Worldbuilding 4d: Elfland

And today we're back to climate.  Looking at the whole map of Minaria a moment (and we'll post it here today), there's a tendency for the non-geographical viewpoint to see much of it as having a temperate climate.

Plainly, Shucassam is deemed to have a desert climate ... but what kind of desert climate, exactly?  The Sahara?  Arabia?  Upper Nevada?  Which?  And keep in mind that the Syrian Desert has the same latitude as North Carolina, while Mecca is just slightly north of the latitude occupied by Cuba.  This is quite a difference, though most westerners tend to view it all as one desert.

In the earlier post about Mivior, I defined each hex as 40 miles across.  Suppose that we give Colist, in Mivior, a latitude equal to that of Washington D.C., about the same as Seville in Spain, Athens Greece or Beijing.  Funny, isn't it, that we would assume that Spain and Greece were way south of Washington, but that's only a perception built up by travel posters.  This makes Addat about 360 miles north of Colist ... about the same latitude as Toronto, or Marseille.  Compare this climate and year round weather chart for Washington ...

... with Toronto:

Now, obviously neither of these are commensurate with Colist and Addat; they're on the wrong side of the continent, and Washington is very close to the Atlantic (thus all the "mugginess") while Toronto is not ... but for this example I'm concentrating on a straight line from south to north.  My point is only that there is plainly a difference, and that there would be from north to south Mivior.  Colist is out there on the end of a Peninsula, protected by the Mountains and surrounded by the sea.  Addat is on the sea, but it's exposed to the continental cold weather rolling south from Elfland.  These differences would alter the tempo of living from one place to the other.  We need to be conscious of this.

Consider Elfland, then.  On the surface, it appears homogenous.  In D&D terms, we tend to look at the forest as "all the same," with little change from the north to the south.  Even a little boring; when DMing the setting, it's hard to give personality to any of the hexes, except in their relative distance from Ider Bolis.  In this, knowing the climate can help.

The southern border is just 100 miles north of Addat ... not even as far north of Addat as Ottawa is north of Toronto (about 133 mi.).  Ottawa, however, is not on a Great Lake, like Toronto.  Even over that short distance, Ottawa is more continental than Toronto ... as is the southern area of Elfland that's called "Neuth."

Ottawa is a mere hundred miles from Lake Ontario, but the difference is still distinct, even over that little a distance, as shown by the chart below:

Note how over the little distance, precipitation is markedly up, while freezing begins much earlier in the winter and departs somewhat later.  And also how the "warm" period in summer lasts longer than it does in Toronto.  That has everything to do with the continent heating up and the seasonal barometric high that forms over Canada.

The northern edge of Elfland is about 360 miles north of the southern edge.  In relationship to Ottawa, this is distinctly Low Northern Ontario and Quebec ... I don't have a lot of choices for comparison for this country, but Moosenee in Ontario is about 385 miles north of Ottawa.  Compare it to the above.

It is much, much colder.  It never gets "warm."  Moosenee is on the shore of James Bay, part of Hudson Bay, thus is manages to be overcast despite being in the heart of the Canadian High.  And not a lot of people live there.

This helps us draw some distinctions between one part of Elfland and another, though in all it doesn't seem like a very big place.  There are those who live in Ider Bolis; those who live upon the lake Melting Star; and those who live in that clump of muskeg swamp and islands north of the lake.  The river north of the muskeg is called the "River Rapid" and comes from northern Immer.  The other river, from Aws Noir and the "Spires of the Eternal" has no name ... but we can assume it's frozen solid for six months of the year, perhaps more.  The River Rapid would also freeze through the winter, from November to April.  Neuth is much warmer than most of Elfland, and there's trade from the Melting Star to Addat, which we covered in the Mivior post.  Knowing the climate greatly helps provide different parts of the region with personality.

As a political entity, Elfland is on the fringes.  The game Divine Right decided to split the Dwarven peoples, placing them on two sides of the board ... with Rosengg and Alzak in the far east, beyond Pon, and Aws Noir in the west, cheek and jowl with Elfland.  In human history, similar ethnic groups like this may share some cultural associations with one another, but it's highly unlikely they'd be governed by the same principles.  The problems of Aws Noir and the other dwarves are very different.  Aws Noir is totally isolated.  By climate, even more so.  The mountainous spires would be colder still, and in real terms practically unapproachable by an army.  The same can be said of Ider Bolis.  While the game of Divine Right might enable a player to conquer this region, by any comparison with Earthly geography, it would be much harder than Moscow.  Moscow does not have a huge lake guarding its back door, or an immense muskeg swamp protecting its flank ... as well as "the Mires of the Sinking Kind."

