Caranus, history part one

So there is a second continent.  It is Africa to this world, meaning most specifically it is the place bipedal naked apes first took to being bipedal and wearing clothing.  It is also where civilization first rose and fell, rose again and fell again.  It rose and fell many times, because unlike Africa, this continent is mostly boreal and cold.  Which is the excuse, but not the cause.  The cause is that there is only one large strip of fertile land on the entire continent.  There is one or two tropical regions but for the rest it is filled with poor old soil and is covered with trees.  There are no primates anywhere else in the world, but there are analogues that fill the various niches on Caranus.  There are Demi-humans here, as they evolved here too, except for elves, but they are here too.  Humanoids did not evolve here, but there are a few that are here too.  But that is in the history too.

Humanity rose here and then spread through the continent.  Civilization rose where they had a lot of leisure time, and this that in the extreme north west of the continent, where there was true tropical weather year round and where the soil was rich with volcanic ash.  The civilization spread, many iterations occurred, but eventually the entire western arm was under their control, from the rich tropicals down to the tundras of the south, where the arm was connected to the rest of the continent.  Separating the arm was a reach of the ocean that extended on its eastern flank.  The empire was the first to develop boats and sailing ships and thus well before the empire extended to the deep frigid south, there were colonies in the subtropical northern reaches opposite the ancestral Capitol of the empire.  There they interacted with the still uncivilized natives and exploited their resources.  

The empire began to grow very decadent, it's citizens enjoyed great prosperity that rose the lifestyles of all it's people.  Sanitation, free for all public bathes and a basic welfare system for the very poor to live on.  People devoted themselves to the arts and the sciences, but began to neglect other concerns.  The outer colonies were the first to go, the succeeded by rebellion and neglect, they were sometimes left undefended and jealous or vengeful natives attacked and took them over and eventually the southern reaches of the empire began to feel pressure.  The push took over a thousand years, but eventually the push became a source of fear in the empire and they woke from their millennial slumber to find that their defenses were not up to the task of defending them, that the infrastructure had crumbled and they began to retreat from their frontiers.  Once the retreat began, the retreat became a head long rush to the core of the nation.  Three generations saw the lands cut in half and the armies get a reputation for running than fighting.

Through this time thought, the was one measure where the empire did expand and that was in the expansion of their knowledge of the world.  They had many brave explorers that mapped the shoreline of the continent and searched the great seas for new lands and new resources.  The seas were vast and expansive, dangerous beyond compare; many expeditions were never heard from again.  One form of expedition had particular success, fisher fleets: these were grand vessels that spent the majority of their days fishing and hunting sea elves.  They found many distant islands and a few new untapped  resources.  But it was when they stopped hunting the Sea Elves and discovered they were sentient did they gain the most insight to the world.  It was from these elves that they learned about the even more distant landmass far to the north and west.  A promised land, in the dialect of the sailors, car a nus, lands of promise.

Of Sea Elves.  Millions of years ago, there was a primate that lived by the warm seas and increasingly used the seas as a form of protection from predators and as a source of food too.  They adapted over millions of years to live closer and survive longer in the oceans, to the point where they could live deep in the seas and never come on land.  They evolved in groups and exploited the riches of the warm seas and had leisure time.  They build civilizations and discovered great leviathans and fled from them.  They discovered, as a race dangers greater than those that they fled from in the geological past and took to living in the shallows where the behemoths could not go.  Some took again to land, in multiple locations all over the world.  Some took to the brackish waters near rivers, some took to the rivers themselves.  Elves are everywhere, but they are not closely related to humans at all, only in the very distant past; the closest match would be a distant ancestor to the lemur, that they look human is just an accident of parallel evolution.

The news hit the dwindling empire as a distant hope, but as hope.  Expeditions were financed and thousands of bounty seekers tried and died attempting to get there.  They all failed.  A few made it washed up on an alien shore to live out the remainder of their lives victims of storms attacks by great sea leviathans.  Eventually though the pressure on the empire became too much, the great magical colleges that studied the mysteries of the world were turned against e invaders, they had little destructive power and their foes had much more experience with that sort of magic.  However, the empire's sorcerers were much more capable when they turned toward exploration.  When they were thrown into the task, to find one last way to escape the fall of empire, they succeeded.  

The journey was long, after the true destination was discovered through more trial and error and a lot of death, over a year by the most direct route.  The largest ships the empire had would not be enough, they could only transfer a few people and get back.  The decision was to send specialists and tools to the new lands and build the appropriate aid there and send it back, building new ships to send the raw resources back.  Magical communication and magical guidance allowed the trips to be direct and relatively quick.  Magical propulsion cut the journey down considerably, but it was still a year long journey.  Fleets of fishing vessels reduced the need to bring supplies, but attracted more dangerous natural predictors.  An alliance with groups of sea elves aided theses adventurers, as it allowed them to venture forth and trade with nations further a water. 

It took three celestial years for the colonies to become self sufficient, and another before they began to send regular supplies back, but it was too little and the empire was starting to fall to pieces.  A plan was made to evacuate the ruling family from the spiraling decay and plans were made.  The great betrayal it was called years later, as the people who laboured to insure the great fleet's construction were to be left behind, stripped of even the little protection that royal military provided.  The court astrologers, who were to be brought along with the rulers, saw into the future and saw great destruction if this plan came into fruition.  Disaster for the future of Caranus and for the people of the empire.  They contacted the magical colleges and a second great fleet was constructed in secret, one that would ensure the best possible future for all.  A year before the imperial fleet was ready, the plans of the imperial family were leaked, the very eve that the magical colleges left the empire for the New Promised Lands.  The resulting riots, destroyed the imperial shipyards and the ruling family was overthrown.  The gates of the empire were thrown open and the barbarian hoards that there pounding on the gates rushed in.  They rushed in an began looting and fighting with them selves over the riches.  The people of the empire dispersed amongst the victorious captors as slaves or were allowed to simply exist, which was better than the seers saw in the stars.  The Imperials, died as they would have as the seers saw, but the colonies, they went on to greatness, which if the imperials had reached they would not have.  

