Assessing A Planetary Environment

 

The People Of The Wind, IX.

Rochefort has crash-landed on an island in an archipelago which, it will soon be confirmed, is Oronesia whose home guard includes the business partners, Tabitha Falkayn and Draun, both of Highsky Choth. Rochefort is already well-informed concerning the core, rotation, magnetic field, atmosphere, vegetation etc of Avalon but is also able to sense and deduce some further details.

Lower gravity causes exuberance. Although the Avalonian diameter is only 11,308 kilometers, the horizon does not seem closer than the Terrestrial or Esperancian. The sky is bluer, the sun sinks twice as fast and Morgana looks larger than Luna. It is smaller but closer and causes twice the tides. He thinks that the dense ground-cover helps to explain why the hexapodal animals have remained reptiloid and are no match for mammalians or avians.

Diverse Avalonian Territories

 

The People Of The Wind, I.

Stormgate country:

"Above valleys steep-walled, dark and fragrant with woods, snowpeaks lifted. Closer was a mountainside down which a waterfall stood pillarlike under the moon. A night-flying bugler sounded its haunting note through stillness." (p. 447)

(Three senses.)

Elsewhere:

the Plains of Long Reach;

arctic marshes;

scorching New Gaiilan savannahs;

the Sagiittarius basin;

uncounted islands.

 

An Ythrian female who marries out of her choth has to adjust to different laws, customs, culture and geography. However, winged Ythrians naturally travel farther and more frequently than human beings. Eyath's mother, Blawsa, often revisits her native Sagittarius - the basin, not the constellation. Eyath plans to marry Vodan who is also of Stormgate. However, war will intervene.