Yora
Maester
I got an idea to spice up the world I created and provide more potential for conflicts and adventures by taking it from a stable middle Bronze Age culture to a collapsing late Bronze Age culture. I always find the scavenger worlds of many post-apocalyptic settings very compelling and maybe this will make it easier to apply things from my favorite stories when working on my own plots.
There are plenty of fantasy worlds that have turned into barren deserts and I actually feel kind of bored with those. I find giant forests much more interesting, and so the environment of the setting is based roughly on Northern India and Southern China, with more remote areas that have conditions like the Philippines, and the American Pacific Northwest region.
To make this world more inhospitable to people, I have decided to go with a period of increased storms, that are more frequent, with stronger winds and a lot more rain. Here in Europe we experience environmental change mostly as droughts and somewhat of an increase in winter storms, which don't tend to bring too huge amounts of rains and come at a time where they don't hurt agriculture very much. But in other parts of the world, tropical storms often bring unbelievable amounts of rains and much stronger winds that damage and destroy the less sturdy made buildings. Increased storms are very destructive, but I personally know very little about how that affects the societies in those regions in the long term. Here I could really use some help from people who know more about it, but also just interesting ideas what I could do with this premise in a fantasy world.
Something that I am familiar with from living near the sea in Germany is coastal erosion and river flooding. I think we have the world's largest mudflats here, which were created in their current state when an apocalyptic storm caused a flood so bad that it swept all the topsoil out to sea in a huge area. What used to be the few major hills are now islands. Hundreds of thousands of people dead, whole towns wiped from the face of the Earth in one night. At low tide, you can now walk between many of the islands across the muddy sea bed. And since the whole area is very flat with very little tree, the mud seems to stretch almost from horizon to horizon. I grew up with it, so I never thought it was strange. But thinking about it now, it's actually really creepy.
Over at the Baltic Sea the ground is more hilly and we have some places where the ground just drops 10 to 20 meters straight into the water. And every winter another meter or so goes down into the sea. Since it's a busy tourist area they usually demolish houses before they topple down for safety reasons. But you get huge fallen trees on the narrow beach all the times, and occasionally forgotten foundations from long removed houses are exposed and crash down as well.
Where I grew up some 20 kilometers inland, any time there is a moderate wind from the east for a prolonged time, the wind blowing on the water surface is enough to make the river slow down a little bit and increase in volume significantly, always completely flooding the same couple of streets that are too low to the normal water level. I think it's basically the same thing that happens in Venice, but fortunately it only affects the same 50 or so houses every time.
Now my first idea is to simply dial up these things a bit. My plan had already been to put all the major cities very close to the coast, or at least on the largest rivers not very far inland. The result is that many cities are getting literally swallowed by the sea. In some cases there are almost intact cities that permanently stand in a meter or two of water and have been abandoned because of it. In other places, the sea facing parts of cities have been eaten away by encroaching cliffs, and with the harbors being destroyed there is very little reason for people to stay in the remaining parts. Those cities are severely underpopulated with just farmers living on the inland facing edges.
Another impact I think at least sounds plausible is that rivers are flooding with such a frequency that the ground becomes permanently soggy and make it unusable for the crops that farmers used to grow. In severe cases, areas with flat ground and very large rivers turn into permanent wetlands like marshes or swamps. Close to the coast, they can become enormous river deltas.
With ports being destroyed and a lot of farmland being lost, all the kingdoms become poorer and have less surplus to trade with other kingdoms, and without trade things get even worse. Overland roads are no longer maintained and grow over, bridges that are damaged or destroyed by floods don't get repaired, and mountain paths that are buried in landslides don't get cleared. And you're already in a pretty post-apocalyptic situation.
In what ways would the remaining population adapt to their new conditions? With no roads and fewer fields, rivers become even more important for fishing and transportation. People living close to rivers that tend to flood regularly would build their houses on stilts. Though that probably only works in places with not too much exposure to wind.
In more northerly regions that don't have good tree cover, I would see people building houses that are build very low and partially into the ground, to protect them from getting blown away and help with heating when there's severe wind chill.
