world-building
Posts about world-building.
Atlas #1 · The island's trade
Cargo Only Floats Downhill: The River Trade of a Mountain Island
Every river the island trades on, measured: 92% of the cargo goes downstream, the barge has vanished, and boatmen haul their empty boats back up the rapids.
Atlas #2 · The island's roads
A Stair at Mavigol That Leads Back Where It Started
At Mavigol, a stair 7.8 metres long leaves a stone road and comes back to the very spot it left. Built exactly as recorded, it piles up against the kerb.
Atlas #3
Who Built the Rainbow Gate?
The Rainbow Gate, the Black Shard, the Hundred Arches and the Giants of the Pulpit: four colossal monuments, measured. Who made them, no one can say.
Atlas #4
The Holy City Has a Place Now
Every Muslim grave on the island now lies across the way to one holy city, on a shore no map shows. Until this week the graves agreed on nothing.
Atlas #5 · The island's trade
How Does a Port 209 m Above the Sea Load Its Ships?
Labuhan Harjo keeps 31 ships, yet the city stands 209 m up a sheer sea wall beside its river's waterfall. The way down to them is 1,211 stone steps.
Atlas #6
Forty-Five Metres Over the Rainbow Gate
Forty-five metres over the Rainbow Gate's crown, out of a slot canyon into a low sun, beside the Hundred Arches to the Black Shard: three flights planned whole.
Atlas #7 · The island's towns
Firewood for Winter, in a Word the Plans Didn't Know
In the winter weeks 1,705 crews of three cut firewood in 276 places, and 134 pairs gather desert brush. Until 19 October no plan had room for them.
Atlas #8 · The island's water
2,585 Hollows and Three Lakes
The island's map shows 2,585 hollows that could hold a lake, and three lakes. The rivers silted the rest flat; a closer look drains a quarter of the largest.
Atlas #9 · The island's water
1.9 km of Road Ran Inside a Lake. Now It Keeps to the Shore
Five cart tracks round Girpilio ezeras ran 1.9 km inside the lake, on ground below its water level that the map shows as dry land. Now they keep to the shore.
Atlas #10 · The island's trade
The Island's People Settled. Its Trade Never Has.
Teluk Tinggi buys 596 tonnes of rice a year, most of it for its hens. Each of the island's 900 ledgers closes, yet the trade between them has never settled.