Serania
Serania, often referred to in plural form as the Seranias or colloquially as the New World, is a vast continent in the antipodal hemisphere. In Outer Joriscia, the Seranias are typically referred to collectively as Serebria, by which name it was known in several fables extant across the continent in the pre-settlement period.
Summary
Serania, the largest continental landmass in the World, is divided along geopolitical, geographic, and geological lines into Serania Minor, in the west, and Serania Major, in the east; the boundary between the two halves is formed by the Dovgorodine Strait, the Coactian Sea and the Mirsky Canal in the Mirsky Isthmus, the latter being the only existing land connection between Serania Major and Minor. The large islands of Victoria and Rögnuland are often also included into the continent, although they are separated from Serania Major by the Ivarstead Passage. Similarly, the Princess Margaret Islands are often attached to Serania.
Due to its vast size, Serania has a very diverse geography with all possible land-forms, biomes, and climates found in the Old World also found in Serania. Due to its large East-West extension in the tropics, Serania has much large areas experiencing various forms of Equatorial and tropical climate than the Old World. In addition, Serania Major is the continent with the longest latitudinal extension, meaning it has both a northern and southern temperate zone, a unique case on the planet. Serania is also famously the host of the Coactian Deluge, a unique perennial tropical cyclone driven by the heating cycle of the Coactian Sea.
Serania has been isolated from the rest of the planet's landmasses for at least 40 million years, allowing life to develop on an independent path from the Old World. This has led to two significant consequences: (1) a fauna dominated by marsupial mammals and great flightless birds, and (2) the complete absence of native apes, chiefly among them humans. As such, when it was first discovered by the Agamari mariner Felix Oddivosius in 1567, Serania was a completely virgin continent, with an ecology broadly similar to that of the Old World during prehistoric interglacial pleistocene periods.
The continent has been slowly colonised by Joriscians and Messenians alike from the 17th century, with an acceleration of settlement during the Radiance and the industrial revolution. The harsh natural environment in many parts of the continent and the lack of native population were the two major factor behind slow early settlement. The creation of a stable oceanic trade route from Outer Joriscia to western Ascesia was a major driver of early Joriscian colonisation in the 17th and 18th centuries. Messenian powers, who had a direct access to Ascesia, only begun to take an interest in the continent in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, with the Messenian conquest of the Seranias happening during the post-Neritsovid power vacuum as part of the so-called Heathen Wars.
Today, all of the Seranias are claimed by some nations (principally Great Powers) or by minor independent states and the continent is home to a total population of about 500 million. The majority of the Seranian population lives in the Outer Joriscian colonies, principally in Serania Minor. However, despite this relatively sizeable population, vast regions remain practically devoid of human presence. Settlements are generally concentrated along the coasts, near major rivers, or near important resource deposits (e.g. inland mining); the temperate and subtropical latitudes are favoured, such as Felicia or the Noble Ostrobor Peninsula.
Geography
Serania is the world’s largest continent, with a land area of 78 million km², representing 44.5% of its total land area. Serania Major by itself is the largest continent or subcontinent, slightly larger than Greater Lestria, at 51 million km² or 28.9% of the world's land area. With 27 million km² (15.6%), Serania Minor is almost the same size as Messeno-Joriscia. The distance between Serania Major's most northerly and southerly points is 14,700 kilometres, the largest of any continent, and the whole continent is about 6,000 kilometres east to west. The continent is bordered, in clock-wise order from the north, by the waters of the Arctic Sea, the Prothenian Ocean, the Antarctic Sea, the Sunnar Ocean, and the Esperasian Ocean; the Coactian Sea is almost entirely enclosed with a single connection to the Esperasian.
Given their vast size, the Seranias have a diverse geography, with almost every type of land-form and biome represented there. Due to the late inhabitation of the continent and the difficulty of access caused by the harsh untouched environment in many places, large parts of the Seranias are considerably remote from areas of habitation, and remained unmapped until the advent of satellite imagery.
Features
One striking feature is the Coactian Sea, also often simply referred to as the "Interior Sea", which is almost circular in shape. The Coactian Sea is connected to the rest of the ocean by the Dovgorodine Strait, its only natural outlet.1 As surface evaporation within the Seranian tropics loses greater volumes of water the Dovgorodine Current pulls water southwards through the strait into the Coactian Sea. This permanent flow creates a concentration gradient across the shallow ocean, with the western Siadjon continental shelf forming thousands of square kilometres of notoriously shallow ocean, with sand banks sporadically forming islands of varying size. For this reason, since early settlement maritime trade southwards has focused upon the eastern Coactian trenches. The saline, shallow oceans of the Siadjon are renowned for exceptional biodiversity (despite devastating tropical storms); and, near the coasts of Serania Minor, increasingly brackish waters merge into the reefs and mangroves of the east coast mangroves.
