Goddamnit, writing something today! (worldbuilding) (Patreon)

Sorry, this is driving me nuts so I'm putting something down because if I'm going to be a writer then I got to frigging write.  This is what came in the shower.

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The Scarp is a geological feature that has defined social settlement and development in the Riverlan for centuries.  Formed during the Breaking 10 thousand years ago, the geological formation is a reverse fault that spans from Pallia on the coast through Ambernathis, defines the border between Lyonesse and the Ventaran Empire, and ends in the nation of Nikel, where it meets a transform fault that runs north and south along the Tung mountains.  The Scarp is lowest at Ambernathis, a mere twenty feet high, but rises to more than a thousand feet tall in places.  In many places, the hanging rock looms far out over the southern plains.

The Scarp has always been a formidable barrier to exploration north of the Riverlans.  The Kol river flows through the low slump in a wide and implacible torrent. Mills line the shore, taking advantage of the powerful flow to produce the flour and textiles that are the lifeblood of Ambernathian northern exports.  Explorers would have to wait for the Kol to be at it's lowest in autumn months to dare clambering up the Throat to the higher plateau where the Kol, Hrad, and Eld rivers meet.  A series of over thirty locks on the ambernathian side allow barges to ascend up and down river.

The scarp creates economic winners and losers.  Nikel has long struggled with being above the Ventaran plains, moving wagons along a perilous track up to their city proper.  Some products are simply loaded into marked barrels and dumped over the fifteen hundred foot drop into the pools formed by the Vhent river.  This economic isolation has made Nikel develop into the economically ruthless nation they are today, trading anything from slaves to drugs, anywhere for any price.  Pinned between Lyos and the Tung, the merchants of Nikel are some of the most cut throat in the world.

This geological feature is instrumental in the political map of the Riverlan.  Large troop movements are all but impossible up and down the scarp.  Territories to the north thought that it made them all but immune to invasion.  The second Ventaran empire proved many of them wrong, building the locks that Ambernath employs today to launch invasions of Lyos, Hradreth, and Nikel.  While the Empire was successful in conquering Hradra and Nikos, renaming them, the Empire was never able to successfully mount an invasion of Lyos.

The Scarp did play a role in Hradreth and Nikel's eventual independence, as the efforts to keep a military presence there failed.  The costs severely undermined the second empire, leading to it's eventual collapse.  

Just as the Kol river separates the Riverlan into 'east and west', so does the scarp separate it into 'north and south'.  Territory above the scarp is referred to as 'up' and territory below it is 'down'.  The scarp also serves as a linguistic and communicative barrier.  Nikel, Lyoness, and Hradreth all speak variants of Hradish and Lyrish, despite the Empire's attempts to impose it's own lingusitic norms on the region.  The musical and artistic traditions also serve older focuses, such as wood and stone carving rather than the fine arts of the South.  

Idealogically, north of the Scarp has far greater preference towards independence, freedom, and tribal affiliation than the south.

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I wrote this reading after reading about how various geographical features can effect national development.  Hopefully, I can do more of these every morning to try to warm up my head into being productive.  Thanks for sticking with me.  If I'm a writer then I need to write, damn it!