HERE BE DRAGONS

A modern Bestiary

Here Be Dragons

Copyright 2012, Mark Ure Please note: This is not a finished book. It is being printed in compliance with a deadline.

Here Be Dragons

1. Preface 2. Introduction by the Interdimensional Transport Authority. 3. The Four Worlds World Zero Realistic World Ancient World West World Midgard Aphrodite's Children Appendix: The Yates-Gerson Device and the Multiverse.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Here Be Dragons

1. Preface
The bits of this book which are actually believed to be true are in this, plain, sans serif font. On the other hand, bits of this book which are almost certainly not true are printed in this newspaper like, slightly fancier, font.

2. Introduction
The first world to be discovered was Ancient World, which is in the neighbourhood of coordinates -15.07.-02.06.03.43.-21.17. It has two electromagnetic anomalies at the poles, one in the neighbourhood of Bermuda at the South magnetic pole and the other at the North magnetic pole which is in the Indonesian Archipelago. The Bermuda anomaly leads to Realistic World, which appears to be closer to World Zero. The Indonesian anomaly leads to Midgard, which is definitely closer to World Zero as it has a clearly identifiable history with documented events which occur in World Zero's timeline up until the eleventh century CE. Ancient World also contains Aphrodite's Children, on the planet Venus. West World is in the opposite direction to Ancient World. It was discovered accidentally due to a bug in the control software for the YatesGerson booth which reversed the signs for the octonions. It is interesting in that it is in several senses the opposite of Ancient World, suggesting that the distribution of possible worlds follows some kind of pattern.

3. The Four Worlds

Different worlds There are several different settings which may be mutually incompatible or have different physics. I'm going to arrange them in descending order of realism and outline what they're for: 0. The Real World! This timeline, this planet, these laws of physics, 4

Here Be Dragons adamantly and rigidly realistic. No flexibility at all. This is just here for neatness's sake. I wouldn't expect it to be used. 1. Realistic World. A world which is superficially like this one. Same geography, laws of physics and so forth, as they are understood today. The main difference is that there are cryptids and entities from urban myths, recent folklore &c, for instance lake monsters, Bigfoot, the Squonk and the Upland Trout. Details of the world need to be slightly different, for instance Loch Ness would probably need to contain more biomass to sustain Nessiteras rhombopteryx. 2. West World. A version of Earth without Africa or Eurasia but otherwise quite similar. This is probably useless but is there for the sake of fairness because of the Eurocentric Ancient World. It could contain animals such as the Bunyip and Chupacabras. It's the opposite of the next one. 3. Ancient World. Earth without the New World but with the Old, plus the continents of Atlantis, Hyperborea, Lemuria and Terra Australis, and with the South Pole in the South Seas, i.e. near the Caribbean. This contains most of the Western bestiary style animals such as gryphons and dragons, and a number of others such as Chinese dragons and krakens. Laws of physics are the same but the geography and climate is different. 4. Aphrodite's Children. This would be called "Discworld" if it wasn't copyright Terry Pratchett. It is a slightly convex world with a sky dome, on the back of giant elephants which are themselves standing on a giant turtle. The laws of physics probably need to be quite a bit different for this to work. Clearly two beings which belong here are the World Turtle and the giant elephants supporting the world. World Zero - this world. If a cryptid is discovered to be real here, it simultaneously becomes extinct in the world in which it previously existed. Realistic World - like this world with the difference that the likes of Nessie and Sasquatch really exist, with any other changes which follow from that (e.g. more food prey in Loch Ness or a tunnel to the sea). Beasts mentioned in folklore also exist here, e.g. the Bunyip, Chupacabra and Squonk. Urban myths also tend to be true and there are a number of conspiracies going on. This world is regularly visited by extraterrestrials in saucer-shaped craft, powered by electromagnetic motors. 5

Here Be Dragons Ancient World - Africa and Eurasia are the same shape but the planet spins on an axis passing through a point near the Caribbean to a point which would be situated in Northern Australia. The other continents are Atlantis, Hyperborea, Lemuria and Terra Australis, the last of which includes the whole of Australia as part of it. This world is the abode of most of the mythical beasts and plants mentioned in Western bestiaries along with a number of other and is physically different from World Zero in various ways. The continents missing are known in myths in this world and there are several animals and plants absent from this world but present in World Zero which are known as mythical beasts here, for instance the armadillo. There are no marsupials in this world either, so kangaroos and koalas are imaginary. There is also an imaginary "nail fairy". Population is around 500 million. West World - Includes only the Americas, Oceania and Antarctica along with the Pacific Islands and a few scattered islands where the mountaintops of Afro-Eurasia would be. Some of the American and Australian animals in Realistic World also exist here. Two points of interest are that the humans in this world are descended from New World Monkeys and Australasia was uninhabited before a relatively advanced technological civilisation arrived there in sailing ships to find, among other things, megafauna such as Megalania. There is no colonialism in this world. Population is maybe about a billion. This world mainly exists to provide balance for Ancient World. In this world, there's a myth that a great inhabited continent once existed in the vast expanse of ocean which is occupied by Africa and Eurasia in World Zero. Midgard - The world where animals and plants somewhat like those of Nordic myths now exist. This world had a hemisphere roughly corresponding to the Western Hemisphere in World Zero completely sterilised by a gamma ray burst in the year 1000 CE, an event which triggered a world-wide mass extinction. The current human population is well under a million. No colonialism due to the very small population. Turtle world: This is the most different world. Physics here are Aristotelian, 6

Here Be Dragons there are no atoms and so forth. A giant turtle is swimming through a resistant medium with four elephants on its back and a somewhat convex shield on which most of the organisms dwell. It bears little resemblance to the others physically except that the turtle is like those of Ancient World rather than World Zero.

World Zero
World Zero is the real world, the world in which this book is being written and read.

Realistic World
Realistic World is a world which to the casual viewer would appear identical to World Zero in all respects in most circumstances. Realistic World inhabitants themselves are generally not aware that they are not in World Zero and many of them, if asked, would describe the world exactly as an early twenty-first century inhabitant of World Zero would describe it. However, some of them would be incorrect in World Zero but correct in Realistic World because many things which are popular misconceptions or lunatic fringe ideas in World Zero are actually true in Realistic World. There is a portal between Realistic World and Ancient World in the Caribbean. Some real entities in World Zero are mythical in Ancient World, including four continents and a number of animals and plants, such as tomatoes and armadillos. The Squonk - Realistic World (2). Location: probably NE North America.

Here Be Dragons Lacrimacorpus dissolvens Quote from the 1910 book Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts: The legend holds that the creature's skin is ill-fitting, and covered with warts and other blemishes, and so it hides from plain sight and spends much of its time weeping.[2] Hunters who have attempted to catch squonks have found that the creature is capable of evading capture by dissolving completely into a pool of tears and bubbles when cornered. A certain J.P. Wentling is supposed to have coaxed one into a bag, which, while he was carrying it home, suddenly lightened. On inspection, he found that the bag contained only the liquid remains of the sad animal. Also mentioned in Steely Dan's 'Any Major Dude'. The tears dissolve the animal. It secretes large quantities of lysozyme (or another enzyme) and has no means of opposing this action on its tissues, so the tears are capable of reducing it to separate cells. This is akin to the real enzyme hyaluronidase as secreted by the bacteria associated with gingivitis, which can lyse almost the whole human body in small quantities (a few ml). Its body has a very high water content and the tears are emotional rather than purely physical (i.e. squonks are depressive - they perceive things depressively, that is, arguably realistically). Its tear ducts are the only parts of its body which don't lyse but are small and transparent, so they are not noticeable. It becomes a pool of cells which then become flagellated (or ciliated?) and swim to opposite ends, then rebuild two smaller squonks. There is no excretory system as it deal with waste by allowing it to build up as solid matter in its body and then leaving it behind. Incidentally, this is sort of what bryozoa do instead of excreting. It is a vertebrate, and eats like other vertebrates but has no anus, renal 8

Here Be Dragons system or cloaca. Although its ancestors reproduced by mating and there are still separate sexes along with a sex drive, it reproduces asexually in the manner described because it lacks enough self-esteem to get into a relationship and is also passive. Consequently, the reproductive systems are atrophied. It digests very efficiently but engages in comfort eating, with a diet high in carbohydrates and fat, which however, it has adapted to "thrive" on. It seeks out rotten fruit for its unpleasant taste and high alcohol content so that it can spend much of its time intoxicated and it sleeps a lot, including hibernation and aestivation (winter and summer). Its liver processes alcohol very well. It lives in cold, damp, dark conditions although it would prefer to live elsewhere because it thinks it doesn't deserve to inhabit conditions it would enjoy. While it is possible for a squonk to be happy, this soon proves fatal because it is so well adapted to being miserable that its organs give out if it's in a better mood. For instance, its respiration is based on constant sighing and sobbing, and if it breathes normally it can't absorb enough oxygen and asphyxiates. Its heart fails with high cardiac output and endogenous endorphins are toxic to its brain. Therefore, a happy squonk is unhealthy and probably about to die, and you have to be cruel to be kind. Mongolian Death Worm - olgoi-khorkhoi This is a giant terrestrial sea cucumber, red and resembles a colon, between sixty and 120 centimetres in length with black bristles at each end. It is able to squirt internal organs when threatened and can also fatally electrocute large animals at a distance. It lives in the Gobi Desert.

Loch Ness Monster The Loch Ness monster, Nessiteras rhombopteryx, is one of several related species of amphibious or aquatic megafauna, in this case a freshwater variety forming a relict population of around thirty inhabiting Loch Ness in Scotland. Despite initial suspicions that the animal was a plesiosaur, it has now emerged that it is in fact a giant, long-necked desmostylian. Nine 9

Here Be Dragons metres in length with a mass of ten tons, Nessiteras is an amphibious herbivore which has evolved into a plesiosaur-like form. Nessiteras is a representative of the desmostylian order of mammals, which fluorished during the Oligocene and Miocene epochs in the Northern Pacific. Unlike the situation in World Zero, the order spread south-east down the Pacific Mexican coast, across the Straits of Panama in the late Miocene before they closed, then across the Atlantic via Greenland and Iceland to Scotland and Scandinavia. Loch Ness is very rich in plants in Ancient World, sufficient to support the small population of monsters in it, which have a total mass of around three hundred tons. Yeti This is a large bipedal ape which lives in Tibet and the Himalayas. It's related to Gigantopithecus and therefore closest to the orangutan.

The Bermuda Triangle This is an interdimensional bridge which opens to a parallel universe, since dubbed Ancient World. It was opened by the culture referred to as Atlantis at the end of the last Ice Age from the other side into Realistic World, and is the source of many of the peculiarities of this world. Due to its age, it is rather unstable regarding its destination, size and position. Ships and aircraft entering the region have a higher than chance risk of entering another universe, the most probable one being Ancient World, at the south magnetic pole of a terrestrial planet with a relatively strong magnetic field of the kind found in the Pyramidal-Ultracharge Timeline Cluster. These are worlds with a more limited inflationary epoch, an extra gravity-like force of limited range and a particularly powerful 10

Here Be Dragons electromagnetic interaction. Most of these planets are uninhabitable, usually for climatic reasons, and combustion-based engines entering Ancient World are liable to explode soon after entry due to the high oxygen concentration in the atmosphere there. Mental health issues in Realistic World A major discernible difference between World Zero and Realistic World is that particular individuals and meticulous observers will notice remarkable phenomena which are sometimes not generally acknowledged or shared by received opinion, and for which mainstream thought has not attempted to account. Therefore, standard theories, hypotheses and explanations show a greater discrepancy with observable phenomena in this world than they would in World Zero. As a result, mental health is different than in World Zero, partly because particular phenomena generally regarded not to exist are in fact real, partly because this disbelief is encouraged or advocated by the establishment and partly because a minority have certain abilities not shared by most people. There is also prejudice against them. Schizophrenia: This is seen as including at least two of the following features: delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech, grossly disorganised or catatonic behaviour and the negative symptoms of the absence of strong emotions, speech and motivation. Only one of these features is necessary for the diagnosis of schizophrenia if the delusions are bizarre or involve a voice keeping up a running commentary on behaviour and thoughts, or more than one voice conversing with another. The problem for this diagnosis in Realistic World is that bizarre things often happen and it is in fact possible to insert thoughts and make a victim hear voices. Therefore, schizophrenia is overdiagnosed in Realistic World, and the distinction between it and paranoia is more blurred. Just as depressive realism is a feature of depression in World Zero, in Realistic World many diagnosed schizophrenics experience schizophrenic realism and the mentally healthy population tend to ignore, discount or fail to notice bizarre occurrences. The majority of people in this world cope with subconscious suspicions that things are not as they seem superficially by self-deception, that the world is more prosaic than some claim. 11

Here Be Dragons Schizophrenics and people suffering from a delusional disorder are more likely to be correct because there really is a global conspiracy. However, schizophrenics and otherwise delusional people can often still be seen as mentally ill partly due to society's attitudes towards them, the fact that their belief systems are isolated and not part of the mainstream, and because of the mental and emotional difficulties arising from the discrepancies between their perception of the world and those of the establishment. Moreover, their beliefs are often inaccurate and mixed, and they may cope poorly with their suspicions emotionally. Finally, there still are genuinely psychotic people in World Zero whose beliefs bear no relation to reality. The passive features of schizophrenia are different. Thought insertion, withdrawal and external control of the will, movements or speech are all real risks in Realistic World. However, other features such as thoughts being heard aloud or broadcast are not usually real phenomena there, though similar things would take place if the sufferer were in a group of people capable of perceiving the mental states of others. In the area of special powers, the likes of premonition are never real, so there are still characteristics which would be genuinely diagnostic of schizophrenia. Due to the confusion of realist and psychotic schizophrenia, medicine recognises two major categories of the condition. One is like our Type I and Type II, and many schizophrenics are lumped in with those conditions, but there is a third type whose features are clearly different. People diagnosed with it show normal-sized and relatively symmetrical brains without enlarged ventricles, do not have increased numbers of dopamine receptors, have no seasonal peak of birth date in the early part of the year and have a genetic element, which is however independent of the genetic element of the other types. However, all types of schizophrenia are more common in lower social classes, have an onset in the mid to late twenties and respond to anti-psychotic medication. Delusional disorder (Paranoia) Erotomanic and jealous types of paranoia are the same as in World Zero. Grandiose and persecutory types are more often realistic. Folie a deux, though it is a psychosis, is more common in Realistic World than in World Zero because people with the psionic trait are more likely to empathise and 12

Here Be Dragons therefore be persuaded of the truth of delusions. Philadelphia Experiment

Poltergeists Great Pyramid The Atlanteans brought certain technologies and knowledge with them to Realistic World which were later distorted or forgotten. One of these was the power of pyramids. Realistic World humans became aware of the special forces exerted within certain shapes but misunderstood the exact shape and scale involved. As a result, they constructed pyramids of variable size with square bases. These do exhibit notable properties of preservation due to their ability to conduct oxygen and water vapour away from centrally-located chambers, but this is hampered by their irregular shape, the misplacement of the central chamber and the poor positioning of air passages. Other pyramids work even less well because they are the wrong size. Contemporary establishment science on Realistic World does not accept the reality of pyramid power and instead considers both forces 13

Here Be Dragons to be part of a stronger gravitational force, with the result that there are some anomalies which it finds hard to explain. The Shadow Government Realistic World is secretly controlled by a government consisting of a small group of powerful and wealthy individuals whose identity as the true rulers of the world is hidden. This is not a democratic institution but operates through nepotism and the recruiting of promising people with appropriate attitudes from outside the group. It has gone by various names and is at least nine hundred years old, so it is referred to here simply as the Shadow Government. Its motivations are to ensure the stability of the current economic and political system, which involves a concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of a few individuals. It also has the arguably positive motive of preventing widespread panic resulting from the general public's realisation of the truth, and the less positive motive of preventing those organisations and individuals which the organisation as a whole does not trust from gaining knowledge or power. As a result, the organisation infiltrates intelligence services, public institutions and other power blocks in society with the aim of keeping a number of things secret. These include: Mind control techniques: The use of physical devices and techniques which render people subject to the will of others is not acknowledged but is widely used, even sometimes unwittingly by the police during riots. The Atlanteans: The Atlanteans arrived from Ancient World about 10 000 years ago and have colonised the Solar System. Along with the Greys, they are also actively engaged in abductions and visit the planet regularly in their spacecraft. The shadow government has done a deal with the Atlanteans to allow them to continue in exchange for secret technology and not revealing their presence to the general public. The Atlanteans are of course technologically superior but go along with this because they are not interested in what they see as the trivial power games of a civilisation confined to a single planet and would rather just have a quiet life. 14

Here Be Dragons The Bermuda Triangle: The existence of this artifact would reveal both the possibility of this means of transport and that of advanced technology. Therefore, incidents suggesting its existence are ridiculed by the media and its appearance on satellite photographs is edited out. Psionics: Although these abilities are recognised as available to certain people, this is not publicly acknowledged because of the power it would give to an individual who is fully aware that they have them. They are therefore constructed as mentally ill and medicated and incarcerated by psychiatrists, who are also of course controlled by the government. Pyramid Power: This would undermine various industries such as food and render various products more durable, so it is similarly constructed as non-existent. This is helped by a misinformation campaign involving the idea that pyramids need to be square-based rather than tetrahedra. Energy Medicine: Would undermine the medical and pharmaceutical industry and is therefore deprecated. Findings in deep space of alien artifacts: This is mediated by fake human missions to the Moon and other planets in the Solar System. In fact, modern humans have never left low Earth orbit by their own methods, although they have also been all over the Solar System with the help of the Atlanteans. Space probes orbiting other planets have their data altered, with the telemetry encrypted in a way which appears to be compression, but the algorithm concerned is patented by a front company for the world government. There are, however, real space missions carried out by the government itself. The shadow government promotes fake science through the infiltration of university science departments by their own people. The scientific method as we understand it is practiced by their own people and also by fairly fragmented fringe individuals, who are usually either repressed or recruited. Science 15