But it fits with recognisable D&D that the elves — eternally a group of self-righteous pricks — would be inaccessible.  I did much the same with my own world, assigning Murmansk to the elves and assuming they'd have transformed it by magic and engineering into a frozen paradise.  Murmansk is one of those places that in the last 500 years has never seen a shot fired in anger.  Calgary also, for that matter.

Thing about Elfland, however, is that while they may have less troubles, they're also somewhat unimportant in the grand scheme of things.  Occasionally, yes, they must fight with Trollwood and the border with Immer is never quite "friendly" ... but Immer has no great crying need for timber because it has no shipbuilding industry.  It has its own wood.  Nor does it have any reason to expect a practical expansion of settlement into the cold, northern Ontario-like woods of east Elfland, any more than Canadians are dying to live along highway 113 in Quebec or highway 11 in Ontario.  These places may have some mineral wealth, but it takes 20th century technology to find it and dig it out, so who cares?

Likewise, a great elf army can hardly pour out of Elfland with expectation of conquest.  The Breaking and the Wetlands to the south are presumably devoid of much food, not to mention cold like northern Wisconsin, while Immer is a cold, wasted land like Manitoba, Saskatchewan and North Dakota.  By the time an elven army had taken Lone Wirzor and sieged Castle Altarr, a combined army of at least two additional monarchies — say, Muetar and Mivior — would be intervening, with the support of the School of Thaumaturgy.  And the Elven flank would be exposed to Trollwood besides.

Thus, they are nicely boxed in, with their one city, their smug superiority and the small trading opportunities their inland status allows.  Political entities without access to the sea tend to become inward looking, particularly those on the fringes of civilisation.  But my feeling is that the elves like it out there.

Once upon a time I owned a copy of Divine Right, but it's long since been lost; many of the details are lost to my imagination, and I cannot find explanations online.  Places like the Mires or "Stump Hole" were starting places for mercenary units.   Undead could be raised on battlefields like "The Unknown Army."  Places like "Sacred Stones" were locations where a king unit could move in the hopes of getting a boon that would give more units, special items or other benefits.

In D&D terms, sprinkling the game world with such places helps provide a sense of adventure for the party.  Stump Hole might be a hard to find, relatively unknown lair for a large humanoid like an ogre or giant ... or it might be a tremendous, defensible rock formation with a community of ogres, too large for a small elven army to defeat, yet remote enough to ignore.  Perhaps it has been entered and "cleaned out" ... and yet the party learns that nonetheless, a new family of 8-10 ogres has settled in and the elves don't know about it yet.

The place Sacred Stones occurs in the "Wild Reaches," a barbarian land so far to the north as to be tundra ... yet it might be a marker for a pathway to some "off-continent" region ... perhaps a land bridge to another entire continent, like journeying through a more southern Alaska into a more southern kind of Siberia.

Battlefields provide context for past political events between Immer and Elfland.  The "unknown" army might have been a third player in a battle that involved existing states; or a fight that took place so long ago that no one's sure who fought there.  Such places are more than a source for undead — a source so large that it can never be truly cleaned up; they are also a source for giving the players knowledge and ideas for future adventures.  Getting to the ancient battlefield is an adventure in itself.  Meeting whatever lives there, who might bar their way, what ancient thing might be learned ... mixed with some possible battles between the party and whatever occupies the place ... makes a good six-month campaign, provided the knowledge is interesting and leads to the next thing.

Placing markers like this provide more than "plunked-in modules."  The subtle characteristics of each place can pull the game setting together in interesting ways, by providing threads between multiple places that paint a larger picture than the existing political situation.  Think of it like a series of ancient Schools of Thaumaturgy, that each — once upon a time — had their hand in many pies, fixing and influencing events in their time.  While recognising that some of these places may be new entities, trying to build what the School has, which they've only started to do.