Difference between revisions of "Hârn Kingdom of Kandáy Natural Resources"

Latest revision as of 16:35, 27 August 2017

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Natural Resources

Kanday is not blessed with an abundance of natural resources. Rainfall is regular and water is plentiful and of good quality, but the frequent storms leave the roads and structures in constant need of repair. Wind and water power are both widely used for mills, the former along the western coast and highlands and the latter in the populated river valleys.

Away from the Thard and Eryn valleys, the land is seldom fertile and is better suited to sheep rearing than to intensive agriculture. Grain production is predominantly rye, barley, and oats; wheat does not fare well here. Mineral deposits are widespread but not especially rich.

Ternu Heath

The vast Ternu Heath is underexplored and underexploited. It is an inhospitable area of scrubby woodland, ponds and bogs of all sizes, and fire-scarred areas hundred of acres in extent.

The Ternu Heath is covered by an uneven patchwork of stunted, scabby scrub oaks and twisted pitch pines that seldom reach ten feet in height, useless as timber and of limited use to charcoalers. Shrubs include a few varieties of blueberry, heather, and hardy azalea. The sandy soil's drier stretches are carpeted with tough bearberry, while pond shores and bogs support cranberry and wintergreen.

Upland areas exposed to the prevailing west wind are dry even after the frequent early morning fogs. These areas are subject to and reliant upon fire; the pitch pines are highly flammable and their cones do not even open until they have been subjected to a wildfire. Fires spread rapidly, fanned by the omnipresent winds and limited only by the frequent bogs, ponds, and minor waterways that crisscross the heath.

Thousands of small ponds dot the landscape, some transformed over the years into bogs. The sheltered lowland areas are humid and cool and support a wide variety of hanging and ground-mosses, carnivorous plants, and fungi. Trees seldom grow tall in the thin, infertile soil, and many areas are effectively impassable due to rotting fallen logs. Pockets of richer acid soils support white cedar, where hunters know to seek deer in the winter. There is incredible diversity in these areas and some apothecaries and hired herbalists endure great hardship and privation to acquire the treasures growing here.

The heath is home to foxes, raccoons, minks, and other small mammals. There are several species of turtles and snakes, especially in the dry uplands, but only the Heath Adder is poisonous. Frogs and salamanders are relatively few, their fertility diminished by the acid waters of the bogs, and their numbers checked by constant predation from herons, raccoons, turtles, snakes, and almost anything else that can catch them. The eagle is the king of the birds, a large realm that includes scores of migratory songbirds, wading birds, gamebirds, and shorebirds.

Heathside settlements acquire much of their fuel from cutting and drying peat from the older bogs.

Exposure

The most dangerous foe on the Ternu Heath is exposure brought on by the deadly combination of wind and water.

Some of the oldest bogs are quaking bogs, so overgrown with thick moss that a lightly armoured man can walk across the surface. The vegetation cannot truly support the weight at any appreciable distance from the shore; the moment it starts quaking underfoot it is too late to escape. The hapless pedestrian is plunged into the icy dark water below, which can be knee-deep or as deep as 12 feet, with a thick, heavy muck at the bottom. The floating vegetation, still unable to bear the weight, must be cut away as the victim wades blindly toward shore. Once soaked, the incessant wind can bring on deadly hypothermia and death in under a watch.

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