#What is happening in Myanmar

[hungwy]

International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan has requested an arrest warrant for Myanmar's military leader Min Aung Hlaing, citing alleged crimes against humanity related to the deportation of Rohingya Muslims between August and December 2017. The military campaign allegedly forced more than 700K Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh amid widespread reports of killings, torture, rape, and arson, with UN investigators determining the actions were carried out with "genocidal intent" — a charge that Myanmar denies.

[not-your-asian-fantasy]

THE PEOPLE OF MYANMAR ARE RISING UP FOR DEMOCRACY

Students, civil servants, nurses, and others are putting their lives on the line to resist tyranny. In order to sustain the movement, they need lost-income support for food, healthcare and housing.

Mutual Aid Myanmar (MAM) is a collection of activists, academics, and policy makers working to support the democracy movement in Myanmar.

Our deep connections in the country allow us to distribute funds efficiently and target activists with the most need and greatest impact.

[ladyimaginarium]

reminder that asia is. fucking massive. btw

[vhstown]

its crazy how it's accepted that there's so many different types of white people but when it comes to POC and especially brown / desi people we're all just seen as like... indian or something . and not even indian just a stereotype of what people think indians are

[meemalee]

Yesterday was the 6th anniversary of Anthony Bourdain’s passing.

I wrote about him at the time for @eater London, especially how important his CNN Parts Unknown episode on Myanmar was to me.

Here are some of the best quotes from Bourdain’s Myanmar episode which show that he saw what was really going on out there, even in 2013 when it was supposedly a democracy.

Here’s the Parts Unknown guide to everything that Bourdain ate in Myanmar, where he ate it, and who he ate it with.

And here’s Bourdain’s full Parts Unknown episode on Myanmar!

If you’ve not seen this yet, you’re in for a treat.

It’s still one of the best pieces of journalism about Myanmar, showing an ephemeral moment in time filled with some fear, but mainly hope. Sadly, the balance has tipped in the other direction since the coup in 2021.

All photos by Josh Ferrell/CNN

[freedom-barricades-bighero16]

Shortlist of the issues I care about / support:

Movements that are part of the Milk Tea Alliance:

Free Hong Kong

Taiwan's struggle against Chinese encroachment

Thailand Protests

Myanmar anti-coup protests

Free Tibet

East Turkestan Independence

Black Lives Matter

Woman, Life, Freedom

Ukrainian resistance against Russia

Free Palestine

If you're asking me why I'm supporting Palestine, that's because I believe human rights should be for everyone in the world and not just for people who are like me. Whoever is under oppression and needs help, I will stand with them.

And my support for Palestine will not diminish my support for these other movements that I'm already getting behind.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[paleodictyoptera]

Can we stop having conflicts and genocides that force survivors to flee their homes and become refugees in a strange land, k thx

[humanrightsconnected]

Be sure to read the latest Myanmar Internet Project's Digital Coup Quarterly. It summarizes the digital oppression incidents that occurred between November 2022 and January 2023 in Myanmar.

[methed-up-marxist]

If between what is happening in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Palestine, England and Venezuela you are still talking about the fucking US presidential election like maybe get some fucking perspective

[judaismandsuch]

An Open Letter to Dropout

@dropoutdottv I am disappointed in you.

I know that this will not change your policy, nor will you make a folloe up statement, as proportion wise the number of people you have lost from your last post, vs. the number of people you will lose should you make an apology and walk back the statement are not in any way the comparable.

But you have failed your Jewish audience.

A group of your viewers accused an openly and actively Jewish guest on one of your shows of being Zionist. Despite him not making any statements since the few days after October 7th.

So you made a statement, saying that no one you have had on identifies themselves as such. And that even if anyone did you would give them the room to grow, and learn, and repent from such a horrific view.

That you condemn the genocide. Which hasn't been found to be a genocide by the international court. Which has a death toll of combatants-to-civilians far less than even just the bombing of Dresden of WWII. An event can be horrific without being genocide. But calling it 'monstrous' or 'horrific' wouldn't have placated people.

