#easternmost

[jadafitch]

Lubec Channel Light, Lubec, Maine. At low tide, the "Spark Plug" is virtually surrounded by mud. This mud is one of the top spots in the state for fall shorebird watching. Thousands of sandpipers, plovers and other little long legged birds make a stop here, to fatten up on worms and other small invertebrates, before making their way south for winter.

[serpentface]

What’s the architecture/layout of old Bur, how do modern people perceive the ruins?

The city in its peak was very large and spread over both shoreline and a network of small islands. These islands comprised a waterfront district connected by a network of bridges and canals, where a large portion of its non-agricultural lower class lived.

It had a fairly well organized and efficient freshwater+sanitation system across most of its span (the canal district had less effective plumbing largely due to logistical difficulties, most of its wastewater was instead flushed by rain powered cisterns). The water system was powered by the Hsuke river and made fresh water readily accessible throughout the majority of the city (though few homes had direct freshwater plumbing). It had several major public baths, and the homes of the wealthiest members of society had their own private bathing pools.

In this part of the world, it is broadly regarded as once being one of the most beautiful cities to have ever existed. It was particularly noted for its water gardens (still a fixture of present day Burri culture) which were absolute marvels of engineering for that period, with the majority of these being entirely artificial and supported by its network of aqueducts. These hosted thousands of ornamental plants, fish, and fowl, as well as fruiting trees and shrubs. They were treated as a public work meant to benefit all citizens, and existed throughout the city.

The palace in particular was noted as impressive, in part for its architecture but mainly for its gardens. These hosted 'exotic' plants and a menagerie of animals from across the empire's territory, and existed in part as a symbol of the state's power and reach. It was a trend for emperors to bring in the fiercest animal from each conquered province to the grounds, with the an-nechoi being the beast of choice from the lands across the sea to the east, with one (Probably erroneously) cited as killing thirty servants in the process of moving it into the gardens.

The palace was located within the temple district. This district housed over a hundred shrines to the various lesser deities of the pantheon, and temple complexes to the seven chief deities (the firstborn gods who created the world, all other gods were later descendants). Old Burri temples were Kinda similar in shape to a ziggurat, though had an accessible interior space and a central tower which housed the shrine. At this time, the chief gods were believed to physically inhabit their temples. Each god had its own high priest permitted to attend to their shrine, with the emperor being the high priest to Inanariya (king of the gods) and the only person permitted to directly commune with this deity. The foundations to these temples are relatively intact in the present day, though none of the towers remain (collapsed in earthquakes with no one to rebuild them).

The city was heavily fortified, having one external wall surrounding most of its length, and an internal wall surrounding the palace/temple district (which doubled as a fortress).

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The period of sea level rise began with a 500ish year period of mostly gradual increase, which occurred slowly enough that most infrastructure could adapt very easily and the problem went unnoticed by most (the city of Bur experienced most of its Growth during this time). It then culminated with about a century of (relatively) rapid rise, which is the direct cause of the city's abandonment.

The canals flooding had always been a problem during storms, but this began to occur with notable frequency, alongside the water level as a whole rising quickly enough to be noticed on an immediate human timespan. The canal district was maintained for a while by rerouting some of its waterways and building up barriers, but it was the first part of the city to be abandoned. Things got more serious when the mainland parts of the city grew increasingly impacted by storm surges that never seemed to fully retract, and major parts of its surrounding farmland were hit by surges and tidal waves, and rendered too saline to remain arable.

The actual single biggest cataclysm was the collapse of the city's mainland sewage system. It was built with flood canals as a failsafe, but these were built to withstand heavy rain rather than an encroaching ocean. Storm surges would cause large segments of the city to be flooded with sewage (including some of the freshwater plumbing), and serious disease outbreaks would follow.

These issues were enabled/exacerbated by earthquakes (the region is geologically active and this isn't unusual) that further damaged and mingled the sewage and freshwater systems. One earthquake and its subsequent tidal wave was a turning point, and the resulting breakdown of (already strained) infrastructure rendered a large swath of the city uninhabitable in the space of about a week. This also just caused immediate damage to much of the city's architecture/walls, and collapsed the tower of the temple to Inanariya (never a good sign). This is when the full exodus began, first with people flocking to un-flooded parts of its city and farmlands, and those who could afford it fully relocating to other cities/towns.

