[BIRTHRIGHT] Across the Sea of Storms

[ryancaveney]

Daniel McSorley wrote:



> I`m thinking of putting a what-if-Columbus-were-right continent over

> there. The part the Anuireans colonized would roughly resemble

> Kamchatca and the eastern coast of Russia, in terrain at least.



I like it. One very important question would be: are there elves in

those endless Siberian forests, or not? If yes, are they anything like

the Cerilian Sidhelien, or not?



> West of the asians, maybe some Mongol-type orcs, because I like orcs

> and I like Mongols.



A fine plan. Two great tastes that taste great together? ;>



> West of that, some mountains,



AKA the Urals and the Caucasus? =)



> then a hellenistic area, which is visited by some far-ranging Basarji

> from the original homeland of that people. They probably sailed

> pretty far, maybe island-hopping to get there.



Sounds good to me.



> In the south of this big landmass, maybe some big island chains

> like the islands between Australia and Asia.

>

> East of Cerilia, there are the Dragon Isles, right, and then the

> Basarji homeland. Probably a long gap between there and my asia,

> that`s about it for the northern hemisphere.

>

> South of Cerilia, we have Aduria, of course, which some people have

> variously put yuan-ti and beast-man type empires on that I know of,

> and the Adurian Empire or remnants thereof.

>

> Any other continents you`ve placed on Aebrynnis?



This leads us to the age-old question, just how big is this planet?



The map we have which shows the largest region is the cardstock terrain

types map from the original boxed set, and its near-twin ocean areas card

sheet from Cities of the Sun. The scale on those maps, taken at face

value, would imply they measure about 2,500 miles east-west and 2,000

miles north-south. With fantasy worlds, flat planets are always a

possibility, but the strong north-south climate gradient implies to me

that the planet is indeed round.** This would mean we can believe the N-S

number, but the E-W number is true only at some specific latitude -- which

we don`t know (or else the "lines" of longitude are _curved_ on the map,

which is a complication all sane sailors (Cerilia`s primary mapmakers, no

doubt) would avoid). Furthermore, properly correcting for distortion

requires we know at least two actual latitude lines on the map and the

radius of the planet.



Now, Cerilia is quite small -- a bit smaller than Australia (if, for the

sake of argument, we take 2000x2500 as a real, rectangular area, Cerilia

would need to cover half of this map to be the same size as Australia;

it`s shown as more like 20-25%). 2,000 miles N-S is about 29 degrees on

Earth -- is that big enough to handle the variation from Aduria`s deserts

to Thaele`s glaciers? I`d say yes, since that`s enough to reach from

Tunisia to Finland (though of course the effect of mountains and ocean

currents on rainfall and temperature should also be considered, not to

mention that desertification is largely the fault of goats...). That

means, although some people have in the past suggested this, it is not

actually necessary to make Aebrynis as small as Mars (one-quarter Earth`s

surface area). In fact, if we say Aebrynis is the size of Earth, the map

position is about the same range as Tunisia to Finland, and the horizontal

scale is set at the N-S center of the map (to minimize the relative

distortion between the edges), then we find that the map in question

covers, say, 30 N to 60 N, and 50 degrees E-W, and really does cover about

5 million square miles (my choice of middle latitude for the horizontal

scale is what makes this the same as the rectangular calculation).



The crucial result of all of the above is this: that map covers only

_one-fortieth_ of the total surface area of an Earth-sized Aebrynis.



There`s plenty of room out there for other continents!



Any thoughts on how big Aduria is? How about Djapar? Thaele?



** As an aside, it`s also probably a bit farther from its star, since its

year is 388 days long; its sun could instead or also be smaller than ours,

but I personally would prefer slightly farther away from a rather more

massive star, so that the amount of solar energy received per unit area is

not too much less than ours, lest we leave the whole planet too cold.





Ryan Caveney

[Arch-Sorcerer Gargamel]

That is really well thought out. Its good to see world-builders not too afraid of science. h34r: <_< :blink:

[Urulòki]

Originally posted by Arch-Sorcerer Gargamel@Jul 18 2003, 06:54 AM
That is really well thought out. Its good to see world-builders not too afraid of science. h34r: <_< :blink:

Indeed there are fine thinkers working on the world of Birthright, should I say the living world of Birthright? B)

[ryancaveney]

Arch-Sorcerer Gargamel wrote:



> That is really well thought out.



Thanks. =) I`m really just following in the footsteps of my old college

buddy Gary Holian, who did a similar calculation for the world of Greyhawk

several years ago: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~monax002/Coun...4/measure.html



But really, AFAIAC, the math is the easiest part. The really interesting

stuff is the actual drawing and populating of the maps, in which area I am

quite pleased to steal^H^H^H^H^Henjoy the work of others. =)



Oh, one other option which I forgot to mention last time: if Cerilia seems

too small to you (e.g., you`d prefer Anuire to be the size of most of

western Europe, instead of just France): it`s pretty straightforward to

roughly double the map scale, and say instead for example that the map in

question actually shows 60x100 degrees, and is placed roughly from 10 N to

70N; this gives an increase of total map area from 5 million square miles

to about 17.6 million (note that it`s less than quadruple, because the

surface is curved). There`s still room for a bunch more continents (it

still goes less than a third of the way around E-W, and still doesn`t

cover the southern hemisphere at all), including Aduria, whatever Djapar`s

attached to, and Daniel`s Eurasia-inspired lands. The trouble this causes

is that now there starts to be a more significant difference in scale as

you go north on the Cerilian continental map -- e.g., Ariya and Avanil get

a lot bigger, but Hogunmark and Grabentod don`t change nearly as much.

This may make the whole "how big is a province" issue even more

problematic -- which might not be so bad, as it provides another reason to

redefine provinces on the local scale as composed of some specific number

of 6-mile hexes, as Kenneth does, as well as to help explain why the

Anuireans had such great success as imperialists.



> Its good to see world-builders not too afraid of science.



*grin* If you`ll cast your mind back, I was the one who discussed Fourier

transforms and quantum mechanics with you some months ago...





Ryan Caveney