Though I noticed that you haven't spoken about the genocide (or at least, wide spread persecution and inhumane treatment) of Uyghurs in China. But that may lead to you becoming completely banned in China. Which could impact your bottom line.

You will give more money to PCRF, and you encourage people to donate to UNRWA.

What is wrong with you?

What is it, that an accusation of 'Zionist', which can mean anything from "Israel exists now, and it no longer existing is bad" to the Kahanist definition, requires an immediate response and excuse?

You continue to recommend supporting UNRWA, despite documented proof that UNRWA members took part in October 7th.

In your first milque-toast response to your Discord's meltdown on the subject you supported JVP, and mentioned that there are several equally horrific events going on around the world.

But you haven't supported any of the other causes.

Several of them are far worse than what is happening in Gaza, but you haven't raised a cent for them.

You continue to tacitly support JVP, despite any affiliated Jew saying that they are clearly not Jewish. There practices show that they don't understand Judaism, and their founders and board of directors is mainly non-Jews. They have a page on ADL describing all the Antisemitic acts that they have done. But you still keep a pinned post in support of them.

Why aren't you fundraising for WCK? They do good work in Gaza, and unlike the rest of the groups you platformed, they haven't had a single accusation of association with Hamas.

But, you treat a baseless call of 'Zionist' as if it were a nearly credible call of 'Nazi'.

You make a post on this, the day before the American Election, but haven't even done a single 'go out to vote' post?

What is wrong with you?

Are you afraid that because @samreich is Jewish, if you don't get in front of demands that all obvious Jews you have on demonstrate their alliance with 'the cause', people will start to ask if Sam Reich is 'one of the good ones'?

To be clear, this isn't antisemitism.

This is performing for an audience that doesn't realise that a witch hunt for Jews, demanding that the Jews show that they are 'good jews' is in fact antisemitism.

This is focusing on one conflict to the exclusion of all others. Perhaps Myanmar and Sudan just aren't that important. Afterall, no one is talking about them.

Feeling the need to address baseless accusations thrown on obvious Jews that haven't performed well enough.

You have sent your message.

I am unwelcome.

I hope it was worth it

[not-your-asian-fantasy]

At least 165 people, including 27 women and 19 children, were killed after Myanmar’s military junta bombed Kanbalu township in the central Sagaing region on Tuesday

[jewreallythinkthat]

Something that honestly scares me is this maniacle belief that no one is allowed to have any joy or enjoy anything because bad things are happening in Gaza. Like people will disrupt anything fun or happy to make sure everyone is aware what's going on.

I've never seen suffering appropriation like this before. Not while Azerbaijan cleansed it's entire 400,000 person ethnic Armenian population, not while China enslaved and is still enslaving Uyghurs, not while there are genocides in Sudan, and Myanmar, and the ongoing hutu-tutsi fighting on the Rwanda/DRC boarder.

Literally every person knows what's happening in the middle east. It's been plastered on every screen for months. The idea that no one is allowed any joy because of that is baffling and counterproductive in so many ways

[fuck-hamas-go-israel]

Ethnic cleansing? Genocide? Apartheid?

Throwing around these buzzwords to describe the Israel-Hamas war because you’ve seen them on social media doesn’t make you right, and it doesn’t make you an activist.

It makes you ignorant, intellectually dishonest, and lazy for parroting biased talking points with no concept about what these terms actually mean.

What is apartheid?

Well, it was first used to describe the political system in South Africa and today’s Namibia whereby racism was institutionalised. This manner of governance meant that clear racial segregation would occur, in a manner that benefited the white race and would actively oppress those who had darker skin.

This meant that there were white-only spaces, white people would get prioritised when it came to education and jobs, and relationships/marriages between white peoples and coloured people were illegal.

