0. The World





Dark brown: mountain ranges. Light brown: moldgrass plains. Light green: temperate and boreal forests. Dark green: tropical rainforests. Dark brown: mountain ranges. Light brown: moldgrass plains. Light green: temperate and boreal forests. Dark green: tropical rainforests.

The face of Earth has changed much in these millions of years. Utterly uncaring about the devastation wrought by the Beam, the geological processes working beneath the crust have kept moving the continents according to incomprehensibly slow plans, as they have always done.After their brief union in the human age, the two Americas are once again separated. The North is near the North Pole, while the South is receding westward. Antarctica is moving away from the South Pole; much smaller without the ice shelves, but also higher due to the rebound after being relieved from the weight of the ice, it's now a land of forests and mountains.All other continents are united in a single landmass, as both Africa and Australia have moved northwards enough to collide with Eurasia. The Mediterranean sea, the islands of Indonesia, the delicate peninsulas of Europe and Indochina have been crushed and uplifted into massive mountain ranges that dwarf the now declining Himalaya. Mighty rivers flow from these ranges, choked with mineral debris, and form vast deltas in the far North.New landmasses have appeared, albeit minor in size. The hotspot that produced the Hawaii, now unusually active, has created a vast volcanic archipelago in the middle of the Pacific, a black land of wave-beaten basalt and scalding hot lakes. Eastern Africa has broken away from the rest of the continent and drifted eastward, like a new Madagascar, carrying with it a sample of continental fauna to evolve in isolation.The world is quite warm, and there's no permanent ice at the poles - only at the summit of the highest mountain ranges. Consequently, the sea level is much higher, and lowlands such as the Amazon, the Congo Basin and central Siberia have become shallow seas. Reefs are a common sight, even in temperate waters, while salty marshes and brackish estuaries have reclaimed many coastlines; new kinds of plankton float on the ocean surface in world-spanning gyres.AFRASIA is by far the largest continent. It's crossed from the Atlantic to the Pacific by a huge mountain range. This is widest and tallest in the far west, with the Mediterranean Plateau, and in the far east, with Zomia; these plateaus have a mean altitude of over 4000 meters on the sea level. Because of this range, and of the desert that surrounds the thinnest central portion, the northern and southern half of Afrasia are biologically independent continents. The north is covered by temperate or cold forests; they're linked by a flat moldgrass steppe. The western mediterranean foothills are covered in temperate rainforest; the cold and shallow Ob Sea separates Cisuralia in the west from Siberia in the east, and it's rich in plankton. The south is composed by two peninsulas: Kalaharia is dominated by a tropical rainforest and by a subtropical savanna, while the smaller Yingarna is entirely covered in jungle. Despite Zomia, Yingarna is not entirely isolated, being connected to other lands by strings of islands. The glaciers of the plateaus produce rivers that water the cisuralian woodland and the yingarnan jungle.OROMIA is the new continent produced by the breakup of Africa (the rest of the old continent, partially flooded, has become Kalaharia). It's almost entirely covered in jungle, even on the northern highlands, except for thin strips of desert on the northern and southern coasts. The Oromian Sea, at its west, is warm and shallow, and rich in reefs.LAURENTIA is the heir of North America. It's rich in mountains: the eroding Rocky Mountains in the west, and a new mountain range produced by subduction in the east. Both are covered in temperate forests: however, the central basin is dry, since it's in the shadow of both, and it's located on a high pressure belt that sees scarce rainfall. Laurentian forests have largely the same flora and fauna as northern Afrasia, thanks to their geographical proximity.FUEGIA is what remains of South America. Like Laurentia, it has two mountain ranges (the Andes and a new one). The center still has enough rain to support a tropical moldgrass savanna. The ancient Amazon Basin and a good part of Patagonia are flooded; the coasts of the Amazon Sea are occupied by salty or brackish swamps.ANTARCTICA is almost uniformly covered in cold forests, with many endemic species of weedtrees. The northern coast is kept relatively warm by the sea current flowing through the Oromian Sea. The warm, wet air brought by this current meets the hot, dry air of the southern desert belt and the cold, dry air streaming from the South Pole; this produces constant storms and typhoons that ravage the central plain.Note: I've currently set the present day as 32 million years after the Beam. The amount of continental drift I've given here is probably far too much, but for now I can only ask you to pretend it's not.