Serania Minor has many jutting peninsulas that enclose large bays or gulfs. In the north-west, the Desh Starum and Noble Ostrobor Peninsula faces the open Esperasian Ocean, and are separated from the Ekhah Peninsula to their east by the Gulf of Matay. The Ballarat Sea is set between the Felician Peninsula and the Ekhah Peninsula. The Sininnic Gulf (also named the Sininnic Sea), in south-western Serania Minor, is also almost wholly enclosed by land, though it has far more connections with the open ocean than does the Coactian. The waters south of the Mirsky Isthmus form the XXXXXXX Sea, another shallow sea with many islands. Finally, the other notable large gulf is the Roriks Gulf, in north-eastern Serania Major between Felicia and Tatulnia. In the equatorial and tropical south-west, the Zlatny Archipelago features some of the world's largest islands, and also has the most islands of any archipelago in the world. Its islands partially enclose the Sininnic Gulf to their south and the Rozdan Sea to their east.
Serania Major has the so-called Seranian Cordillera, which is formed by a long succession of mountain chains running from western Felicia to the antarctic regions. Unlike the Lestrian Spine, the Seranian Cordillera is not uninterrupted, it is actually composed of separate ranges, linked by lower-altitude terrain (although such terrain is usually plateaux or hill chains). For example, the Mittelgebirge is separated from the Southern Belt Chain by a 1,600-kilometre-wide gap filled with less rugged hills chains.
Climate
Because of its vast size, Serania hosts a large variety of climates and biomes; nonetheless, with important landmasses distributed along the equatorial and tropical latitudes, tropical and subtropical climates are the most common on the continent, forming the largest contiguous forests and grasslands on the planet.
The Coactian Deluge
A major and unmissable feature of the climate of the central Seranias is the Coactian Deluge. The Deluge is a permanent low pressure system (a tropical cyclone) generated by the thermal heating of shallow waters of the Coactian Sea to a degree unique anywhere in the World.
Throughout the year the cyclonic system rotates anti-clockwise around the sea's south-western regions, in a cycle driven by the changing solar illumination (determining the point of maximum heating) and the motion of the ITCZ and its associated wind patterns. While the solar energy received in the area is not higher than in other similar tropical locations, the sea's relative shallowness and isolation from larger oceanic circulation means thermal energy can only dissipate via evaporation, leading to the formation of a tropical cyclone system that never completely stops (although there has been recorded occasions where the system temporarily dissipated).
The Deluge is typically at its strongest in the northern summer, and at its weakest in the southern summer. Its movement around the sea creates a band of tropical monsoon and tropical wet and dry climates around the sea's shore (in particular in the west) which in some locations is counter-inituitively located regarding what climate would be expected to occur in the absence of the system. Some of the highest precipitations in the World are located along the Deluge's track. Coupled with the recurrent dangerous weather, this has led to those areas being more difficult to colonise than other parts of the already harsh Seranian environment.
Serania Minor
Serania Minor is almost entirely contained between the 30th parallels north and south; as a result, its climate is hot year-round, and most of its biomes are tropical or sub-tropical. [...]
Serania Major
Contrary to Serania Minor, which is oriented along a general west–east axis, Serania Major follows a north–south axis, extending from about the 50th parallel North almost to the southern pole; its climate is more diverse than that of Serania Minor. [...]
Ecology
The isolation of the Seranian continent from any other significant landmasses has brought about the development of an ecosystem dramatically unlike that of the Old World, with probably the most fundamental difference being the dominance of marsupial species, as opposed to the placental mammals prevalent in the rest of the world.
The first explorers of the region also found a natural world that was essentially unchanged from the Pleistocene; many equivalent species in the Old World had died out with the advent and spread of mankind. The best-known example of this is the survival of Seranian megafauna. These include large marsupials such as the graveling Diprotodon or the tree bear, giant species of the Macropus family such as Procoptodon), large predators such as the Seranian lion (Thylacoleo), giant monitor lizards such as Megalania, several very large lemurs, including the erdember (Erdembrus), the largest primate species in the World, the sloth lemurs Megaladapis and Palaeopropithecus, several species of giant flightless birds, and the Seranian giant eagle.
