The guys and their stuff

Geography my favourite sujbect

The geography of the island(s) is simila rto that of Iceland’s, however their volcano is.. eh, dormant. There’s always a chance that one day it could erupt once again, but it hasn’t for many, many years. (Around 700). The smaller islands are just the tops of rocks or other volcanos that used to be above sea level, only very few of them are inhabited. Because of the volcanos and the specific landscape around it, the rocks and sand are jet black, and the stone is kind of slate-like. It comes off in huge, thin sheets of dark stone. 

Precious minerals can also be found within the rock, usually between two larger sheets of stone. Three of the main minerals found there is some coal, or their equivalent of. It’s usually ground up into paste and has to be fused with a special oil to be lit on fire, this is used in lanterns, indoor lighting, and other smaller uses for light. Another mineral is some white crystal like thing, it’s usually white or light blue. Mostly used for decorations. A blue, flaky ore is usually ground much like their coal, however this is used for dye. The oil for the fire is a very specific and limited substance. Caverns aren’t too common, most of them collapse. 

A huge mountain range, that includes the few volcanos, lines the northern part of the island. This is usually the divide between the two halves of the island, and also a good passage point if you can get past the low but spiky rocks. Just to the north of the range, or behind it, as the locals would say, is mostly jagged rocks and tall cliff edges. Below this cliff is.. more.. jagged rocks, but also some nice sandy beaches. There’s a large village there, as well as a crossing guard and some paths through the rocks. This is usually a very quiet point, however during some winter sports seasons it can get a little busy. 

The eastern side of the island is very flat, it’s also the only place of the island that has visible grass and is a popular grazing spot for cattle and other creatures. The lower parts of the great fields can be comparable to marshes. It can freeze over in the winter. During the summer, however, it’s a very popular spot for picking lots of expensive flowers. A cultural thing with the great flower picking event lol. It’s illegal to pick them before this time, though. For the eastern-centre part of the island is very different. It’s starts with small, grassy hills but slowly the terrain changes back to the standard cliffs. Cliffs in the middle of the eastern side of the island can look a little odd and intimidating, but they’re a popular rock climbing area and is home to the largest city on the island. Lots of rivers flow from the tops of these low-reaching mountains and down into the lowlands below. There’s also seasonal waterfalls, the excess water from the large lake usually runs off into seasonal waterfalls which only flow from spring to summer. They can be slightly dangerous in the autumn and early spring, as large chunks of half-melted ice can fall on you lmao (this is a popular cause of death.)

The southern side is mostly cliffs and beaches. The flat cliffs suddenly drop into soft, sandy beaches of the same dark colour. These beaches can be littered with massive ice boulders which can be almost twice the height of a single person. These can roll down a large valley in the south-eastern part. A similar area is in the north-west, but on a larger scale. The sand is black but also glitters. The ice at the beach is almost completely clear due to the salt of the sea! Ice in the south is better for ice sculptures, it’s more sturdy and clear. The beaches stretch almost the entire length of the island, only stopping at the large peaks in the south-east and in the west. Their capitol resides in the cliffs of the south, it’s not being the biggest in population, though. A single, thin, man-made split in the cliffs make a smooth climb to the ice sheets that the majority of the island is covered with. More about towns and cities later. 

The western side of the island is much less interesting. The south west of the island is just patchy rocks and small beaches, the further you go the more.. nothing it gets. The cliffs drop into the sea, and the dirt on top of the flat cliffs is very thin and hardly anything can grow on it apart from some very sturdy grass. However, it’s a haven for the island’s wildlife, especially their birds. On the north western part there’s not much apart from large, mountainous slopes that eventually slip into the ocean. Rivers here are the most abundant, but most of them freeze in the winter. Here is also where the most active volcanos are, they’re only small though. 

The islands off the coast of the mainland are mainly on the south eastern and general western sides of the island. There’s none to the direct north or direct south. These larger islands mainly consist of large rocks with some grass on top, and uninhabitable large rocks. Lighthouses are often put on these rocks, and on the larger ones a small village could be hosted. Most of the island in the west train off from the large slopes it has, and there are very tiny islands below the steep cliffs, presumably from fallen rock sheets. Smaller islands litter the coasts all around the island.

You may have noticed that all the settlements of the island seem to be dotted along the coastline of the main island, and that’s because the actual shape of the island itself is in a sort of.. flat-crater like thing. Presumably a meteorite had crashed in the middle of the flat tops of the cliffs, and made a large dent in the middle of the island. However, no one would notice a crater in the centre of the island because it’s all filled with water, which has since frozen. It’s in an almost state of permafrost. If the crater was filled with liquid water and not ice, it would be an archipelago! During the spring and summer months, it’s extremely dangerous to cross the ice sheet, since there could be patches of non-solid ice that someone could fall through. Although the crater is mostly solid ice there are often patches of ice caves filled with water, someone could easily slip into and either drown or die of hypothermia. The shallow top layer of ice can also melt in the summer months, making it a pain to wade through. It’s only relatively “safe” to cross in the winter. People have dubbed it “the great ice rink.” There are also no buildings on the  ice for obvious reasons. There have definitely been attempts.. but people learned pretty quickly that building there would not be a good option. A lot of old artefacts could be dug up from the ice, but no one would actually want to drill though the ice to find out. I’ll talk a bit more about why it’s not allowed to break the ice later. It’s very cold and windy up on the ice rink and if caught out in a blizzard could spell disaster for anyone travelling across it. Despite being dangerous, it’s the fastest way to get a message from one side f the island to another, especially with the use of sleds.

The seasons on this island are mostly.. cold. Very cold, wintery, snowy.. blizzards.. wind. It’s not the best place to live if you like the sun. The summers hardly get to 13˚C! The melting of the ice and snow usually starts at around mid spring and then freezes again at early-mid autumn. The summer moths are usually mild, with blue skies and lots of rain. The winter is very cold and gloomy. Not much sunlight. Because of how far up north the island is, there’s around two weeks of pure darkness in the winter, and two weeks of sunlight in the summer. It snows a lot, and blizzards on the ice sheets or on the tops of the cliffs are common.