Before this game went into coma which it might actually awake from, I made some screenies for Ref having traded maps around, then never posted them:
Also found one which seemed intended for report:
I think it means that I don't feel too bad about xist marching in, but, otoh, he has air mana and an unknown number of wizards in the fog, so I should know I might very well die pretty badly. He won't give peace. With the raider trait and incoming chariots things might be possible, shame those forests that I can't do much about as long as he won't give peace...
Platyceran Shelf Wrote:The shallow waters along this shoreline support a vast bed of enormous bivalves, many with shells wider than the spread of a tall man's arms, and most weighing at least a quarter of a ton. They anchor a benthic forest of seaweeds, corals, and the creatures that live in and among them, all adapted to the special environment created by the giant shells. Harvesting the meat from such monstrous clams requires great expertise in the peculiar demands of their fishery, but their massive shells make valuable building materials as well, and skilled Patyceran clam-fishers can cut the clams' muscles, pry them apart, and harvest the shells along with the meat. Would-be clam fishers without the necessary skill inevitably fail in their attempts to prize open the massive shells or to wrench the whole from the sea floor shelf to which they are anchored, and face risks enough from the sea itself to dissuade all but the most reckless: Between the shallow shelf and the irregular shapes lent it by the gigantic clam shells, the breakers can be violent as they roll in from the sea, and boats must use caution whenever moving among them to keep from being dashed on boulder-sized clams or the rocks of the shore. This does offer an advantage to such boats as manage to establish themselves among the clam beds with good soundings and preparation, at least when facing would-be attackers who have to make their way among the dangerous breakers and avoid running aground on a huge bivalve shell, so locals warn that guarding the clam beds against enemy incursion is of even greater importance than may at first appear.
From the second:
Covenant Shoals Wrote:The rich silt from the twin estuaries making its steady way out toward the mouth of the bay gathers here in the shallows under the influence of outflow and tides to form a maze of unpredictable shoals, supporting immense kelp forests older and more tangled than any living forest of the surface world. Traversing the water's surface between the thick tangles of kelp and avoiding the hidden hazards of the shoals demands slow, careful navigation, but any ship that could wind its way in and prepare its defenses with up-to-date knowledge of the daily-shifting obstacles beneath and at the surface of the waves would be extremely difficult for enemy ships to safely pursue. So ancient are these kelp beds, their submarine soil constantly renewed as the rivers carry nutrients out from the shore, that legends are told of the place from before the ice came and the seas froze: Legend tells that long ago, a pact was made here between the peoples of the ocean and the shore, declaring a peace between them and establishing trade and commerce at the surface of the sea, where the realms of air and water meet. Whether the compact yet holds is as uncertain as the origin of the legend itself, but there is a small community of merfolk that lives among the kelp and shoals that is willing to barter their undersea goods with fisherfolk from the shorelands, and if trade should continue and increase, their numbers - and the value of the goods they can provide - will surely grow. Should the community be entirely destroyed by raiders from the surface though, no one who knows merfolk ways imagines that any more will resume such trade again at the site of betrayal from above that scourged their predecessors from the sea.
Third:
Worldstone Reef Wrote:Not far from the mouth of the bay, the sea waves break across a stony coral reef so ancient that it features in many creation myths: Some say that the marble deposits shaped by Kilmorph near the shore were made in imitation of it or even out of parts of the reef itself in the long-forgotten past - while others claim the world itself, land and sea floor alike, are just overlays of rock and dust and soil on a framework of primordial coral. Ocean life abounds across the coral reef, and the upper and outer reaches of the stony coral can be harvested as building materials, but the foundations of the reef are impervious to even the most powerful sorceries and enchanted tools. It was known to the ancients that any ship that tried to navigate the breakers across the jagged shallows created by the reef must do so with extreme caution, taking it slow, for even the strongest hull can be torn apart when striking the barely-submerged coral - and consequently, any ship that successfully navigates the reef and establishes itself there with the coral to cut off enemy lines of attack would be extremely difficult to dislodge by other ships at sea.
