Verse:Eventoa

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.)

Planetary data

(TBA)

Eventoa is somewhat warmer than Earth, with an average temperature about 1.5-2°C higher than present-day Earth, and that with the large northern ice cap.

The continental landmasses have mostly been isolated for long enough that they have developed their own distinct fauna and flora. There are, in fact, some large continental ecoregions for fauna and flora: Seralton-Šacoria-Témo as a large continent, with Southern Témo having more endemic species that haven't spread elsewhere due to the deserts of northern Témo and central Šacoria. Lusaṃrīte and Jūhma have their own species, and have in common many species between them, though mainly in flora and temperate fauna, while animals in their tropical zones are quite distinct; Purédo has species in common with both Ceránen (temperate and boreal) and Euxiten (tropical), but the three continents have mostly distinct species.

Continents

Seralton, Témo, Šacoria and Purédo are, geographically, part of a single landmass, which makes up slightly more than half of all land area of Eventoa. However, Purédo is rarely ever considered to be joined to the other three, as they are only connected through a mostly polar landmass with southern shores well beyond 75°N, in some places north of 80°N, particularly north of Evandor and Šacoria. The northern part of this landmass is covered by Eventoa's northern ice sheet; ice shelves in the seas around it reach the polar circle, however, due to warm ocean currents, a small section of coast due north of Seralton, straddling the 80th parallel north, may be ice-free for a few weeks during the summer.
The ice sheet is largely contained north of the polar circle and mostly north of 70°N by mountains or seas in most of the planet, with the exception of central Purédo, where in the interior it reaches well south of the polar circle (as far south as 57°N) 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 three 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. Éte - the largest and mildest (some of the islands associated with it are south of 50°N) - is located at the northeastern end of Purédo, creating a bridge towards Ceránen; Oduran is by far the smallest, due northwest of Seralton, which is still warmed by the Prétalonian current enough to be mostly ice-free even with its southernmost point at 58°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 lies 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 (mostly on the island of Holenagika), about 70°N, are cold due to the influx of the great northern ice, though ice-free due to warm currents, 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. 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 Témo 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, the land connection between the three Old World continents, is a large belt of steppes in the north and deserts to the south - contiguous to the great northern desert of Témo to the west - that forms a huge natural barrier between the continents, broken by the sky islands of the Máro Mountains, whose rivers on both sides have been major trade routes for millennia. The south coast of Šacoria, towards Témo, lying firmly in the dry latitudes, forms a huge coastal desert contiguous to the ones of Central Šacoria.

Témo is the largest continent of Eventoa, joined with Seralton and Šacoria through an isthmus in the northeast; the Carpan Sea, a large inlet of the Nadrenic Ocean, divides it from Seralton 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 mostly 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. While no part of Ceránen lies north of the 60th parallel, most of the northern shore is tundra due to the effects of the northern ice sheet. Ceránen was most likely the last continent to be settled by humans, which only came to the continent island-hopping from boreal Purédo to the east at a time where the earliest civilizations were already developing on Témo, 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.

Purédo

Euxiten

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 desertic areas of central Jūhma, though nowhere as extensive as those in the northern hemisphere of Eventoa, are, climate-wise, fundamental in bringing minerals to the rainforests of Lusaṃrīte. 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.

Other than the major continents listed above, there are at least two "quasi-continents" which are generally landmasses too large to be considered islands but smaller than the other continents, although the terms used in Eventoan languages are often applied to other lands:

• Quánea straddles the northern tropic due west of southern Purédo, the closest landmasses (where its first settlers came from) are however the islands northwest of Siceron, the northwestern subcontinent of Euxiten (or itself a quasi-continent, see below).
• Méride is an equatorial (between 12° and 2°N) landmass in the ocean between Témo and Euxiten, just distant enough from both continents to have not been settled in prehistorical times. It is just barely larger than at least two landmasses considered islands (Holenagika and Nāfo), but due to the distance from other continents it is not grouped with either.
• Éte, Oduran and Tregos, while part of the great northern landmass, are often considered to be quasi-continents due to the isolation;
• Siceron is usually considered to be the northwestern subcontinent of Euxiten, however it is a separate landmass divided from the main one by shallow straits. It is also substantially larger than all other quasi-continents.
• The continent of Sođeu is made of four major landmasses, sometimes all considered quasi-continents on their own, even if the largest makes up nearly 65% of the entire continent.
• The islands of Holenagika, north of Evandor, and Nāfo (Toyubeshian: Naafọ), the largest of the Toyubeshian islands in Eastern Lusaṃrīte, are both large enough to be considered quasi-continents, but are geographically and historically tightly linked to the respective mainlands so much that they are considered islands; Nāfo is, for legal purposes, considered to be part of mainland Lusaṃrīte (as are a few other islands in the Lusamritene Inland Seas) by the government of the Dundulanyä Confederation, which it belongs to.