Here Be Dragons Realistic World science has existed in a number of forms. When the Atlanteans first arrived, they used their own scientific concepts and method without difficulty. After about two millenia, their science reached a global crisis point which led to its total revision. Later on, natural philosophy arose among the Ancient Greeks as it did in World Zero, and became steadily refined into science as it is known today. However, in the process of doing so, a social crisis was precipitated by concerns by the shadow government that if science were permitted to proceed publicly as it had hitherto, it would lead to social instability. As a result, science split into Echelon Science, a secret activity practiced by the higher echelons of government and certain underground groups, who agree on the methods used, and into a more controlled body of facts, and carefully proscribed methods which are used for everyday practical purposes by the majority of the population, including educational institutions. This second mainstream science is referred to as Vulgar Science by Echelon scientists. However, there is a further difference between science as practiced in World Zero and even Echelon Science in Realistic World. Whereas World Zero science deprecates anecdotal evidence on the grounds of its unreliability, in Realistic World anecdotal evidence is much more likely to be correct, although this does not apply to all areas of science. Therefore, it has a higher status in science, being almost as widely accepted as inductive logic. However, in order to maximise its reliability, anecdotes are collected in a formalised manner and ruled upon in a process similar to the legal system, where suggestions are put on trial and witnesses are called. Scientific papers can also sometimes differ from those of World Zero, as they are more likely to be in the form of case studies and reports and statistics is less important. This is less so for Vulgar Science. The revision of Atlantean science was somewhat along these lines, but as Ancient World also evokes this perceptual difference, though to a lesser extent, it was mainly due to other factors. Vulgar Science Vulgar Science in Realistic World is strongly influenced by what we would call Lysenkoism. Shortly after their revision of science in about 7000 BCE, the Atlanteans discovered DNA and invented direct gene-splicing. Genetic drift in the 16

Here Be Dragons results of their experimentation indicate that by 6500 BCE, their techniques were advanced enough to engineer sentient humanoids from unrelated tetrapods. There are two main types of these humanoid, one, the grey, based on humans themselves, the other a more radically modified non-mammalian form, the reptilian humanoid. Both of these species represent early genetic experiments which got out of hand. Reptilian Humanoids The design brief for the reptilian humanoid was to provide a slave race to automate certain tasks which could be transported long distances without the need for large quantities of stored food. To this end, a poikilothermic animal was required a cold-blooded animal which does not produce its own body heat via metabolism, considerably reducing calorie requirements. It was also required to hibernate, lay eggs which could be stored in a dormant form and be herbivorous. As an adult, it was intended also to be docile and obedient while simultaneously being intelligent enough to carry out fairly complex tasks. In order to achieve this, it was decided that an animal could be based on a form like that of a primitive dinosaur. Since no non-avian dinosaur DNA survived from the late Cretaceous in Realistic World, the solution was found by selecting the two surviving animals most closely related to dinosaurs which were only distantly related to each other: one of the eleven species of the New Zealand wingless and flightless giant bird, the moa, Megalapteryx species, and the gharial, Gavialis gangeticus, which is a fish-eating crocodile native to the River Ganges. The shared DNA was copied immediately into a new genome, then various simulations were run to find a non-lethal genome from the remainder, with preferences for herbivorous diet and bipedal posture with forelimbs.

17

Here Be Dragons

Gharial The poikilothermism of the gharial was preserved in order to reduce food requirements, and its forelimb DNA was also retained, along with the bipedal skeletal structure of the moa. The head was more like that of a gharial, with teeth, and the long tail was kept to balance the body. The hindlimbs and pelvis were like those of the moa.

18

Here Be Dragons

19

Here Be Dragons

20

Here Be Dragons Moa

21

Here Be Dragons Initially, a prototype bipedal creature was produced which closely resembled the Triassic archosaur Saltoposuchus:

Saltoposuchus This animal was allowed to breed for several generations in captivity, but was somewhat fierce, and it also took a while to produce animals which could survive infancy many died as embryos or shortly after hatching. The next stage was to use human DNA and turn off various unnecessary genes such as the one which caused tail growth. In order to achieve the latter, moa DNA for a pygostyle was restored and the pelvis was modified such that the hip joints were at a different angle, the pelvis was tilted backwards and a curve a lordosis was introduced in the spine to tilt the body further back. The size of the body was also reduced, the head and neck foreshortened and the eyes moved to a forward-facing position to facilitate stereoscopic binocular vision. The brain was planned meticulously from the brainstem outwards, and rather than attempting to create a new cerebral cortex, which was not very developed in either moas or gharials, the choice was made to build directly on the basal ganglia and develop a more sophisticated system based around additional ganglia, on the grounds that the absence of a cerebral cortex would make it impossible for the species to develop a will of its own. The prototype clones were an apparent success and the Atlanteans went on to develop around thirty different genomes with various genetic traits 22

Here Be Dragons in order to guarantee diversity, provide easy opportunities for different breeds and increasing resistance to infection by introducing variable forms of resistance to the same potential pathogens. Initially, reptilian humanoids were a success, and were transported all over the solar system and beyond. However, after some time it emerged that they were in fact more aggressive, self-willed and violent than expected, and rebelled against their creators, ultimately founding their own communities and colonies, often acting in quite a piratical way. This led to conflict between the Atlanteans and the reptilian humanoids but they have long since achieved an uneasy and pragmatic truce.

23

Here Be Dragons

Reptilian humanoids now generally look something like this: Good-quality pictures are hard to come by due to the secrecy and reluctance of the species to make themselves known. They are undoubtedly a significant influence on the government of the planet and are successful in politics due to the fact that they are psychologically quite Machiavellian. They are amoral, being generally sceptical about the very idea of right and wrong, and lack empathy even among themselves. Their political system is totalitarian and undemocratic, but they are in any case unlikely either to choose or thrive under any other kind of politics. However, this system is the result of the Atlantean design of the reptilian mind and was a deliberate feature to enable them to be controlled easily in a top-down strategy, with a master at the top and a rigid hierarchy underneath. There is some controversy over whether this view is a form of speciesism and a minority of observers suggest that they are in fact redeemable, though most people consider this to be a dangerously mistaken view. Reptilians have very efficient metabolism and are long-lived, rendering 24

Here Be Dragons them capable of interstellar travel much more easily than humans. They are able to enter a dormant state in interstellar space which can continue for many years, and their requirement for food is very small. They are also able to survive for even longer in the form of eggs, which enables them to take up less room and consume fewer resources. Consequently, their activities in spreading through the local area of the Milky Way from the Solar System involve a combination of suspended animation ships containing dormant adults along relatively short distances of up to twenty light years or so, egg-bearing ships with skeleton crews over about 120 light years and finally generation ships with long gaps between the generations bridged by stashes of eggs which can reach up to 600 light years. So far, the species is estimated to have spread a maximum of about 2000 light years from Earth, although the limit of the speed of light means that their current spread cannot be known to be that extensive until at least the year 4000 CE.

25

Here Be Dragons Greys

26

Here Be Dragons

27

Here Be Dragons These were the result of a second experiment by the Atlanteans, this time an early one in transhumanism, a project which later met with greater success. The initial plan here was to create a version of a human being with as few flaws as possible compared to the baseline example, which for the Atlanteans was of course somewhat different than those of World Zero in the first place. In this case, two examples of human were freely available to them, since the humans of Realistic World show considerable biological differences, such as the presence of cells in the central nervous system which were able to replace dysfunctional neurons. The Greys were unsuccessful in a number of ways. A major problem was that many of their enzymes and other biologically active substances such as hormones were redesigned in a manner intended to be improvements which unfortunately turned out to make their entire systems less efficient and healthy. Each substance operating alone was in vitro more efficient, but when operating in the body in combination with other enzymes, the total effect was lower efficiency and various problems which existed only on the level of the body as an entire system. Ironically, this problem would have been completely avoided by the earlier Atlantean vitalistic biological science, although at the cost of genetic engineering being completely impossible. As a result, greys need a constant supply of natural biological enzymes from native Realistic World humans, and achieve this through secret technology trading with the shadow government, which in turn allows them to abduct an agreed quota of humans to harvest particular biochemicals. They never tinker directly with their own biology on a genetic level due to the stigma associated with it in their culture, resulting from the rather poor job done by their creators. Greys are carefully engineered hybrids of Atlanteans and Realistic World humans, but unfortunately not carefully enough. The Atlanteans learnt from their mistakes and are now entirely transhuman, although they have mainly left the Solar System. In the meantime, greys live on various planets and space colonies throughout the system and secretly visit Earth on a regular basis, although they are based in the Zeta 2 Reticuli system thirtynine light years from Earth.

28

Here Be Dragons

Zeta 2 Reticuli, see from the sky of Earth

Zeta 2 Reticuli, seen from nearby. Note the proximity of Zeta 1 Reticuli in the background Zeta 2 Reticuli is only 2 billion years old and is surrounded by debris. Therefore, like the Pleiadean Atlanteans reptilian humanoids live on 29

Here Be Dragons artificial habitats in that system but have succeeded in constructing a planet by shunting asteroids together and clearing an orbit at the appropriate distance from the star. However, their technology is not as advanced as the Atlanteans and other than the planet, the oldest parts of the inhabited system consists of habitats previously used by the Atlanteans. More recent habitats have been built, but are largely copied from their former masters and are not innovative, suggesting that the species lacks creativity. They seem to have selected Zeta Reticuli in order to take advantage of the proximity of two stars, although the location suggests that it was mainly chosen simply because it was the nearest hospitable system to them rather than the best, and they seem to have had little choice at the time. The Atlanteans themselves are now based in the Pleiades, four hundred light years from Earth. They find the cluster convenient because it consists of a large number of high luminosity stars close to each other. They have no natural planets, but the Atlanteans have a very large number of artificial environments, including entire manufactured planets, in the Pleiades. They also have an outpost in the Venusian atmosphere and presumably in various other places between here and the cluster. After considerable and successful genetic engineering, the Atlanteans are now about 2.5 metres tall, but are still outwardly ethnically similar to the original Atlanteans, being fair-skinned, blond and blue-eyed. The Pleiades themselves are an open star cluster also known as the Seven Sisters. Unlike Zeta 2 Reticuli and the Sun, they are hot, large and shortlived stars of type B whose pressure of radiation is too great to allow the formation of planets. The entire cluster is about seventy light years across with a core diameter of sixteen light years, contains over a thousand stars and is quite new, having formed during the Cretaceous. The Atlanteans are not attached to planets and are using the Pleiades as a series of conveniently close energy sources and the clouds between them as sources of raw material, although they are also capable of synthesising matter directly from starlight, of which there is plenty in that region.

30

Here Be Dragons

The Pleiades, current abode of the Atlanteans, seen from Earth's sky Alcyone is highlighted, but is one of many stars in the cluster.

31

Here Be Dragons

The Pleiades seen from the direction of Earth.

32

Here Be Dragons

Close up of the Pleiades with some of the stars labelled

33

Here Be Dragons

34

Here Be Dragons

A reflection nebula near Merope in the Pleiades This is a typical example of the matter used as raw material by the Atlantean civilisation situated in the Pleiades star cluster in Realistic World. Merope itself is just off the top of the picture.

35

Here Be Dragons

Medicine Glial cells are usable as neurons. Damage to neurons leads to the release of particular chemicals which are detected by the glial cells. They respond by becoming neurons. Therefore, in a sense only 10% of the capacity of the brain is used. The head acts as a temperature regulatory organ and can radiate heat very easily, but does not vasoconstrict effectively, so most of the heat is lost through the head even if one is naked. Climate The shadow government is carrying out experiments using chemical additives to jet fuel intended to reflect infrared radiation back into space Botany Bananas are Moraceae and grow on trees. They are straight. Pines are Betulaceae, not gymnosperms. They are wind-pollinated, flowering plants. Palms have secondary thickening and are dicotyledons. Some bear very large nuts. Nuts: Almonds are not Rosaceae. Pecans and walnuts are not drupes. Brazil nuts are a different shape because they don't grow in capsules. Cachoux are not in the mango family. Peanuts are not leguminosae and are low in methionine and cysteine. People with nut allergies are usually not allergic to sesame or nutmegs, but they are allergic to coconut and water chestnuts. Water chestnuts are nuts, not corms. Cacti are cosmopolitan. They are found in deserts all over the world and spread during prehistoric times, before the evolution of humans. Food 36

Here Be Dragons A carbohydrate compound initially developed as an auxiliary source of oxygen for divers. When held in the mouth, salivary amylase gradually breaks down bonds in the molecule to release oxygen, which the diver can breathe directly. A gramme of hobermanene yields half a gramme of oxygen along with a smaller mass of hydrogen. Hobermanene was initially developed by a company whose board of directors shares many members with the shadow government. This is how it works. A hobermanene molecule is a collapsed icosidodecahedron held in a compressed state by pairs of oxygen atoms, and also bears two pairs of hydrogen atoms for each pair of oxygens. It can also be induced to trap atoms or small molecules inside its structure. Salivary amylase breaks the oxygen bonds and releases them and the hydrogens, thereby causing the molecule to expand to four times its initial diameter. This also creates gaps through which any trapped molecules can be released. This process was thought only to occur at body temperature in the mouth, in the presence of certain enzymes. Extensive testing seemed to show that hobermanene was safe and it began to be used in soft drinks and a fizzy candy for children. It later emerged that a combination of ingredients found in soft drinks and in the candy, but never both, led to an explosive release of the gases some time after being swallowed. This was discovered after a series of accidents where children combined the candy with canned beverages and found that after consumption of large amounts of both, there would be a sudden release of several dozen litres of gas inside their digestive systems, leading to abdominal rupture. Once this had been found to be the case, the manufacturers hushed up the rumours and the ingredient stayed on the market, but the rumours spread and hobermanene is still occasionally used in practical jokes and bullying incidents, where the ingredients are either disguised and consumed unwittingly by the butt of the joke or the victim is forced to consume them in full knowledge of their fate. Chewing gum Chewing gum is largely made of an ingredient which, if absorbed, cannot be broken down by the liver due to being lipid soluble but not easily converted to a water-soluble form, and is stored in adipose tissue for many years. Therefore, if chewing gum is swallowed, it stays in the body for a very long time.

37

Here Be Dragons

Ancient World

Why can so many animals in Ancient World fly? It's obvious that there are a great deal of large flying or otherwise aerial organisms in Ancient World compared to World Zero. It also seems that gold is common enough for gryphons and ants to use as a preferred substance and for dragons to hoard. These two facts can both be explained quite simply: Ancient World Earth is higher in heavier elements than World Zero Earth, making gold more common and the atmosphere denser. Gold: There is more gold in Ancient World. It tends to be controlled by dragons, gryphons and ants, making it difficult to obtain because it's fiercely defended, so it is still in a sense scarce. The reason gold is valuable here is that it's equally hard to obtain due to its hoarding by dangerous animals. There are probably a lot of other heavy metals which are more abundant here, for instance platinum and rare earths. This makes the gravity slightly higher, but not significantly so. Gold is still a coinage metal here. The Atmosphere: This is more consequential. The air pressure at mean sea level is 80% higher and the partial pressure of oxygen is 50% higher. The heavier atmosphere partly results from the slightly higher gravity, but mainly from the fact that xenon is the third most common component of the atmosphere, whose composition breaks down as follows: Oxygen: Partial pressure 0.3 bar; 16.7%. This is more oxygen than World Zero. Nitrogen: 0.8 bar; 44.4%. Same as World Zero but a smaller proportion of the atmosphere. Argon: 0.01 bar; 0.6%. Carbon dioxide: Low, not significant in either world. 38

Here Be Dragons Xenon: 0.69 bar; 38%. (There are rounding errors). There is so much more xenon in Ancient World's atmosphere because barium, iodine and caesium are all more abundant in its crust and they decay radioactively to various stable isotopes of xenon. This makes the atmosphere denser and the muscles of the animals using it more effective, with the result that an animal can weigh 2.7 times as much with the same performance, which includes flight. The difference in the nature of the atmosphere has a number of other consequences. The weight of the atmosphere, and therefore the pressure, is 80% higher. The altitudes of the clouds are higher, the air can hold more moisture, winds are stronger, thunderclaps are louder, waves are larger and have more force, and the snowline is higher. Also, buoyancy is easier to achieve in the atmosphere and respiration is more efficient. Insects, flying or not, are larger. Lightning has more destructive force, forest fires happen more often and fire is more dangerous. Gryphons are more able to draw sparks while mining gold and all fire-producing animals have an easier job, including humans. Air is breathable further up and there can be more air-breathing organisms in the upper atmosphere. The pressure of the oceans is somewhat higher too, though this is insignificant. Animals need more antioxidants in their bodies, which is one reason gryphons have golden-coloured feathers. Their carotenoids make them more resistant to oxidative damage. Other organisms coloured because of carotenoids are generally brighter colours, for instance "flamingoes" are pinker. The sky is somewhat bluer and the airglow brighter. In fact there is a general tendency for colours to be brighter in Ancient World. Drag is more important at a higher altitude, so "outer space" starts higher up. Balloons can rise higher in the atmosphere. Aurora is brighter and 39

Here Be Dragons more violet. Human-powered flight is easier. Ancient World snakes can be bigger than they would've been in World Zero. Heaven "The Heavens" or "Heaven" are defined as the region above which a hydrogen balloon cannot rise, a height of about eighteen Ancient World leagues (see the doc on units of measurement). Since the density of the atmosphere is higher, this is roughly the same height as the top of the stratosphere, which in World Zero is about half that altitude. It includes outer space, so it is in fact almost the whole Universe. There are a few organisms which live just below Heaven and others which spend time in Heaven itself. The Birds of Paradise are permanent inhabitants of the region immediately below Heaven. Eastern dragons and the pantheon at least dwell in Heaven itself, although Eastern dragons also spend time in water in eastern Asia. The Pantheon: there are at least ninety-two varieties of these, distinguished by the number of stars on their bodies. They cannot normally be seen even in space because they are very dark and camouflage themselves against the black of the sky.

