THE SOUTHERN PLAINS

By Hersius
and
Mary Bosk Woman

INTRODUCTION

This Geography Department discusses the Gorean landscape in terms of latitudes, longitudes, and tectonic plates as a way of coming to terms with the immensity of the virtual landmass of the Gorean supercontinent. Those perspectives provide a basis for locating the various cultural geographic areas that serve as background for the sagas that span the series.

Norman defines areas in terms of their landforms, climate, and underlying geologic structures, and he shows the effects of human habitation on these areas. This and subsequent articles will identify an area and then showcase it by describing what it looks like and giving background information. A call for contributors for future collaboration on other areas will conclude each article. The purpose of the articles is simply to highlight the genius of John Norman in creating this world, to show where the various places are on Gor, and to show why each place is a special place to be.

All quotes are from Book 4 unless noted otherwise.

THE SOUTHERN PLAINS

This region is known both as the Plains of Turia, in honor of its only major city, and as the Land of the Wagon Peoples, in recognition of the nomadic groups which tend the immense bosk herds of the southern hemisphere. Descriptively, it is known as the southern plains or the southern prairies.

Geologically, as explained below, the southern plains region is bounded on the north by the Ta-Thassa Mountains, beyond which lie the rainforests. Culturally, it is both the Ta-Thassa range and the Cartius River that form the northern boundary. Thassa forms the western and southern limits, and the southern foothills of the Voltai form the eastern boundary. Page 2. The southern plains are described as being in the middle latitudes of the southern hemisphere. Book 10 Page 70. We place the region between 18 degrees south latitude and 44 degrees south latitude, and the southern foothills would be located at roughly the prime meridian, as mentioned in previous articles. However, the planetary axis is sharper than the Earth axis. Book 1 Page 43. It is therefore conceivable that the land mass extends farther south into the middle latitudes while retaining the prairie climate. The western longitude depends on how far west you believe the region extends. The region is vast, however. The statement is made that when winter struck, the wind may have driven the snow as far as 2,500 pasangs over the prairies, yet whether this refers to an expanse from south to north or an expanse from east to west is not specified. Page 58.

A corridor of plains runs north and south above the southern prairies and between the rainforests and the Tahari. The eastern boundary of this corridor is formed by the northern portion of the southern foothills of the Voltai and the Tahari, with the Ven Highlands forming the western boundary of this corridor. Wagon Peoples once rode over those plains to war against Ar itself. Pages 13, 28. Cabot trekked across those plains to reach the Wagon Peoples. He booked passage on a barge to cross the Cartius River, which is when he formally left the corridor of plains and entered land claimed by the Wagon Peoples. Pages 2, 3.

The terrain surrounding the eastern portion of the Cartius is characterized by lush valleys. Page 13. The majority of the prairies themselves are characterized by uneven terrain with high and low spots. Page 177. They are treeless, windswept grasslands. Pages 4, 9. The plains stretch for hundreds of pasangs in all directions to the horizon with little cover. Page 145.

The region has only one major city, Turia. Turia is located among low hills. Pages 232, 233. It is situated above underground water and is subject to winter snows and spring rains. Page 182. Although the entire southern prairies are referred to as the Plains of Turia, the specific area around Turia appears to also be termed the Plains of Turia. Page 109.

Most of the action in Book 4 takes place in and around Turia. The Plains of a Thousand Stakes, where the Love War is held, is an area described as being only some pasangs from Turia and is easily within sight of that city. Pages 105, 113. The Omen Valley, where omens are taken to determine if there will be one Ubar to unite all the Wagon Peoples, is located near Turia among low hills. It is watered by a large creek visible from the air at a distance. Pages 11, 170, 344.

