It's Not The Environment

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ari
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It's Not The Environment

Post by ari »

Really. It's not the environment. As the moon of Sap in the year -27 is nearing its end, children all over the country wait for the right time to collect birch juice, right after most snow has melted. It is still cold, yes, but the land is safe and nurturing, and while it might treat its children harshly, it will rarely surprise them, and even more rarely overwhelm them. Next it will be the month of Spring Work, and farmers will plough and till the land, and sow their seeds. Their grain will grow and thus sunlight will feed the people. What more could a human ask for?

Not that the Lantians use great amounts of farmland. There's only three million of them after all, and most farms are concentrated around the southern parts, where there is more sunlight. Everywhere else, there is forest. It might only be because the world is young and fresh and there hasn't yet been time for an ideology to rise up in Lant that would despoil the land, but a good four fifths of the nation is covered in woodland. Little of it exists in anything like a natural state, though. Even the old-growth forests, never felled in Lant's recorded history, are carefully managed: Forest fires rarely occur except when the humans decide they should, the wildlands and the urban lands are shaped to keep one from disrupting the other, and all of the forest is owned by people, people who make sure to know what's going on in their land and how to get the best long-term economic advantage from it. And of course, there is little that's wild about the wildlands: Populations of every animal are kept in check, big enough to stay viable but small enough to not cause the humans trouble, by giving out licenses for trapping and hunting in a regulated manner. A few humans who hunt for sport are enough to keep even the most ferocious beasts in Lantian woods in check.

Just as well as the ecology is managed, little of the rest of nature poses a threat to the people of Lant. The land is geologically stable, and too far in the north for violent cyclones to form. It's possible to burn one's skin in the summer sun, but it does take extraordinary carelessness. This leaves only two real challenges to the nation's engineers that are unusually specific to Lant: The seasons, and the telluric field.

The summer highs in Lant can be a full sixty degrees centigrade hotter than the winter lows. Telephone lines that are pulled taut between poles in the depths of the month of Pearls will sag halfway to the ground in the hottest summer days. Trains clickety-clack as they pass over expansion joints in the rails, and the cars run on a different fuel in wintertime and summertime. Roofs are built strong and steeply pitched to keep the snow from collapsing them, windows are double- or triple-paned everywhere, and cities employ heavy plowing equipment to keep the roads clear of snow throughout the winter.

Even more engineering effort goes into managing and mitigating the effects brought about by the telluric field. Certainly Resplendence pulls in its share of engineers who enjoy working in the less naturally restricted environment of the city, creating solutions that will never work outside of it, but far more people work for the market of all of Lant. It's a simple calculation: Even with the greater prosperity of Resplendence, with the difference in population, anyone who can make it big in the city should be able to make it ten times bigger in the republic.

Lantians have several approaches to the problem of the telluric field and what its existence means. By far the most common belief is that it is simply a part of nature, not different from the cold, or for that matter gravity or any other laws of nature that one would sometimes like to be able to ignore. Yes, it seems more complicated, or at least its macroscopic effects are more difficult to understand, but that's simply an indication that we must be living in a complicated universe. While there might never be an explanation, a "reason" there is a telluric field, there is no accepted explanation for why there is an electromagnetic interaction either - but there are mathematical and physical tools that allow one to predict how it works, and to manage its complexity in statistical ways, and that seems to be enough.

Some do believe that there is a old Drachumvelin man with a cloud above his head who controls the telluric field and maybe even is directly linked to its existence in some manner. The information is definitely out there, and in fact this belief is unusually commonly represented in the engineering community. However, a good 80-90% believe that for how strange and even seemingly capricious the force is, there's nothing intellectually reasonable about supposing that it's all about one guy who once cussed out the Senate while looking like he was wearing the most ridiculous hat in known history. The subject still comes up often in coffee table discussions, though, and the fact that even the experts are pretty much stumped is more or less taken to mean that even rank amateurs can claim to have educated opinions on the issue.

Espen M. Fredrikson, whose work led to the standardisation of scales for measuring effects of telluric distortion, preferred a middle-of-the-road explanation: He figured that the telluric force is simply too unusual to fit the mold of the other natural forces, but saying that any one person is behind it is giving far too much credit to humans. Maybe the universe was created by an engineering agency that got a last-minute requirements change to keep the natives from getting too advanced - and considering how they must have botched their solution up somewhere given its complexity, maybe there is a way to get around it. Maybe God just was in a hurry in general. His students generally share his opinion on the matter: While they agree that the localised weather system above Omi Oitherion's head is one of the more interesting quirks of their universe, the idea that that gives him power over other its other quirks is laughable. If anything, one should look to the Zaee, or the Safir, or the Shelterers of Words, or other civilizations with established unusual powers, to find anyone who might just know the truth already. And even that isn't desirable. In the end the only way to make sure you really understand the force is to figure it out yourself in the first place.
Lord Furniture
Not even partially responsible for Malarboria; will take the blame for Caverden, though!
Tallest and therefore Greatest of the Janitors
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ari
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Re: It's Not The Environment

Post by ari »

In case you're wondering, the month names are just translated Finnish ones, except when they would make no sense (for instance, the Finnish name for December is "Yule moon", which doesn't really work in this universe). I have some etymological latitude to work with though, and I tend to pick non-obvious meanings, for instance the "obvious" meaning of "tammikuu" (January) is actually "oak moon", but it's not actually the correct original etymology, and the one I'm using is closer to the truth. Similarly "maaliskuu" (March) would sound to most people like it has something to do with the earth showing up from under the snow, but the "sap moon" explanation has some support as well. And there might be some even more odd and unusual choices coming for the summer and autumn months.

And the year starts in late October, of course. Can't forget that bit.

(in fact pretty much all of this post that isn't about the telluric field is just your basic "introduction to the Nordic countries". I guess I might be a bit culturally lazy!)
Lord Furniture
Not even partially responsible for Malarboria; will take the blame for Caverden, though!
Tallest and therefore Greatest of the Janitors
Eternal Watcher of #micronations

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Scott Alexander
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Re: It's Not The Environment

Post by Scott Alexander »

Some do believe that there is a old Drachumvelin man with a cloud above his head who controls the telluric field and maybe even is directly linked to its existence in some manner.
*sigh*. The thought that, even in our enlightened age of Year 7, people still reject scientific explanations and believe that the forces of nature were created by an old man in a cloud is just shameful.
Espen M. Fredrikson, whose work led to the standardisation of scales for measuring effects of telluric distortion, preferred a middle-of-the-road explanation
I hope the M. stands for McCallavre :)

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ari
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Re: It's Not The Environment

Post by ari »

I mightn't be much of a writer, but I'm allowed more than one character of significance, am I? :)

Dante might show up still... but he's going to do it in such a way that nobody's going to have to be confused by any mention of anyplace called Straylight or an idea as odd as building a floating city.
Lord Furniture
Not even partially responsible for Malarboria; will take the blame for Caverden, though!
Tallest and therefore Greatest of the Janitors
Eternal Watcher of #micronations

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ari
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Re: It's Not The Environment

Post by ari »

(The real reason his middle initial is M. is that that's the middle initial of one Fereidoun Esfandiary, though that's not the name you might have heard of him by. You might find some parallels between the two characters, if not in the detail of what they actually did in their lives, but at least in their greater implications!)
Lord Furniture
Not even partially responsible for Malarboria; will take the blame for Caverden, though!
Tallest and therefore Greatest of the Janitors
Eternal Watcher of #micronations

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