Is Israel objectively an apartheid state? There are no laws that actively favour one group over the other. There is a sizeable population of Israeli Arabs that can thrive in the same way as the Israeli Jews can. There are laws against discrimination on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Palestinians from Gaza are allowed to work in Israel through a work permit system. There are about 150,000 Palestinians working in Israel, most of which live in Israel and some come from Gaza/the West Bank. They aren’t denied rights institutionally.

Is it harder to get a job or education in Israel if you’re a Palestinian from Gaza? Sure, because of different governments. It’s like how it’s a lot easier for you to find a job in your own country (in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy) than overseas. But you’re not denied the right to apply.

Of course, if you have a history of violence, a criminal record, or your family has ties to terrorists, then it’ll be a lot harder to get an approved work permit. But that’s not apartheid. That’s common sense, and a regulation practiced by all countries that minimally desire to protect their own population from danger.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide

These two concepts can go hand-in-hand. Ethnic cleansing refers to the mass expulsion or killing of a group of people based on their ethnicity. Similarly, genocide is the purposeful killing of a group of people solely with the intention of annihilating them.

Famous examples? The Holocaust, of course, where the Nazi regime believed in the superiority of the Aryan race and decided to declare genocide on the Jews, Romanis, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, people with “Asian features”, and many many other groups. Anyone who they didn’t think was “pure”.

Their aim was to ensure that the Aryan race propagated without having “impure” blood affecting the bloodlines. They even started a eugenics programme called Lebensborn to ensure that more pure Aryan babies were born.

More recent examples? The Rwandan genocide where the Hutus attempted to wipe out the Tutsis on the basis of ethnicity. They mandated that Tutsis mention their ethnicity on state-issued ID cards in order for the Hutus in power to be able to identify them and then kill them.

Or the Yazidi genocide which happened so recently, in which ISIL killed, raped, and sent thousands of Yazidis into conversion camps on the basis of their ethnicity. They also took Yazidi women as sex slaves and raped and tortured them.

Or the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine State in Myanmar, and how there was a mass killing and expulsion of them from the country, forcing them to flee to Bangladesh to take refuge, crating the world’s largest refugee camp.

Or how ISIS killed thousands of people from Christian groups in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Libya because of their faith, leading the US, EU, and UK to label this as religious genocide and condemned their actions.

Has Israel been practicing ethnic cleansing and genocide on Palestinians all these years?

Well, the birth rate of the Palestinian population in Gaza, the West Bank, and in Israel has been steadily increasing all these years.

So, no. No ethnic cleansing, no genocide. They are free to have as many children as they desire.

The UN Genocide Convention

The United Nations has 5 actions that constitute genocide.

1. Killing members of a target group

Israel is targeting Hamas officials with the aim of wiping out the terrorist group and ensuring that such a deadly attack on Israeli soil doesn’t happen again. I suppose you could call it genocide against Hamas, but they’re killing Hamas because they’re terrorists, not because they’re Palestinian. Shouldn’t everyone believe in genocide against terrorists?

But look at Black Saturday. Look at Hamas’ rhetoric. They repeatedly call for the annihilation of Israel and genocide of Jews. When will the media start believing what they say, word for word, instead of trying to spin it into “hmm maybe they want to kill all the Jews because they’re freedom fighters!”

War has collateral damage. Of course the innocent civilians don’t deserve to suffer just because of the actions of their government, but there have been warnings given to the Palestinian civilians prior to Israel striking the areas. There are consequences of attacking a country first, and then having that country attack you back.

2. Causing people of the group serious bodily or mental harm

The UN refers to sexual violence as the prime example of non-fatal harm.

Sexual violence has occurred. Hamas have kidnapped and raped women and even paraded the bodies of half-naked women around. But I f Israel had done the same, it’ll be the first thing appearing on everyone’s BBC push notifications (without even being confirmed as true).

3. Imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group

Many people refer to the blockade that Israel imposed around the Gaza Strip as an example of this.