Thus began the great and long lasting magical empire began in the Promised lands.  The timeline for the prologue was thousands of years; the empire was not one empire but a series that ruled a region.  The last empire was the last for thousands of years to gain as much control for various reasons including interventions from outside.  What I did not say was that the empire was Black. The tone of their skin was black.  That matters to us, but not to them.

Like the arrival of a the Orc horde and the rise of humanoids, but that is part of the grand history.

Long ago, the first settlers arrived in the Promised Land.  They arrived on the Eastern shore which was a vast virgin forest that stretched from the deep south to the temperate north.  There were no enemies to fight except for those that they brought with them and they had a strong alliance with the Sea Elves who dwelt in the shallows.  There was a whole continent to explore that was fertile and open to them: paradise. 

The Magi quickly rested the colonies from the Governors sent by the empire and used their magic to make choices for the people.  The choices were good and the planning was long term in nature, so although initially the people had difficulties with the rule, later generations enjoyed it greatly.  Still morale was high in the early years, the production was not being sent to a far away war and could be used by the people for themselves and to expand the colonies.  The colonies were separated greatly, as much as a thousand kilometers apart, but with the mages, communication was near instantaneous and that helped keep the colonies cohesive.  There were no hinderances to humans on the continent and this was a mixed blessing.  No foes meant that people were relatively safe alone in the forests and could go and establish freeholds if the mages let them, which they did not, because there were dangers that they could not see.  This caused some resentment, until Dragons and dragonkind were discovered.  

The key to the successes was that the Sorcerer Kings controlled how large the settlements got and how wide spread they got.  They spread, new Sorcerers meant new settlements and they followed their rules about working within the environment.  

Much is clouded about these times and this may be a generous rewriting of the early days considering how The Second Great Empire came to an end.  What the history says is that each town grew around a school that raised sorcerers to rule and to explore the mysteries of the land and the cosmos.  The outskirts expanded only to meet their own needs and nothing more.  They expanded slowly and were far enough away from each other to keep their impact on the world small.  As the schools expanded the towns around them expanded.  After years they would become cities.  The expansion of the cities into a true empire, with many city states connected together, took many centuries and were the work of many generations of mages.  This state of expansion lasted until one or more of the city states achieved enough power to challenge the might of the powerful dragons who controlled the skies and the land between the cities.  

The rise of the mightiest of the sorcerers occurred as the search for immortality rose amongst them.  As they lived longer they wanted to live longer still.  To live longer they had to gain more power.  It became a never ending cycle.  Longer lived mages were not the issue, it was that longer lived mages ceased to be connected to the people they protected.  They became self centered and neglectful.  At a certain point they began to research necromancy and extension of their life beyond what was natural.  

The city states had spread through the jungle regions of the south east, they spread to the extreme south in to the areas thought to be too hot and there they flourished.  In the east the the rule of the Lich Kings solidified.  The liches sought out more and more power and their city states broke from the collective rule of the Council and began to form larger nations.  They infringed upon the realms of the dragons and there were fierce territorial battles fought, many cities fell, but some prevailed.  Those that won against the dragons gained greater control, often taking control of the recently fallen cities.  

On Dragons.  

They never stop growing.  When they are born, in the seeds of rain, they are small and numerous, but as they canabalise their brethren and grow, they hunt in a larger range.  Like soap bubbles in water, the space between larger bubbles is filled with smaller bubbles and so is the territory of dragons.  Large dragons have large territories that exclude all other dragons, smaller dragons fill the spaces between, as the bubbles merge the smaller become bigger and push out the smaller.  When a bubble bursts, the space slowly fills with smaller bubbles.  In Caranus, the city states flourished in the spaces between the bigger bubbles, where the bigger dragons ruled.  When they pushed into the larger spheres of influence, conflict ensued.  Dragons after a certain size is reached become like a force of nature, their firery breath is like a firestorm, the wind from their wings like a gale, and their tail hits the ground like a landslide.  Those are the dragons that the Lich Kings fought; they still avoided the dragons whose breath was like a raging volcano, winds like a tornado and whose tails knocked over buildings one hundred meters away.

Where the cities were in more temperate climes, the physical dangers outside the city states were lesser and when rulers became liches, the people sometimes rebelled and fled the cities and into the wilds.  It was this way that the great plains became settled with people.  Besides the dragons, there was not too many dangers roaming wild in the world.  There were the dragon kin and not much else, besides the lions, the tigers and bears.  There were advantages too.  The dragons while dumb and wild when smaller gained quite a lot of intelligence when they got big and many humans negotiated with the dragons giving them tribute from their herds.  And there were Elves.  

The cities in the extreme south were the last holdouts to necromancy.  They built fantastic cities with large regions under cultivation, they were in the space between three very large dragons, where there was a fourth, that the others removed.  Terrible wars were fought between these holdout cities and the great Lich Kings, but slowly something unexpected happened.