Can sheep and goats graze in wetlands? I know they are popular livestock in many areas where soil is almost non-existing, like the rocky islands of the North Sea. But would wet feet damage their health?
There are plenty of fantasy worlds that have turned into barren deserts and I actually feel kind of bored with those. I find giant forests much more interesting, and so the environment of the setting is based roughly on Northern India and Southern China, with more remote areas that have conditions like the Philippines, and the American Pacific Northwest region.
To make this world more inhospitable to people, I have decided to go with a period of increased storms, that are more frequent, with stronger winds and a lot more rain. Here in Europe we experience environmental change mostly as droughts and somewhat of an increase in winter storms, which don't tend to bring too huge amounts of rains and come at a time where they don't hurt agriculture very much. But in other parts of the world, tropical storms often bring unbelievable amounts of rains and much stronger winds that damage and destroy the less sturdy made buildings. Increased storms are very destructive, but I personally know very little about how that affects the societies in those regions in the long term. Here I could really use some help from people who know more about it, but also just interesting ideas what I could do with this premise in a fantasy world.
Something that I am familiar with from living near the sea in Germany is coastal erosion and river flooding. I think we have the world's largest mudflats here, which were created in their current state when an apocalyptic storm caused a flood so bad that it swept all the topsoil out to sea in a huge area. What used to be the few major hills are now islands. Hundreds of thousands of people dead, whole towns wiped from the face of the Earth in one night. At low tide, you can now walk between many of the islands across the muddy sea bed. And since the whole area is very flat with very little tree, the mud seems to stretch almost from horizon to horizon. I grew up with it, so I never thought it was strange. But thinking about it now, it's actually really creepy.
Over at the Baltic Sea the ground is more hilly and we have some places where the ground just drops 10 to 20 meters straight into the water. And every winter another meter or so goes down into the sea. Since it's a busy tourist area they usually demolish houses before they topple down for safety reasons. But you get huge fallen trees on the narrow beach all the times, and occasionally forgotten foundations from long removed houses are exposed and crash down as well.
Where I grew up some 20 kilometers inland, any time there is a moderate wind from the east for a prolonged time, the wind blowing on the water surface is enough to make the river slow down a little bit and increase in volume significantly, always completely flooding the same couple of streets that are too low to the normal water level. I think it's basically the same thing that happens in Venice, but fortunately it only affects the same 50 or so houses every time.
Now my first idea is to simply dial up these things a bit. My plan had already been to put all the major cities very close to the coast, or at least on the largest rivers not very far inland. The result is that many cities are getting literally swallowed by the sea. In some cases there are almost intact cities that permanently stand in a meter or two of water and have been abandoned because of it. In other places, the sea facing parts of cities have been eaten away by encroaching cliffs, and with the harbors being destroyed there is very little reason for people to stay in the remaining parts. Those cities are severely underpopulated with just farmers living on the inland facing edges.
Another impact I think at least sounds plausible is that rivers are flooding with such a frequency that the ground becomes permanently soggy and make it unusable for the crops that farmers used to grow. In severe cases, areas with flat ground and very large rivers turn into permanent wetlands like marshes or swamps. Close to the coast, they can become enormous river deltas.
With ports being destroyed and a lot of farmland being lost, all the kingdoms become poorer and have less surplus to trade with other kingdoms, and without trade things get even worse. Overland roads are no longer maintained and grow over, bridges that are damaged or destroyed by floods don't get repaired, and mountain paths that are buried in landslides don't get cleared. And you're already in a pretty post-apocalyptic situation.
In what ways would the remaining population adapt to their new conditions? With no roads and fewer fields, rivers become even more important for fishing and transportation. People living close to rivers that tend to flood regularly would build their houses on stilts. Though that probably only works in places with not too much exposure to wind.
In more northerly regions that don't have good tree cover, I would see people building houses that are build very low and partially into the ground, to protect them from getting blown away and help with heating when there's severe wind chill.
Can sheep and goats graze in wetlands? I know they are popular livestock in many areas where soil is almost non-existing, like the rocky islands of the North Sea. But would wet feet damage their health?
Istar
Myth Weaver
Scribe
Troubadour