All of this issues were compounded by the 1st Burri Empire already being in a period of collapse at this time. This was largely a matter of simple overextension. Its borders were constantly under attack by rival states/its victims, sometimes with great success. Bur's own population had burgeoned well past what the imperial core land could sustain, and its cities relied predominantly on extraction of foreign grain/goods to feed their people. It lost most of its eastern land holdings in a fairly rapid timespan (overextended with wars at multiple fronts), which caused frequent famines in its core.

This put pressure on its final emperors to invest in increasingly desperate expansionist projects, while attempting to keep up public morale with lavish public works and objectively stupid vanity projects. The attempt to excavate a canal at the Viper seaway's 'tail' (one of the few eastern regions it retained secure control of at that point) was in part a desperate act to revive its economy by opening up/monopolizing a new trade system. The amount of money and manpower sunk into this ultimately doomed project was followed by Bur being fully ousted from its eastern holdings, and was one of the final straws in its collapse.

People in the city of Bur proper were dealing with the double front of starvation and their homes + streets + immediate water supply being flooded with seawater and literal human feces. These issues impacted the lower classes first and most severely, but ultimately transcended class boundaries. Famine grew more and more rampant, not only with the loss of the colonial holdings that supported the population but of farmland in the imperial core- much of the city of Bur's immediate farmlands were unproductive due to repeat inundation with saltwater during surges, and the farmland along the Yamage river to the north was rapidly being captured and pillaged by the Hsem (historical enemies, a nomadic group with a khait warrior culture from further west).

All this was fucking unlivable in of itself, but also had very obvious implications in the context of Burri emperors also being high priests and the chief intermediary between the gods and the people. Not only was the government failing to sustain its citizens to begin with, but signs of divine disapproval were deeply apparent.

So the last days of the 1st Burri empire were a chaotic period of civil unrest, most acute in and around city of Bur proper. This involved near-constant peasant revolts and several attempted coups. The last Burri emperor (of the First empire) ultimately fled the capital of Bur and reestablished in Titenegal, declaring it the new capital. This was then sacked by the Hsem within a year and after that it was fucking Joever.

The city of Bur was functionally abandoned by this point. People still Lived There and there were several attempts to set up a new government, all of which failed in the short term. After the collapse was complete, its inhabitants were mostly just peasants who built up new homes further inland and sustained themselves on the remaining farmland. Few people lived permanently in the city proper due to all of its intact infrastructure being effectively non-functional without the governmental bodies/human labor to sustain it.

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It should also be noted that it was Extremely not just Bur that was flooded, the sea level rise was worldwide (resulting from a collapsing ice sheet) and almost Every coastal city during this period experienced the same issue. Bur's demise was just notably dramatic in that it was once the most heavily populated human city that has Ever Existed, and directly correlated with the fall of the empire it hosted.

The flooding was fairly gradual, but it's been 7 centuries since the first Burri empire's collapse and the fall of its capital city, and many contemporary records were lost to the immediate chaos and to the large span of time since. Cultural memory tends to reframe the flood VERY rapid on a human scale, many of the stories describe the city being swallowed in a single wave as an act of divine punishment (the popular notion at the time that the last emperors deeply displeased and shamed the gods has stuck into the narrative, often exaggerated into stories of them being horrifically debauched blasphemers guilty of the worst disgraces imaginable). Even more conservative accounts tend to imagine the totality of the destruction taking place over the span of about a year (merging the memories of the immediate earthquake devastation with more gradual elements of its slow flooding). People widely believe that most of its residents drowned in the city's cataclysmic demise, and that the ruins are now Extremely haunted.

The state of the flooding is not 'completely under the sea' and you can still walk/wade through most of the inland ruins (the canal district is effectively submerged, with most structures that Would be above the water level having collapsed against the strain). As such, some people Do Live Here. These people are mostly smugglers and pirates using the ruins as a hideout, and/or opportunistic hunters and fishermen who won't let ghosts stop them. Entering the city ruins is currently forbidden (largely Because of the criminal nature of basically every motive to go here (even hunting, which is considered poaching)), but enforcement of this rule/active patrols to prevent entry are inconsistent.