This blockade was imposed by both Israel and Egypt in 2005. Its aim was to prevent smuggling of weapons into Gaza, and isolate the reign of Hamas to the region. This was to ensure the safety of Israel and Egypt.

Did this blockade pose serious challenges to the Gazan civilians? Of course. But that’s a consequence of having a terrorist government. If you have a terrorist group running your country, don’t be surprised if neighbouring countries are extra careful about who or what they allow in or out of the borders.

Many authorities from other Arab nations have also expressed approval of Egypt’s border restrictions, and even encouraged Egypt to flood the terror tunnels that Hamas has dug under the city. As a side note, other Arab nations have not historically been very kind or welcoming to Palestinians. Syria has killed over 4000 Palestinians, and many Arab countries are now refusing any refuge for Palestinians. But no one cares about that because it doesn’t make Israel look bad. All they do now is use the images of dead Palestinians under the hands of Syria and reuse them to propagate fake news.

The blockade has been labelled as a human rights violation because of collective punishment. Many humanitarian organisations believe that the blockade has caused the Palestinian civilians disproportionate harm.

Contrary to popular belief, Israel isn’t disallowing humanitarian aid from coming through the borders. Fuel, food, hygiene products, clothes, and shoes have been coming through the borders regularly for years. The Gaza Strip also has electricity and internet access and water.

Do all these items reach the Palestinian civilians? Well, there has been evidence that Hamas has been intercepting a lot of the supplies sent by humanitarian groups. This is not surprising since the UNRWA tweeted that Hamas has stole fuel from hospitals in Gaza in order to launch more rockets at Israel (but quickly deleted it after realising that it goes against their agenda to paint Hamas in a bad light.) In addition, the returned hostages have mentioned that there are many aid supplies hidden in the terror tunnels by Hamas. Instead of giving them to the civilians, they are hoarding it for themselves.

There has also been video evidence that some people are reselling these aid items in stores at exorbitant prices in order to turn profits. This has been well-documented for the last 10 years.

Is blockading the region to mitigate terrorism a disproportionate response? Well, it’s like asking if heightened security and stricter border control at airports is a disproportionate response after 9/11. Is being cautious and worrying about the security of your country an irrational reaction to the constant threat of terrorism?

4. Preventing births

Gaza’s population growth rate per annum is about 1.99%, which is the 39th highest in the world! Their population is allowed to propagate freely.

Israel isn’t preventing births of Palestinian babies.

5. Forcibly transferring children out of the group

No, Israel hasn’t been taking Palestinian children and forcing them to convert/keeping young Palestinian girls as sex slaves. Like I said, if this was truly happening, all the news outlets would be so quick to publish the story before verifying it.

Can we trust the UN Genocide standards?

The UN is known for corruption and have been exploiting the Palestinian people by selling them the humanitarian supplies instead of distributing them for free, which they should because these supplies literally are donations.

The UN also has differing standards of what they would label as genocide. For example, they refuse to call what China is doing to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as genocide, even though the situation does fit many of their own criteria.

Hence, to all of you out there overusing these terms without knowing what they mean, make up your own mind about things. No one can force you to believe anything and no one can force you to change your mind.

But at the very least, do your due diligence and educate yourself before spouting tired buzzwords. Repeating misinformation doesn’t help anyone and can be very harmful.

[jewish-sideblog]

if your blog is nothing but posts combatting antisemitism, and absolutely nothing in the atrocities being committed by israel, please explain how it’s unfair to assume you don’t actually care about the palestinian genocide. you see, when most people care about a cause, they actually talk about it and bring awareness to it

The situation in Gaza has been trending on tumblr and every other social media site consistently for three months. Most major news networks are at least covering the ICJ case and the Houthi strikes this week. Public awareness of situation in Gaza is so high that it’s clearly influencing polling for the US presidential election. Herit/ageposts has basically been talking about it 24/7, complete with an antisemitic rehash of The Crucible. Their posts tend to get tens or hundreds of thousands of notes.