Taxonomy in Ancient World As well as animal and plant kingdoms, there is a kingdom of organisms, some of which are large, with characteristics of both, including mandrakes, barometz ferns (also known as vegetable lambs of tartary). Also, many fungoid structures are in fact plant lesions rather than organisms in their own right and the kingdom of fungi is therefore smaller and different in nature. Many birds are in fact maniraptors, and can be primitively flightless rather 40

Here Be Dragons than having flightless ancestors. These are long-armed, have three fingers on each hand and have a semilunate carpal bone. The ancestors of swans were deinonychosaurs, more specifically troodontidae. These had unusually long hindlimbs compared to World Zero swans. There are three varieties. One is social, intelligent and uses language, and was described elsewhere. They are secretive and have communities in remote parts of Hyperborea near and on the inland sea. A second variety is of the same species but lives in Eurasia. These are solitary and descended from feral cygnets which result from abandoned or orphaned cygnets which hatched in this part of the world. They have no language of their own but make sounds. This means they are able to acquire various skills during their lifetimes and hand them on to their offspring to a limited extent, but are unable to evolve culturally beyond a very primitive stage. This means that they are not obviously intelligent to humans. A third kind is another species, descended from these feral birds. It is also solitary, less intelligent and make few sounds of any kind, and are therefore referred to as mute swans. All swans mate for life, lay one egg at a time, are helpless when they hatch and have a long childhood with extensive parental care. They have teeth, long tails with vertical feathers which can be used as rudders and are primarily water birds. They have claws on their wings but no opposable thumbs. Reptiles form an obvious class. They have a sprawling gait, are always scaly, sometimes give birth to live young, always have limbs and either rely on heat from outside their bodies or generate their own heat using fire. They include dragons, wyverns, lizards, tortoises, turtles and rhynchocephalians but not crocodiles or alligators, and a number of other species. Dragons are related to lizards. There are also bipedal wingless dragons. Snakes are not reptiles but more like vertebrate versions of worms with jaws and eyes, with slimy skin. Rhynchocephalians are common in Terra Australis. Archosaurs are a separate class including gryphons, crocodiles, alligators, 41

Here Be Dragons horses, winged horses, hippogryphs (which are, however, sterile hybrids and not a genuine species), bonnacons, Styrian panthers, opinici and birds. Birds are more diverse than in World Zero. Many of them have teeth rather than beaks, claws on their wings, long tails and they are not always descended from winged ancestors and may have arms rather than wings. Archosaurs as a class always lay eggs, are sometimes endothermic but through metabolism in their internal environment rather than their respiration. Their hindlimbs are always held directly under their bodies rather than laterally. Ostriches are bipedal archosaurs with no limbs and are rather like the popular idea of dinosaurs apart from the fact that theyre feathered. There are various other bipedal archosaurs which are somewhat like birds but have always been wingless. All are descended from very small bipedal dinosaurs which survived the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous. Snakes are similar to amphibians except that they have direct development rather than metamorphosis and do not lay eggs in water. They have never developed legs and evolved directly from fish. Their skins are slimy and cold and they breathe through them - there are no lungs. Chinese dragons are related to snakes and are amphibious or aquatic, although they can also fly. Its not clear what turtles are or if theyre closely related to tortoises. Butterflies and some insects which would have a pupal stage in World Zero have incomplete metamorphosis in Ancient World. There are also caterpillars, which are a kind of onychophore and not closely related to insects.

42

Here Be Dragons Birds of Paradise - Ancient World. Related to pelicans and more closely to frigatebirds, Birds of Paradise live above the normal cloud layer. They are wingless and legless, and survive on blue-green algae which are specialised for living that high - there are aerial plankton in Ancient World. I haven't worked out what the algae can be living off yet, unless they just happen to have been blown upwards somehow - a variety of inorganic elements needs to be available or the "algae" generally live at a lower altitude. They are adapted to the cold, low pressure and radiation, and their presence rules out the kind of commercial airliners as exist in World Zero. They have the usual adaptations of animals to cold climates, which are that their extremities are smaller and they are larger than their warmer relations. In the case of Birds of Paradise, this has led to the complete loss of wings and legs, the latter of course being unnecessary. Since there is hardly any oxygen at the extreme altitudes that constitute their natural habitats, they generate their own oxygen. They do this by separating oxygen and hydrogen in water, which is either by an enzymatic process similar to the action of catalase or by direct electrolysis. They then use the oxygen for respiration and, since they are birds, fill the hollow spaces inside their bones and their gular pouches along with other viscera, with hydrogen, creating negative buoyancy in the upper troposphere. I need to work out some kind of size and mass thing here for them to have sufficient negative buoyancy to float in air. Pelicans: Really do feed their young on their blood, similar to the way mammals feed on milk. The chicks are basically bloodsucking "parasites". Parrots: Descended from Psittacosaurs, these are small, flying protoceratopsians. Even in World Zero, Psittacosaurus had feathers. In Ancient World, it became smaller in size until by the end of the Cretaceous it was the size of a parrot, and in fact was an ancestral parrot. It survived the extinction of the dinosaurs and achieved flight soon after. They now 43

Here Be Dragons inhabit the rainforests of Hyperborea, Asia, Africa, Lemuria and Terra Australis, as well as some other habitats on those continents.

Gryphons, Bonnacons and Horses. Gryphons are quadrupeds resembling crosses between eagles and lions. They have taloned feet. the hindquarters of a lion, eagle-like heads, equine ears, large feathered wings used for flight and hatch from eggs the size of ostrich eggs. There are wingless species referred to as alces or keythongs and another winged species with paws called the opinicus. There is also an animal referred to as a male gryphon, of which more later. Gryphons are oviparous and hatch from eggs fifteen centimetres long in golden nests in the Hyperborean mountains. Their parents build the nests from gold which they scratch from rocks, raising sparks in the process, which they then roll into fibres and weave into nests in which they lay their eggs. They mate for life and do not seek new ones after the death of their partners. They are bold, courageous, strong and can triumph in fights against dragons and elephants, and are solitary animals. They eat large animals including oxen and horses (but see below as to horses in the World) and are entirely carnivorous, happy also to feed on humans, whom they sometimes carry off to feed their young. An adult gryphon is two metres long. They are very strong but not particularly good fliers, though they migrate seasonally from Hyperborea to an area ranging from South Asia to Ethiopia. Gryphon feathers are golden yellow and high in carotenoids and flavonoids. When suitably prepared, they are edible and are a fantastic source of provitamin A. As a result, they can cure certain types of eye disease and can sometimes restore sight to the blind. The so-called male gryphons are a separate but related symbiotic species, also related to the bonnacon, which help incubate the eggs and scavenge carrion left behind by the true gryphons. They have lost the power of flight. 44

Here Be Dragons Evolution of gryphons &c: The lineage of gryphons and their relatives can be traced back to the late Cretaceous. Towards the end of the Mesozoic, Hyperborea was an island continent populated by, among other things, ceratopsian dinosaurs like the World Zero Protoceratops, but unusually small, with an adult weight under 25 kilogrammes due to insular dwarfism. Explanations for insular dwarfism: occurs in many isolated ecosystems such as caves and oases. Large species tend to get smaller and small species larger. Only smaller animals survive due to lack of food and smaller territories. Also means shorter gestation and generation times. Thermoregulation is easier in the tropics. In herbivores, absence of predators means they can be smaller they don't need to be a threat. When an asteroid hit Terra Australis 65 million years ago, a mass extinction wiped out all of the larger animals on the planet. However, since Hyperborea was on the opposite side of the Earth from the impact, it was relatively unscathed, and because the dinosaurs there were smaller, they did not become extinct but just managed to cling on. As the Cenozoic Era began, they underwent a new adaptive radiation, evolving into a new taxon of animals which were feathered, egg-laying quadrupeds descended from ceratopsians. They are classed with birds and crocodiles in a class referred to as the archosaurs. As well as crocodiles and birds, living archosaurs include: gryphons, male gryphons, panthers, bonnacons, keythongs, opinici and horses. The last species needs a bit of explanation, but a few things need to be mentioned beforehand. Both male gryphons and bonnacons share a common ancestor with gryphons but are both more closely related to gryphons than each other, despite seeming more similar to each other than to gryphons. Male gryphons are native to Hyperborea and bonnacons to Eastern Europe. Bonnacons are superficially bull-like animals with horns that curve inwards which are used in mating displays. Like several other species in 45

Here Be Dragons the gryphon family, they are carnivorous and have a diverticulum near the anus which ferments sulphur-containing amino acids to produce hydrogen sulphide. On being threatened, bonnacons eject this gas along with dung and it ignites spontaneously in the air as a threat. Male gryphons also do this but as a means of warming the nest. Ordinary gryphons have this facility too but use it as a means of propelling themselves through the air because they are unusually large for powered flight rather than gliding. Panthers also have this ability. Horses: Ancient World horses are not mammalian but archosaurs. They are very similar to World Zero horses in appearance, with a single hoof on each foot, a mane, horse-like heads and long tails, and they run fast and eat grass as well as being used as a means of transport and power by humans. They differ in that they are covered in hair-like feathers, their manes and tails are feathery rather than hairy and they have two wing stumps on their shoulders. They also lay eggs and feed their young with cud, though they do not themselves chew the cud. They are in the same genus as gryphons. There is also a related Hyperborean species of horse which has large wings and is capable of flight, though it is smaller than the common horse. Horses are also originally Hyperborean, where they were domesticated and brought to Eurasia over the Pterophorus mountains when the Hyperboreans invaded Asia in the distant past. Horses and gryphons can interbreed to produce a sterile hybrid called a hippogryph but this rarely or never happens in nature due to the fact that horses are the prey of gryphons. Hippogryphs are omnivorous and capable of flight. Although there are no mammalian horses in Ancient World, there are several species of equine which look superficially very similar to horses, including unicorns and monoceri. These have single horns in their foreheads. A number of other horse-like mammals exist, including centaurs and onocentaurs. Tenuks Tenuks are tapirs, though there is only one species in AW. It is a large browsing animal with woolly fur, and has few natural predators. It lives in coniferous forests in South-East Asia and its closest relative is the unicorn. 46

Here Be Dragons 2.5 metres long and 1.3 metres high at the shoulder. Diurnal, eating pine needles, pineapples, and are important for seed dispersal because they do not digest seeds fully and tend to defaecate near water. Many plants in the SE Asian coniferous forest rely on them for growth. As a result, the plants growing in SE Asia are unlike those elsewhere in Leuconesia. There is an eastern subspecies of tenuk which is larger, white and has smaller ears and eyes protected by epicanthic folds. The western subspecies has dark wool in the summer and moults to a white coat in the winter. The peoples of Leuconesian Asia use the wool from tenuks as a textile. The Wallace Triskelion A threefold division between the ecozones of Asia, Terra Australis and Lemuria, meeting at the East Pole. The polar climate is so harsh that there is virtually nothing living there, and there are wide separations between the three regional archipelagos of Leuconesia further west. Lemurian Leuconesia is dominated by primates, Terra Australis Leuconesia by therapsids and Asian Leuconesia by tenuks and the flora dependent on them. However, primates are able to cross the pole and are also found in East Asia. The other bioregions are Sundaland, including Java, Sumatra and Borneo, Sahul, including New Guinea and Near Oceania as well as Terra Australis itself, and Mu, the Lemurian region. The region immediately around the pole is referred to as Wallacea. The name triskelion derives from the symbol for the Isle of Man a threelegged swastika shape, thus:

The Triskelion of Wallace itself has the following form:

47

Here Be Dragons

48

Here Be Dragons

49

Here Be Dragons

50

Here Be Dragons

There are some islands missing from the Lemurian side, and Lemuria itself is not shown. Vertebrate Central Nervous Systems in Ancient World and Realistic World Ancient World land vertebrates have a remarkably large number of sentient species present in several classes. These include the lepidosaurian dragons, therapsid centaurs, archosaurian swans and mammalian hominids. The last group has several clearly sentient species such as the woodwose, dwarf, human, mermaid, giant and cyclops. The reason for this phenomenon is that the brain developed relatively advanced cognitive abilities before these groups split off, resulting in a general tendency towards greater intelligence in lepidosaurs, archosaurs and synapsids, though not in amphibia (including turtles and tortoises) or serpents. "Camps" show similarly advanced cognition but achieve this by 51

Here Be Dragons warming their brains and increasing the speed of information processing rather than increasing the complexity of the structures - their brains are relatively simple but work much faster than those of, for example, humans and they consequently perceive time to be passing more slowly. The cluster of mutations which led to this change took place in advanced amphibia, and has led to many species being more intelligent than their World Zero equivalents. However, this is not always so because in many ecological niches, intelligence is an evolutionary disadvantage, so there are still quite a few "stupid" animals. As is the case in World Zero, intelligence is somewhat selected against because of the time taken to mature and learn, the investment of energy in parental care, the attention required reducing the number of offspring which can be raised at any one time and the time and nutrition taken for a large brain to grow before birth or hatching. Intelligence is also only useful for a limited range of novel problems on the whole. However, archosaurs, synapsids and lepidosaurs are all primitively intelligent even though many of them became degeneratively less intelligent, and evolutionary throwbacks are also sometimes more intelligent, so intelligence can reappear fairly easily. In Realistic World, human and some other brains have three separate systems widely separated in function and evolutionary history, a state of affairs referred to as the "triune brain". The Atlanteans re-engineered intelligent brains from genetically modified organisms in the Realistic World Neolithic period: see Reptilian humanoids. Scales and Scutes World Zero vertebrates have evolved scales twice, once in fish and fish-like animals such as sharks, and once in the ancestors of all quadrupeds except amphibians. Fish scales are somewhat like teeth on the whole and their genes also govern teeth in other vertebrates as well as mammalian hair. They are of various types but arise from the living layer under the epidermis, rather than the dermis. They can have pulp like teeth, and the ancestors of all quadrupeds have particularly tooth-like scales which, however, do not overlap but tile the skin. Shark scales are also like teeth but smaller. The tiled scales are called cosmoid and shark scales placoid. Cosmoid scales are probably fused placoids. Both types of scales have 52

Here Be Dragons dentine, i.e. they have a mineral layer like teeth have. Other fish have other kinds of scales but they are never like the scales of land-living vertebrates. Reptilian scales in World Zero are different. They arise from the epidermis and are horny, though they sometimes contain bone because bone doesnt always arise from the inside of the body but can develop in the skin in some animals. Lizards sometimes have bone in their scales. Mammals and birds sometimes have scales, birds on their feet and mammals less often but, for instance, on the tails of beavers. There are also scutes. Examples of these are the oblong scales on the bellies of snakes and the pinecone-like appendages of pangolins, or scaly anteaters (pangolins are not in fact anteaters or armadillos but probably closest to carnivores such as civets). Birds legs also have scutes. Scutes are horny and arise from the lower skin layer, the living dermis. They do not overlap but tile. Another difference between fish and reptile scales is that the former are shed individually but the latter in one go. Ancient World scales are also of two types but are distributed differently, and this has consequences for the kinds of animals that are possible in the world. Mammals and lepidosaurs, i.e. lizards, tuataras and dragons, have retained cosmoid scales, though in the case of mammals these are not usually all over the skin. Archosaurs have developed a different kind of scale more like those of reptiles in World Zero, along with feathers in some cases. This is because Ancient World amphibians retained the scales of their ancestors. Its probably best to describe this chronologically. When the fish first came onto the land in Ancient World, they were covered in cosmoid scales. This meant that their skin was always thick and impermeable to oxygen and carbon dioxide, so Ancient World amphibians are more like reptiles. They breathe through their lungs or gills, they can be larger because the insides of their bodies neednt be close to the surface, they are equally at home in the sea or fresh water because their skins are 53

Here Be Dragons protected from osmosis by their scales and because they are larger they can be herbivorous. They also have ribs, because they have lungs. However, like World Zero amphibians they lay eggs in water and hatch out as tadpoles, on the whole, and also like them, they metamorphose from a fishlike form to a newt or lizard-like form. There are no quadrupedal vertebrates with permeable skins in Ancient World. Lepidosaurs, chelonians, archosaurs and mammals all arose from amphibians, separately. Ancient world lepidosaurs include lizards, rhynchocephalians and dragons, but not snakes, turtles, tortoises or crocodiles and alligators. They are quite similar to amphibians except that they can lay hard-shelled eggs on land. Unlike their World Zero equivalents, Ancient World lizards do not shed their skins in one go and the fact that their skins are tiled with scales rather than having overlapping ones means that they cannot easily evolve into snake-like animals because they lack the flexibility snakes have. Lepidosaurs are very similar indeed to Ancient World newts. Chelonians are the Ancient World tortoises and turtles, and evolved directly from marine amphibians. They are shelled and generally like World Zero turtles, even to the extent of being able to breathe through their rear ends. Some returned to the land and became tortoises, so theyre the other way round than our tortoises and turtles: World Zero tortoises are ancestral to World Zero turtles but Ancient World turtles came first and some became completely land-living as tortoises. Ancient World chelonian shells are stony rather than horny because their scales are different. Archosaur scales are very similar to World Zero scales and share with them the tendency to become feathers. Ancient World crocodiles, alligators and ghavials (there are no Ancient World caimans) have skins like those of World Zero equivalents and they are generally quite similar to ours except that they can move their upper jaws separately than their mandibles. One animal has been able to take advantage of the relative softness of crocodile skin in Ancient World by developing a sawlike toothy back (it has cosmoid scales) which it uses to slice open the bellies of crocodiles and eat them from the inside. Gryphons, horses, flying horses, bonnacons and birds all 54