The majority of Old Bur's inhabitants are animals. The un-flooded parts of the city and its gardens are now a host to a thriving community of native plants and animals (and a few descendants of escaped non-native zoo animals/ornamental plants that adapted well to the conditions).

The egret shown here is a foreign species originally brought as an ornamental bird. In the centuries since its first import, it has become widespread and occurs on both sides of the Mouth seaway. It can hunt in both freshwater and saline environments, and a very large population lives permanently in the ruins of Old Bur.

Its common name is the ghost egret. Contemporary Burri folklore holds that the ghost egrets of Old Bur are literal ghosts, carrying the souls of those who died in the cataclysmic floods.

[reikunrei]

woke up to see my neighborhood has been entirely surrounded by fire now :) literally on all sides

[way-out-there]

Montauk Point State Park. The paradise I found in New York.

[endure-ac-survive]

i find it lowkey funny that nova scotians call alberta and such "out west" because literally everything is west of us

[no-passaran]

Photo by 若昔难得 (Flickr).

It's known as the "Old Dragon's Head", and it's the last part of the Shanhaiguan (or Shanghai Pass) where it reaches the Bohai Sea.

Map from Travel China Guide.

This is the end of the Great Wall of China.

[bearbench-img]

ニホンサイトウタン

日本の最東端は、北海道の北東端に位置する納沙布岬 (のさっぷみさき) です。この岬は、日本が誇る美しい自然景観と、その戦略的な位置で知られています。 納沙布岬は、北海道の根室半島の北東端にあり、オホーツク海と北太平洋の境界に位置しています。この岬は、その険しい崖、荒々しい海岸線、そして広大な海原の壮大な景色で有名です。

手抜きイラスト集

[magmacannon]

q, b, L, h, s, andddd x for bothul

yess thank u... Hell Yeah

a little bit of background for Bothul below too ofc

Bothul is a big egotistical dragon who is convinced that she is The Best There Could Ever Be (as a lot of dragons, when they get big and old enough, are) and is trying to access Greater Powers for herself in a very specific way by digging into the ground in a weird magic-rich area and seeing what he can find and use. He has a gaggle of minions/followers that I'm working on making with my wife and a very devoted bard who brought a lot of their current competition for Bothul's attention to their dragon in the first place. You know how it is

B. Describe their family dynamic. - oohoho okay! Ever since Bothul was a little wyrm that popped out of his egg and was the only one of his siblings that survived to reach sentience (Dorna dragons work in an interesting way), she was her parent's Most Special Baby. Unfortunately for them, Bothul got too good at being the most special baby and probably took over a good portion of their territories after he became a young adult and got bigger than either parent. I think there's a certain amount of pride there, especially after she moved and wasn't stealing their (over-competed) food supply. Bothul would commend her parents on their support and correct decisions in making sure he ate as much as he needed to Get Strong.

H. Where is their favourite place to be? - Her Evil Lair.... genuinely though it probably is whatever setup he has down underground now. I think it's gotten to the point where Bothul doesn't feel super safe leaving, but that's because there are things that she doesn't have the capability to fight lurking around down there. Before it was likely still her lair - a well-furnished place with a hoard of magical items and expensive bits she's collected over the years is hard to beat, especially when there's a cool bard singing about how great you are while you chill.

L. What is their secrets to happiness? - Hands-down and without question, dominance.

Q. Do they have a signature look or fashion? - Bothul is currently stuck in non-designed hell, but he incorporates a lot of crystal armor and baubles in what he wears. VERY purple fashion overall as well, and likely a fan of intense eye makeup (maybe?? not too sure yet pff).

S. What’s their relationship like with their parents? - As explained above! Distant but he looks back on them about as fondly as a dragon usually does.

(A little extra here, Bothul's current 'family' - if it could be counted as such - is a bunch of people-pleasing suckups who are doing their best to either win Bothul's favor, kill a more-liked minion for power, and/or potentially wanting to kill Bothul himself to inherit all of his Very Powerful Items. Fun!)

X. What’s their biggest fear? - Whatever the biggest, MUCH more powerful thing is down below her. Her way of handling it is to try and maybe take the thing's power for herself, but she leans too hard into the pride and it WILL be her downfall.