After many centuries of rule the Lich Kings and their city states began to disappear.  The extreme of the climate that kept the populous from captive in the relative safety of the cities had a price on the dead bodies of their rulers, they decayed faster.  The power of the liches held the jungles and the wildlife back when the lich's power broke, the wild flooded in.  The jungles were home to much worse than the temperate plains, poisonous snakes and reptiles, lizards that could eat a cow whole.  First thought to be dragon kin, but later proved to be not, they never-the-less tore the inhabitants and the cities asunder.  

Investigations into the heart of the cities found most of the buildings reclaimed within a few short years by the jungles, and they also found a deep and darker evil shard of the lich's power deep in the heart of the city.  Best to be avoided entirely.  The eastern forests have been avoided ever since.

Fear of necromancy made the practicing of magic a rarely studied thing, but eventually, it's powers proved to valuable and important to be permanently avoided.  That and there were so many good examples, the Elves used it, the dragons used it.  Dragonkin even use it.  All things in the world use it with corruption coming with it.  So the mantle of magic was once again hoisted upon the shoulders of man.  And the societies of the plains once again flourished.  

To be clear, the histories show that it was not paradise, that there were conflicts and wars and great empires rose and fell, but due to the size of the continent and its fertility, wars were not common.  It seems though that magic was its servant for many years, it was its curse as well.  There rose a great empire in the dry rain shadow of the Eastern mountains, north of the great bay of Storms.  The nation practiced summoning dimensional portals to bring in water and resources from far away.  They brought in mineral resources too.  Soon the empire in the sands was more prosperous than any time before or since and they turned the southern deserts into paradise.  It was said that distant kings envied the wealth of the poorest person in this land, but as these stories so often end, tragedy occurred.

It happened suddenly and the destruction was total.  The ripples of that day are felt everyday across the world.  A mage summoned the most powerful thing in all the multiverses that would fit through his portal.  He summoned an intergalactic colony-ship from an alternate world.  The space ship tumbled and rotated in the sudden gravity well and the populous was ejected as the spaceship tumbled down to the city and exploded.  The explosion vaporized the empire, and turned the sands to glass, pushed the land up into a mountain chain and polluted the waters afterwards with radiation.   The escape pods from the ship landed all over the planet, most on or near the continent.  Several thousand all told.  They were not exactly human either, they were what became known as orcs. 

The settlers landed in the old world where they fought many inconclusive wars. They landed in the plains and they fought more conclusive wars.  They landed in the water and they quickly moved back towards the continent.  The obliteration of the empire and the wars that broke out were on a scale that no one had seen before, the technology of the survivors of the colony-ship was great, the simplest mining tool, to the simplest cooking appliance could be turned into weapons that sundered kingdoms and in addition to those they had actual weapons.  Within a few months most of the wars had ended, the few thousand had killed millions before the bulk of them were defeated. The lands were defeated smoking ruins and the dust from the first explosion turned the skies grey with ash and an unnatural winter descended upon the entire world.  

It was in the midst of this disaster that hope died again, a force larger than the one that wracked havoc in the continent, approached from the sea where they landed and they were mostly part of the defensive force the spaceship deployed and almost a million colonists.  The people's were mostly unaware how close they came.  The humanoid troops landed on the west coast and were resoundly defeated by a much smaller sacrificial force that became known as the Protectors.  They used chain magic to cast a spell that removed everything down to the bedrock to another dimension where they were cast in stone.  The sacrifice by the force of Protectors went unnoticed as everything suffered this fate in that land.  The land continues to suffer from the effects of this spell.  There is no soil, no plants no life.  There ARE shadows that are cast upon the surface from figures that are not there.  

On the Protectors

About the same time as the devastating explosion there was another magical experimentation occurring.  The city states in the south were still extant and much research was being done.  It was being done in many fields at once, but one proved to be more promising.  Time magic.  The Mage who researched it needed more time to do research away from his bothersome students and created a room to do research.  The Mage entered the room and studied far days and came out to discover time had not appreciatively passed.  His research progressed quite quickly from then on and after a matter of a few weeks had perfected his chamber.  The devastation in the north occurred at this time and a large tsunami threatened his entire civilization and his solution was to remove them all until it was over.  But there was an error and an unexpected glitch occurred and the city and it's people we're lost.  

Then they came out alive.  But changed.  They were different.  They were evolved and they were incomparable in every way to the people that went in.  Longer lived and more magically attuned.  They ceased to be human and were more than that.

Just Give Up

Because giving up means giving up.  Giving up means there is no hope.  But maybe I *should* give up, there is no hope.

Let's see I joined Plenty of Fish years ago, the site is infamous for men who compete in the one week challenge, to date and sleep with one woman everyday for a week.  And there is enough men out there that say they have done it, or nearly done it.  Men brag to my friend that women are desperate on that site and it is the easiest thing to score there.  *I* have had one date from that site, and well I scored, but I had to pay for it.  I found my first Prostitute on Plenty of Fish.  I was also robbed when I showed up to one date as well.  But I have not met any of these desperate women.  I have not met any women at all in about six years on that site.  Well not true, I met someone yesterday, but she was not interested in dating at all.  I was her first meeting and we had been chatting for nine months.  

So perhaps Plenty of Fish is not for me, despite that huge track record of people hooking up.