Here Be Dragons have feathers and may also have scales and scutes. Mammals are generally but not always hairy or furry rather than scaly, but when they have scales these are cosmoid, not like those of lepidosaurs, and they never have scutes. From this it can be seen that the travellers tales of armadillos and glyptodons must be purely mythical. Beavers have scaly tails and pangolins are also scaly. Some mammals, such as the catoblepas, have protective scales on their backs as a defence against predators. Whales are almost completely covered in scales, so they look more like fish than World Zero versions. The existence of mineralised, tooth-like organs on the skins of Ancient World mammals has consequences for their horns and antlers, which are like dentine or enamel rather than horny. Since they are poorly supplied with blood, they have another adaptation which protects the organs from attack by bacteria. In World Zero, the lower jaw of some vertebrates is able to resist infection better than other bones because it is more easily exposed to bacteria. Ancient World horns also have this feature, and as a result can be used to purify water and neutralise some poisons, such as scorpion venom. An Ancient World horn is more like a tusk or a tooth in substance than a horn of a World Zero mammal. This makes them stronger, harder and better forms of defence than horns made of ordinary horn. This is particularly noticeable with unicorns. Unicorns are horse-like animals related to rhinos which have defensive forehead horns. These horns are highly prized because they can neutralise many poisons and can also kill bacteria in water, with the consequence that purified alicorn, the substance of which they are composed, is used instead of chlorine to purify water for drinking. The related rhinoceros not only has horns of dentine but is covered in hard, armour-like plates of the same substance. Elephants are somewhat similar but have lots of small, hard nodules embedded in their skin like World Zero ground sloths. Because of this adaptation, a fair number of Ancient World mammals are practically bullet-proof and have to be killed with arrows or 55

Here Be Dragons spears. Guns have never really taken off in Ancient World because sufficiently penetrating bullets are hard to come by. Armour is also extremely hard because it can easily be made of the much tougher materials available from animals than the leather which exists in World Zero. Also as a result of the nature of the scales of land vertebrates and amphibians in Ancient World, there is a separate class of snake-like animals which are descended from lampreys rather than being reptilian. This is covered elsewhere. An odd consequence of the nature of Ancient World land vertebrate scales is that human skin, hair and nails behave slightly different. Although human skin does become horny, and human hair is generally made of the same protein as in World Zero, human finger and toenails are made of ivory and do not grow in the same way. Instead, they are shed periodically and grow anew like teeth, and there are usually two sets of nails just as there are of teeth. Parents tell their children about the nail fairy and manicurists and podiatrists are more like dentists. Nail varnish is also somewhat different. There is a hair condition involving calcification of the hair which occurs instead of baldness in men, though its consequences are similar because thin, brittle strands of hair are easily broken. Also, skin calcifies rather than becomes horny in Ancient World, so callouses are harder and psoriasis and eczema progress differently. In another skin disease, the surface of the skin develops calcified scales. This means that in general, Ancient World skin tabus are somewhat unlike World Zero ones, since skin diseases have a different course, tending to look more stony than weepy or inflamed. This also means that a condition such as scleroderma is more serious and quickly life-threatening. Just to make one last thing clear: hooves and claws are made of ivory, not horn, but horses, since they're not mammals, have horny hooves and still need horseshoes. This also means that ivory is more common, and there is no pressure to hunt elephants for their tusks. It is not a precious substance. This also means elephants are called something else, because they're named after the substance their tusks are made of, so that's a bit odd. 56

Here Be Dragons

Land Frogs Pliny and Isidore both mention these, but they seem to be quite unpopular subjects in bestiaries. Just as there are frogs which prefer water and prefer cold environments, there are anti-frogs, as it were, which need heat and are killed by rain. There is a slight flaw in this in that although real (World Zero) amphibians today do unusually well in cold, damp environments compared to other quadrupeds, they are also at home in the tropics and do not necessarily suffer due to high temperatures. A few preliminary remarks about Ancient World frogs in general. Unlike World Zero frogs, they are not flattened, as this is an adaptation due to cutaneous respiration and Ancient World frogs started out with impermeable skin and respiratory lungs - they do not breathe through their skins. Anurans generally somewhat resemble tailless lizards. Their eyes are not on top of their heads but face forward, as they are predators. The evolutionary history of land frogs began in the Sarmatian Waste. 57

Here Be Dragons Although Ancient World amphibians do not suffer desiccation to the same degree as World Zero ones, they did have some problem with obtaining water, in particular were unable to lay eggs in water and metamorphose through tadpole stages to the adult form, and could not take full advantage of high temperatures during the day because their scales were somewhat insulating, desert nights being very cold, though this enabled them to take advantage of nocturnal conditions. The earliest adaptation was the retention of eggs and tadpoles until they became adult, so land frogs give birth to live young rather than laying eggs. Prior to that they were almost confined to oases and creeks. Later, they also lost their scales in order to be able to heat up more quickly and absorb water from their environment. Their skins are thin and covered in pits which constrict in dry conditions but open when humidity is high, and which are well-supplied with capillaries to enable them to absorb water efficiently. Hence they are in a sense able to drink in the same way as a World Zero amphibian breathes. They also use the water present in their food, and they are of course insectivores. They jump very high to avoid touching hot ground too much, and have similar back limbs to this worlds frogs. Land frogs never drink. They excrete almost no water. To some extent, it makes sense to think of land frogs as cold-blooded equivalents to jerboas, kangaroo rats or gerbils, although they are quadrupedal, lack tails and eat arthropods and the like. Since they jump, they have flexible joints crossing their heads behind their eyes which absorb the shock of jumping, preventing their brains from being constantly jarred. Some land frogs have spread to Europe but are not particularly welladapted because they need hot climates and are killed by fresh water, either in the form of rain or in rivers, streams and lakes. This is because they are osmotic conformers like echinoderms - the concentration of their body fluids is always the same as any surrounding fluid in which they are immersed and have a water absorption system which, due to the aridity of their natural habitat, has no check. If they get wet, the pits in their skins absorb the water easily and irreversibly, so their blood and other body fluids get diluted easily which is rapidly fatal. Therefore, they seek shelter during rain and do poorly in temperate climates, and are migratory, moving 58

Here Be Dragons east in the winter and west in the summer. Their ability to jump is spectacular, and they can often cross rivers in this manner. They are also harder to squash than World Zero frogs and toads because they have ribs. One thing land frogs can do surprisingly easily is drink water of a certain salinity and live in sea water where it has the same salinity as their own bodies. Consequently, some land frogs cross the Channel to Albion in particularly warm weather. These frogs are not strictly speaking land frogs because they have webbed feet and live on coasts. Unlike true land frogs, they shelter from the rain in rock pools or return to the sea. They are sometimes kept as pets, but true land frogs are more popular - they are one of the most popular small pets. A land frog placed in sea water will not notice a gradual reduction in salinity, and therefore they are sometimes killed when they swim into estuaries rather than land on beaches. They are also endangered by rock pools due to the unstable salinity caused by rainfall and evaporation. Water frogs are quite different. Although they jump, they are adapted to cold climates, partly aquatic and covered in scales. They are larger than land frogs, have eyes on top of their heads and lay eggs in water which hatch out as tadpoles on the whole, though some do give birth to live young, either as tadpoles or adults. They are more circular in profile compared to World Zero frogs when seen from in front. The larger ones are omnivorous or herbivorous. There are also toads, which are larger than frogs. Mermaids, satyrs and woodwoses (wild "men"). Ancient World.

59

Here Be Dragons Humans had an amphibious phase before they became fully human certain apes returned to the water and began to adapt to marine life before turning back to the land. In Ancient World, some humans went further with this and became amphibious, but at the same time developed sexually divergent forms as mermaids and satyrs, so that they could exploit both terrestrial and marine environments for food and to escape potential predators. Both go off on foraging and hunting exhibitions in single-sex groups and it's not at all obvious that they're the same species, though since each group seems to have only members of one sex, it's clear that something fishy is going on. Mermaids are female. They have long, scaly fishlike tails below the waist and look like ordinary women above it. They are born with violet tails which change colour gradually throughout their lives until they become red at the menopause. During their reproductive years their tails release pheromones while on land which attract satyrs. They also sing songs which attract heterosexual satyrs into the water. They are good at tolerating hypothermia and can hold their breath for very long periods, an ability they also train in themselves by singing and other vocal exercises. Satyrs are male. They are hairy below the waist, have two hoofed toes and a pair of horns on their foreheads. They engage in a mating dance and play pipes as part of a courtship ritual. 60

Here Be Dragons

61

Here Be Dragons Satyr with nymphs Mermaids are almost twice the length of satyrs, satyrs being about a metre tall, mermaids about 1.8. Both mermaids and satyrs are somewhat flawed and unsuccessful as a species. Satyrs are subject to alcoholism and drug addiction and tend to die young as a result. However, they can also be wise and live austere lives oriented mainly around creative arts such as music and dance. Mermaid lifestyles are about equally austere but they are more practical and responsible for most of the technology, which is, however, rather limited due to the fact that they cannot use fire, and in fact the species as a whole has only learned of the existence of fire from others and they are therefore generally hunter-gatherers at the palaeolithic stage of development, although mermaids ride sea horses (NB: sea horses are not the same in Ancient World as in World Zero - see something i haven't written yet). Mermaids only have one opening where their legs would join, through which they give birth. Satyrs have two. In both sexes, there is a tendency to develop diabetes early, which however they are able to treat through herbal medicine and the avoidance of fruit, honey &c. Each sex also has only one gonad and one kidney. As a result of the diabetes, older mermaids lose the ability to produce pheromones at about the menopause. Unlike humans, mermaids and satyrs have 48 chromosomes. The extra pair developed from chromosome 18. Mermaids and satyrs also have the evil twin mutation and mermaids always give birth to twins. Their lifespan is rather short and they are susceptible to both mental and physical disability fairly soon after they reproduce. As a result, their children are often orphaned and looked after by the community and they rarely have living grandparents. Civilisation hasn't been able to get off the ground with this species due to their short lives and health problems, though they are at least as intelligent as humans, possibly more so. Their gender roles are partly cultural, but practical considerations prevent much 62

Here Be Dragons flexibility. Mermaid and satyr hair In prehistoric times, mermaids ranged over most of the Eastern Hemisphere, from equatorial to polar regions. They have now spread even further, particularly into islands in the Great Ocean. As a result, their ethnicity varies considerably and they have adaptations to both climatic differences and their aquatic and marine way of life. Although they spend much time swimming, they also spend long periods of time with their heads exposed to the Sun, so their scalp hair has to serve the purposes of insulation in air, in water and streamlining. Satyrs, by contrast, need only to protect themselves from solar radiation in the form of heat, light and ultraviolet radiation, and therefore have different hair. Satyr hair is generally kinky in shape but on growing out becomes "Afro"-like. Mermaid hair is unique among primate hair in that it includes both short and long hairs in certain parts of the body, notably on the scalp. The lanugo present on some human skin has evolved into short, stubble-like hairs shaped like arrowheads which fulfill the dual function of trapping air between the skin and water and reducing boundary layer turbulence. These hairs follow a streamlined pattern and are present over most of the body, being oriented in whorls which follow the flow of water across the skin while swimming. They are blond and very short and all mermaids possess these hairs of the same colour throughout their range. As a result, the fair-skinned mermaids of the east look conventionally Caucasian but those of the west, whose skin is darker, have a "peppered" complexion due to the contrasting colour of their hairs. The second type of mermaid hair occurs only on the scalp and is long, like human head hair. These hairs emerge from crescent-shaped follicles whose inner curve faces the crown of the head - there are no mermaids with double long hair crowns and one crown of the short hairs always coincides with their long hair crowns with several other short hair crowns on the torso corresponding to the need for streamlining. The inwardfacing grooves of mermaid scalp hair provides similar insulation to the short hairs by trapping air bubbles between the scalp skin and the water as 63

Here Be Dragons well as further down on the body, since mermaid hair is very long, an adaptation also enabling babies to take hold of it in the water. This channel is susceptible to filling with salt crystals when out of the water, so mermaids need to groom themselves thoroughly by combing their hair - a mermaid's comb is as important to her health and survival as her trident, as she cannot easily survive without either. Mermaids also take advantage of rivers by swimming upstream into their freshwater regions to remove salt from their hair. The dual purpose served by the long scalp hair means that in equatorial regions, some mermaids have kinky hair like that of satyrs, which insulates and protects their heads from the Sun. Like satyrs, they often allow their hair to grow out into a "bush". However, this necessitates a different mode of living than the eastern mermaids, who have long straight hair, because they cannot swim as fast and their babies cannot hold onto the hair while the mother is partly out of the water. Therefore, western mermaids tend to live in coastal and freshwater areas and around coral reefs and eat a diet of plants and slow-moving molluscs as they are unable to catch fastswimming animals. These mermaids were originally concentrated in the Mozambique Channel, though there is a gradual change in frequency and extent of kinky hair across most of the Western Lemurian sea, where suitable environments are more widespread and the climate is sunnier. Other differences between eastern and western mermaids are that eastern mermaids are taller and have more subcutaneous fat, which also applies to satyrs. Western mermaids became more mobile after the domestication of the seahorse, which helped them spread eastwards but they are still more likely to be found in the Western Lemurian sea than elsewhere. There is no ethnic conflict between the two, and also no dispute generally because they have different lifestyles. Straight-haired mermaids are the original form of the species, which arose on the eastern Lemurian coast and spread westwards. Western mermaids are more closely associated with seahorses than eastern ones and are in a sense "experts" on their care and breeding. They also deal in carbonate pearls, whereas eastern mermaids are more likely to deal in monopole pearls and don't eat bivalves. However, since Megaeuglena and other marine plantimals are more common in the West Lemurian sea, they form a more important part of the western mermaid diet, being caught in nets, 64

Here Be Dragons whereas eastern mermaids are more likely to eat fish which are caught by spearing. The eastern mermaid diet is higher in sea honey and sea olives. Woodwose

Woodwoses, or wild "men" of the woods, are related to mermaids and satyrs but both sexes are terrestrial. They are like humans but covered in hair and live in temperate climates, for instance in caves and woods, though not in remote locations but near human settlements. They are solitary and have no language of their own, though they are capable of learning a few words. The main issue here is lack of motivation and the fact that they have basically no society: they do not mate for life and have a relatively short childhood. Foraging, hunting and scavenging from human settlements all form part of their lives. They bond for the seven-year period of bringing up single children, who are mature and able to fend for themselves by that age.

65

Here Be Dragons There are various political and social issues around mermaids, satyrs and woodwoses, with much prejudice and hostility towards them. This is a more serious problem for woodwoses because they live in close contact with humans and tend to be aggressive. Males are also fiercely territorial, which can lead to conflict between them and with humans.

66

Here Be Dragons Minotaurs Native to Lemuria, bipedal carnivorous primates with parietal horns which are rather aggressive and about human sized, these construct elaborate labyrinthine burrows for themselves into which other animals wander, often becoming lost. Minotaurs, being familiar with the layout of their tunnels, lay in wait for them, then give chase, forcing the prey into a dead end, goring them with their horns and eating them.

Serpents Ancient World serpents are not closely related to reptiles (i.e. lepidosaurs) or even to other tetrapods, but arose separately. They were in fact the first vertebrates to live on land, though they tended to be amphibious. They share common ancestry with hagfish and emerged from the sea, rather than fresh water, in the Silurian period, when they preyed upon scorpions and various land arthropods. Features in common with hagfish: Slimy - like hagfish, serpents produce large quantities of slime very efficiently. Hypertonic - their body fluids are saltier than sea water, unlike most other vertebrates. Therefore, many of them can survive and maintain activity considerably below freezing point. Tendency to lose vertebrae - some species have a vertebral column but others have lost them. Six hearts. They also differ from hagfish in various ways. Some are able to live in fresh water, many are terrestrial or amphibious and they have jaws, which is convergent evolution with other vertebrates though they evolved 67

Here Be Dragons separately. They also lack gills - they rely entirely on gas exchange through the skin for respiration. Ancient World serpents are more like the folk misconception of snakes as cold and slimy than real snakes. They have ears and other appendages on their heads, but no limbs and have never had limbs or paired fins. Examples: Viper: Copulation is oral. Young eat through the belly when ready to be born. They are amphibious and eels and vipers are closely related. The mother dies during giving birth and is eaten by the young afterwards. Asp: Various species of these. Dipsa (for some reason there are two of these)#1: Poison damages kidneys, causing polyuria, dehydration and death. Ypnalis: Narcotic poison, inducing coma. Emorrosis: Haemorrhagic poison, causing bleeding from the skin. Prester: Bite is infective and causes rapid decomposition after death. Cerastes: Invertebrate. Buries itself in the sand with only a fourfold projection on its head showing, which is mistaken for a plant. When an animal tries to eat it, it attacks and eats it. Amphisbaena: This is complicated by the fact that amphisbaenae are also real animals, because they've been named after the mythical version. This has eyes at both ends and moves in either direction. It's also an ouroboros it holds its tail in its mouth. This is to achieve bulk while maintaining cutaneous respiration. It also tends to tie itself in knots like other snakes. Hydrus: Causes swelling which can be relieved by cattle-dung (no idea how i can make this work at the moment unless i change it to bonnacon dung). Parasitises crocodiles. Hydra: Lernean hydra, not the cnidarian. A water serpent with a number of heads, which can regenerate. Somewhat like a planarian - in fact, i think this is simply going to be a giant flatworm. 68

Here Be Dragons Boas: Italian milk-drinking snake. Drinks from cow udders. Jaculus: Has redeveloped the ancient dorsal fin and uses it to glide from branches onto prey which it then poisons. "Siren": Needs a different name, which is probably out there somewhere. A white, gliding serpent which injects an anaesthetic venom which kills quickly. Similar strategies exist in World Zero, e.g. vampire bats. Seps: Injects concentrated hydrochloric acid and enzymes which kill and predigest the prey, enabling it to eat the fluid remnants. Glow worms do this to snails. Dipsa#2: A fast, painless snake like the "siren". Earthworms are also snakes here. They resemble World Zero caecilians and annelids did not become earthworms because serpents arrived on land before annelids. There was therefore an "Age of Serpents" in the mid-Palaeozoic. When amphibians arrived on land, they had the advantage of avoiding desiccation, which serpents lack. The moist-skinned amphibians of World Zero have never existed. Serpents are more medically useful than World Zero snakes because their venom is more varied. They are, for example, local anaesthetics, anticoagulants, general anaesthetics and a source of digestive enzymes. Their venom is also faster-acting in many cases, like that of sea snakes.

