A Tundra

Diana

LOOK HOW CALM SHE IS
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  1. Not accepting invites at this time
Posting Speed
  1. 1-3 posts per week
  2. Slow As Molasses
Online Availability
10AM - 10PM Daily
Writing Levels
  1. Adaptable
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Female
Genres
Romance, Supernatural, Fantasy, Thriller, Space Exploration, Slice of Life
Today's exercise you're going to design a geographic location!

A TUNDRA is a dry, cold, and windy landscape. Most often characterized as a frozen, or super cold place, and barren of most life because of the short sun seasons. To learn more about the traits of a Tundra, you can check out the Nation Geographic Article or the Wikipedia Page!

In this exercise.... design a Tundra for your country or world!

Some Things to Think About:

  • Is is an Arctic, Antarctic, or Alpine style tundra?
  • How long is the winter and summer seasons?
  • What is the typical temperature here?
  • What sort of plants manage to survive here?
  • What sort of animals make their homes here?
  • Are there any peoples settled here?
  • Are there any mountains, rivers, lakes, or ocean?
  • What sort of resources might be found in this area?
  • What are some distinguishing features about your tundra?
  • What are a few points of history that happened in this location?
 
Uhh ok so I was bored and thought I'd give this a try. Am a starwars nerd lightsaber wielding geek so this would be why it's affiliated with such. However this is entirely fictional and nothing to do with lucasarts..or the disney monstrosity that destroyed it -_- RIP Starwars.

Far to the edge of the galaxy in an uncharted but not undiscovered sector sleeps the dead world of Hyvos. The silver planet on the farthest orbit from the twin blue suns Jepherath and Kytos. Once a lush tropical world with nine seas bustling with life had slowly diminished as it's orbit wandered father and farther from the blue twins until it became frozen over. The ice reflects the light of the suns and it's eight moons to give it it's sad lonely silver aura. Yet even as life died, the force remained an eternal entity to encompass it, and it's force storming caves and caverns and enigma sought by force sensitives from all over.

Around 38,000 years before a new hope, je'daii explorers landed on the desolate world, intrigued by it's strong presence with the force, the surface was gentle but the depths were terrifying and mysterious. The nitrogen levels far too high to breath without respirators or artificial terraforming. The temperatures well below the negative 80s during it's long days that would last two months earth time. The air dry and sapped of all moisture. The only living creatures were black ice burrowing worms insensitive to the je'daiis influence over the mind by use of the force. They attatch themselves to a host and drain them of any heat or energy they can siphon out of them. Even from each other after mating.

During the night it would be so cold that all attempts to measure temperature with mechanical drones had failed. Last readings before the droids transmission was lost was somewhere in the negative thousands. They also suspect the ice worms, came to be known as kalms, may have had something to do with the transmission.

Harsh,unforgiving, and unlivable the je'daii decided that it should serve as two purposes: A prison for those so dangerous they threatened the safety of the order altogether, and as the trial grounds for a survival test. Volunteers would take up the challenge to survive one earth week with no food or water. The temple they constructed had generators for the artificial atmosphere inside and could heat it to around a few degrees above freezing. Such impossible living conditions gave them no choice but submit to the force and rely on it as their soul source of life. A giant statue of master Bo'di looms over the entrance wielding a double edged steel sword. A reminder to those who enter that strength in the force is not a desire to control, but to submit, and be one entity with it.

Beneath the temple are long tunnels with torches never to light again. Catacombs and tombs of an extinct sentient race lost in the pages of time, and enveloped in the darkside. Their rage as a people that did not wish to die out haunts it as a rip in the force. It draws and brings a sense of suffocation and oppression to those strong with the force. Many Je'daii have ventured down, only to become frozen petrified statues or worse, found laid to rest in an empty tomb that waited for them.

As it finally drifted far enough it was no longer useable by even the Je'daii and is just another relic of history. But still, the temple stands, and master Bo'di gazing down at his forgotten legacy.
 
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The Freezing Band is a planet-encircling region of land on the tidally-locked planet called Oristania. Through tidal locking to its home star, Oristania has a adopted an extremely contrasting set of environments in its regions, ranging from ground-melting hots to air-freezing colds. One side of the planet continually faces its star as it orbits around, while the opposite side faces eternal darkness and a lack of direct sunlight. Only a very thin band between these two regions supports living conditions, and is further divided into distinct areas.

One of these areas is the Freezing Band, a strip on the Habitable Zone bordering the dark side of Oristania. Where the middle of the Habitable Zone sees its star just on the edge of the horizon, the Freezing Band can only witness the light shining over the distance. Very little of this eternal glint is capable of warming the Freezing Band, and temperatures vary little throughout the year beyond random shifts between 200 Kelvin (-100 F, -73 C) and 230 K (-45 F, -43 C). The virtual void created by the dark side of Oristania draws in warm air rising on the dark side, cools it, and returns it back towards the light side. Wind speeds are a continually fierce force then, with biting colds sweeping the ground towards the light side. Warm air above would cool further down the path, saving much of the Freezing Band from facing an eternal blizzard.

The entirety of the Freezing Band is essentially a planet-wide glacier, with its surface slowly inching closer to the Habitable Zone and melting as it reached it. Organisms actually living in the Freezing Band, however, would not enjoy the benefit of these liquid waters. Life here would be dominated only by those who could manage a strict water retention rate, low heat dissipation, and a modem of securing water (heating the ice) with little energy expenditure. Most creatures here would likely sport a form of brown fat across the entirety of there body to induce heat generation at the cost of futile energy cycling. As the cold requires much more out of an organism's metabolism than does cooling in the face of heat, organisms would need a modem of energy conservation to survive.

For example, one such organism would utilize the benefits of undergoing periodic torpor to save energy otherwise used for heating their internal temperatures (it would thus be an endotherm, ectotherms would more likely utilize cryoprotectants to survive). Stationary during torpor, however, it would need to keep itself protected from would-be predators. This organism (let's call it an Ice Breaker) would bury itself in tube of ice surrounded by a warming secretion. Much like a trap door spider on Earth, it'd remain inactive (in this case, undergoing torpor), until a prey item passed by. Torpor is an arduous hours-long metabolic process on Earth, and so this organism would likely have to display some strange chemical pathways to get in and out of torpor expediently. Arising from torpor in seconds, the Ice Breaker would reach out and snap up the prey item before beginning the digestion process, likely utilizing the breakdown processes excess heat to help keep warm.

Plant-like life would find difficulty living in the Freezing Band, but not impossible. Certain tree-like organisms could live within the Freezing Band, closer to the Habitable Zone (and ultimately form a sort of taiga). The freezing lower winds would have to be protected against by extensive layers of insulating bark, whilst the upper regions would attempt to extend far into the sky, reaching the warmer, moisture-saturated airs above. The ice it sits within would only be easily melted in areas with underground thermal activity. These trees would get their water by soaking up melted ice resting above volcanic regions in the Freezing Band. Tough fleshy plants could surface through the ice as well, making up loose patches of vegetation for sparse herbivores to feed on.

Intense hibernators could survive tissue freezing utilizing cryoprotectants and anti-freeze chemicals in their haemolymph, possibly waiting out periods of blizzards or intense colds in the Freezing Band (as Oristania orbits, the distance between it and the star would affect global temperatures; as it distanced itself, portions of the Freezing Band would drop in temperature for months at a time). Others would migrate closer to the more temperate Habitable Zone.
 
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