The relative locations of the four different Wagon Peoples are not specified. Page 9. The Tuchuk land is in an area south of Turia. However, the Tuchuk wintering area is described as being pasturelands far north of Turia yet south of the Ta-Thassa Mountains. The Tuchuks circle around Turia and approach the equatorial belt from the south to arrive at their wintering area. The Tuchuks may winter either north or south of the Cartius River. Pages 11, 55, 58, 266. The Kataii people are black. Page 14. This might indicate a genetic relationship to the rainforest people and might suggest that the Kataii occupy lands to the northwest of Turia. The interactions among the Tuchuks, Kataiis, Kassars, and Pavaracis suggest that the various Wagon Peoples live nomadically relatively close to each other and to Turia.

To watch a bosk herd stampede at a distance is to watch the world transform. A tawny dust cloud rises along the horizon in small tornadoes of dust, darkening into an ominous brown blanket of dirt and dung and grasses shredded and churned up, rising in billowy waves, stretching to shield the baking grasslands from Lar Torvis itself. The air, now thick with dirt, shockwaves outward, skimming the sweet grasses crazily as the choking debris rides the currents. The ground vibrates steadily, pounded from a distance into continual motion. The calm silence and gentle swish of the wind are replaced by a deep rumbling. The sharp, clean scent of grasses is brushed aside by the heady odor of earth mixed with animal as the hoofthunder sweeps the plains. The distant wall of dirt and air, looming over the land at a nearly unimaginable height, lengthens impossibly, almost appearing to be a remote mountain range. As the abusive pummeling of the earth courses away, the peaks of the cloud whisk away, scattering, and the wall slowly collapses. As the groundspasms subside and the land gently rests again, the now transparent veil of dust wafts and drifts and streams itself apart. The constant wind will now police the chaff and dirt, and the land will quickly return to its eternal peacefulness, a never ending expanse of whispering grasses waving beneath calm blue skies. The bosk challenged the Sky by churning up the grass and kicking the land into the Sky itself, yet in the end, the Sky remained pure and strong. The bosk, the grass, and the Sky will remain in their proper domains, everlasting.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The southern plains region has two known mountain systems and one known major river system. These all give clues to the geologic history of the region. The southern plains region appears to have once been its own mountainless continent located between the southern polar ice cap and the large tectonic plate, referred to previously as the northern plate, that stretches from the equatorial belt to the northern polar ice cap. The continent that would become the southern plains traveled northward and collided with that massive plate. The new latitudes modified the climate and resulted in the grasslands of contemporary southern Gor. The suggested latitudes allow for the grassland topography while at the same time giving the region room to have been once located further south and then travel northward.

The existence of a southern tectonic plate was proposed in a previous article. Part of the evidence for such a plate comes from the Ta-Thassa mountain range. Some online interpretations believe the Ta-Thassa range to be located either bunched in a corner or running north and south, but in either case hugging the northwestern coast. It is clear from the books, however, that the range begins relatively close to Turia and runs east and west along the northern boundary of the southern plains to finally end at the ocean itself. When Cabot arrives on the prairies, there is a stampede of animals that can only have come from the Ta-Thassa Mountains. Pages 1, 2. The name of the range does not mean that the mountains are located at the ocean but rather that they run to the ocean. The Ta-Thassa range is therefore perpendicular to the Voltai and its southern foothills. It borders the rainforests and ends at Thassa. This large scale mountain range appears to be the result of the collision of the southern plate with the northern plate. The fact that the range runs east and west in a fairly straight line suggests that the continent approached the northern plate from the south and hit in a northerly movement. The collision is similar to the crash of India into Asia. The Ta-Thassa range is not presented as being particularly high, which suggests a long period of erosion and therefore great antiquity for the collision.

The eastern boundary is also a small mountain range, referred to as the foothills of the Voltai. The Voltai range is interrupted around Tor. There is a definite gap in the range, but whether the gap is relatively small or extends for the entire north to south distance of the Tahari is not specified. One model can have the Voltai picking up again just below Tor and extending down into the southern plains, getting smaller in altitude as it does. Another model can have the Voltai range proper ending just north of the Tahari, while in popular conception continuing below the Tahari in the form of low mountains referred to as the southern foothills of the Voltai. The fact that there is a line of mountains running north and south, forming geologic borders interrupted only by the Tahari, which is itself the remnant of either an inland sea or of part of Thassa, evidences that the eastern plate crashed into the northern plate after the southern plate had already joined with the northern plate.