Ancient World was formed close to a supernova because gold is an important element for much of the life on the planet, including dragons, gryphons and ants, though of course it plays no part in their physiology. Looking at World Zero's atmosphere, however, krypton is something like a hundred times as common in the atmosphere than xenon, and in fact the quantity of xenon in the real Earth's atmosphere is anomalously low. 69

Here Be Dragons Compared to this, the quantity of xenon in the Jovian atmosphere is anomalously high. The following theories have been proposed to explain this: Low xenon in Earth's atmosphere may be due to atoms being trapped in quartz inside the planet. The silicon atoms are displaced by xenon, forming xenon dioxide deep underground. This is a highly unusual compound because its a naturally-formed xenon compound. It's golden yellow in appearance. Hence the xenon, in spite of being fairly common (in the sun it's about as abundant as barium), seldom reaches the surface and consequently the xenon content of the atmosphere is minute. High xenon in the atmosphere of Jupiter is possibly the result of that planet forming before the solar nebula started to heat up, so it was incorporated in the planet, whose gravity then held onto it. Then, the sun started to heat up and drove most of the xenon off into space. So, putting these two together suggests this: Ancient World Earth formed near Jupiter but ended up where it is today. When Ancient World Earth first formed, it was very cold and was a natural satellite of Jupiter, so it ended up with a lot of xenon in its crust. However, it orbited so far from Jupiter that the planet lost its tug of war with the Sun and Earth gradually made its way to its current position. The xenon in the crust (and further down for that matter) was then released into the air as Earth heated up. This also goes some way towards explaining why the continents of the planet are at a different angle than in World Zero - the planet's early life was traumatic and it got thrown off its axis. The New World continents are also completely missing of course, and this could be explained by an impact when the planet moved through the asteroid belt. Earth initially orbited at a distance of many millions of kilometres from Jupiter. The Sun was able to pull it out of orbit and it gradually moved through the asteroid belt, where it underwent a second series of impacts, destroying part of its surface and knocking it into a different axial position while also forming the Moon. It eventually reached its current orbit, which 70

Here Be Dragons smoothed out and is now identical to World Zero Earth's orbit. Signs of this process in the Solar System include the high level of xenon in Earth's atmosphere, the more rapid rotation of the planet Venus (less braking from Earth has led to it spinning on its axis in the usual direction as opposed to retrograde once every 100 hours or so, and it is also habitable and has life because it's not so hot), and the larger Jovian satellites (Earth was the equivalent of Ganymede in World Zero and along with the "Callisto" satellite was lost to Jupiter. This has left "Europa" and "Io", both orbiting further from Jupiter than in World Zero). Another consequence for Ancient World Earth is that there is a golden yellow mineral called xenonite, which releases xenon constantly into the atmosphere and is associated with quartz. There is also kryptonite - a very rare substance found in the surface of the Bermuda ice cap, chemically krypton difluoride.

Breakdown of landmasses and oceans on Ancient World:

71

Here Be Dragons

EURASIA

72

Here Be Dragons 1. Eurasia: 54; 36.3%. This is almost identical in topography to the World Zero Eurasia but tipped up and straddling the Equator, with the Pterophorus Range like the Rockies or Andes across Lapland and Northern Siberia due to continental drift towards Hyperborea. These are the highest mountains in the world, higher even than the Himalayas or the Andes, and are snow-covered all year round even at the Equator. They are inhabited by large white bears like polar bears but these differ somewhat from real polar bears. There are also caribou, reindeer, wolves and so forth. There is a rain shadow desert nearby. Arabia (Arabia Felix) is a region of tropical rainforest and not arid like World Zero Arabia. There are vast rainforests in Central Asia, which is equatorial. The Pterophorus Range: This is a vast plateau and mountain range with no World Zero equivalent. It is caused by the imminent collision of Hyperborea with Northern Eurasia. Most of it is covered in snow all year round. It covers much of Siberia, stretching from Lapland in the West to the Chukchi Peninsula in the East. There are a number of peaks which reach the maximum possible height above sea level for a granite mountain, namely 13.4 kilometres. It's possible to see over four hundred kilometres from the top of such mountains, and where other such peaks are in the vicinity, this is doubled in each direction, making the maximum 1650 kilometres from the middle peak spanning the distance to each side. It also makes it possible to see parts of southern Hyperborea from Siberia. There are very deep river valleys in parts of the range, which griffins and swans fly through. Some of these have strongholds at the southern end which the Europeans and Asians have used to defend themselves against Hyperborean invasion historically, and settlements have grown up round them. Tartary: There is a vast tropical rainforest bisecting Asia from the east Pterophorus area, where it merges into a rain shadow desert, across Tartary into south-west Asia, and in fact Arabia Felix can be seen as part of the area too. This is usually simply referred to as Tartary or the Tartarian Jungle. It stretches across a total distance of 7400 kilometres across the equator and a mean of 950 kilometres east and west of it, giving it a total area of 14 million square kilometres, which is the size of World Zero Antarctica, larger than the whole of Canada, three times the size of the 73

Here Be Dragons Amazon rainforest and more than twice the size of the total area of tropical rainforest in World Zero. It accounts for the majority of species found in Ancient World, including the vegetable lamb of Tartary and the screaming mandrake. A number of great rivers are found in the area, including the Volga, Ural and Yellow Rivers. Two of these drain into the Caspian, which is therefore larger, being continuous with the Sea of Aral and almost reaching the Black Sea as it was in the World Zero Miocene. It has only become landlocked in the past two million years or so, so the life native to it is still quite similar to that in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Lake Balkhash is also larger and fed by rivers from the north-west rather than the south, as it is in World Zero. Tartary alone is responsible for more than half the oxygen in the atmosphere, by contrast with World Zero where most of the oxygen is supplied by algae in the oceans. The pressure of oxygen supplied by this rainforest amounts to almost 60% of the oxygen, or 176 millibars of the total partial pressure of 300 millibars. However, since the plants, plantimals and animals also respire themselves, they also absorb quite a lot of the oxygen produced by the biome and the contribution is therefore lower than it might otherwise be. Tartary is also the area with the greatest diversity of terrestrial plantimals because of the large biomass and the highest insolation of the land surface of the planet. The rainforest forms a substantial barrier between Europe on the one hand and Cathay and India on the other, so there was no Silk Road in Ancient World. However, there is a trading route along the West Lemurian Sea, and the landgoing route reaches West India. The sea route loops round Arabia Felix, goes into the Red Sea and ends at Sinai. The rainforest prevented the Mongols from reaching Europe and limited the size of their empire. It reduced contact between Europe and the Far East, delaying the arrival of paper in Europe, curtailing the spread of Buddhism and entailing that Cathay and Europe were less well-known to each other. There is a band of desert and tropical grassland each side of Tartary. One of these corresponds to the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts in World Zero 74

Here Be Dragons China, and is continuous with the rain shadow desert of north-eastern Siberia. The other covers eastern Europe north of the Black Sea and is called the Sarmatian Waste. Between the two and Tartary lie the fireplains. The actual word savannah does not occur in Ancient World languages as the Arawak language has never existed there, so they are technically referred to as maquis, meaning subtropical steppe. Ancient World tropical grasslands are more like chaparral, though again this is not 100% accurate. There are frequent fires on maquis due to the higher oxygen content, and in fact the ecosystem depends on it. As a result, they are referred to as the Fireplains. Europe: The large peninsula comprising western Eurasia, bordered approximately by the Urals and the Caspian and Black Seas. The eastern part of Europe is dominated by the Sarmatian Waste and the tail end of the Pterophorus Range in the north. The Sarmatians themselves are a nomadic desert people who speak a language known as Ironic. This is closely related to Scythian but has a number of remarkable features influenced by the nature of their culture, partly reflected in the nature of the vocabulary compared to Scythian. Although the two languages are superficially quite similar, many words and their antonyms are reversed in the two languages, with Sarmatian being the reversed language: Scythian has many words related closely in meaning to similar words in other, related languages, but the apparently similar words in Sarmatian often mean their opposite. Examples are: Sarmatian word English translation of the Sarmatian word Hah Wadi So Aes Kaam Wazo Whiliz Mountain Valley Black White Hot Cold Wet Scythian word English translation of the Scythian word Valley Mountain White Black Cold Hot Dry

Wodi Hoh Urs Sau Uazal Qarm Hus 75

Here Be Dragons Has Hua Salin Exef Raas Dry North South East West Huylydz Hur Salyn Aehsaev Rast Wet West East North South

Another idiosyncratic feature of Ironic is that it uses the same grammatical construction for negation and for yes/no questions. Ironic along with Sarmatian culture has a number of remarkable features. In a memorable historical incident, Sarmatia once drew up a peace treaty with Scythia which led to war due to the fact that the words for peace treaty in Ironic appear to say declaration of war in Scythian. A similar phenomenon occurred within Sarmatia itself. The Sarmatians themselves are very proud of their local dialects and language, and the word for peace varies considerably between different areas of the country. This has led to conflict between the regions and sometimes civil war. Another, rather sad, process which occurs in Sarmatia is with the word for sanity, which bears an unfortunate resemblance to the brown note produced by mandrakes on being pulled out of the ground. However, rather than causing permanent brain damage, some susceptible individuals become fixated on the word, being unable to think of anything else like an earworm, and if literate start to see the word written everywhere, even in patterns which are not writing. Sarmatians refer to death by a euphemism which translates freely as The Grim Reaper. This anthropomorphic personification is threatening and corresponds closely to the figure of Death in World Zero European folklore, but is only said to manifest when a person is recovering from a serious illness. The Sarmatians themselves have no concept of irony because to them, all things are ironic and they are unable to perceive the world in a non-ironic way. The nature of the Ironic language means that children take longer to learn to speak and acquire literacy in Sarmatia, and a simplified argot has developed among less well-educated Sarmatians. This dialect has been 76

Here Be Dragons systematised and proposed as an auxiliary language to be taught in schools, used in official communications and the like. As a result, there has been a backlash to make the Ironic language pure and hypercorrect and there are laws against using the simplified form of the language. This is partly motivated by the similarity to Scythian and the possibility that Scythians and Sarmatians might be able to communicate more easily if it were adopted. Scythians find Ironic easy to learn and understand, but Sarmatians cannot generally understand Scythian. In fact, Scythians generally achieve fluency in Ironic more quickly than Sarmatian children. Finally, although Ironic has an unusually rich colour vocabulary, more so for instance than English with two basic terms for both red and blue, they are hardly ever used because other aspects of appearance are taken to be more important, such as sparkling, glowing, shining and so forth. Oxidentaru: The westernmost nation in Eurasia, Oxidentaru was historically allied to Albion until the sixteenth century war between Western European nations and the Cipangan Empire in East Asia. Cipanguan territory expanded across Hyperborea and eventually attempts were made to annex Europe, provoking a war when Scandinavia and Iceland were invaded. Cipangu managed to occupy some territories but was quickly pushed back due to the extreme lengths of its supply lines, and almost all territory was reclaimed with the exception of a small part of the Iberian peninsula, corresponding roughly to the country formerly known as Portugal. Unlike all other nations in Western Europe, Portugal remained in Cipanguan occupation and the Cipanguan forces proceeded to have a large, deep canal dug across the lowest-lying parts of the west Iberian peninsula, thereby excluding the rest of Europe, and closed their borders, though continuing to trade with the rest of the Cipanguan Empire. As a result, Oxidentaruan culture is very unlike the rest of Europe. In recent decades, Oxidentaru has reopened relations and is now an accepted European nation. Bridges have been built over the canal and transport and communication is now straightforward One of the effects of the isolation and mixture of Portuguese and Cipanguan culture has been the emergence of a new language sharing features of both Cipanguan and Portuguese. It uses the Cipanguan scripts, including Kanji, and its grammar is largely Cipanguan, but the vocabulary is mainly Portuguese, though influenced by the pronunciation of Cipanguan. The 77

Here Be Dragons name of the country itself, Oxidentaru, means west in Oxidentaruan. Oxidentaru also has an idiosyncratic religion based on Christianity but dramatically mutated due to the fact that it was forced underground. It has since become the official religion but is now a form of ancestor worship which uses Christian martyrs as if they were those ancestors. Its rituals and liturgy also have a Cipanguan flavour to them. A naive outsider would have the impression that the religion, known as Kirishitan, was an oriental faith like Shinto or Buddhism. Eden Although several advanced hominins in Ancient World evolved in Lemuria, the present species is descended from a very small number of individuals in South-west Asia, namely in an area called Eden. This is an isolated enclave they reached as a result of rafting from Lemuria during an ice age about 150 000 years ago, when the Lemurian seas were little more than channels. It is dominated by a caldera surrounded by high mountains but is itself low-lying and was very fertile at the time humans lived there. It was initially distinctive for its low plant biodiversity but this was soon remedied by evolutionary radiation into a large number of empty niches. The area is near the Persian Gulf and therefore consisted of rainforest, though without any major predators or many hazards of other kinds. However, there was one species of tree which produced a natural herbicide, enabling it to clear the surrounding area and avoid competition with other species. The humans living in the area had a tabu that prevented them from eating the fruit of that tree. At some point, this tabu was overcome and they began to eat that fruit, whose toxin accumulated in their bodies with a number of deleterious effects. They became more aggressive to each other, the toxin was mildly teratogenic, leading to inherently more aggressive offspring due to a change in brain development, and their touch became poisonous to other plants they used as food, since these were the plants in competition with the tree. Eventually the toxicity became so serious that even the ground they walked on was cursed in that areas on which they habitually walked became barren and incapable of growing edible plants but becoming populated by hardier inedible species. This led to a crisis in the population and they were forced to leave the area through the mountains and enter the harsher environment on the other side, where food was harder to find. In the meantime, volcanic eruptions rendered Eden uninhabitable and the only human survivors of the incident were those who were rafted back to Lemuria. 78

Here Be Dragons

2. Africa: 30.37; 20.4%. Again the real continent but tipped up. The area west of the Gulf of Sirta is temperate, the Eastern Sahara is maquis and desert and there are some rainforests in the Congo, but not to the same extent as in Asia. Primates arrived in Africa later than they did in World Zero, from Lemuria. Africa has naturally poor communications with Eurasia due to the Sahara. As Ancient World Sahara is in a different place, the barrier is elsewhere and cuts off different parts of the continent. West Africa is climatically like Europe, but marred by the slave trade. In World Zero, Africa can be accessed via the west and east coasts by sail, via the Nile or through the Sahara. The west coast route is difficult because of trade winds driving ships west and the answer turned out to be not to resist this drift and accessing it via Brazil. In Ancient World, the currents and winds move differently and there is no such problem, but there is still a problem with supplies. Therefore, Carthage spread further into the interior and Hanno reached the Cameroon, successfully establishing colonies. The Carthaginian Empire was therefore bigger. Since camels were not used outside Egypt until late in antiquity, crossing the Sahara was harder in both worlds, even though we're talking about different camels. The Roman Empire extended well into West Africa but had a long land border with Carthage along which wars were constantly fought. This drained the resources of both empires and may have been a factor in their fall. The late Roman Empire split along the Straits of Gibraltar rather than in modern day Slovenia. The African part of the former Roman Empire stayed Romance and European in culture on the whole, with "orthodox" style churches, and African Romance is a distinct branch of the Romance language subfamily. This area is referred to as Latin Africa. When the Muslim invasions took place, they were somewhat Romanised and therefore Iberian Romance was less Arabic and more purely Romance than Castilian or Portuguese are. One of the few consequences for English is that the word "magazine" is different. In more recent history, the West African nations became Latin American-style dictatorships before eventually becoming liberal democracies and joining the EU. One of the modern African Romance nations is Mauretania and the most important African Romance language is its national tongue, Mauretanian. 79

Here Be Dragons The eastern part of North Africa near the Sahara is still Carthaginian and uses a "cleaned up" version of the Phoenician script. Its languages are mixtures of Phoenician and Arabic. Their politics are similar to those of Latin Africa except that they have not undergone reform and are still totalitarian regimes. Meanwhile, in Europe the Roman Empire didn't spread so far east as in World Zero, for the same reasons as it was restricted by the Sahara to the south. Therefore, the eastern part of Europe is even more Greek, with all languages using the Cyrillic alphabet. The Isles of the Blest are a misnomer as they and the nearby land, which is cold and Scandinavia-like with fjords, were the main source of West African slaves. The westernmost coast of Africa is home to the redhead people, who stayed pagan, were persecuted by the Christians inland and eventually enslaved. The Nile divides East and West Africa but arises in the Mountains of the Moon. Combined Mediterranean African and West Eurasian history Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa have more in common than in World Zero. The most significant barrier to Afro-Eurasian culture are the Sarmatian Waste and Sahara Desert, which is absent from West Africa. It therefore makes more sense to consider Eurasia as a single continent culturally, and there is also more continuity between organisms in the western part of Eurasia and Africa for instance, land frogs are able to spread westwards along an extensive front in hot, dry weather and also to move along coastlines by sheltering from the rain in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas. In ancient times, three high cultures came to dominate the region: Carthage, Rome and Byzantium. Rome: Traditional date of foundation was 753 BCE. As in World Zero, the Roman forces spread into Gaul, Britain, Iberia and the northern part of Africa, but climatic differences prevented their advance into Eastern Europe and the strength of Carthage prevented them from colonising Libya. They stayed pagan for longer than in World Zero and were only converted to Christianity by a crusade carried out by the Byzantine Empire in the fourth century. Even after that, the distance from the seat of power in 80

Here Be Dragons Byzantium maintained a cultural difference, manifested in the development of a reformed church in the late Middle Ages in Western Europe and Latin Africa. Byzantium: This was originally a set of city states which became an empire stretching at its maximum extent from the Indus River in Tartary in the east to Egypt, Illyria and Dalmatia in the west. This empire was the first political entity to become Christian in the fourth century and proceeded to conquer the weakened Roman Empire soon after in the name of the Church. As a result, Christianity in general has a more Orthodox flavour than in World Zero. Another consequence of the persistence of the Greek-speaking empire has been the appearance of an entire Hellenic linguistic subfamily spoken throughout the area, paralleling the Romance subfamily to the west. Carthage: Earlier in antiquity, Hanno the Navigator was able to establish Phoenician colonies across the Atlantic coast of West Africa, which later became the Carthaginian Empire. This was able to colonise territory from the edge of the Sahara desert in Libya along a line stretching to the Gulf of Guinea. However, this was only short-lived because the Romans invaded across the Pillars of Hercules deep into Africa. This was however a Pyrrhic victory because it led to the resources of both empires being squandered on defending a land border stretching thousands of kilometres and was probably the most important factor in the fall of both empires in the fourth century. 3. Atlantis: 5.65; 3.8%. The smallest continent, Atlantis is about the size of the Roman Empire, the European Union or New Jerusalem as mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Just beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar), Atlantis is described in Kritias. It may need to be slightly different. In Ancient World, Atlantis has a cool, wet climate like Scandinavia and is somewhat volcanic in the west due to its proximity to the MidAtlantic ridge. In fact, it may even straddle the ridge and have a volcanic mountain range running across it. It is somewhat like Iceland but much larger, and is the only continent to have glaciers as a result of its high latitude rather than altitude, although the Leuconesia archipelago is also glaciated. Its roughly diamond-shaped.

