Awen (Early Access)

Here's our starting map.

The solar climate here is Temperate; four seasons, spring/summer/winter/fall, with snow in the winters. Most biomes will therefore also be temperate.

The red arrows indicate Hot Wind Currents; prevailing winds come from the north-east, and heat up that area a good bit; if there are hot rainforests, that kind of thing, they'll probably be on the north or east (unless you've got some geothermal activity or something in mind).

The blue arrows are a Cold Ocean Current; so the west coast gets some cooling there and that southwest corner could be fully frozen, if someone wants.

So, Class, please open your Awen PDFs to page 6......

We're going to do two 'rounds' of biomes at once, as in the Lifescapes section of the book. Your job here is easy. Respond to this post with two map coordinates (A3, F7) to stake your claim to those (That way, you can take your time figuring out what you want there and come back, and nobody will have accidentally poached the location you were thinking about).

Then, go to the book, figure out what biome you'd like to center on each coordinate, along with modifications and maybe a bit of description (no names, though; there's nobody here to name things yet), come back here, and respond to yourself with the full description of those biomes. If you've got thoughts on your selected areas, and want to discuss before finalizing, we can chat about them.

After someone posts their descriptions, feel free to ask them a question about the flora and fauna, if you like, which they get to answer as they like; things like "You said there's caves. Anything living there?"

(Remember not to jump ahead and introduce Kiths anywhere; they aren't here yet!).

G7, C6

seedling2 years ago (1 edit)

D6 (I assume D is going vertically? So that's the one between all the mountains?) Oops - that one is adjacent to another one but maybe that's ok?
I8

Yeah, should have been clearer given the hexes; letters are straight verticals, as for a grid.

And side-by-side is dandy!

seedling2 years ago

D6: Arid temperate shrubland, getting close to desert in the hot summers, in the rain shadow of several mountains. An important source of minerals, and also especially aligned with the magic of rocks. Many strange rocks can be found here with crystal patterns that are unique to this place.

I8: Cold peatland, almost constantly shrouded in fog. The peat bogs are full of life, being warmer than the surrounding area. A particular berry can only be found here which can cure most diseases and cause wounds and other injuries to heal at a remarkably fast rate - animals here are quite long-lived. Its leaves make a purple dye.

Question! In the brushland: How are plants and/or animals affected by the rocky and crystalline strangeness, if at all?

seedling2 years ago

Mostly plants and animals are indifferent to it, since it doesn't directly act on them. In the dry season, larger rocks tend to move, slowly but subtly, which causes minor problems for burrowing creatures and for plants near them. And the rains dampen this effect, as to the rare large patches of vegetation. In fact, it's possible that this effect would spread further if the environment were not conductive to it manifesting.

Question for D6! Do the crystal patterns move? Do the rocks drift?

seedling2 years ago

The crystal patterns only move on geologic time scales, but the rocks do slowly drift.

F8, I6

H7 is a Forested Cove, riddled with interconnected caves that go deep underground into several huge cavernous areas that are typically flooded during high tide. The area is typically moderately temperatures, but sometimes during winter the water will freeze in the underground caverns, causing low, ominous sounding groans and creaks to echo through the entire cove.

D10 is a Huge, open grassland with rich, dark soil from a Volcano miles underground that is still active but (for some odd, unexplained reason) has eruptions that cause only minor earthquakes in the area while. A strange natural phenomenon, (arguably a natural wonder) Lava is diverted through naturally formed chambers and tunnels to have the lava flow into the deepest part of ocean to the North West. The climate is warm, even in the winter you could walk around comfortably in a T-shirt. Because of the volcanic activity there are several hot springs in some of the small stone outcroppings across the grasslands.

Question: On the grassland: What's the largest predator / prey pairing? (Like: Wolves and bison, lions and gazelles, blue falcons and miniature moose)?

Largely bigger wild bovines with big horns and shaggy fur being hunted by packs of wildcats with green and yellow highlights in their fur.
There are also small critters resembling gophers and slightly larger animals like wild deer that are also hunted by the wildcats.

Question! What's the largest thing that lives in H7?

Gigantic, bear like creatures, over 14 ft tall on its hind legs. Has elk horns, dark oily fur like an otter and can comfortably swim in sub zero waters with its webbed feet. It eats whatever the hell it wants, and is generally cranky and murdery.

That's a hell of an image. Awesome!

I6 - Fungal Shrubland: Unlike most 'shrubland' this area is warm and humid most of the year from moist winds blowing down off the ocean. The flora is sparse with 1/2 - 1 meter tall bulbous capped mushrooms occasionally breaking up the terrain along with stringy tufts of enoki mushrooms. The bulbous capped mushrooms are hostile to most other lifeforms, secreting a substance into the soil that impedes normal plant's growth and, during the dry season, emitting spores that grow in the lungs of animals slowly clogging the lungs and killing them. Animals have two main forms of adaptations to protect themselves from the spores. The first is separate breathing and digestive tracts with efficient filters over the breathing apparatus. The second is a hybridization with another fungus which has replaced scales and fur with fungal plates, these plates draw nutrients from their host but provide protection (they are quite hard shelled) and resistance to the killing spores.