OkCupid.  I have had better luck on this site, more first dates, more second dates, no prostitution.  No relationships, no one night stands, lots of, "You are a nice guy but not what I am looking for," chats. I think I get about one date a year.  It has an algorithm that asked you questions and you rate how important the answer is and you get a match percentage based on that. Because some people would love to date someone who thinks gays are going to hell, the moon is bigger than the sun, and a right handed glove turned inside out fits on the right hand, I am not one of them.  

Ashley Madison.  I have been a long time subscriber, because there are single people there too and because I want to have sex too.  A whole site of people who *want* to have sex and admit that is their primary goal.  And not once.  Lots of scams, but no dates.

LavaLife old site pay site. Two dates with the same person got lucky, but nothing else.  Spent about $100 to get that date.

Molson.com free site, not a dating site, pre-dating sites.  Met a person and dated for a year.

The problem is that if I cut out these sites, my chances of me meeting anyone drop to zero.  So what is hope worth to me?  How much money do I throw away for hope?  If I can't get a nibble from a site known for the ease of hooking up, maybe I should just give up.

Admit that there is no hope.  For me.

TELL ME

I don't know the difference between friendships and relationships.  

Please tell me.

I am great at friendships.  I just had a non-date and she wrote me afterwards to tell me that I was wonderful and would love to be friends and I was a real treasure.  I try to be a great friend.  I don't see the difference between being a great friend ad being in a relationship.  Is that why I can't have one?

Please tell me.

Don't tell me that you just have to know.  Don't tell me that because it does not help.  I try to be positive.  I try to be myself.  I tried being someone else.  I don't know the difference and it is killing me.  Literally.  As in it is driving me to suicide.  I can only think about reason to exist.  I can't grow anymore I can't flourish.  I am sustaining and that is it.

Tell me. 

Caranus

Caranus— is the work of my life in my off times, it is the land I have been silently building in my off time for centuries, no decades.  Some years more than others.  I should go public with it.

Caranus is only one continent on a world, a magic world, where things are not what they seem for the people living there.  It is big.  Caranus is a continent, it is a wide expansive plain, the Plains of Caranus and it is a river.  The River.  

Everything is bigger on this world, I began building it in high school and there was an actual map that I mounted on my wall; the lines slowly fading as markers do.  I don't have it anymore because of the fire.  It did not burn, but smoke and water did it in.  It did burn though in my head and it is still there.

Saturn.  It is a Super Earth, the size of Saturn.  Or there about.  That part is not important.  It orbits far from the bright sun at the center; that is important: the year is about 25 Earth years long.  There are three suns (also important), one blue that no one can see, because it's light is scattered by the atmosphere, one green, that appears yellow to everyone on the surface and one red.  The blue is the primary and does the most to heat up the surface.  The green and red orbit each other as they orbit the blue.  They orbit the Blue once every Earth year, but because combined orbits of the planet and the two suns, it appears that there are 24 years in the orbit.  It is all very complicated.  The thing is, is that it is scientifically accurate at a level and magical at another.  

There are three goddesses and three consorts; that is the simplest part of that arrangement, everything else gets complicated.  The three consorts were divided between two moons apiece.  So there are a total of six moons.  The three consorts, with their dividedness, are most often worshiped.  Because they are divided, their areas of control are more readily discerned.  They are granted their powers from the divine goddesses, just as their light, is the light of the suns reflected.  Their dual nature also allows for aspects, polar moralities to be worshipped separately or together, love, hate and marriage.  Bountiful harvest, disastrous, and consistency.  War, peace, and struggles.  But each is a reflection of the goddesses, but in a way that mortals can use.  The direct power of the goddesses can be used sparingly by mortals and so they are not worshipped directly except by the foolhardy.  

Each priesthood has been granted one truth that they share only within their upper hierarchy as a way to identify each other.  The truth is not apparent to the general public.  For example, due to the fundamental nature of the Blue Goddess, she is unknown and unknowable to the people of the world; Reighlee Scattering scatters all of her light, so that there is not apparent source, there is no Blue Sun.  In the same sense, her light is everywhere, she is the center of everything, the other two Suns orbit her and she not them, but still she is invisible.  The Blue Goddess is Magic.  The Green Goddess and the Red Goddess dance around each other over the course of a week.  They orbit around the Blue Goddess once a year, so in many ways it is they who are most knowable.  The Green Goddess's truth is that she is not life, plants are green too, but that is because they reject her light.  Another truth is that due to Scattering, her light is changed to Yellow.  She is known to mortals as the Yellow Goddess and so she is the source of falseness, lies and disguise.  The Red Goddess is exactly as she appears to be, but is misunderstood.  Thought to be about Death, she is about life.  When she eclipses the Green Goddess, her light is completely absorbed, she the plants go from green to black, so she is thought by mortals to be the source of all that is destroyed.  The red light bathes the land and makes it appear old, her light is the softest and can be looked upon directly even at noon.  The Moons, the Consorts, have their mysteries too, but while the goddesses' mysteries are about the fundamentals of the world, theirs are more mythological.

How do I describe the world?  It is mostly water.  The oceans are huge, I mean when you think of huge on Earth you think the Pacific Ocean, which nearly covers one whole side of the planet, but when you increase the size of the planet, this becomes a different story.  With the vary best technology of sailing ships and magic, it took the settlers over a year to cross the ocean expanse.  The world runs on all the science that our world runs on but with the addition of magic and divine forces.  The continents are formed by plate tectonics, all the creatures evolved and the rules of science hold equally true there's as they do here.  The sun still rises in e West and sets in the East.  Oh, did I mention that, it spins a different way than our own planet and the weather patterns are similarly affected, but the run the same way.  Humanity did not evolve there.  It evolved on another continent and had to make the passage to Caranus.  No land bridges.  