The unchanged nature of Serania's biosphere made it a paradise for biologists, but also meant that colonisation, especially in the pre-industrial era, was much harder than elsewhere in the world. In the Old World, most areas have been inhabited by humans at some point in their history, and their biomes have been influenced by human activity. This process never happened in the Seranias (with some notable exceptions), making some of the local biomes far more hostile to human habitation than anything comparable on the Old World.
Geological strata in both southern Serania Major and Southern Lestria indicate that the Prothenian Ocean started to open in the south about 120 million years ago; the northern Prothenian started to open only 80 to 70 million years ago. On the other side, the larger Serania Minor continental plate broke had completely broken up from the Messeno-Joriscian plate by 100 million years before the present. As the Prothenian Ocean grew in size, the continents that were northern and southern Serania Major were brought together about 40 million years ago. This also corresponds to the period from which total Seranian isolation started, as Serania Minor was already isolated and all remaining land or shallow-water connections between the Old and the New World were severed.
Fauna
Marsupial mammals split from placental mammals about 125 million years ago to the latest estimates, a split which is believed to coincide with the opening of the Prothenian Ocean. Although marsupial mammals fossils have been found in the Old World, they all but disappeared there, while they thrived in their Seranian isolation, expanding to occupy the majority of ecological niches. A small number of placental species were native to the continent before the first Old World contact, but a much larger number have been introduced subsequently, both by accident and by design.
Seranian primates belong to the clade Lemur, which diverged from the ancestral primates (that eventually led to Simian primates) about 60 to 50 million years ago. They probably reached the Seranian landmasses through land bridges and rafting over shallow seas. Although giant lemurs were once widespread in Serania, and one species, the erdőember, can still be found in the more forested parts of the Velyarok, the Seranian continent is devoid of any species resembling the Old World great apes, much less human beings - something which came as a shock to the first Joriscian explorers, who had anticipated the existence of large and potentially wealthy "Serebrian" kingdoms with which to trade (Felix Oddivosius's first fleet had carried a sizeable quantity of trade goods with this in mind). The discovery of Seranopithecus in 1900 was later proven to be a hoax.
Other niches have been covered by avian life; Seranian birds diversity is much higher than in the Old World and also preserves species whose equivalents are only found in the fossil records in the Old World (e.g. large flightless birds). Birds have even expanded their ecological footprint into the higher levels represented by apex predators such as the terror birds of northern-central Serania Major, the widespread Seranian giant eagle, and, to a lesser extent, the gallimores of the southern plains. Very large species of non-carnivorous flightless birds are also found throughout the continent, most are from the Seranopalaeognathae clade (also called the Seranian Ostriches, given that Old World ostriches are their closest relatives) such as the longicols, mostly extant in Serania Major, and the vladika birds of Serania Minor. The so-called thunderbird family, of which the gallimore is the largest species, is also common throughout Serania Major, mostly in the grasslands and lightly-forested southern and central regions.
Corvidae
The Seranian crows (also Adept crows) have displayed a high degree of intelligence, including tool use and complex problem-solving abilities. They have also been shown to perform some deliberate modification of the environment by spreading fires or seeding specific plants (helping, to a small degree, to make some areas more readily habitable by humans), as well as exploiting other animals in a fashion not dissimilar to primitive domestication.
Several controversial studies from both Messenian and Vaestic scholarship in the 20th century have claimed that some Adept crow species are developing sapience which is approaching human capabilities, including displaying signs of an early material culture and that their calls can be construed as an actual language. If confirmed, this would make the crows the second species in the world to achieve sapience and start its journey toward civilisation.
However, the studies are very controversial, and remain hotly debated. Their authors are often considered to be iconoclasts at the fringe of the scientific world in both Messenia and Joriscia, and the remote and poorly-accessible habitat of the studied corvids, usually in the deeper interior, hinders closer examination of these studies.
Flora
The Seranian flora is also typically different from that of the Old World, showing signs of the continent's ancient isolation even further than the divergence of mammals species. Many plants are endemic to the Seranias, although some links exist between flora in southern Lestria and Serania Major, as well as equatorial species in Serania Minor, Outer Joriscia and Petty Lestria. There is also a significant evolutionary divide between the flora of Serania Major and Minor, which is consistent with geological evidence indicating that Serania Minor was an independent continent for most of the last 100 million years. The main Seranian plant genera are Nothofagus, Proteaceae, Cannaceae, and most of Myrtaceae and Bromeliaceae.