Meanwhile, there are like. Ten blogs on this website that are actively contributing to combatting antisemitic misinformation. We might get 10k notes on a more successful post. Mostly we get slurs and death threats.

Right now there are major conflicts ongoing in Sudan, Syria, Myanmar, Ukraine, and Somalia. Do you care for the thousands of people that have died in those conflicts in the last sixteen days? Have you been consistently posting about them and bringing attention to them? There was a mass shooting at an American high school just last week. Did you make a post about it? Or do you not care about the three children who died? Will your reblog bring them back?

The situation in Gaza is, by leaps and bounds, the conflict with the most awareness in the world right now. There is not a single person who follows this blog who is not aware of what is happening. Jews are sheltering from the thousands of missiles being fired at soft targets from Gaza, or we are in the diaspora, getting hate crimed for a conflict we have no control over. How much more awareness would you like us to have? And what exactly do you expect that awareness to solve? Slacktivism will not save lives.

[snovyda]

You see, from what I have witnessed, people outside of Ukraine are getting an incredibly sanitized version of this war's events. It's all part of the bigger practice, obviously. Just like the topics of ww2 are being sanitized in education.

When a prominent Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko had a public reading of her book in Zurich, she was explicitly warned to not mention the war, because "that would be traumatizing for the audience". They don't want to even hear anything that would be traumatizing!

Well guess what: it should be traumatizing. Nobody should be comfortable with this. Or with what has been happening in Syria, or Myanmar, or anywhere else.

"Kyiv still stands 😎" our allies say, because it's comfortable to say that and not "Mariupol lies in ruins, Mariinka, Volnovakha and Bakhmut are wiped off the face of the Earth, and we are still refusing to provide the aid Ukraine has been requesting for more than a year now after we made it give up on its defense capabilities in the first place".

I keep thinking about all the mass graves that we keep discovering on the liberated territories. And about all the mass graves that keep growing on the still occupied territories. About torture chambers, about filtration camps, about the mass kidnappings of children. About all the rape, organised, sanctioned. I keep thinking about the 7-year old girl whose body was recovered from one of the mass graves, with traces of sperm from 7 different men on her. About the children whose parents were tortured, raped and executed in front of them. And vice versa. About photos and videos of human heads russians put up on tree branches and poles near their positions.

Feeling uncomfortable? Good. You should be.

[elbiotipo]

Notes on a South Asian Tropical Cyrodiil (and more!)

So, many TES fans know that before Oblivion, Cyrodiil was supposed to be tropical. The most striking phrase to describe it, "most is endelss jungle", says it all. The quick and snarky explanation is that Todd Howard watched LOTR, was "inspired" by it, and that's why everything in Oblivion looks sort of like a Rennaisance Fair. In any case, I think it was a huge missed opportunity, especially in a world where most popular fantasy is European inspired, to have replaced what could have been very cool tropical enviroments with what is frankly a lame "Talos used his magic" lore retcon. You can read the 1st edition of the Pocket Guide to the Empire to see what we missed.

But it's not only Cyrodiil which we missed this way… Tamriel just makes more sense as a tropical continent. While the size and the exact location of the continent is discussed by nerdier nerds than me, I think it does make sense like this, and not only that, we have a very interesting world parallel to compare it to: India. From a tropical rainy south to the cold mountains of Skyrim, Tamriel is surprisingly similar to the Indian subcontinent, and many of its geographical quirks can be explained if, instead of assuming a temperate Cyrodiil, we go all out with that concept. This is going to be a long post, you have been warned.