Caranus from the over map view looks like a giant insect or beast.  It has huge spinal ridge that extends from the extreme south to the high northern latitudes.  It is relatively narrow mountain chain with few passes through it.  Narrow is a relative term, the length of the range, if you were to skirt its subtle cressent curved length looking for the said passes, would be over thirty thousand kilometers and thus the relative narrowness is in comparison, three hundred to a thousand kilometers.  The narrow west coast enjoys nearly total isolation from the East and they prefer it that way.  There are a few demihuman civilizations, the halfling kingdoms in the north, the hollowed halls of the dwarf kingdom, which offeres the only safe passage through the mountains.  The elven nations the breadth of the narrow coast.  The West Coast is maintained in its non human purity by powerfull spells and vigilance by the Protectors, there are demihumans in the rest of the continent, but here they are pure.  The entire west coast recieves healthy rainfall and there is no lack as the conditions here are ideal.  Except in one location, a rock desert midway up the coast, the constant rains scour all sand and soil from its bleached surface, but causes no other erosion.  The eerie landscape is made all the more creepy by the shadowed forms burned into the rock.  If one were to count, the figures would reach the millions, the shadows are burned deep into the rock and the details show that it is the scene of a titanic battle that dates before recorded history.  Perhaps this is why the Protectors keep this coast free of humans.

Abruptness of the mountains is clear to all that journey to them from the East.  The great plains are flat with little change for tens of days and then there are mountains.  There is no gentle rise, there are no foothills, for most of their length, the mountains start in flat flood plains and rise away quickly.  This may seem to be an artifact of creation rather than that of modification, but the great river Caranus, the true Caranus, flows beside the mountains for most of their length.  It is an over exaggeration, but the statement holds true for a third of their length.  The source of the great river is a mystery, no one excepth the Protectors have penetrated the jungles of the south portion of the continent.  If ancient maps and writings are to be believed, the origin is a series of Great Boiling Lakes near the Protector City of Six Teeth.  The same writings claim that the entire region is filled with ruins of bygone civilizations and perilous dangers from these forgotten times.  What the writings are clear about is that the Great river is navigatable all the way to these mysterious lakes and that all expeditions the reach them have failed or disappeared.  

The Great River emerges from the shoulders of the jungles wide and swiftly flowing and into the lower reaches of the Plains of Caranus.   The combination of the great easterly winds, the vast plains and the sharp rise of the mountain ensures that the rainforests flanking the mountains contribute a lot of water to the river.  The journey north sees that river widen and widen until it is impossible to see across it before it dumps into the northern sea.  The river delta is a mass of smaller rivers form a dense marsh for hundreds of kilometers.  Most of the smaller rivers are navigatable, but they change so frequently that even the newest updated maps are only good for at best a few months.  The river dumps silt and sand deep into the sea and has been extending the lands here for millennia.  The water is warm and fresh far from the continent and the waters of the entire bay are brakish and more temperate than other northern reaches.  

The space between the Great River and the Desert to the east is a huge plain that is remarkable in its inconsistencies as for it's samenesses.  The use of the word "plains" is a misnomer.  They are flat on average.  They are fertile on average.  They are covered with long rivers that feed the Great River to the West.  There are open stretches of grasslands, mostly to the east near the desert, but also to the west in the floodplains, but here and there it is broken up by forests, some larger than your country, some smaller than your town.  There are lone mountains, tiny mountain chains, low hills and tall hills.  There are rain shadows every feature that you might expect for the temperature of the climate.  In the north it borders the northern sea and it's cold waters, in the south the tropical and equatorial Glittering Sea.  In the west the Great River and the great Deserts in the East.  There are large countries of all design and many more smaller ones, many no larger than a single town.  Their are nations of demihumans and humanoids.  The key to the entire region is diversity in every shape and form.

The Great Desert is two or three deserts and were created in different ways.  First there has always been a desert here.  There is a second great mountain range that extends from the south along the Glittering Seas and cutting of a peninsula of jungle, extending along the the head of the Sea of Storm and along between the east coastal plains and the desert.  The western side is deep in its rain shadow and is thus a very dry desert, which is the foundation of these great landforms.  Where the northern reaches of the mountains are the traditional mountains, the ones in the south are not.  In the south they are called the Glass Mountains by the maps and it is clear why by all that see them.  The western slopes are covered with thick glass as is the mountain base and the plains below for a thousand kilometers.  Those that witness this plain also talk about its great curse as after a few days all begin to suffer from hair loss and wreaking pains.  The symptoms persist for days afterwards until they die. The eastern side of the Glass Mountains appear to be a jumbled mess of cast stone and boulders.

The third part of the desert is similar to the second, this time though of different origins.  According to rumour, their is a portion of the mountains that have been altered by the Protectors.  It is a rumour because there is only one account exists of a successful journey in this desert.  The winds from this desert are especially hot and the moisture is quickly desiccated from all that approach.  As the mountains comes into view it is clear that they are silvered.  The first rays of the Suns reflect off the mountains in the early morning and scorch a ten kilometer stretch to hundreds of degrees in seconds before the glimmer vanishes.  Upon closer inspection, the account goes on, this is because of a happy flaw in the creation of this artifact, happy because it screens the truth from unwanted prying eyes.  The walls of the mountain are one polished concentrating mirror that focuses the light of hundreds of kilometers of intense sunlight on one spot a few meters across.  The heat brings all metals and rock to a boil in seconds.  The impurities of the material are boiled off and refined to the purest forms.  If the account were to be verified as truth, it would mean that the protectors have a refinery that exceeds every other refinery in the world combined in quantity of refined materials, and no other material would be as pure as one refined here.