The existence of the Ven Highlands also points to the southern plains being its own tectonic plate. The Ven Highlands appears to be the eastern portion of the rainforests. The elevation of the eastern portion is considerable and explains why the rainforests do not belt the supercontinent. The Ven Highlands may be uplifts or wrinkles formed by the same forces that created the Ta-Thassa Mountains and the Voltai range and foothills. Expressed in geologic terms, the combination of stresses from the southern and eastern plates running into the northern plate uplifted the eastern rainforests and created its westward drainage system.

The Cartius River forms the northern boundary of the southern plains in the minds of the Wagon Peoples. It has its origin in the northern section of the southern foothills, somewhere above Turia but still southeast of the Ta-Thassa Mountains. Because Turia is some thousand pasangs from any appreciable above ground water, Turia is probably located at least one thousand pasangs south of the Cartius. Book 8 Page 43. The Cartius travels westward, since the later eastern plate collision uplifted the eastern part of the northern plate and resulted in the westward waterflow that characterizes the major rivers of the supercontinent west of the Voltai. The Cartius has to be crossed by people traveling the plains between Tor and Turia. Page 3. The Cartius then parallels the Ta-Thassa Mountains. There is ample land for wintering between the western portion of the Cartius and the mountains. Page 58. Somewhere in the west, the Cartius enters the rainforests, continues to flow westward, and eventually empties into Lake Ushindi, which is only some 200 pasangs from Schendi Harbor on the coast. Book 13 Page 104. From its origin point, the Cartius crosses nearly the entire continent westward.

At the time Book 4 was written, it appeared that the Cartius began in the southern foothills of the Voltai and emptied into the Vosk, running far to the south and west of Ar. Page 2, Book 5 Page 207. Later, when the rainforests were introduced, it was revealed that new information had changed the understanding of the Cartius. The more complete original understanding had been that the Cartius began in the southern foothills of the Voltai, traversed the southern plains, entered the rainforests, emptied into Lake Ushindi, left Lake Ushindi, and flowed from the rainforests over sloping northern hemisphere plains into the Vosk at Turmus. That made it easily the longest river system on the planet. Then a cartographer discovered through a study of elevations that the river that enters the rainforests is not the same river that exits the rainforests. The edge of the rainforests where the river emerges is at a higher altitude than Lake Ushindi, and since water cannot flow uphill, the river leaving the rainforests has to be a different river. Subsequent exploration demonstrated that the Cartius flows into the rainforests and enters Lake Ushindi and that the only rivers of any size that exit Lake Ushindi are the Kamba and Nyoka Rivers. Exploration also determined that a totally separate river, which had been mistaken for the Cartius, begins in the Ven Highlands and flows westward over six cataracts, providing the drainage system for the northern portion of the rainforests. The origin place of that river was discovered by an explorer, Ramus of Tabor, and since the origin point is not specified, it may concluded that the river is the product of the confluence of smaller streams in the northern section of the Ven Highlands. That river exits the rainforests at a location where it had been logical for people to mistake it for the Cartius emerging from the rainforests, and then it flows into the Vosk near Turmus and Ven, which are at the eastern edge of the Vosk delta, and in that manner reaches Thassa. Ven is the last western Vosk city, and Turmus is the last small town and is literally at the margin of the delta. Book 13 Pages 16, 17, Book 23 Page 424. Along its way to the Vosk, the river is joined by tributaries. Page 203. The southern plains river retains the name Cartius, as it is south of Ar, and the river that flows from the rainforests and joins the Vosk was renamed the Thassa Cartius.

