

(Author's note: Eventoa is partially based on Calémere, so expect recurring or very similar names despite the different geography; but nearly everything about Eventoa except from a rough continent map is still to be decided.)

Continents

Seralton, Vaóren, Šacoria and Prétalo are, geographically, part of a single landmass, which is by far the largest on the planet. However, Prétalo is rarely ever considered to be joined to the other three, as the only connection is an isthmus between far northern Šacoria and the polar part of Prétalo, which is mostly beyond 80°N and covered by the planet's largest ice cap and the neighboring seas are part of the northern polar pack. For this reason, Prétalo was mostly unknown to people from Seralton (and even farther Šacoria and Vaóren) until the early modern era. Due to the mountainous polar isthmus of Šacoria, the ice cap is mostly notable in Prétalo, where in the interior it reaches well south of the polar circle and marks the climate of the interior highlands, the so-called «Dead Lands», a large barren wasteland that is inhospitable for most forms of life.

  • Aside from the two large landmasses that are connected by the polar land bridge, there are four subregions which are too small to be considered continents, but may be grouped differently: these are essentially small lands that extend from the polar landmasses far enough to allow human settlement. Two of these four subregions are commonly considered parts of Prétalo, Éte - the largest and mildest - at its northeastern end, creating a bridge towards Ceránen, and Seriman at the opposite end. Oduran is by far the smallest, due north of Seralton, which is still warmed by the Prétalonian current enough to be mostly ice-free even with its southernmost point at 63°N; it is often politically included in Seralton, but its history is completely different, and even Seraltonians only discovered it in the modern era. Tregos is the most remote, between Šacoria and Ceránen, but its mountainous chains and relatively southern latitude - up to 53°N - shelter it somewhat from the polar ice cap. While not a separate landmass, Tregos was the last major land on Eventoa to be settled by humans, about two hundred years before the present.

Seralton is the smallest true continent - despite being joined to Šacoria in the east - and lies well within the northern temperate zone. Its northern shores, about 60°N, are cold due to the influx of the pack ice north of it - and the polar ice cap further north - but the rest of the continent is warmed by its many internal seas and by the warm current flowing northeastwards across the ocean from southern Prétalo; that makes Seralton quite temperate for its northern latitude[1]. Seraltonian-based civilizations have colonized much of the rest of the planet, establishing culturally Seraltonian societies particularly the near totality of the inhabitable areas of Prétalo and Ceránen and most of Axome and Sođeu, in a few parts of Vaóren and only marginally in the other continents.

Šacoria is a continent joined to Seralton at its western end and to Vaóren in the southwest. It is divided into four major areas: the southeastern subcontinent, towards the island seas dividing it from Lusaṃrīte, which is by far the most populated area of the continent and where most of its countries are; the mild temperate highlands of this part of the world are also where behaviourally modern Eventoan humans first developed. Central Šacoria is divided into an area of broken highlands, towards Vaóren, which had a large influence in world history due to it being at the crossroads of the three continents of the Old World; north of it lies a steppe area in the heart of the continent, which eventually leaves its place to taiga in the north and along the central eastern coast, and tundra and barren lands in far northern Šacoria towards the isthmus that connects it to the continental polar ice cap.

Vaóren is the largest continent of Eventoa, joined with Evandor and Šacoria through an isthmus in the northeast; the Carpan Sea, a large inlet of the Nadrenic Ocean, divides it from Evandor to the north. It has a roughly triangular shape, with a narrow southern peninsula and a wide base at its northern end; this shape, however, creates its most prominent downside, the fact that the northern part of the continent is a wide east-west belt around the northern tropic, which makes the area Eventoa's largest hot desert; some smaller deserts also exists in the far southwest of the continent, in the rainshadowed area of the southern peninsula.

Ceránen is the second-smallest true continent and the least populated, mostly because of geographical factors: while its southern shore is temperate even along the eastern side due to the course of warmer currents, it lies almost entirely north of 30°N and the vast majority of it has a boreal climate; northern Ceránen has some glaciers which generally form an unbroken cold desert with the ice pack along the Polar Ceránenian Strait which divides it from the polar ice cap. However, the more mountainous northern part of the continent at least prevents the ice cap from descending towards the continent and creating barren wastelands such as Prétalo's Dead Lands. Ceránen was most likely the last continent to be settled by humans, which only came to the continent island-hopping from boreal Prétalo to the east at a time where the earliest civilizations were already developing on Vaóren, Lusaṃrīte and Šacoria; even if southern Ceránen is the closest continental landmass (other than, obviously, Šacoria itself) to the place of origin of modern Eventoan humans in Šacoria, the lack of islands between the two continents prevented humans to spread directly, unlike with the shallow seas and many islands lying between Šacoria and Lusaṃrīte, while the northern route from Šacoria to Ceránen is too far in polar areas.

Prétalo

Axome

Sođeu

Lusaṃrīte is the second-largest continent of Eventoa and the largest in the southern hemisphere; only a very small section of its mainland is north of the equator - with the northernmost point of its mainland being slightly south of 6°N, although many of its associated islands are. A long cordillera follows its western coast leaving the narrow western shore mostly arid, while the lower lying eastern part of the continent is generally a tropical forested maze of internal seas, gulfs, bays and islands that fill the sea dividing it from its smaller eastern neighbour Jūhma. Only in the northwest is there an unbroken rainforest, which is also the least densely human-populated area of the continent. Towards the south, beyond the tropics, the continent is more mountainous, with some drier - but moderately small - basins in the rainshadow. Southern Lusaṃrīte is temperate but mild, particularly north of the main mountain chains; even the southern shore is relatively mild except for the few parts beyond the southern polar circle - the southernmost continental mainland - due to the lack of a southern ice cap.

Jūhma, to the east of Lusaṃrīte, has a similarly tropical northern part, while the inland sea in the west of the continent is somewhat more arid. The eastern shore is particularly rainy but gets more temperate towards the south; its southern shore, barely reaching 45°S, is much milder than Lusaṃrīte's. Excluding Sođeu, which is an insular continent, Jūhma is the only continent on Eventoa whose mainland is entirely in the southern hemisphere (its northernmost point, the tip of a protruding peninsula, is at 4°S), even if some of the most remote islands traditionally grouped with it are north of the Equator. Southern Jūhma is generally antipodal to southern Seralton and central Šacoria.
Lusaṃrīte and Jūhma, which are culturally often treated as a single megacontinent, have some among the most fertile lands on the planet and have the greatest percentage of fertile lands to total land area, which has enabled the Lusamritene and Juhmene civilizations - most notably the Dundulanyä one mostly on Lusaṃrīte and the Skyrdagor one on Jūhma - to be, at multiple times, the most advanced on the planet; however, the relative isolation of these two continents has also played against the local civilizations, as the most notable dark age among them - particularly among the Dundulanyä - came about a millennium before the present as a result of more frequent contacts with the civilizations of the Northern hemisphere, which brought to Lusaṃrīte and Jūhma diseases that spread massively across both continents, disrupting the local civilzations - a change from which only the two major ones, the Dundulanyä and the Skyrdagor, eventually fully recovered - and changing their demographical profile.

Notes

  1. ^ Compared to Earth, it's like Europe, but somewhat colder.