Historical summary
Neritsovid period (1567 – 1701 CE)
The first lasting settlement was established in the Seranias by Felix Oddivosius in 1567 CE at Novigavan (now Vosdavansk), and was followed by a string of new foundations along the western coast of the continent on behalf of the Joriscian trade leagues. Initial exploration was limited to the immediate coastal areas, and although Shalov Guranyok managed to make the crossing to western Ascesia and ultimately to circumnavigate the globe in the closing years of the century, only a relatively limited area of the seaboard was settled during the 16th century. Nonetheless, most of the Joriscian trade leagues, and especially the Lacrean League, were eager to invest in the construction of forts and settlements and the search for precious metals promised by legend. By 1610 the colonies had an estimated population of 110,000 people, largely speakers of Rashimic (predominantly from the Dekoral, Lacre and Agamar). The War of the Pact of Osan and the subsequent Flight of the Bgheets to the Seranias, after which the properties of the Trade Leagues were appropriated by the central government (and in particular the Graviate of Lacre and Polcovodate of Mirokrai), dramatically accelerated the pace of development, with successive waves of Bgheets and Bīrōs banished from the metropole providing the solid foundation of a new social order. The exact size of this migration remains a point of academic dispute, but in 1701, on the eve of the Great Imperial Restoration, the population has been placed at around 1,100,000 people - a tenfold increase on 90 years before. And by this point forts had been established all the way along the route to Ascesia, including in northern Serania Major.
The colonial economy was predominantly agricultural and produced a range of cash crops for metropolitan consumption as well as basic perishables for local consumption. The vast space available and lush greenery allowed for relatively low-cost raising of large herds of livestock, and the ready availability of meat and low cost served as a major incentive for migration during the later 17th century when the central countries of Vaestdom were suffering from significant price inflation and (perceived) overcrowding. In principle the colonies were governed by the West Wind Commission in Great Pestul, but in practice there was very little political interference from Joriscia; the entrepôts on the coast typically had a metropolitan presence in the person of the Procurator during the Trade League era, but the central government itself only established its own officials in the region in the 1650s during the concerted attempt by Ratibor II's regime to reassert itself against the influence of Mirokrai that ended with the Purity War and the West Wind Treaty. Most colonies were dominated by Bgheet or Bīrō plantation owners, who were able to rapidly take control of large swathes of land. From the 1670s and 1680s, they were increasingly joined by a second wave of metropolitan Noble-Profiteers, who having taken over the Joriscian end of the trade were now belatedly moving into the Seranian end too. Perhaps in response to this development, there was a general resurgence in the popularity of Trade League politics, referred to by (tendentious) oriental historiography as the 'Second Dawn of Faction'. Large communities in particular began to appoint their own officeholders, whose influence generally towered above that of the central government. This laid the foundations of a lasting antagonism between the 'Old and New Settlers': those who adopted a lifestyle and model of social organisation based on the old Joriscian Trade Leagues and those generally more recent arrivals who favoured closer relations with the old imperial centre.
Demediatisation (1701 – 1845 CE)
From the Great Imperial Restoration in 1701 through to the Treaty of Tharamann that ended the Great Peninsular War in 1845 the exact status of the colonies was a constant bone of contention between the emergent Joriscian powers of Lacre, Azophin and Terophan. For most of the 18th century it was generally accepted that the colonies, with the exception of those devolved to Agamar under the West Wing Treaty, were part of the patrimony of Vaestdom, to be taken by whoever succeeded in the long contest to be single Emperor of the Vesnites; in practice neither the Legitimists nor the Restorationists had much interest in asserting their authority there. Lacrean merchants dominated the Seranian trade, particularly with the 'old settler' Bgheet and Bīrō settlements, with Dekoralese and coastal Rasheem a distant second. As the century rolled on, however, this balance began to shift, as Noble-Profiteers from all three powers began to establish themselves along the Seranian coastline in ever greater numbers (Lacre itself purchased the 'rights' to an extensive swathe of land from Azophin in the 1771 Acquisition of Ondolu). The resulting militarisation of the colonial seas accelerated the development of the so-called 'Pirate States' and eventually dragged the metropolitan powers into a series of colonial wars. An ambitious Azophine attempt to assert its dubious right of sovereignty over the colonies in the later 18th century resulting in the disastrous Ondolu War and the slightly more successful Second Ondolu War and Fejedelem's War, all of which were fought exclusively at sea and largely in the Seranias. From 1789 onwards, the non-Agamari colonies were recognised as 'demediatised', meaning that they were technically Prysostaiac property and no power had specific rights of sovereignty there; this produced something of a golden age of free trade across western Serania. It was only after the Great Peninsular War that this order was overturned and the colonies were officially partitioned (the Serebrian Mediatisation), with Azophin taking the lion's share of the northern and central colonies and Lacre and Terophan taking possession of the vast uncharted tracts of the south.
