Geography and Environment (Cora Supplement)
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|World of Cora|
The World of Cora has a single white sun which rotates in a circle in the sky. The entity never leaves it's rotation above the material plane, always circumscribing the heavens, this causes the sky to be lit at all times, though the heavens do change colors, and darken at specific intervals. The sun takes 28 hours to make one full revolution around the sky, during which time the heavens cycle through five different colors. The rotation of skies is yellow, green, red, blue, and gray. Yellow, green, and blue skies last for 4 hours each, while red and gray last 8 hours. It is generally acceptable to sleep from the onset of blue-sky, till the middle of gray-sky, and the first eating usually happens at the beginning of yellow-sky.
The onset of seasons is caused dually by the position of the sun in the sky, and also by the waxing and waning of the elemental planes. Though it is yet undetermined which is actually causing the seasons, the seasonal shift is thought by most scholars to happen primarily because of the waxing of planar power. Which in turn causes the sun to drop in the sky during the cold season and then rise again during the dry season. The sun is highest in the sky during the dry season, when it lies almost directly overhead. During the cold season the sun hangs low in the sky, shedding much less light, and also causing a cooling effect to happen.
In Cora a day is referred to as one revolution, which is the time it takes the sun to circle the sky once. Ten revolutions is a period, ten periods are in a season and four seasons make up one time.
The weather in Cora is fairly consistent, high pressure systems from the plane of air get chilled by the northerly plane of cold. This causes a flow of colder air on the northern half of the material plane. In the south, air is heated from the plane of fire and moves over the deserts and then spreads over the sea. As the warm air picks up moisture it regularly collides with cold air coming down from the mountains of the north causing thunderstorms at sea, and in the eastern part of Cora. Flash-flooding occurs seasonally, near the border of the plane of air, as water is dumped from the sea in large quantities.
Gratia is the name given to the land around the eastern border of the sea. It contains the furtile lands near the plane of earth, and barren wastes near the plane of acid. The empire controls the largest cities in gratia, though they are largely unconcerned with the actual land. Gratia holds the best mines in all the land; silver, tin, copper, gold, iron and coal are all mined from shafts in Gratia, and these are highly coveted by any who stake a claim. The empire controls most of the profitable mines, as it has used its military and technological might to hold them from others. While it takes great pains to protect its mines, in Gratia it could care little for other lands it holds. Bandits and other factions are able to thrive along the highways as the empire turns a blind eye to keeping the roads safe, and the plains of gratia make for excellent crop growth. The northern section of Gratia is known as the barrens or the wastes. It is an area of land close to the entrance to the plane of acid, and because of the grounds acidic qualities it is impossible to grow anything at all. Travel to this area is rare, as is fresh water.
Haldor is home to the desertwellers, and the largest desert in Cora. It is known to hold the best cora stone mines and many merchants and travelers migrate to Haldor for profit. The desert is an unforgiving place though, and while people may seek out their fortune, many perish from lack of water and food. While it is not as difficult to grow things in Haldor as it is in the barrens, water is still scarce, and where it does exist, you can almost be sure that a town has formed around it. Small communities of desertdewllers dot the fields of sand, a handful of trading communities built to accomodate miners and traders alike. The largest of these is Jofthi, a town built from the side of a cliff. Because of its high capacity well system built from Imperial technology, more people are able to live in a single concentrated area, where there would otherwise never be enough water to sustain the life. A nearby mine generates the majority of the city's wealth, and work.