Fourth:
Svalbard Springs Wrote:Travelers from lands in which the ice still has not receded tell of a mountain chain shaped - so claim their myths - by volcanic forces rising up from deep within the earth. If these world-rupturing forces now slumber, they do so fitfully, for the ground sometimes shakes in the region, and plumes of steam or smoke sometimes arise from one of the mountains as though a tribe of giants held a bonfire and were boiling water in enormous cauldrons by its heat. In the midst of all this, a spring bubbles up out of the deeps of the earth, heated by the same fires that are said to have rent the bedrock and built the mountain range around them - and there, the steam is constant, rising and settling, lending its heat to the frigid air of that northern clime, so that the springs are surrounded not by glaciers but by almost-tropical greenery: Not a rainforest, but a mistforest fed by cooling steam. They say too that a temple built around a gigantic idol once overlooked these springs, but it has long since cracked and crumbled, crushed in and before and beneath moving sheets ice among the mountains in the past age, reclaimed by the roots of steamforest plants ever since and into the present day.
Fifth:
Murex Grotto Wrote:A small colony of merfolk in one corner of the bay raises and harvests a rare breed of rock snails in a deep-water grotto, completely inaccessible from the shore. The merfolk have learned the secret of inducing their snails to produce a uniquely vibrant purple dye, oft reserved for royalty, much prized by such merchants as can afford to invest in goods of such beauty and rarity. By learning to keep a calendar of tides, these merchants may meet with the merfolk at the right times of year to get access to the dyes in tradable quantities. Skilled deep-sea fishers, on the other hand, by bringing up delicacies from deeper waters than these bay merfolk can reach, can win more-regular and immediate profits at any time of year through barter with the little mercolony. The care, harvesting, and production of the rock snails and their dyes is a closely-guarded secret among the merfolk, and if raiders were ever to wipe out their colony, production would permanently cease: The occasional rock snail might be caught and crushed for a modicum of dye and a tiny annual profit gained thereby, but nothing on the scale of what could be attained with the help of the merfolk who live there today.
Maurits Basin Wrote:Rumor whispers of a titanic struggle between legendary beings wielding now-forgotten magics beneath a frigid sky, amid vast sheets of snow. The glaciers where the battle took place, and even the frozen bedrock below, were torn asunder, hurled outward, by the force of devastating spells, and the very fabric of the world around them was strained and twisted by the power unleashed there. Now, long after the battle, some say snow and sleet still fall ceaselessly around the basin thus torn open by magic power; some say volcanic vents rise from the earth beneath, burning hot enough to melt even hail in mid-air as it falls. It may be that both are true - that the residue of the two great powers and their meeting still do battle across the basin and its walls, leaving power of another kind behind - for there are tales of a river that flows around the basin without beginning and without end, forever rushing downhill in an eternal circle, impossible in any other part of the world. The river is said moreover to overflow its banks in time with the sun's yearly cycle, annually reclaiming rich volcanic soil from the snow, and thereby to turn the icy basin where the battle raged into one of the most-fertile lands of the south. The tales of this place might never have spread nor ever been believed were it not for the astonishing drawings of the river made by the famed and ingenius explorer Maurits Cornelis, for whom and for whose work the basin now is named.
and
Tempest Atoll Wrote:Alone amid the trackless sea, the ancient coral and seaweed forest of Tempest Atoll forms a choppy ring, white with the froth of waves during the region's many storms, that has grown into legend as a graveyard for wayward ships. Navigating its wide expanse, passing in and out of the circle, demands the same care and deliberate pace as among the oldest and thickest of better-charted coral reefs and shoals, but if a boat once finds safe anchor within the central lagoon, shielded from the worst of the sea's wrath by coral and seaweed on all sides, and shielded from would-be attackers by the surrounding reef and the choppy, unpredictable seas themselves, it will find the interior of the atoll a safer haven than almost any shore so long as it remains there, as if in the eye of the tempest. Of the hulls of unlucky ships that foundered here, blown onto the coral by storm winds, how many have been looted is hard to know without actually sailing in and exploring them. Perhaps some retain their treasures in their holds - or perhaps some retain other mementos of the legend: Perhaps undying victims, or perhaps the ancient curse that raised them after running their storm-tossed ship aground upon the edge of the shoreless atoll.
Sorry it took me so long to get all of these posted here - it's been that kind of week! Here's hoping the game is indeed restored to life after all!