The east coast is a landmass of forest and jungle that stretches from the south to the north.  Its coastline is said to equal the rest of the continent and its area is greater than the Plains of Caranus, but that it has never been inhabited before.  There are myths and stories that this was not always so, that there was a civilization there that predates the Desert of Shadows and the Glass Mountains, it may have even predates the Protectors.  But the region has ample protections.  First the jungles of the South, near the source of the Great River are long and wide so journey is effectively cut off from the West Coast.  Access from the Southern Kingdoms of the Plains, is cut off by the Glittering Seas, which where it crosses close to the southern tip of the continent, gets very warm, in excess of 40°C, with very high humidity to boot. Skirting the more northern waters means passing close to the Sea of Storm, a great swirling hurricane that has been sitting in place since the world began, the result of a horrible magical disaster or a natural phenomenon, created in by winds buffeted by mountains and warm water currents adding energy to the storm.  The storm's eye is thought to be hundreds of kilometers across and contains the flotsam of a million wrecks of all ages and their survivors descendants.  The deserts and the mountain ranges prevent access.  Travel from the North is hindered by lack of people, the north was only recently settled, by an insular race of men with a strong cultural aversion to sea travel. If anyone has made the difficult trip to this place, they have not reported back. The Protectors are vague about what is there or was there, but they are not vague about the dangers therein, common looking mundane things being alive and hungry.  Carnivorous trees, speaking rocks with a taste for flesh and tribal humans that look more like animals.

The North is rock and inhospitable.  The clash of landforms and weather was enough to turn most settlers to better areas.  Those not deterred face another prohibition.  The Protectors, denied them access.  Saying for thousands of years that the region was for someone else.  Someone else is there now, and only now some hundred years after it has happened, the people's of the continent have learned this and they are curious.  The Protectors have removed themselves from their sentry posts and it appears that who ever has settled this land are ready to come out.  The land comes to a point in the north, separating the Northern Sea where the Great river dumps its waters and the east coast with tropical currents that sweep from the deep south and clash with cold currents coming south.  They clash creating vast raving whirlpools and eddies, the cold currents stir up nutrient rich materials and the warm currents mix here creating a wealth of sea life, which attracts another sort, massive sea animals and monsters from the deeps.  The warm waters bring rain, the cold cause fog and together they cause great storms that wrack the coast.  And it is far north.  Further north does not exist on this continent and the summers here are longer than elsewhere, but the winters are longer and colder too.  And darker.  The coastal mountains stop this weather.  In the interior the weather is different.  There is summer and crops can be grown, but there is winter too, true winter with cold temperatures and snows that are too deep to pass.  The lake's surfaces freeze ten meters thick.  But in the summer, that is where the Empire gets its grain.  

On Weather

Let's be clear.  There is a slight tilt to the axis and years are measured by all as the time it takes for the dancing suns to get get smaller and bigger once, but this is not an actual year.  A year is how long it takes the planet to go around the invisible sun at the center, the same point that the celestial dance partners dance around.  The "year" is measured as to start and end on the days that they pass between behind the central sun and are eclipsed.  But that real year is many times that in length.  The summers and winters are long affairs, the ebb and flow of the Dancers affect the temperature of the world subtly as the dance and eclipse each other over the course of the week and orbit away and closer relatively to the planet and then briefly disappear entirely from view.  There is a yearly seasonal trend to the weather caused by the Dancers, but the most significant measure is brought by the tilt of the planet and where it is in its orbit of the central sun.  Like on Earth, winter has shorter days and summer has longer days in proportion to the latitude on the planet.  Because the true seasons are six years in length and not three months, there is less variability to them.  The lands and the seas heat up slower and remain warm for longer.  When the jet stream moves north, it moves further and slower and is thus less variable.  The Dancers add to the variability.  So it is in the higher latitudes where the most dramatic effects of weather are seen, where the Dancers dance away for up to twelve years at a time and never set for an equal amount of time.  Where lakes heat up to bath temperatures on summer and freeze solid in winter.  In the equatorial climes there is a different sort of weather.  The days are persistent in length for the whole true year, but two seasons of unbearable life threatening heat spaced with two seasons where life  persists with only great uncomfortability.  In the tropical climes, the weather is deadly warm for a season of six years and nearly uncomfortably cool for another.  The climate of the Plains of Caranus is temperate, the summers are hot and the winters are cold, but not too cold.  Nearer the river there is a boost to the daily temperatures from the heat of the river from warmer climes.  In the Northern Empire, the warm ocean currents keep the climate uncomfortably wet and temperate through the entire winter occasional snowfalls are very heavy and melt quickly.

The push

The push.  It is the push that drives me.  I left for a lunch date in Big Smoke with not enough time to get there.  I had already decided to take my bike with me.  I got of at a station before where the brunch was going to be and I just pushed it.  I pushed myself hard.  I did not go through any red lights but I pushed myself the entire trip, 5-7 km in ten minutes.  The traffic was not that thick, but it surprised me that there w a lot of foot traffic walking on the bike lanes.  People walking with their back to traffic on bike lanes with ear buds in and music turned on.  Loud enough they could not hear me give warning.  But acted surprised when I brushed past them, because brush I had to.  

