The Greater Alps

One of the bigger geographic results of the Great Continental Shift. Originally made up of separate mountain ranges - based on the Italian/French Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Carpathians (with the Greek mountains as an offshoot) - the Shift caused the mountains to collide, close some valleys, destroy some valley settlements, and create one mega mountain range typically called the Greater Alps. Though not nearly as high as the Svarog mountains (which are based on the Ural Mountains in Russia), they provide a formidable barrier to both conquerors and traders which caused the search for sea passages to start slightly earlier, despite the Vikings. They also created a greater rain shadow effect, making the lands within the newly created Mediterranean lake system somewhat drier.

Geography

On the North side of the Greater Alps, the area is lush and green with forests where the humans haven't cleared the land and healthy crops where they did clear it. The cause of drought is usually over-planting of nitrogen-sucking crops and not from a lack of rainfall. On the South side, the climate is very tropical, much more so than in our real-world timeline, and since the time of Da Vinci the people there have put a lot of energy and technology into created desalination plants, which create tons of salt and desalinated water for the region and thus having water reserves is a sign of wealth or at least relatively financial stability. Sabkhas also appeared as a result of the Shift, which are mineral-rich mudflats that the tide leaves behind. There is a rainy season, but not a true monsoon season.

Fauna & Flora

Goat-antelope thrive in the mountains. No one was really bothering them up on the mountains before, and certainly no one is bothering them now! Marmots are also present, and they are very cute rodents. Wolves live here in large groupings, but the mountains are so vast that this doesn't deplete the populations of other species. Eagles are also present.

Natural Resources

Sulfur, aluminum, copper, gold, cobalt, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, tin, zinc, iron, nickel, lanthanum

Type

Mountain Range

Related Ethnicities

• Gyepotlak