So with that in mind, I'll try to make a not-so brief tour (with some evocative pictures along the way) of a rebuilt tropical Tamriel, following the rains of the moonson:

The position of Tamriel, in this case, would be roughly where the Indian subcontinent is located in real life, that is again, tropical, stretching the Tropic of Cancer (is there a name for the tropics of Nirn? Interesting to think about) Here, we see our numbers pan out well: Tamriel is mentioned to be between 4000 and 3000km across east to west and 2000 and 3000km south to north. VERY, VERY roughly, there is 4000km between Pakistan and Myanmar, and 3000km from Sri Lanka to the northern tip of Tibet. Plot that on a map, and you already can see some coincidences. Now, this is a rather average continent, not Pangea sized like some imagine Tamriel to be. This does help explain why, for example, the interior of Cyrodiil is rainy and good for agriculture instead of a desert. But it also means that it's very likely that Tamriel is ruled by monsoons. Monsoons are complex, but they basically form when there are plenty of warm places for water to evaporate (the South Indian ocean), and mountains that block cool winds from the opposite direction (the Himalayas). We have a very similar situation here, with a mountainous Skyrim on the north of a tropical Cyrodiil facing an equatorial southern ocean. So, what happens are monsoons, perhaps not as strong as IRL India, but carrying rains very deep into the continent. This would feed the rivers and the rich agricultural areas of Cyrodiil, and would have some other consequences.

So let's imagine our trip South to North. In the South, in Black Marsh, Blackwood and Lleyawiin, and Pellentine (southern Elsweyr) we would find, much like in the original lore, humid tropical climates, jungle, wetlands, and my favorite, mangrooves. I would expect mangrooves to stretch in this whole area, across rivers. In fact, one of the reasons why Black Marsh could be so hard to explore and control by the Empires at Cyrodiil would be the presence of thick mangrooves all over its coast. This is the region of Cyrodiil that would most resemble "endless jungle".

(Rice fields in India, what I imagine most of this Tropical Cyrodiil would look like)

However, as any lore person knows, Anequina, northern Elsweyr, is arid desert. Does this mean a contradiction? Far from it, we have a similar example in IRL India: the Deccan Plateau, which has a semi-arid to arid climate. This can be easily explained by higher elevations up to a small mountain chain separating it from Cyrodiil to the north, and the fact that little rain would reach behind this "Anequina Plateau" would make the region of Kvatch and Anvil more dry much like in canon, in this case, more scrublike. This highland desert would not be as harsh as Elsweyr is usually concieved, maybe, but its driest regions might justify places such as Dune. (On that matter, it always bothered me to read about the "cities" of southern Elsweyr and there being only two or three there. If I had to redesign it, I would move some from the north to the south).

(the Deccan Plateau in India, it gets greener or drier according to the monsoon)

Keeping on our tour of Tamriel, the Topal Bay and the very rainy Black Marsh funnels the rainy monsoon from the south towards central Cyrodiil. Here we find the endless jungle of the Nibenay Valley. But unlike the rainforests of Elsweyr and Black Marsh, these dense forests and rich river plains are mediated by the monsoon winds, with dry seasons alternating with copious rain. This has huge effects on agriculture and culture in general, as agriculture is defined by the rythms of the rain. Keeping with our South Asian theme and the 1st edition of the Guide to the Empire, Cyrodiil would have huge extensions of rice paddies, as well as terrace farming and much hardier crops in the highlands, instead of the… well, almost absent agriculture we saw in Oblivion. The food, clothing, architecture and overall culture of Cyrodiil would be very different with this. The original Pocket Guide said some of its main exports besides rice and fruit are moon sugar and silk. Moon sugar in Cyrodiil, can you believe it?

Another thing I imagine Cyrodiil would be famous for would be fish and seafood, well, river food. Rice plantations can host fishes and crustaceans to get some extra protein, and well, what about mudcrabs? Hell, as preparing muddy soil is vital for rice cultivation, no wonder mudcrabs are considered a nuisance. Imagining critters in gameplay in such an enviroment also makes my mind roam. Tigers, elephants, rhinoceros, and this is not even getting into the more mythical creatures you could find, instead of endless wolves… Rice cultivation is also more labor intensive than other crops, and it also has a deep impact on the terrain, "terraforming" so to say, huge expanses into paddies and terrace farms. This level of cultivation also requires an established infraestructure of irrigation. While this does not necessarily means a centralized goverment, as farmers can build it and maintain it by themselves, the rise of an empire, i.e., the Empire, will also increase the complexity of these systems, adding canals, dams, reservoirs and more ambitious projects, like we see in India and China. I am sure some people more knowledgeable about those cultures can comment more.