[jadafitch]

West Quoddy Head Light, easternmost point in the US of A. PRINTS, TEES, TOTE, ETC.

[lilietsblog]

tfw no "dead east" option

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[sso-maev]

PUTTING JORVIK ON THE MAP: SIZE AND LOCATION

WHERE IS JORVIK?

Finding Jorvik’s exact location is actually pretty easy.

”Jorvik, located somewhere between Norway, Iceland, and the British Isles, of which it was once part, is a nexus of worlds.” - Jorvik Calling, Prologue.

This is still a pretty large area, but one that’s significantly narrowed down by reading Four Stories from Jorvik. Anne’s segment Midnight Sun establishes that Jorvik is at the very least partly above the arctic circle, to the point where Anne can see it while riding by Jorvik Stables in the middle of the night. This also puts Jorvik pretty close to the tectonic rift between the European and American continental plates, which handily explains why Jorvik is a volcanic Island.

HOW BIG IS JORVIK?

Jorvik’s size requires a bit more speculation, and I’m relying on two book sources.

1: Jorvik stables is a bus trip from Jorvik city.

Anne lives in Jorvik City but goes to school with the other soul riders in Jarlaheim, and has her horse at Jorvik stables. We know that she goes there by bus, so the distance between Jarlaheim and Jorvik City shouldn’t be too large; I’m capping the max length of the bus ride to about an hour.

2: Valedale is less than a day’s ride from the wineyard.

In The Legend Awakens, Elizabeth and the soul riders are heading to Pi’s Swamp and sleep over at the Wineyard. The soul riders wake up late and leave after having eaten breakfast and lunch. The sun is ”at its highest point in the sky” when they leave, so probably around 1-2PM. It’s twilight when they arrive, and the Baroness comments that they showed up in time for the evening feeding of the horses. Since the days are shorter in late October/early November, which is when this chapter takes place, we can guess that they arrived at around 5-6 PM.

Mapping out the most likely routes for these two trips, the route to the Wineyard is about a third of the bus route from Jorvik City to Jarlaheim. Additionally, the bus would drive on average ~70 km/h because of Jorvik’s smaller roads. The average walking speed of a horse is 6 km/h.

Now, the Valedale-Wineyard trip could take anywhere between 3-5 hours, but I’m inclined to believe that it’s on the lower end of that scale to keep Anne’s commute as short as possible. That leaves us with a 18 km long ride, and a 54 km long bus tour that takes 46 minutes. Pretty reasonable!

RESULTS

With these new measurements, we can figure out the actual distance between different places on Jorvik. Most importantly, we can measure the absolute width from Jorviks westernmost to easternmost point: 92 km, or ~57 miles!

Having figured out an estimate of the island’s size and location, we can now put Jorvik on the map!

[travelmanposts]

Byron Bay, Australia: Byron Bay is a beachside town located in the far-northeastern corner of New South Wales, Australia (in Bundjalung Country). It is located 772 kilometres north of Sydney and 165 kilometres south of Brisbane. Cape Byron, a headland adjacent to the town, is the easternmost point of mainland Australia. It is the largest town of Byron Shire local government area, though not the shire's administrative centre (which is Mullumbimby). Wikipedia

[leflaneurbrutalistedefees]

Eyy look at that it's the lighthouse that inspired the drawing in my profile picture

[serpentface]

Amarzi Kos nomad showing off his eagle.

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'Kos' as an ethnonym groups a set of closely linguistically/culturally related peoples who make up most of the population of Kosov, one of three omas (a large territorial division with its own regional government) of the contemporary Burri Republic. 'Amarzi Kos' refers to a group of nomadic pastoralists who occupy southeastern edge of the Grajyi plateau steppe that effectively forms Bur's western border.

Kosov is the largest of the Burri omas, encompassing the easternmost edge of the Daginarya mountain range and a small portion of the high altitude Grajyi plateau. Kosov is landlocked and sparsely populated across much of its territory. The majority of its people and cities are clustered along the Hsuke river valley system, its tributaries, and the lush, rainy southern foothills (all of which are highly favorable for agriculture). At higher elevations, most people practice seasonal transhumance to and from mountain pastures, alongside terrace farming of hardier high altitude crops.