One repeated online interpretation purports that there are actually three Cartius Rivers, since the Cartius is also referred to as the Cartius Proper and as the Subequatorial Cartius, but that is simply a misreading of the material. Book 13 Page 19.

The existence of the corridor of plains between the Tahari and Turia is a logical inference enabling Cabot to walk over plains from the northern hemisphere to the vicinity of Turia with his only impediment being having to pay bargemen for passage across the Cartius River. It accounts for masses of Wagon Peoples having ridden all the way to Ar to wage war on a grand scale. The altitude provided by the Ven Highlands, which must certainly be considerable, explains why the rainforests stop at the corridor rather than belt the continent, and so the existence of an eastern highlands thereby also supports the idea of a corridor. The existence of the Fayeen Rivers and of fertile districts southwest of Tor also supports the idea that a corridor of plains must exist.

The Fayeen river system begins somewhere north of Tor. Its origin must be in the southern portions of the Voltai range north of the Tahari. Book 10 does not state whether the Lower and Upper Fayeen rivers begin as independent rivers or as one river that branches into two. Online interpretations favor the branching model and tend to visualize the branching as occurring at either Kurtzal or Kasra. Either location is impossible. If the Fayeen is a split river, the division into Upper and Lower branches takes place somewhere north of the small river port of Kurtzal, since it is specifically located on the Lower Fayeen and is situated north of Tor. Kurtzal is a four day wagon trip overland from Tor and is a shipping point for transport downriver to Kasra, which is the river port from which Tahari red salt is exported throughout Gor. Kasra is located west of Tor along the Lower Fayeen, which, along with the Upper Fayeen River, flows slowly and windingly to the Cartius River. Apparently no major rivers lie between Kasra at the Lower Fayeen and Tor, since caravans customarily traverse the land between Tor and Kasra. Book 10 Pages 20, 32, 33, 37, 41, 43, 44. Being west of Tor places Kasra and the Lower Fayeen well north of the rainforests. The Fayeen rivers do not flow westward and join the Thassa Cartius, which had not been introduced by Book 10, somewhere between the rainforests and the Vosk. This is shown by their absence in discussions of the road systems and Vosk tributary systems throughout the series. The Fayeen rivers would join other rivers or intersect with major roads long before they could reach the Thassa Cartius. The Fayeen rivers must flow from the vicinity of Tor southwestward to the subequatorial Cartius north of Turia. They both have to flow westward enough down the corridor of plains for Cabot to be able to not encounter them on his southward trek, and the corridor has to be wide enough to accommodate both Fayeen rivers.

The Teehra district is mentioned as being southwest of Tor and as bordering on the Tahari. There is also a large Desert Veminium industry at the edge of the Tahari. Tor itself grows few crops within its walls, so there must be growing land around Tor. Book 10 Pages 40, 44, 50, 51. The existence of croplands, a flower industry, and at least one identified district argues for at least some plains area southwest of Tor in which large volumes of water are readily available. While not requiring a corridor of plains between the Cartius and Tor, the phenomenon of the Torian districts is at least compatible with the corridor model.

The shape of the southern plains region is not given. The northern edge would be roughly a straight line running east and west. The region is the place where Thassa rounds the supercontinent, but whether the southern edge is rounded like Africa or angled like India or spiked like South America or squared with perhaps an arc like Australia is not specified. Land continues east of the southern foothills, and the shape of the continent east of the southern foothills and south of the Tahari remains unknown. Port Kar traders and pirates do not sail south of the Ta-Thassa Mountains, and any commercial relationships between Turia and coastal places are with islands and ports lying above those mountains. Book 6 Pages 6, 137, 138. Moreover, Wagon Peoples culture is an inland culture. Accordingly, the coasts of the southern plains are not discussed.

CALL FOR WRITERS AND RESEARCHERS

Future articles will highlight other areas. People who wish to work with me to provide Book research, heartfelt descriptions, and important background information relating to the area are encouraged to contact me at hersiusofthentis@yahoo.com.