81

Here Be Dragons 4. Hyperborea: 6.986; 4.7%. About three-quarters the size of Australia, Hyperborea is beyond Siberia. It has the approximate shape of a fourleaved clover with a central landlocked lake. The eastern half is in the tropics, the western subtropical. The inhabitants have the highest life expectancy in the world due to genetic variation and have a distinct ethnicity. The sentient swans live in secrecy on an island in the central lake.

82

Here Be Dragons

Here Be Dragons 5. Lemuria: 18.88; 12.7%. Very close to the size of South America, Lemuria is in the Indian Ocean. Its a relatively narrow strip of land stretching all the way from Madagascar and Zanzibar in the west to Sri Lanka and Sumatra in the east. It has a maximum east-west length of 8535 km and is up to 3871 km north-south. primates initially evolved before spreading to South-East Asia, the Indian subcontinent and East Africa. Humans evolved at the western end and spread across the continent, and from there to Africa, India and Asia before reaching the rest of the world. Madagascar is part of the Lemurian mainland and it is also very close to Sri Lanka. The continent is mountainous in the centre and therefore ecozones depend partly on altitude as well as latitude and other factors, tending to stretch diagonally across the continent. The central plateau is alpine and glaciated, surrounded by mixed coniferous and broadleaved temperate forests. Closer to the coast, the land is lower and has typical biomes for its latitude. The Lemurian ecosystem is characterised by primates occupying ecological niches which would elsewhere be occupied by other mammals and often even by birds. Examples of this are the various species of fairy, which are most diverse on this continent, and pixies, which are primate rodents. This is because the mammalian diversity during the late Cretaceous was low, consisting almost entirely of plesiadapiforms. Partly due to its remarkable flora and fauna and partly as a result of the fact that humans evolved there, nearly half of Lemuria is a World Heritage Site. The presence of the scitalis means they are not generally poached or invaded. The south coast is remarkable for a number of outposts used for study and tourism by the centaurs. These are the only permanent centaur settlements outside Terra Australis. The largest human city is in the northwest. Unlike primates, centaurs are immune to the influence of the scitalis and occasionally help humans avoid them. Lemuria is unique in being bounded by two arms of the Wallace Triskelion to the north and south, but leaks in that primates have colonised Africa, South-east Asia and the Indian Subcontinent, including humans. Taprobane resembles Lemuria to some extent. Sri Lanka is Serendip (and Cathay is China). The primates living across Lemuria are substantially derived from the prosimians rather than simians, 84

Here Be Dragons so for example mantichores, sphinxes, pixies and fairies are not descended from monkeys or tarsiers, or for that matter anything like them. The central highlands contain most of the coniferous forests of the world. The centre of those highlands in turn includes glaciated regions somewhat like those of Pterophorus and the highlands form a separate political entity, i.e. they are not part of the same countries as the rest of Lemuria. The ethnicity of the people in Lemuria falls into three groups. One is a continuum of Polynesian-like peoples stretching from Malagasy to Sumatra, west to east. All speak Austronesian languages written using a script derived from Arabic, which is the dominant script on the continent. In the northern central region, there are Dravidian and "Aryan" people speaking Sinhala and Tamil-like languages who invaded in the fairly recent historical past and use a variety of alphabets including Dhivehi. In the highlands and the regions dominated by the Scitalis, there are isolated pockets of indigenous people who are basal humans, that is, they have changed least since the species evolved. They are in no way inferior to other humans. Finally, Lemuria is coincidentally very like Corsica in shape, though it is of course far larger and with a different orientation:

85

Here Be Dragons

86

Here Be Dragons

87

Here Be Dragons Lemuria and Corsica compared Culturally, Lemuria is largely Islamic but just as Christianity is different in Ancient World, so is Islam, largely because it is divorced from Arab culture and rejects the Hadith.

88

Here Be Dragons

TERRA AUSTRALIS

89

Here Be Dragons 6. Terra Australis: 32.85; 22.1%. The second biggest continent and slightly bigger than Africa, Terra Australis is heart-shaped and in what the English-speaking inhabitants of this world would call the Far South. It is somewhat isolated from the other continents by the southern arm of the Wallace Triskelion on the north side. The Equator passes through the middle and it has rainforests as large as those of Central Asia, with almost all of the continent tropical. Its Ancient Worlds climatic equivalent to Africa, with a desert at each end, two belts of tropical grassland and a humid, tropical interior. It is dominated by therapsids and the eastern end, which is one of the humps of the heart, is arid and similar to Australia. New Zealand is part of a peninsula. To some extent, Terra Australis is Gondwanaland. In recent geological time, the subcontinent of Huy Brasil collided with it and there is a large plateau with very active volcanoes, so active in fact that it is thought that they will trigger a mass extinction in the next million years or so. East of this plateau are the Campi Amazonis, or Amazon Basin, a large basin with an area of 2 million square kilometres and up to 5 km below sea level but extremely arid, with no rainfall whatsoever. It was formed after the collision between Huy Brasil and the main part of Terra Australis and is a salty desert, with however a number of isolated plateaux, making up about 10% of the area, inhabited by more conventional but genetically isolated organisms. Formerly, it was an inland sea, but since it was not well-supplied with rivers and cut off from the Southern Ocean, it dried up in about a millenium due to being in desert latitudes. There are a few animals, including vertebrates, living in the basin, which has year-round temperatures over 80C. Air pressure at ground level is 3.8 bars, giving water a boiling point of 140C. Water is available from hot springs in various places. It also has major deposits of astatides, including francium astatide, which centaurs mine for their own purposes and trade with humans. For humans, the area is literally like a sauna and survival is impossible for more than a couple of minutes. Centaurs are slightly more tolerant due to their ability to shut down their endothermy, but even they find it difficult to survive for long there and rely on special environmental suits, vehicles and climatecontrolled dwellings. The challenges for humans and centaurs living in the area are close to those of living on another planet, and 90

Here Be Dragons in fact the Ancient World Venus is more hospitable. There is an exposed ocean ridge running along the basin, which is of considerable interest to geologists. A few hypersaline lakes occupy the lowest points of the basin, with life only at the edges. Extremophile micro-organisms live in certain places across the Campi Amazonis. A few rivers enter the region but evaporate within a few kilometres. There is also occasional virga precipitation which fails to reach ground level due to evaporation as it falls. Hot springs are found in various spots, particularly along the sides of the ridge. The extremophile microbes are mainly found near the creeks and hot springs, but some also survive on desert varnish, which is however only present where the altitude is relatively high due to reliance on dew. They are not part of the food chain because their biochemistry involves amino acids of reverse chirality to all other life on the planet, like Venusian life, and seem to originate from that planet. Given the existence of Aphrodite's Children, this suggests a connection between the two planets, and the genetic drift of the desert varnish organisms also means that it is unlikely that there is either an Atlantean or a Centaurean connection there is clearly a connection but it apparently occurred millions of years ago, shortly after the formation of the basin in the Pliocene. It is also quite remarkable considering the extreme aridity of the basin. Biomass enters the area in the form of dead organic matter and excreta from the plateaux, and the occasional living animal or plant which falls into the basin. Flying animals sometimes also drop food into it. There is a narrow waist in the middle of the basin almost bridged by a number of peaks which is quite well-supplied in this respect. Some insects fly in and out of the area and arachnids prey upon them. Birds cannot survive there but there are large insects and dwarf dragons, and birds do fly over the area at a relatively great altitude. The plateaux, which are former islands, are karst. This terrain consists of bare rock with soil and carbonate minerals eaten away by acid rain, partly due to carbonic acid in the rain, partly as a result of the sulphuric acid from the volcanoes in Huy Brasil. There are many cenotes, sinkholes and potholes but there is also life. Rivers on the karst plateaux tend to plunge underground and emerge again 91

Here Be Dragons at lower altitudes. They eventually spill out onto the Campi Amazonis, where they quickly evaporate. Terra Australis once again has unique flora and fauna, but by contrast with Hyperborea is dominated by non-mammalian synapsids whereas Hyperborea is dominated by dinosaurs. Since it split with Pangaea at the same time as the evolution of primitive dinosaurs, the dominant terrestrial class is synapsid but not mammalian, referred to loosely as therapsids. The traversodonts and cynognathids survived the late Triassic mass extinction here and have left herbivorous and carnivorous descendants. Unlike vertebrates elsewhere, they usually have six limbs like the first amphibians. There are also lepidosaurs and archosaurs in Terra Australis. This continent alone has preserved the sphenodonts. The native saurischians also evolved into bipedal forms like flightless birds, although flying birds have also reached the continent and naturalised many millions of years ago. Like Hyperborea, the continent has produced an indigenous sentient species the centaurs. However, unlike swans, centaurs are well-known as intelligent to the human race and have a technologically sophisticated material civilisation. Human beings lack a permanent presence on Terra Australis and are considered inferior by centaurs, though their attitude can be positive or negative depending on the individual. Centaurs have little interest in the rest of the planet, considering it to be distastefully infested with human vermin. Terra Australis and Hyperborea were formerly part of the same continent, in the centre of the Great Ocean. This split in the early Mesozoic into three continents, the third one being Huy Brasil which followed Terra Australis into its present position and collided with it recently. Hyperborea moved in the opposite direction. The general arrangement of the continents is somewhat closer than in World Zero and they are in the process of colliding to form a supercontinent, referred to as the Oecumene, which will happen in the next few million years. The deepest oceanic trench is between Pterophorus and 92

Here Be Dragons Hyperborea in the sea known as the Arctic Ocean, which is, however, really too small to be considered a real ocean rather than a sea. The Indian ocean is smaller than in World Zero because of Lemuria. South of Lemuria is the Southern Ocean, between it and Terra Australis. The word Oecumene is also used to refer to all the land except for Terra Australis, i.e. the whole human-inhabited world. West of Atlantis lies the Great Ocean, combining the Pacific and the Atlantic, covering at least 50% of Earths surface and stretching all the way from Africa, Atlantis and Europe to China along one axis and from Hyperborea to Terra Australis in the other. It also contains both the East and West Poles and their ice caps, both of which are smaller than the Arctic Ice Cap in World Zero. The Caribbean islands exist, but are in the Western Polar region in an area referred to as the South Seas. There are island chains in the Great Ocean but no large landmasses at all. Many islands are volcanic. One consequence of this is that Ancient World is closer to having land and water hemispheres than World Zero. Another is that the coast of Hyperborea is afflicted by enormous waves. The southern coast of Hyperborea has a monsoon climate. Hyperborea is where gryphons hatch. It lies at the back of the North Wind, beyond the frozen wastes of Pterophorus where the snow falls like feathers. The land itself has to exist because its where those animals originate, but unlike the land to the south, its warm and the sun never sets. There seems to be no way to make a land with constant daylight without interfering with the rest of the Earth so much that it becomes either uninhabitable or very silly, so instead i thought of the following solution, which makes Hyperborea warm while still keeping Pterophorus cold. However, my solution is highly Eurocentric, literally. The Greeks before the sixth century BCE saw Earth as flat. This opinion changed to making it round after and persisted, ambiguously, ever since in Europe, meaning that the Greek words for North, South, East and West changed their meanings when their beliefs about the shape of the planet changed. Before that point, North had meant the direction of Thrace (and Hyperborea), South the opposite direction, West the direction of the 93

Here Be Dragons Pillars of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar) and East the opposite direction to that. Two so-called continents are allegedly named after these directions: Europe is from ereb, the Sumerian word for West, Asia from asu, a Semitic word for East. So, say youre standing on the Urals. Europe is west of you, Asia is east. Those are simply the names for those directions. Now imagine looking at a globe with Nantes at the centre. 7/8 of the land on this planet is visible. This is the land hemisphere. The other side of the planet, with the antipodes of Nantes at the centre (i.e. near a set of islands called the Bounty Islands fairly near New Zealand), is almost entirely ocean. This is relevant to the mediaeval world view. The Church declared that there could be no land on the opposite side of the planet because the tropics were considered impassable and therefore anyone living there would not be able to hear about Jesus, and since they were anthropocentric, no people meant no land. Isidore of Seville and others saw Jerusalem at the centre of an apparently flat world, but this messes up the European climate. Take the globe lined up with Nantes at the centre and note the position of the North Pole. Now roll the globe, keeping Nantes at the centre until the position occupied by the North Pole is at the Tropic of Cancer, the northern limit of the tropical zone in reality. This is the new North Pole, roughly, about which the planet spins. However, its now called the West Pole, the planet spins the other way and it is in fact in the Southern Hemisphere. The opposite hemisphere is centred on the East Pole. The Sun rises in the South and sets in the North. A compass points more or less towards the Caribbean in most parts of the world. There are two points on the planet which still have the same latitude. One is in Nantes, the other in the Pacific Ocean near the Bounty Islands. The compass directions have all swung through somewhere near ninety degrees, but not quite. There is no North or South Pole - they are almost the new West and East respectively. This difference has a number of other consequences. Magnets are considered to have west and east poles instead of south and north ones, longitude is measured as north or south of Greenwich and latitude is west or east of the Equator. Map projections are similarly altered: for example, the Mercator projection puts east, which is in a sense actually north, at the top of the map. This means that the mediaeval orientation of maps with 94

Here Be Dragons east at the top has not changed: the T-O map can be superimposed on Afro-Eurasia with only slight rotation of the map. What we would call magnetic south is in the area of Bermuda and magnetic north is in the Ancient World's equivalent of Indonesia, more commonly known as the East Indies or Leuconesia, since the islands there are permanently white with snow. This is sometimes counter-intuitive since it means that the Caribbean is east of the pole even though sailing there from Albion would be in a westerly direction, just as parts of the East Indies are west of the pole but could be reached by sailing west from Sumatra, or for that matter Europe. The Eastern and Western Hemispheres are natural geometrical divisions separated by the Equator like the Northern and Southern Hemispheres of World Zero, but the Ancient World Northern and Southern Hemispheres are divided by an artificially chosen meridian of longitude which passes, like that of World Zero, through Greenwich, and they are therefore not natural divisions of Earth's surface. The Prime Meridian is half of a great circle running between the East and West Indies and through Greenwich near London. This also influences time zones. The International Date Line is antipodal to the Prime Meridian as it is in World Zero, but unlike the World Zero line, it has no need to deviate from the circumference of the great circle on which the Prime Meridian is also situated because there are no human habitations on large landmasses which it would otherwise cut through. Although it does cut through one side of Terra Australis, the centaurs which dominate that continent use their own system of longitude and time zones which places their own International Date Line somewhere near or in Hyperborea. Neither humans not centaurs need to consider this because they are unlikely to find themselves in the potential problem zones. Mermaids and satyrs do not have a problem because they live in isolated communities.

95

Here Be Dragons

The difference between World Zero and Ancient World compass directions, as if standing in Nantes.

