Hercynia

The deck rumbles beneath your feet, and for the first time you hear the howl of windshear as the shuttle breaches Hercynia’s thick atmosphere. The world below, seen through the a thick, condensation-streaked porthole: An emerald smear, scarred by ragged patches of black and brown. Patches of grey cloud cover speak to the months-long rainstorms that plague Hercynia.

-Excerpt from No Room For A Wallflower

Geography

Hercynia is a forest world, crowded with old growth since regrown after the Hercynian Crisis some 500 years ago. The climate is tropical in the vast lowlands, giving way to few alpine mountainous regions. Around Evergreen, it is temperate. Wooded, rolling land is broken by sudden buttes, evidence of the planet’s ancient glacial past. A distant mountain range marks the northern horizon; clouds spill down from the scree slope peaks, soaking the plains in steady, warm rain. Distant to the North, the continent runs out into a grey and turbulent ocean. Beyond that is the north pole of the world, a dry, windswept desert lit by northern lights. There is no life here. To the East, the land stretches for thousands and thousands of miles, forest eventually giving way to a borean tundra beyond a massive mountain range. Part the product of the natural rain shadow and part the result of an initial glassing campaign by Union, this tundra is foul and inhospitable. To the South, the forest runs and runs, giving way eventually to ocean much like the Northern boundary. This ocean is more temperate, even tropical, dotted with islands in archipelago all the way to the South Pole. To the West, forest runs until ocean, split by riverlands and plains, karst topography flattened by ancient glaciers. There are scattered wrecks of ships that crash-landed on Hercynia, and the remains of above ground Egregorian tower-hives.

Fauna & Flora

It is an old world inhabited by the young. The planet’s biome experienced, essentially, an artificial extinction event; 500 years is a long time on a human scale, but on the scale of worlds it’s not nearly enough for a species to step in and fill the sudden apex species gap. As such, as a world Hercynia is eerie, quiet, and largely empty of fauna. Insects abound. Union practiced a re-seeding program a few hundred years prior to this module; while none of the terrestrial mammals managed to take root, localized birds and fish are a common enough sight. Cranes stalk the reedy shallows of the river near Evergreen, picking at the localized trout and salmon runs. The mornings are often filled by the sound of distant, solitary birdsong.

Natural Resources

In the lands around Evergreen, some colonists have made their homes on lonely tracts of cultivated farmland. The soil, tortured as it was five hundred years ago, is rich enough now to sustain life. Waving regiments of tall corn butt up against native trees, their stalks supported by legume vines and modest, localized gourds. Rice paddies march along the river upstream from Evergreen, siphoning the cool water out from the wide current.

Type

Planet

Included Locations