While this Cyrodiil is a tropical/subtropical region covered in "endless jungle", some parts might indeed resemble the rolling hills and grasslands you see in Oblivion. Deforesting jungle for pasture is something very common around the world (some have joked this mass deforestation was later in canon explained as a gift from Talos lol) and you can see the results, like in tropical Australia and my closer Mata Atlantica, do superficially resemble temperate pastures in say, Europe. Until you notice the palm trees, of course. But yes, I can see the Nords being a mostly herding people (more on that below) bringing their sheep and cows to the tropical lowlands and, well, deforesting to make space for them.

(ranches in Sao Paulo state, Brazil, notice the palm trees)

Imperial City just so happens to be built in an island in the middle of several river crossings, in what seems to be a swampland. The first thing that came to mind when I read that was Tenochtitlán. The districts of Imperial City would have been built over the centuries on artificial islands on a shallow lake, using plentiful mud and organic matter to make fertile chinampas. I believe this would make for a striking sight. Instead of just a city in the middle of a empty island, you would see the White-Gold tower and the rest of Imperial City rising from Lake Rumare, surrounded by rich farmland and its districts joined by walkways. (much like the old descriptions, actually, could you believe I wrote that without reading them?)

(Reconstruction of Tenochtitlán... and I just noticed, it's surrounded by (volcanic) mountains too, much like Imperial City)

Much like the Pantanal is one of the sources to the Paraguay River (which merges with the Paraná and then the Río de la Plata) IRL, here, the swamps of central Cyrodiil would be the source of the Niben. This does raise an interesting question, where is the source of the Niben? Is it Lake Rumare? No, I believe it would be several smaller rivers all the way from Bruma and even Skyrim. These small, violent mountain rivers eventually flow into the Rumare wetlands and only THEN in the placid great Niben. You DON'T want to be caught in one of the mountain valleys in rainy season. This does raise the question; won't the developments upriver, like Imperial City itself and the surrounding farmland, affect the course of the river downwards? There's plenty of water from the rain, but a more developed Cyrodiil might indeed have to grapple with this, supposing, for example, they manage to dam the river.

Looking west, we got the Colovian region, said to be composed of drier highlands and cliffs in the early Pocket Guide. Probably cut from the rain because of the Anequina Plateau, this is indeed more arid or "mediterranean", though I actually see it as more Australian. Maybe some of the drier parts near Hammerfell, resembling Argentine Cuyo and the northwest, would be a distant cry from the wetlands, having thorny dry forests and dry valleys, where yes, you could plant wine. The wetter cloud forests (much like the Yungas in South America, the place where the rain reaches last) could maybe be the home of the last pre-Imperial cultures of Cyrodiil. Fascinating places.

(Jujuy, Argentina. Just *near* are the Yungas cloud forests, where the last rains from the Atlantic meet the Andes, making for some AMAZING places)

Given that I mentioned enviroments near to/on the Andes IRL, let's talk about potatoes. Potatoes are unique crops, because they are the only ones who offer such calories and also be planted in cold enviroments like Europe. Or Skyrim. The discovery and spread of potatoes would cause demographic shifts on people living in cold areas. And they also originated in a unique enivorment IRL: the Andes, actually with possible hybridization from the Magallenic foresWHAT I MEAN, is that potatoes are very important and have been domesticated in very specific conditions. The Wroghtgarian Mountains would seem like a perfect equivalent of the Andes at the first glance, but they would be very different. The Andes, located between the Pacific Ocean and the greater Amazonian region, are very, very unique enviroments. These mountains, however, are in between inner seas. Something like the Atlas or the Alps? In any case, if there is some people who would appreciate hardy tubers that can grow in mountainous places, they are for sure the Orcs, or perhaps the Reachmen. Maybe an hybridization even between them?