96

Here Be Dragons Hyperborea is still in the north, but at about the latitude of the Mediterranean with a pleasantly warm climate. It is beyond Pterophorus, a highly mountainous plateau caused by the southward movement of the Hyperborean continental plate and therefore still a frozen waste. The global climate is slightly milder because neither ice cap is over a continent, so both are smaller than the Arctic ice cap due to the greater salinity of the Great Ocean - the Arctic Ocean of World Zero, being almost landlocked, is less salty because of the rivers emptying into it, in reality. This means there is quite a bit more liquid water on this version of Earth and the sea level is higher by something like sixty metres. To give an impression of climate, the ice cap covers the West Atlantic (the New World is absent). There is no Gulf Stream and in fact all the ocean currents are different. The Western polar circle is near the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa. Most of Albion has a lower latitude than the World Zero London. The Isle of Destiny is slightly further west and so slightly colder. Albion doesnt extend far enough east to west for there to be much difference in climate: Cornwall is about at the latitude of the real Midlands and Scotland is slightly cooler, but England as a whole is slightly warmer. Brittany is almost exactly the same. However, since there is no Gulf Stream there are some climatic differences. The tropics begin at Turkey, meaning that Europe as a whole has a fairly similar climate - the coldest part is probably Portugal. West Africa is rather cold, like Scandinavia, and covered in coniferous forests. The western tropical circle to the equator extends across Western Siberia, Turkey and the Middle East, meaning that its climate is again quite similar to that of World Zero. The Far East is temperate, including much of China. The fact that Africa is substantially temperate means that humans did not evolve there but on the continent of Lemuria south of India, where primates evolved, then spread to Africa and the East Indies, which is how it used to be thought they had evolved anyway. Two other continents are Atlantis and Terra Australis. Atlantis doesnt fit particularly well because it has a Scandinavian climate, but since its mid-Atlantic, it can be 97

Here Be Dragons appropriately volcanic. There are four extra continents, which would make the land surface area considerably greater and lead to habitability problems for the entire planet due to aridity as well as raising the problem of there actually being more water, meaning either that the mean depth of the oceans would have to be quite a bit greater and perhaps incompatible with life in the depths (e.g. krakens and leviathan), were it not for the fact that compared to World Zero several continents are missing. As it happens, like World Zero Ancient World still has 29% land surface because all the continents unknown to the majority of mediaeval Europe, i.e. the New World and some others, namely the Americas, Australasia and Antarctica, dont exist , but the land surface is redistributed between the remaining four continents. Atlantis is about the same size as Asia Minor plus Libya in the Greek senses of those areas. Terra Australis is very large just as it was shown on early modern maps in World Zero before the discovery of Antarctica and the navigation of the Southern Ocean severely limited its maximum possible size, with an area of just over half the combined area of the Americas, Antarctica and Australasia. The area of Hyperborea is more than half that of the Arctic Ocean, which is the World Zero polar ocean between North America and Eurasia, absent in Ancient World due to the non-existence of North America there. Lemuria makes up the balance of the land surface area, making it almost exactly equal to that of World Zero. It should also be noted that Terra Australis is not a snowy desert but quite habitable. There is slightly more liquid water in Ancient World than in World Zero, but the vertical scale of the solid surface of the planet, modally speaking, is exaggerated by 0.2% relative to that of Ancient World. For instance, Mount Everest has a height of 8866 metres above sea level and Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench has a depth of 10920 metres. There are exceptions to this difference in scale, notably the Lemurian Seas, which are much shallower than the Indian Ocean, and the enormous Pterophorus Range, which is up to 13400 metres above sea level. The entire planet is also slightly larger, with an equatorial diameter of 12781 kilometres and a polar 98

Here Be Dragons one of 12738. This also means that if the metre were to be defined in Ancient World, as it was initially in France during the late eighteenth century, as a ten millionth of a quadrant running from the North Pole to the Equator through Calais, or rather the nominal points equivalent to them in Ancient World, it would turn out to be two millimetres longer, except that the terrain is different due to the presence of Hyperborea and the Fram Trench and the deviation from a quadrant along that path is also different because the equatorial bulge runs through central Asia rather than Africa. However, even a quadrant running through Calais from the West Indies to equatorial Asia would be longer. The planet is less oblate than World Zero Earth because although it is more massive, it also rotates more slowly and is less elastic due to the presence of small amounts of monopolar matter, particularly in the core. Another consequence is that the gravitational pull is different. If the density of the planet were the same as it is in World Zero, its mass would be 0.6% greater but the slightly larger size would cancel this out, giving it a gravitational pull only 0.2% greater. This would mean that the acceleration of a falling object in a vacuum at sea level would be 9.83 metres per second squared rather than 9.81, using the World Zero metre, and that escape velocity would also be slightly higher due to the larger radius and stronger gravitational field of the planet. This would in turn slightly increase the abundance of helium and hydrogen on the planet because they would be less able to escape into space, slightly shorten the length of a lunar month and also make the interval between tides slightly shorter. The sidereal lunar month would be one hour and eighteen and a half minutes shorter, in particular. In actual fact, the situation is more complex. Although gravity, gravitational acceleration and the abundance of lighter gases are all indeed higher on Ancient World Earth, this is true to a somewhat greater extent than would result merely from its slightly larger radius, for several reasons. Though rare, the extremely dense magnetic monopoles have been raining down on Earth's magnetic poles since its formation 4600 million years ago as part of cosmic rays. Most of these particles have sunk into the core, although some processes keep a few near the surface such as the presence of natural magnetic fields and the ability of Eastern Lemurian oysters to capture them in their shells and use them as paperweights to hold themselves on the sea bed. 99

Here Be Dragons The strong nuclear interaction is more powerful, so heavier atoms are more stable. Specifically, there are stable isotopes of polonium, astatine, radon and francium. Moreover, certain lighter elements have a larger number of heavier isotopes which are stable, so most pieces of solid and liquid matter on the planet are slightly denser than in World Zero. This is in fact true throughout the Ancient World universe. Ancient World Earth formed near Jupiter and retained more xenon in its crust in the form of xenonite, a noble gas compound which can form under conditions of extremely high pressure. Since xenon is a fairly heavy element, this has also increased the density of the planet slightly. Moreover, certain other elements and compounds were more common as a result of the colder conditions. On World Zero Earth, these boiled away into space. As mentioned above, the stronger gravity also increases the escape velocity, meaning that lighter gases are also more likely to be retained, offsetting the other tendencies which increase the density of the planet. Finally, the atmosphere is denser, which decreases terminal velocity of falling objects.

All of these factors combine in a complex way to increase Earth's gravitational pull in a way which is difficult to calculate, but results in an increase of about 0.4%. This is however more than compensated for in many ways by the almost doubled density of the atmosphere and the higher concentration of oxygen. The increased density makes many objects fall more slowly and provides more lift but also more drag, whilst the concentration of oxygen means that mechanical processes involving the consumption of oxygen can be more forceful. Where these are not factors, the increased gravity comes into play, meaning for example that the sidereal lunar month is nearly three hours shorter, the astrological lunar mansions are in different places and the length of the day is somewhat longer because there have been 0.4% more tides over the entire history of the planet. The Moon is also slightly heavier and the tides slightly less extreme. 100

Here Be Dragons Day length The day is four minutes and twenty-one seconds longer than on World Zero Earth. This means that the year is only 364.142186 days long, leading 1 to a different calendar. This is roughly equivalent to 364 days, leading 7 to the imposition of 365-day leap years once every seven years. February has twenty-seven days normally but twenty-eight in leap years. This has led to leap years being considered unlucky if they have a Friday 13th of February, since this implies that March will also have a Friday 13 th. The leap year shifts the days of the week forward by one day, where it then remains for seven years, leading to a forty-nine year cycle, corresponding to the Jubilee. It also alters the length of the Julian Period and the date of Easter, which is further altered due to the fact that full moons occur on different days. Eclipses are also on different days, occur on different parts of the globe and are slightly shorter. Another, minor, astronomical difference, this time resulting from the large tilt of the orbit of Earth, is that transits of Mercury are extremely rare.

A few other things. The constellations are all in the same places relative to Earths rotation, so the pole star is over the west Atlantic and the zodiac is overhead in the Middle East and Siberia. The Southern Cross is visible from places such as Mongolia and Japan but not South Africa. Lunar and solar eclipses occur at the same time but in different places. Astronomical events are generally the same but the Tunguska Event occurred somewhere else, possibly causing a huge tsunami in the North Atlantic which constituted a disaster for Western Europe and Hyperborea. The axial tilt is the same. Due to the differences in the meanings of the words and their equivalents in other languages, Ancient World has no North or South Poles. North and South are directions parallel to the Equator. Instead, it has East and West Poles. The West Pole corresponds to our South Pole in the sense that if you face East, the Sun will rise on the left and set on the right and so the usual vortex thing applies, which influences ocean currents and the like. One way of resolving the ambiguity of compass directions is to refer to North, South, East and West as Boreal, Austral, Oriental and Occidental 101

Here Be Dragons respectively. The Arctic Ocean is boreal, hence Hyperborea, but not polar. Similarly, Terra Australis, which is somewhat like Antarctica and Australia taken together, is on the opposite side of the planet from the Arctic, but is again not polar but austral. This is how there can be an East and a West Pole. Similarly, there is Aurora orientalis and Aurora occidentalis. The West Pole is straightforward. It is 48 degrees occidental of Greenwich on where the Tropic of Cancer (the boreal tropical limit) would be in World Zero. Consequently, the West Atlantic is covered in ice, and the Caribbean is covered in ice. Cuba, Hispaniola and the rest are polar islands permanently under ice, all year round. They are also the only part of the Americas which exist in Ancient World. There is therefore also no Gulf of Mexico and no Gulf Stream. The westernmost piece of land (West being a polar direction) is Montserrat, which is about 1600 km from the West Pole. The Cape Verde islands are 2487 km from the West Pole and are just inside the Arctic circle, so they are somewhat like northern Iceland in climate and other conditions - for instance, the Western Lights are often visible from there, there is 24hour darkness in mid-winter and a midnight sun in summer. The northernmost part of continental Africa is near Nouadhibou in Mauretania, which is at about the same latitude as Fair Isle in World Zero. During the Ice Age, the glaciers spread across the Atlantic Ocean east to Portugal, Spain and Morocco. Therefore, NW Africa and the Iberian peninsula both have fjords but Scotland and Scandinavia haven't. Atlantis also has fjords. I haven't worked Iceland out yet. This also means that Albion and the Isle of Destiny have somewhat different terrain and biodiversity because they were not covered by ice sheets in the last Ice Age. A great circle passing from the West to the East Pole would cross the Equator in austral Somalia. There are two points which are on the Equator in both Ancient World and World Zero, but the Equator has a different orientation. In Ancient World, the equator passes through Somalia and also touches the boreal and austral polar circles. The other point on the Equator 102

Here Be Dragons in both worlds is in the middle of the Pacific, a very long way from any land. I have committed myself to the East Pole being in the Great Ocean, but so far as i can tell, if the geography of the Eastern Indian Ocean is similar, this would mean that the South Pole is in Terra Australis, but i feel strongly that Australia shouldn't be covered in ice because it would make the planet drier and colder. For Albion to have a similar climate to its current climate (actually slightly warmer), the polar ice caps need to be smaller, and the climate of Western Europe is influenced by the Gulf Stream in World Zero. Since there is nothing like the Gulf Stream in Ancient World, to make the same latitude as warm the planet must reflect less heat back into space, and that means there cannot be a large Eastern Polar Ice Cap. Therefore, Australia cannot be polar. The East Pole is on World Zero's Tropic of Capricorn and 132 degrees oriental of Greenwich. In World Zero, this point is near Haast's Bluff in the Northern Territory of Australia. This clearly means Australia is in the wrong place for climatic purposes. My provisional solution to this is to move Australia 2600 km australly, so that it is part of "Antarctica", in Ancient World a heart-shaped continent the size of Africa called Terra Australis. This means that none of Australia is very close to the East Pole, but it introduces other issues. Indonesia was formed by the boreal movement of Australia towards Asia. This movement has not taken place in Ancient World, so i assume that Lemuria is drifting east instead, causing islands of different shapes to form there. These islands, however, are in the East Polar region and covered in ice. Therefore, the primates which left Lemuria for South East Asia arrived in very cold conditions where there were few fruit trees. Hence they would have encountered something like coniferous forest or tundra on their arrival, raising the question of what kind of primates would have evolved. I am going to tentatively suggest that the primates living there include the Yeti, which raises the matter of whether Realistic and Ancient World Yetis are similar. I also wonder if this could mean that Neanderthal-like hominids lived in South East Asia in Ancient World. 103

Here Be Dragons Something i can't quite put my finger on due to poor spatial abilities: there seems to be a strip of Earth's surface in both World Zero and Ancient World which has the same kind of climate, because both the Great/Pacific Ocean and African equatorial points are in the same place, meaning that there ought to be some kind of vector or something which is the mean of two great circles, one passing through the poles in one world and one in the other, which would be on the same latitude all the way across the world. However, since the poles are in different places it can't always be so. I'm trying to nail this down but can't quite get it to crystallise. The Antipodes: With the exception of the whole of Hyperborea and a corresponding area of Terra Australis, the antipodes of almost all land is in the Great Ocean. Still to be done: locations of the different climatic belts and ocean currents. Is there an Ancient World El Ninho or anything like the Gulf Stream? Tornado Alley, tropical reefs, monsoon regions? Islands and smaller regions The South Seas: Despite the name, this is an area on the other side of the West Pole from Europe, and consists of the Caribbean islands. They are close to the Western ice cap and covered in ice or tundra most of the time. There are also extensive cold water reefs in the area. The indigenous people of the area were ethnically similar to the Atlanteans, being short, fair-skinned, blue-eyed and blond with small extremities, all adaptations to the cold climate. Beginning with Christopher Columbus, European civilisation reached them in the late fifteenth century and most of the native Caribbean tribes were wiped out and replaced by the Triangular Trade of West African slaves to mine, fish and whale, products which were then taken to Europe and made into products which were then sold to finance ships to West Africa in order to capture more slaves for sale. AfroCaribbeans, being the descendants of West African slaves, are ethnically different from Western Europeans, being red-haired and fair-skinned, as opposed to the brown-eyed, black-haired, slightly darker-skinned Nordic 104

Here Be Dragons race. These are now the main ethnicity in the Caribbean, which has now become a centre of shipping, offshore banking and philately. The Caribbean was also involved in the South Sea Bubble of the eighteenth century, where national debt in England was taken on by the South Sea Company in exchange for exclusive rights to economic exploitation of the archipelago, which turned out to be less lucrative than expected and led to a collapse. After the collapse of European empires, many West Africans emigrated to Albion and other old imperial centres, where they now face racism because of their distinctive appearance, and are economically and socially disadvantaged. Haiti: Like the rest of the Caribbean, near the West Pole. Part of Hispaniola, had indigenous people living on it before being reached by Columbus in 1492. One of the main places where zombification is practiced. However, zombies are not dead and do not eat brains. The westernmost tip of Cuba is the last land of any size for over 7000 kilometres eastwards towards Hawai'i, and the nearest land to it apart from the islands in the polar region are the Galapagos Islands. It is therefore an important stopping off point for tropic birds, albatrosses and world turtles along with their symbiotic communities. Cuba itself is the most heavily populated island in the Caribbean and is run as a single-party state identifying itself as communist. Its main industries are tourism, cobalt and nickel mining. With Jamaica, it has the mildest climate in the Caribbean, being almost entirely in the temperate climatic zone. It is largely tundra with somewhat milder coastal regions. Santiago: This is partly a holiday resort for skiing, but also one of the most important exporters of bauxite in the world. In spite of the name, it is part of the British Commonwealth. It is also known for its alcoholic spirits. Jamaica is known for its prowess in winter sports. Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Trinidad and the small western islands are all lands of the Midnight Sun, where there is twenty-four hour daylight in midsummer. They are barren and covered in ice and snow most of the year. The westernmost island is Barbados, which is 76 degrees west. Two important natural wonders of the Caribbean are the Aurora Occidentalis and their extensive cold water coral reefs. The islands are also known for their seafood-based cuisine and their native fauna, including giant turtles, penguins, polar bears and sea elephants, which are 105

Here Be Dragons amphibious relatives of the land elephants found in Asia and Africa. The indigenous people of the Caribbean are almost gone now, being wiped out by European viral diseases such as measles and smallpox, but since the discovery of the Atlantean Archives it has been revealed that their language seems to be distantly related to Naacal, the native Atlantean language.

The Caribbean 106

Here Be Dragons Several religions are based in the Caribbean, including voodoo in Haiti, Rastafari among the redheads of Santiago in particular and Santeria in former Spanish Caribbean colonies. Boreonesia This is also known as the North Atlantic Archipelago and the British Isles. It has two large islands, Albion and the Isle of Destiny. Situated off mainland Europe in the Western Hemisphere, Boreonesia has a warm climate with hot dry summers, rainy winters and snow is only common on the Isle of Destiny. Albion's geographic location made it relatively easy to colonise other parts of the world and it is a former seat of empire. Albion is too far from the pole to have lochs or firths, but the Isle of Destiny was once glaciated and therefore has lochs and inlets, particularly on its west coast. The islands form the westernmost outpost of Europe before the Great Ocean and the only solid ground west of the Aran Islands off the west coast of the Isle of Destiny is the west polar ice cap.

107

Here Be Dragons Boreonesia

108

Here Be Dragons Ultima Thule

Thule, often called Ultima Thule due to being considered on the edge of the world among the Ancient Greeks who believed Earth was flat, lies between the continents of Hyperborea to the North and Atlantis to the South. It is geologically similar to Atlantis but much smaller, and straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The western part of the island is on the Oceanic Plate and the eastern half Eurasian. Its climate is closer to that of western Hyperborea, warm and mild, and it has a population of around 4 million, which is about two-thirds that of Albion. It is subject to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Except for the volcanoes, many of which are active and marked in orange on the map, snow is unknown. The people speak a conservative Scandinavian language and paint themselves blue. They were the first European nation to be invaded by Cipango in the sixteenth century, but successfully fought them off, and were instrumental in cutting off their sea routes to Europe from Hyperborea. 109

Here Be Dragons

OCEANS & SEAS

The continents of Ancient World are clustered together in one hemisphere and their coastlines tend to face each other directly, so they are largely separated by channels rather than oceans. The only real oceans are the Great Ocean, which is the hemisphere of water antipodal to the continents, and the Aethiopian Ocean, which is south-west of Africa, characterised by the Gulf of Guinea. The other large bodies of water are wide enough to separate zoogeographical ecozones but not wide enough to be considered oceans. It's clear from the current configuration of the continents that a new supercontinent is about to form, and the signs of this are already apparent in the volcanic and seismic activities and the condition of the sea beds. The smaller seas are the Arctic, between Hyperborea and Asia, the Lemurian, separating Asia from Lemuria, and the Southern, adjacent to Lemuria and Terra Australis. There is also an eastern sea, frozen all year round and strewn with islands, the East Indian Sea. The Caribbean is also a sea, also known as the West Indian Sea, and is similarly associated with an archipelago and frozen. Other seas include the German Sea, Inland Sea, Atlantic, Mediterranean, Caspian and Black Seas. Aethiopian Ocean Ancient World's analogue to the Indian Ocean but situated off the southwest coast of Africa, this ocean is limited by the coastlines of Africa and Terra Australis along with the West Indian ice cap. It is entirely in the Western Hemisphere and outside the tropics, so it has a single major anticlockwise current. It is quite a cold ocean and the eastern side has very low rainfall. Great Ocean This is a vast ocean, basically the World Ocean, covering the entire surface of the planet from pole to pole, covering something like eleven time zones. There are, however, quite a lot of small islands in it. The Caribbean is present in the West, Hyperborea and Terra Australis form its northern and southern edges and Eastern Asia is on the third side. The life of the Great Ocean includes permanently aerial birds, giant turtles, amphibious elephants which shelter on the turtles, serpentine sea monsters, whales, 110

Here Be Dragons dolphins, merhorses and the two krakens. All climatic conditions are found in the Great Ocean. Lifestyles available to the animals there include permanent marine living, association with other animals, particularly the krakens and turtles, being permanently airborne, being airborne and resting on the surface of the ocean and travelling between different islands. There are two major currents: a clockwise one in the Western Hemisphere and an anticlockwise one in the East. The ocean can be very stormy due to the opportunity for enormous hurricanes to develop and the absence of any land barriers to wind or waves. This makes Hyperborea and Terra Australis very stormy. The largest islands in the Great Ocean, discounting the East Indies which are circumpolar and not strictly part of that ocean, are the Cipango Islands off the coast of Cathay. These are somewhat vulnerable to tsunami. Geologically, the Great Ocean consists of a single, large continental plate. In evolutionary terms, the Great Ocean is partly responsible for the aerial fauna and flora as there is an easier transition between flying permanently above the ocean and flying ever higher into the atmosphere. Also, many of the sea animals, which are often sea-going versions of the land animals, exist as a result of marine opportunities afforded by such a huge ocean to animals living along shorelines. Sea dogs are found along the West Asian coast and in the eastern shallows of the Great Ocean, and penguins and polar bears in the western part of the ocean. The persistent environment of the ocean has led to the survival of the almost permanently seagoing flightless hesperornid birds, which became extinct in World Zero at the end of the Cretaceous. Hippocampus - Merhorse. Sea Lion Sea Dog Sea Serpent Sea Elephant The Seas Atlantic Sea: The area of water between Hyperborea, Atlantis and Europe, 111

Here Be Dragons bordered by those continents, West Africa and the West Pole. Includes Albion, Iceland, Spitzbergen, the Isle of Destiny and a number of other small islands referred to as Macaronesia. Arctic Sea: A narrow channel between the Pterophorus Range and Hyperborea. Contains the deepest trench in the world, running parallel to Siberia, the Fram Trench, which is 16 kilometres deep. German Sea: Between Albion and Scandinavia, can also be considered as including the Baltic. This is a warm sea, subtropical in its eastern parts, and is a popular holiday destination. Mediterranean and Black Seas: Quite similar to the German Sea but even warmer, there are tropical coral reefs at the eastern end and throughout the Black Sea, where the ducks live. Caspian Sea: Tropical, also characterised by reefs but due to its isolated position they have unique flora.