F8 - Snakes in a Plain: These lush grasslands are a vibrant green during most of the year turning to a bright red when dry season desiccates the dominant grass. The grasses grow well partly owing to the fact that only one large species grazes this area. The lumbering 5 ton hairy humped quadrupeds wander solitarily except for breeding season feeding on the grass. They owe their dominance to the fact that the entire predatory ecosystem of the grasslands is dominated by serpents and they are the only creature to be resistant to the extremely potent venom of a territorial viper. Snakes fill the usual predatory niches from ambush predator to quick chaser, even taking to the skies with a species that springs into the air before unfurling flaps that allow it to glide and dive down on prey. There is even a huge constrictor which attempts to prey on the young quadrupeds crushing them and then carving off chunks with its razor tipped tail to swallow. No mammalian predatory species manages to compete and most of the mammalian herbivores are small rodentlike creatures ranging from miniscule to hare sized.

These spores: Would inhalation masks (and serious discipline around them) provide the user with sufficient protection to live here?

(Basically: Can later people really live in this area without extreme adaptation?)

Probably. Alternate ways people could live here include seasonal migration (this is only a problem during dry season) or developing some sort of anti-fungal medication (possibly extracted from the shells of the mutualistic fauna).

Question for I6! Are there any fungus-animal symbiotic relationships? Can you give us an example or two?

dreampod2 years ago (1 edit)

Some fungal symbiots have formed to provide protection against the lung spores. These generally have their fur or scales replaced by hard fungal plates. A couple examples are an armadillo-like mammal with overlapping fungal plates and reptilian creatures with large hardened cap mushrooms as a turtle-like shells.

G-7 This is an arid desert steppe, hot and sandy. It is the home to large lizards with leathery skin and large layered hide flaps that cover their more vulnerable heads. They are quite large and can can carry up to 600 lbs. Their hides can be tanned and they lay large eggs that provide sustenance to others in the ecosystem.

C-6

This region is full of icy wastes cresting and creating enormous hills and mountains of frozen water and stone. One can see frozen within the ice the giant fossils of great birds with enormous wing spans that easily would block sunlight as they flew over. Their beaks are cruelly sharp and full of wicked teeth. They are centrally located around the greatest ice floe in the barrens, a landmark.

The frozen birds: Are they fully fossilized (like, water and minerals have replaced the tissue with a filled recasting), partly so (so there are tissues or feathers or something frozen in their original state), or like "caught up in ice mid-flight", frozen, or.... ?

I think some tissue remains!

Question - in G7, what do the big lizards eat to survive, and where/how do they find water?

I think the flaps might cover a long roll up probiscus so they can drink like cactus water and deep wells.

I think they eat plants and stuff. Herbivores.

G7 question! Does anything big eat the eggs, or is it a small army of little things that eat the eggs?

Lots of little guys eat the eggs and 1 or 2 predators eat the little guys

That's a cool visual, a zillion little mammals/lizards/etc swarming over a giant egg to collectively open it.

(Going to print off a copy of this map, throw these biomes on and spread them around, see if we need to go further to fill it up.)

Sounds good!

(Wait, just realized Rossum hasn't posted in yet, Der.)

For some reason, the main image isn't loading for me. I think I found the blank one that matches in the other thread on PDF "blank maps 2022a" p5.

I think D2 is that largish island in the Canada-looking bit, so I'll take that.

Also E-F 7? The bay with land on five sides? Sorry, I am not sure about the coordinates.

D2 is a Shrublands biome, and I'mma choose two modifiers if that's cool. Cave-riddled and Outcroppings. I am imagining something like this:

Lots of cave species and underwater passages. Maybe something that grazes.

The other bay area is a Wetlands Forest. Something like mangroves or cypress, super dense wooded area with waterways below.

The modifier I want to see here is Utility Plant, the mangrove-cypress-baobab trees are well suited to dwellings within their massive trunks and branches.

I am setting this up to be a major port when we introduce beings, if yall don't mind seeing my sneaky plans.

There's a cave-laden woodland on the south end of the big bay, so I'm going to move the wetland forest with trees you could live in up to the north of the bays.

Which makes it almost entirely shielded from ocean weather, but a *bit* of a sail inward for a coastal port.

On the other hand, giant trees, easy weather: That's a shipbuilding hub waiting to happen....

I trust you to move it where it makes sense. And yes, trees make ships! :D

Thinking about biomes and major geographical features at 2am last night (as one does) it occurred to me that major rivers seem to be missing. Given how places like the Amazon, the Mississippi, or the Nile can be civilization defining features as well as acting as major transportation paths and barriers to fauna movement it seems like they might make a worthwhile addition to the bits of geography that the game cares about.

This is probably fair. Over on the RPGnet side, our biome discussion included a bunch of rivers, but only one (which is huge and explicitly Amazon-like) went on the map.

More might be a good plan.