This returns me back to Bruma and Skyrim. Some people (who make those excellent Oblivion mods) imagine Bruma with a Tibetan flavor. Personally, I imagine it more like Pakistan or Afghanistan, with lots of mesas and plateaus and valleys. It would look dry and rocky with some very fertile valleys by snowmelt, but it would look like a snowy wonderland on winter, indeed, Pakistan and Afghanistan are very snowy. Eventually, of course, ending up in the great barrier of the Jerall mountains and finally, Skyrim.

(the Alps? Skyrim? No, this is Kashmir on winter!)

In this scenario, Skyrim would be a quite dry place… or would it? There is no need for the Jeralls to be a straight line of peaks like the Himalayas. They could be a more "broken" series of mountains, like the southern Andes, but in any case, the rain from the south would clash into the higher mountains. Indeed, that is what actually happens in the Himalayas, the foothills of the Himalayas are some of the rainest places IN THE WORLD. These small valleys are something very unique and not very well known part of the world IRL. I can imagine the Skyrim equivalent would be as unique too, hard to navigate and live in. The forests of the Rift and Falkreath would be mazes of windy forests valleys, each with their own unique secrets under a perpetual fog and drizzle. This is a very interesting enviroment to imagine, where again, some of the older cultures of Tamriel could still live.

(forests of Bhutan, note how the humid valleys stretch into the distance before the cold Himalayas begin)

However, what does Skyrim look like once you cross the border with Ralof? I imagine some sort of more fertile Tibet, not as high as the Tibetan plateau, allowing for forest and alpine tundra. This is mostly because, while Skyrim is high up, I don't imagine as a plateau, but rather a series of broken mountains like the North American Rockies, which makes sense when you account for all the volcanic activity (there is another super-volcano down in Skyrim but nobody notices). I imagine that Skyrim would be a primarily herding pastoral land before the introduction of hardier crops such as potatoes, and even then. Nord culture would be very interesting reimagined like this; hillforts guarding herds of sheep and cows. It would also create a clash between the very, very agrarian south and the nomadic herding north, with High Rock and Hammerfell a gradient between the two.

But here we enter a problem; if we are operating on a level where Cyrodiil is roughly at the same latitude of India, wouldn't that make Skyrim too far from the poles to allow its tundra like climate, even with elevation? No doubt. Tibet is only as cold as it is because it's the roof of the world and far from any ocean. The northernmost tip Skyrim, like Tibet, would be at the latitude of Turkey, Korea or California, which can get quite cold, but not to the level of what we see on Winterhold or Dawnstar (Solitude sounds familiar, though). What's more, having an ocean up north would only moderate the temperature. Cool currents often don't bring cold per-se, just decrease rainfall. This would end with a very temperate and pleasant Skyrim instead of tundra. Which is on its own, interesting to explore.

Could Nirn be going through an ice age, like it's implied with the dissapearance of Atmora? Possibly, but it would imply revising everything I said before, as ice ages decrease rainfall and mess up with weather patterns all over the world. A colder Nirn would explain a lot, though.

I decide I will stop here, I haven't even touched Valenwood (though its subtropical forest seems rather coherent to me), High Rock (the most boring part of Tamriel IMO), Hammerfell, Summerset Islands (if you don't have tropical elves in your setting, you're a coward), or whatever the hell is going on Morrowind. But I hope you enjoyed this worldbuilding exercise and how to make sense of Tamriel's crazy geography. Next time, I'll try to play with tectonics and see if we can make it even more interesting.

If you liked what you read and would like more worldbuilding, consider tipping me on Ko-Fi and send me stuff to talk about, or just send an ask! I'm the kind of guy who reads encyclopedias and RPG manuals for fun, so I have plenty to talk about about everything from fantasy to science fiction to speculative evolution and alternate history!