This fairly straightforward picture of colonial politics from a metropolitan standpoint naturally dissolves into a much more complex picture on the ground. In the century and a half of demediatisation the colonies' population increased eight times over to around 9 million, with a corresponding growth in the sophistication of the local economy and society. During the early 1700s they were largely quiescent with respect to developments in the metropole; in some large Rasheem-dominated towns the so-called Birmeeng Wars saw violent clashes between groups generally (although not exclusively) of northern and southern origin loosely linked to the Crown Wars back home, but for the most part the 'old settlers' had very little stake in what was going on at home, while the 'new settlers' typically watched anxiously from afar or returned to take part themselves rather than trying to prosecute the war in the colonies. In the later 18th century, however, some settlements began to break away from imperial authority entirely – the Pirate States – and prey on the increasingly valuable trade out of the Seranian ports, while Messenian incursions in Serania Major, the ever-growing numbers of 'new settlers' and the fresh interest in the colonies evinced by the metropolitan powers all contributed to a general sense of threat that ultimately gave birth to the Seranian trade leagues, quasi-independent combinations of (particularly but not exclusively Bgheet-dominated) Seranian settlements with an ambiguous and often rebellious relationship with Outer Joriscia itself. These new powers, most prominently the Golden Circle League, the New Zaavic League and the Prophetic League, fiercely resisted any attempts to impose any kind of metropolitan oversight, and spearheaded their own settlement and survey efforts in the interior, as well as expanding their political influence in other more recent settlements.
Current geopolitical situation
The vast majority of the Seranian landmass is today divided up into colonial possessions controlled by the various Great Powers. Large parts of those possessions only exist as legal claims (recognised through the Kethpor System), with little reality on the ground, due to the low population density and, in some places, difficult natural environment; token occupation and settlement is typically used by the Great Powers to solidify their claims.
Serania Minor is governed entirely by Joriscian powers, and can be divided approximately into an Agamari sphere covering most of the Zlatny Archipelago, an Azophine zone in the north of the mainland and a Terophatic zone in the south. Each of these zones contains several enclaves, with the most extensive system belonging to Agamar and dating back to early colonisation. Both Azophine and Terophatic Seranias extend into Serania Major, controlling access to the Coactian Sea and, in particular, what remains of the so-called Golden Hand established during the Terophatic Ascendancy to ensure its dominance in the Seranias. These outposts of Vaestdom aside, Serania Major is divided up between the Messenian powers. Savam controls a huge expanse in the south as the principality of Grand-Sud, the Vice-Principality of the Isles in the Prothenian Ocean, and a significant region in Felicia in the north, as well as the island of Victoria. The central region is dominated by Zeppengeran in the north and Siurskeyti in the south. The southernmost region, to the south of Grand-Sud, is controlled by Odann. Alongside the Great Powers, a number of lesser powers control some colonial holdings in the Seranias: Helminthasse, Lacre, the Prysostaic School, Rania, Madaria, Tassedar, and Tvåriken.
There are only four sovereign states, only two of which are of any significant size. No portion of the Serania Minor mainland is sovereign, and there are only two small island states in this half of the continent: the rump of the New Zaavic League in the Gulf of Matay and Napsul on the edge of the Zlatny Archipelago between Azophine and Terophatic Serania. In Serania Major there are two larger independent states: the landlocked Itace between the coastline of the Coactian Sea (part of Terophatic Serania) and the interior of Zepnish Serania, and New Issenov on the eastern coast, surrounded entirely by Zepnish Serania, from which it seceded in the 1880s. However, the sovereignty of two of these states is debated; Napsul is officially regarded as a marshalate under the Terophatic Banner, while Zeppengeran does not recognise the independence of New Issenov and regards it as part of its Seranian possessions, although for most of the period since 1930 it has not seen fit to press the issue beyond intermittent attempts at a negotiated settlement.
Notes
- ↑ Since 19XX, the Mirsky Isthmus to the south of the Coactian is cut by the Mirsky Canal, providing a second, albeit artificial, outlet.