The streets are quite close together and my destination came faster than I anticipated.  I drove by the place where I was born.  I drove by places that people I knew lived, I drove through streets that I walked everyday.  After my brunch date I drove around on my bike on streets where I used to walk.  The school were the first X-Men movie was shot, a park that I used to walk with my first girlfriend.  All along bike lanes that were not there, when I lived there. Wide bike lanes, where bikes could pass other bikes.  They were all packed with bikes.  Then it was down to the lake shore and the path there filled with joggers, roller bladers and dog walkers.  And bicycles.  The bike path is set up like a smaller roadway with a double line separating the lanes, East and West bound lanes.  The cyclists understood the division, but the others did not.  I did not hit anyone, but I wish I had, as there was the same mix of oblivious people as before, walking in the middle of the lane backs to the traffic with music in their ears.  Dodging one group I nearly hit a cyclist going the other way; I felt her personal body heat wafting off her shoulders as we passed by.  

I admit that I was going way too fast, atleast forty to fifty kilometers an hour, but the signs were posted everywhere that it was a bike lane.  

Dragon watch

It has been kicking around my head in various iterations for a while.  Sparked when I saw a bunch of little birds attacking a bigger one.  I thought what if the other bird just ate them and I thought what if that occasionally happened, how would that have changed the behaviour of those birds evolutionarily?

Core idea: Dragons!

There are many people who see dragons of various sizes from the small ones to e very large.  The assumption has been that they are different species.  It is not true.  The smallest are those seen in the dead of night, those fire bugs, that shine a flame out to scorch night insects.  The very largest live in distant mountains and dwarf most towns with their bulk, and there is legend that there are bigger still.  Some are smaller than songbirds and a few are as big as people.  What is true to all the species is that they have similar characteristics that vary in size only.  They tend to prey on animals a third their size or smaller, but almost never a tenth their size unless they encounter prey in numbers.  They are canabalistic when smaller in size and the larger ones appear quite intelligent.  They are all quite territorial, especially when older, and have been known to leave off other activities to do battle with a rival.  No one has ever seen a hatchling or an egg.  

Until now, that is.  The Great lens maker of city of Gerok beside the Great River that drains the Plains of Caranus.  He joined a series of lens together to focus on a raindrop that had just fallen, and he discovered a perfect pearl like stone in the center of the drop.  He stated that the night before a great dragon had passed overhead and this was the first pearl within a drop that he had seen.  He stated that the pearl quickly unfolded into a minuscule little worm that swam around in the drop and seemed to grow before his eyes.  

** Dragon dust falls from dragons of a certain size, it drifts in the winds until the rain clears it away.  After soaking up the water for a while the dust hatches  into a microscopic dragon which feasts upon the micro organisms and the other dragons that it finds.  The observed growth spurt was more likely the canabalism of the first dragon by the second, although they do grow fast in this stage, it can take hours to grow significantly.  When the dragon leaves the water, it seems to have already developed the power of flame.  In this stage it scavenges off the leavings of bigger animals and preys on nearly microscopic insects.  They have to be carefully as the dragon can also be lunch.**

The ecological niche for the dragon is every level.  The smallest sizes need to eat constantly, the larger sizes subsist entirely on magic.  The in-between sizes cause the most damage to mankind; the house sized dragons feasting once a year on herds of cattle or devastating a town.  Smaller sizes picking off stray cattle or humans more often, goats a sheep.  After they reach man sized, they gain a certain amount of intelligence and control of magic.  This increases as they age and grow.  Although there are different names for different sizes of dragons they are the same creatures.  Sphinxes, manitcores, wyvrens, griffons and many others are just different ways people have used to describe different dragons.  There is great variation in dragon appearance and they have great personal control of their appearances with magic depending on experience and variety.

Crotch watch

I read a post on Facebook a little while ago about one of people's big obsessions: boobies.  I say people because it listed as one of the facts about them that EVERYONE looks at them, men just look longer than women do.  I was a little surprised.  Both that women look at them and I was also surprised at the effect of reading that factoid drew my attention to the fact that I do too and how long I look at them and when I don't look at them.  

Some of the things that I noticed was that variety that they come in and my reactions to them.  Everything from my internal monolog telling the me that person A needs to wear a bra with that mesh top.  Also there was a woman who was heading down the road of severe back issues from the pair that she was carrying, literally twice the size of her head, each.  

What I also noticed was when I did not look.  I did not look when the woman I question made eye contact. I also did not look when it was a person I knew.  

I wonder if people watch other parts too.  Do people watch men's crotches?  

LittleSmoke vs Smallville

I went back to Smallville in Boonieland for a brief visit.  I went to a funeral, but I stayed with a friend.  I love her, as a friend.  She is trying to convince me to come back.  I am unhappy where ever I am, but her selling tactics need work.  She emphasizes the negative parts of my life as to reasons to move.  

But it is the negative vibes I get from the entire town that are pushing me away, the negativity that is coming from me too.

I have lost a bit of weight.  My friends tell me that I should be proud, bunt I tell them I will be proud if it stays off for more than a year and not a moment before.  If it comes back, then I did not lose the weight, something else lost the weight for me.  And then there are other people who notice the weight loss and I see revulsion for the old me.  Maybe distaste.  That makes me feel horrible.  It might be imagined I tell myself.  