The Grajyi plateau is a different story. Its entire span falls into subtropical latitudes, but it is substantially cooler year-round than the lowlands, and experiences much less rainfall. The vast majority of the plateau is wholly unfavorable to agriculture (being mostly grassland with areas of cold desert), and subsistence depends almost entirely upon the herding and grazing of livestock for dairy, blood, wool, and dry dung fuel. Amarzi Kos pastoralists mostly rear horses and khait, and do not typically slaughter their livestock unless as an act of desperation. Almost all meat in their diet comes from hunted game, and most hunting is accomplished with falconry.

Falconry is of significant cultural import across much of the broader Burri sphere, largely as a leisure activity for nobility and the otherwise wealthy. To Amarzi Kos nomads, it is instead a matter of core subsistence, providing meat during harsh winters and furs for warm clothing and trade. The two raptor species most commonly used on the high steppe are the golden eagle (shown here) and the black falcon (similar to a gyrfalcon in size). The golden eagle is often used for its great size and strength to catch fairly large game such as jackals, the niive cat (a dogsized predator), migratory geese, and even (small) gazelles. The black falcon is used predominantly to hunt mid-sized birds, especially grouse and pheasants.

Men do the majority of the hunting during the winter while most women and young children attend to the livestock, cooking, and weaving. Women participating in falconry is culturally acceptable, though they will usually be given falcons as handling golden eagles is considered to be men's work. A boy's first successful eagle-hunt (which they will begin participating in as a teenager, using one of their father's birds) is a hallmark of coming of age and indicates that they are ready to trap their own bird.

The god Gen Yanna, a very minor deity of falconry in the broader Burri pantheon, has an expanded role in the religious practice of Amarzi Kos nomads (and some other groups on the plateau). Here he is re-contextualized as not just a falconry god, but the patron deity of Grajyi steppe and father of its people. Ethnic Amarzi Kos claim to directly descend from him, via a lowlands Kos woman he abducted as a bride long ago. He is the one who taught his descendants how to capture and train wild birds for falconry (and gets credits for teaching some other facets of high-steppe culture as well, such as an alcoholic fermented horsemilk drink, and the flying of dragon kites to ward off evil). He himself owns ten legendary birds, including a fearsome dragon he bound with a divine bridle and uses for hunting and as a flying mount (dragons in the Burri sphere are gigantic birds with 2-4 reptillian legs, feathered wings, and the head of a cockerel).

Across most of the greater Burri sphere, shrines to the gods have fixed locations within homes and town/city temples. This isn't practical for nomadic pastoralists, who instead build shrines along migratory/trade routes and visit as they pass by in their yearly journeys. These shrines are cairns (structured as a low outer stone fence surrounding an inner rock pile) upon which offerings to the shrine's assigned deity can be placed. The biggest shrines (built up from centuries of travelers adding stones) become de-facto focal points of religious practice and are referred to as sky temples.

The great sky temple to Gen Yanna is visited by most families on a yearly basis as they pass nearby, in order to pay respects to their divine ancestor and request his boon during the lean winter months. In addition to sprinkled offerings of milk, yogurt, and alcohol, a falconer will leave some of their bird's feathers at the shrine. This temple is surrounded by tall wooden stakes to which visitors tie their offerings, and the god's presence is felt in the sound of hundreds of feathers fluttering in the breeze.

[northameicanblog]

St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada: St. John's is the capital and largest city of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is located on the eastern tip of the Avalon Peninsula on the island of Newfoundland. The city spans 446.04 km2 and is the easternmost city in North America (excluding Greenland). The closest European settlement is Fajã Grande, Azores, Portugal, about 2,000 km away. Wikipedia

[mapsontheweb]

How a word for "banana" from Papua New Guinea spread with ancient trade routes, becoming the scientific name for the banana genus. The Trans-New-Guinea word is also the source of the regular word for banan in languages like Turkish, Somali and Amharic

This is based on "Things your classics master never told you: a borrowing from Trans New Guinea languages into Latin" by Roger Blench. As far as I know, it's the easternmost word to have made it into European languages in pre-colonial times, having spread from New Guinea (where bananas where domesticated) along old trade routes. Some words have travelled further though, such as the Aymara word for 'potato' into Maori.

by LlST-