The other thing is that moving back acknowledges that I have really given up on dating.  Finding love.  There is no choice there.  The reality of me is that my values more closely match dating eligible children, twenty years younger than me.  I mean, when I broaden the parameters of age for searching purposes on OkCupid, the algorithm tells me that there are twenty women in the 23-25 age range that are +90% compatible, ten women that are 80-95% compatible in the 26-33 age range and about five women who are 70-80% compatible in the 34-43 age range and almost all of the above are only interested in dating within 5 years of their age.  If I broaden the distance parameters I find fifteen women in the +90% range living in BigSmoke who will not date outside of BigSmoke.  Some of them are 99% compatible, considering nearly a thousand mutual questions asked, this is big, but I live too far away.  In Smallville, my options for dating are zero.  So I am left with three choices: stay in LittleSmoke and not date, but have a job, move to Smallville and not date and have a job, or move to BigSmoke and not date because I don't have a job.  

The other stuff is all a factor too, but it comes down to that because I don't want to be alone any more.  Never did, it is just it is becoming overwhelming.  This year has proven to me how far I will sink not to be alone; I will give up everything.  So part of the problem with going back to Smallville is, that as soon as I came back, I started thinking about Cassie again immediately.  I could not stop it.  And I know that that path leads to personal misery.  I am beginning to cry.  Then there is all the bad stuff of the other work place, it is all coming back, but the lure of not being alone at work is getting to be too much.  

I look at the girls, I mean girls, at Tim's here in LittleSmoke and I am desperately trying to see them as not options for happiness.  I have to go.

I want to die still.  More sometimes now.  The thought of being alone adds to it.

Put the F-U-N Back into Funeral

Funerals— it is something that people don't do a lot of these days in this country except when they get old.  People don't go to them when they are young, it is thought that there is a certain age when you are not old enough and there is a certain age when you are.  I guess I was old enough to go to my Great Grandmother's funeral, I was one of her pal bearers.  It was 1987 and I was 14 or fifteen.  Almost everyone at the funeral was older than me and the funeral home fit the people that were there, old and yellow.  The carpet and the wallpaper were the same age as the people there.  I don't remember the food, but I remember all the people hiding away in the nooks and crannies.  It was the first opportunity for me to wear my grey suit that my parents purchased for me a few months ago, it was also the last time I wore that suit, really just a jacket, because of growth spurts making the purchase a waste of money.  The good shoes too, a waste.  But I was a pal bearer so perhaps that was the value.  My father's Grandmother and my Grandmother's Mother.  She was light, but the coffin was not.

I was telling this to a friend, who thought I was talking about ancient history; the entire funeral took place five years before she was born.  My Great Grandfather died more than ten years before.  I only have the memory of a presence and the memory of pictures.  But I did not attend the funeral, I was too young.  As funerals go my Great Grandmother was the only big affair.  Both my Grandmothers went with no fanfare, my grandfather too.  My mother's father went unexpectantly when I was very young and I remember him not a whiff.  The funeral was, in that case was done in absentia as the bodies were easier to transfer when they were deconstituted first.  

Funerals are sometimes not even done.  When my friend Piyush died, I did not know about it until six months afterwards.  I just knew that my letters were returned unopened and I never got a phone call.  His parents arrived and picked up his ashes and took them home to India before I ever knew.  When I found out I was struck as if by thunder.

My sister knew more people in Highschool, so she went to more funerals.  The teen funerals and the funerals that occur because people die young.  But many of my friends never get aquainted with death until after it comes home.  I was just talking to one, who had never been to one.  People in her family died a long time ago or died when she was far away.  

Truth be known I ducked out of a few funerals.  One for a seven year old.  Others I could not duck out of, like my charge as an EA, who died when he was fourteen of the ailment that was the reason for me getting to know him.  It was no less tough to go to his funeral even though I knew from my first meeting that he would die soon.  

Two months ago it was my cousin's wife's funeral, died unexpectantly when on vacation.  A crowded affair with lots of mourners, such is what happens when death strikes the middle aged.  It is a tragedy when there are young people, but more when it affects young people.  Actually, I don't know which is worse, a funeral for a young one, or a funeral of a parent of a young one.

Which is a bigger draw an older tragic couple, or a younger person from natural causes, I will know this time tomorrow.  Until then.

I am back.  I went with a friend who has gone to too many funerals and was raised in a similar church to where the service was to be held.  We were there for our friend.  When he saw me he was very happy, as I had told him I would not be there.  

With my cousin's wife's funeral I got the opinion that it was a more difficult funeral.  There was a lot of animosity.  Her side of the family was upset because he was moving away from the city to be closer to his family and they felt slighted as his daughter was going with him.   Her side of the family was very religious and his side of the family was not.  So the funeral in a catholic church was odd.  There were three groups, their side, our side, and the friends.  It should not have been that way, but it was.

My friend's parent's funeral was different.  After fifty years of marriage, the resentments between families had died down.  The two sides were together and they all came out.  There were the friends of the couple and the friends of their children and there were the friends of their grandchildren.  Fear and loathing began in me and my friend.  It is that churches represent so much to so many, those that go and those that won't, conflicting meanings.  

We bailed.  We left after thirty minutes.  There was another thirty minutes to go before the service began.  Our presence would not have any benefit to our friend, other than letting him know that we were there.  

We were there to let him know that we would be there for him afterwards.  

He called me yesterday, after all the guests had left.  When he was alone.  I acknowledged his grief, distracted him from it and reminded him that I would be up soon to help him more.  He has yet to go through their stuff and put it away, sell it or throw it away.  

You know the duties of a friend.  Be there for them when ever that time is.  And draw them out often.  This means traveling for me back to Smallville in boonieland.