112

Here Be Dragons LEMURIAN SEA

113

Here Be Dragons

114

Here Be Dragons

Here Be Dragons The Lemurian Sea is between Southern Asia and Lemuria, and is divided into eastern and western arms, also referred to as the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, divided by the Indian subcontinent. The continental shelves of Africa, Asia and Lemuria mean that most of the sea bed is in the euphotic zone, which has resulted in the growth of a meadow of marine angiosperms dominated by the saltwater eelgrass Zostera, in the area, which contributes to the higher oxygen content of the atmosphere. The West Lemurian Sea also has coral reefs. A fairly deep ocean trench runs east-west along it, which maintained separation between the continents even during the last ice age, but across which marine species are usually continuous. The marine eelgrassland of the East Lemurian sea constitutes a distinctive biome with a number of unusual plants and animals. There are more species of marine angiosperm living in the area than in the whole of the rest of the world combined. The sea is also unique in including diverse species of marine insect as well as crustaceans, including the sea bees. Most of the insects living in the biome are connected in some way with the angiosperms. There are also unusual vertebrates, including the camps, which are various species of air-breathing amphibious fish, and mermaids. One leg of the Wallace Triskelion passes along the sea, separating the Asian and Lemurian ecozones. Leuconesia arises in the far east, thrust up by the collision of the Asian and Lemurian continental plates. This part of the sea is colder and has distinctive bivalve molluscs able to accumulate monopole-rich pearls which they use to anchor themselves to the sea bed. Mermaids harvest these pearls for their own purposes and to trade with humans.

The Camps A group of unrelated mer-animals, looking somewhat like tetrapods at the front and fish at the back. These include the hippocamp, leocamp, taurocamp, pardalocamp and aigocamp. All of the camps are air-breathing heterothermic fish which are primarily marine. They are not all closely related to each other. Pardalocamps and leocamps are in the same genus, 116

Here Be Dragons as are taurocamps and aigocamps, and the hippocamp is not closely related to any of them. All of the camps are heterothermic: parts of their bodies are kept at a higher temperature than the ambient environment. These include the brains, eyes and the main muscles along the sides of their bodies, and it enables them to react and cogitate faster, and to move faster, than most other fish. A block of muscle running along the sides of the body and anchored to the skin and spine is kept warm by a criss-crossing mesh of blood vessels. As the arteries enter the muscles, they are warmed up by activity in the muscles themselves, and as the blood leaves through veins, the vessels cross the arteries entering the region and give up their heat, keeping the heat in and preventing it from being lost to the rest of the body or the external environment. The same process occurs in the eyes and brain. If this system were not in place, the warmth of the body would be lost to the water through gills, which are still used in spite of the presence of lung-like organs. Since the brain is also heated, camps are quicker thinkers than other fish, and are unusually intelligent.

117

Here Be Dragons HIPPOCAMP OR SEA HORSE

Hippocamp - i.e. stylised seahorse which is actually a sea horse, not a small fish. There is a giant seahorse species native to the Lemurian Sea and domesticated by mermaids, referred to as the hippocamp. As a result of the spread of mermaids and satyrs along the coasts of Lemuria, East Africa, Terra Australis, Polynesia and South Asia, they have spread further, achieving a near-cosmopolitan distribution and, remarkably, spread through the Bermuda Triangle into Realistic World, where they are referred to as merhorses. Sea horses evolved on the continental shelves around the seas of the Eastern Hemisphere, in shallow areas and centres of vortices in the Great Ocean where they eat eelgrass, salt marsh halophytes and Sargassum seaweed. They also live in river estuaries and coral reefs. They have retained many of the characteristics of the smaller sea horses, including male pregnancy and the same general body shape and habitus, but are much larger, endothermic in some parts of their bodies and are amphibious, with lungs as well as gills, and webbed feet which enable them to get around on land to some extent. They are about two metres long, can swim much faster than sea horses and have therefore become streamlined. When they swim faster, they lean forward in the water in order to decrease the size of the surface presented to fluid in the direction of movement. Grazing is done in an erect position. Mermaids use them as transport, and are able to travel with them across oceanic regions from which they are generally excluded due to their reliance on the terrestrial males of the species. They are able to spread as a species up to nine months travel using the hippocamp provided they can reach shallow water in that time, because their gestation period and the presence of terrestrial males means they must give birth near land. 118

Here Be Dragons Hippocamp skin is adhesive, enabling mermaids to stay on them as they swim. Feral hippocamps have spread as far as the Caribbean, where they have entered Realistic World. Here, they are found in the Atlantic Ocean and have become an invasive species due to the absence of their natural predators the Ancient World sea lions, which have not spread due to not being domesticated and being confined to the Lemurian Sea. At the time of Atlantean civilisation, hippocamps had not been domesticated and their spread to Realistic World is fairly recent, apparently in the last three thousand years or so. In the early modern period, the existence of hippocamps was fully acknowledged in Realistic World, but as biological science became more sophisticated in the nineteenth century, it began to be realised that they were anatomically and physiologically so different from any native vertebrates that they could only have come from a parallel universe via the Bermuda Triangle. After that realisation, the shadow government decided to hush them up via a subtle programme of discrediting academic authorities which referred to them, banning or simply not allowing reprints of publications referring to them and destroying or suppressing records of them. Consequently, although they are very widespread, an environmental hazard and potentially dangerous, their existence is officially denied. They inhabit certain sea lochs around Scotland and Scandinavia. Children in particular have sometimes attempted to ride on their backs, become stuck and drowned. In the meantime, the shadow government uses a waterproof adhesive developed from research into the secretions of merhorse skin, which is used in surgery. Hippocamps evolved very rapidly from the smaller sea horses in the late Miocene, the earliest forms appearing in the early Pliocene. Just as it's easier to fly in Ancient World than here, so is it easier for aquatic animals to evolve the ability to breathe air and to leave the water for extensive periods more oxygen in the atmosphere. In the case of hippocamps, they evolved amphibious behaviour as a way of fleeing predators, namely the sea lions. This was possible because their swim bladders became better at absorbing oxygen. They also have heterothermy - warm muscles in order to escape sea lions quickly onto the land. This causes a problem for gill breathers as the heat generated in the muscles is carried away by the bloodstream into the gills where it is lost to the water. 119

Here Be Dragons LEOCAMP OR SEA LION Sea lion Not to be confused with the World Zero sealion, which is a kind of seal, this is a lion with a fish's tail. Like the hippocamp, these are native to the Lemurian Sea but have not spread beyond it since they are not domesticated. OTHER MER-ANIMALS The Lemurian seas also contain sea cows and mermaids, both of which are placental mammals. Sea cows live off eelgrass. The Great Ocean has sea elephants, which are distantly related to sea cows but are directly descended from elephants themselves. This entire group is mammalian and not mutually closely related. Sea dogs are quadrupedal and live on the east Asian shores.

120

Here Be Dragons SEA FLOWERS Seagrass

Much of the Eastern Lemurian Sea is covered in this, on both sides of the trench. Although the dominant species of eelgrass are like those of World Zero, there are also a number of insect-pollinated species. Being both monocotyledons and marine, they have six-petalled blue flowers at the top of a long stalk, high enough for pollinating insects to reach. Insectpollinated sea flowers are all similar. The advantage to them of insectpollination is that there is greater genetic variation as a result of insects being able to swim against currents, thereby enabling ovaries to be pollinated by anthers downstream from them. There is convergent evolution among the insect-pollinated sea flowers. All of them have large chambers containing sulphated glycans in the form of a mucilage a gelatinous mass on which the insects feed, commonly known 121

Here Be Dragons as sea honey. They release a chemical into the water which attracts downstream insects. Sea honey provides insects with carbohydrates and minerals: protein is obtained from the pollen, which is filamentous. Sea honey is salty, gelatinous and quite nutritious for humans and other primates. MARINE INSECTS The presence of a large number of marine flowering plants in the Lemurian Sea has led to the evolution of a number of marine insect species, which have to some extent competed successfully with the crustaceans there, resulting in lower than average crustacean diversity. Due to support from water, marine insects are larger than their land-living equivalents but they are still limited by the tracheal respiratory system. Their cuticles are also sometimes different because they contain a very long-chain triglyceride which resembles plastic and is waterproof. They include: Seabees: Unlike their flying equivalents in Ancient World, seabees are insects rather than vertebrates. They live in waterproof floating hives made of a polythene-like substance which they secrete themselves . These hives are colonies containing a queen, workers, drones and larvae along with stores of sea honey and the gametes of sea flowers, which they eat. Unlike World Zero bees, they lack wings and dive to gather nectar from sea flowers, which are therefore often situated at the top of extremely high stalks. They sting once only, like World Zero bees, and like them they are striped, but because of the different colour of light undersea they use the marine warning colouration rather than terrestrial, so they have blue and white stripes rather than yellow. Mermaids collect sea honey, at considerable risk, and eat it as well as using the plastic from which the hives are made. They sometimes fill polythene canopies with air and use them as underwater tents on hunting expeditions. Seabee polythene is also used by humans, who melt and mould it, and also use it as fuel. It is another item traded by mermaids. There are a number of organisms which digest polythene in Ancient World, with the result that it is biodegradable there. Bluejackets: Related to bees and similar in appearance, these also live in floating nests, this time made from matted mucilage, which inspired 122

Here Be Dragons mermaids to manufacture a similar substance as a construction material. They also sting and are dangerous. Sea skaters: These also exist in World Zero but are more common here. They spend most of their time on the surface eating plankton but lay their eggs on seabee hives.

Swims: The marine equivalent of flies. One remarkable swim is the hangswim, which mimics a bluejacket although it is in fact harmless, and whose maggots live in floating rafts of vegetation on the surface before it adopts a marine lifestyle as an adult. A number of other insects occupy the roles held by lobsters, shrimps and crabs in other seas. 123

Here Be Dragons Wyvern

124

Here Be Dragons

Male Gryphon - not the same as a gryphon but based on a bonacon. Wingless, emits fire or sparks from its rear. Styrian Panther

125

Here Be Dragons

Eagle claws, sparks emanating from beak and rear. Also based on a bonacon. Bagwyn, calopus, calygreyhound, enfield, alphyn - i have no idea what these 126

Here Be Dragons are. Hierocosphinx - winged lion with the head of a falcon. Winged Beasts There are three lineages of winged beasts, i.e. primitively quadrupedal animals with wings: Sell's dragons and their relatives; Davies dragons; gryphons and their kin. The simplest arrangement is the Davies dragon. It simply has forked ribs which are moved by respiratory muscles, and its wings originate either side of the spine. The front ribs project forwards, each consecutive pair is at an angle to the previous one until the hindmost pair points backwards. This gives the wings a larger area and enables them to change shape by moving the ribs independently of each other. Like all members of the dragon order, the Pterophora, the Davies dragon scapula has a synovial articulation between the latero-dorsal procoracoid and the main part of the bone, but in its case this is part of the wing and does not bear an extra limb. The Sell's dragon has an extra pair of limbs joined to the medial aspect of the procoracoid via a ball-and-socket joint like that of the shoulder. These are the limbs. They have four digits. The fourth digit bears a series of claws which are often used to lock the inner sides of the wings to notches along the animal's sides in order to strengthen the downstroke and upstroke phases of flight, but it is also able to separate these to steer its body, unlike the Davies dragon. Every flying animal in the Sell's dragon family has a keeled sternum like a flying bird's. The flight muscles have their origins on each side of this keel. It isn't clear where the forelimb muscles are anchored or if there's a potential conflict between their positions. All types of wyvern also have keeled sterna, but since they are bipedal or have no legs there is no such problem with them. 127

Here Be Dragons There is a secondary "brain" in the spine controlling the wings of the Sell's dragon, contained in a series of expanded fused thoracic vertebrae. Gryphons are in the order Cephaloptera. Their wings are not true limbs but derive from the neck frill of their dinosaur ancestors, so their attachments are different again. Their skeletons are somewhat modified, with cervical ribs, compressed cervical vertebrae and necks forming part of their "bodies" and a new, "false" neck has developed in front of the wings which is in fact formed from the occipital bone of the skull. This also means that the cranial nerves of the cephaloptera are different from all other vertebrates, since the last few pairs originate from the neck rather than the head. The neck also contains the back of the brain stem and the cerebellum. The muscles controlling the wings have their origins on the anterior scapulae and the furcula. There are also basal dragons. These are similar to large lizards and the differences between them and other lizards are often merely technical. Sell's dragons are descended from arboreal ancestors, hence their opposable thumbs and large brains. Davies dragons were formerly terrestrial and jumped as a form of defence which enabled them to free all four limbs.

Dragons
Sell's and Davies's Dragons NB: There is also such a thing as a Chinese dragon, which i think we should do as well, and i have more notes on the Sell's Dragon in particular Davies's Dragon: Papiliosaurus daviesii 128

Here Be Dragons Notes on Big Science Dragon session#1, JD 2455562

This was the first of two sessions. Present: Daniel Ure, Primrose Davies, Poppy Davies, Mark Ure. It was decided that all dragons discussed would share the following features: large size, ability to breathe fire, possession of a post-anal tail, spikiness, wings, scales, claws, teeth, four terrestrial limbs, one pair of wings. Depending on species, some would also be fat, horned or have long necks. Argument for the existence of dragons: (1) Necessarily, dragonfire is fire breathed out by a dragon. (2) Everything that is necessarily so is necessarily possibly so. (3) It is possible that dragonfire exists. (4) If there is dragonfire, it is breathed out by a dragon. (5) Given (3), there is necessarily possibly dragonfire. (6) If there is necessarily possibly dragonfire, then there is necessarily possibly a dragon. (7) Therefore, there is necessarily possibly a dragon. (8) Therefore there is necessarily a dragon, or in other words, there must be at least one dragon. It was then decided that the meeting had discovered a dragon. The biology of dragons - a work in progress: 129

Here Be Dragons Although they are large, dragons are capable of flight. It was widely held that bumblebees were theoretically unable to fly until their mechanism of flight was discovered. Similarly, the method which dragons use to fly has not been discovered. Therefore, in spite of this hypothetical impossibility, dragons can fly. Dragon wings are webbed structures supported by rib-like bones extending from the transverse processes of their vertebrae rather than limbs, since dragons are quadrupedal. They are accessory respiratory organs which aid them in continuing to provide their bodies with oxygen while they breathe fire through their mouths. A dragons torso is not serpentine but broad, although they do possess large, oblong ventral scales. They generate their own heat, which enables them to exploit cooler habitats more effectively than most reptiles, their natural biomes being mountain caves and deciduous forests. They warm the ground before lying on it in order to keep themselves warm. They do not thrive in snow because the damp prevents them from breathing fire. They lay eggs and incubate them by curling round them in order not to crush them. When the young hatch, the mother dries them with fire, which also causes imprinting. They are themselves able to produce fire weakly immediately but are unable to control it voluntarily until older. Fire production: The diet of a dragon includes metal, a particular kind of rock and certain insects. The metal and rock react with their gastric acid and release hydrogen. For this reason, they tend to hoard gold and other metal objects. An accessory pair of non-respiratory lungs concentrates and stores oxygen from the bloodstream. The stages of fire-breathing are as follows: 1) Dragon inhales normally and holds its breath. 2) Wings temporarily take over respiratory function. 3) Hydrogen and oxygen are simultaneously expelled from the stomach and accessory lungs into the fireproof dental enamel-lined buccal cavity. 130

Here Be Dragons 4) Friction is generated by grinding teeth with metallic surfaces. 5) Sparks produced by teeth ignite the mixture of gases, producing an exhalation of flame. Symbiotic algae live within the scales, which provide camouflage and produce extra oxygen to be transported to the accessory lungs via the blood. These can be of two colours, depending on the dragons environment. Dragons living in forests have green symbiotic algae which enable them to blend into the background more easily. Those inhabiting caves live in dimmer environments and therefore have red symbiotic algae which can photosynthesise more efficiently in lower light conditions than green ones. The lack of light in the caves also means the red colour makes them less visible and is, again, a form of camouflage. Sell's Dragon: Tergiala sapiens Notes on Big Science Dragon session#2, JD 245569

This was the second of two sessions. Present: Daniel Ure, Alexander Sell, Ceri Sell, Dorian Sell, Gabriella Sell, Romany Sell, Mark Ure.

It was decided that for the purposes of the session, a dragon could be described thus: A large, lizard capable of flight and gliding by means of wings, with a scaly exoskeleton, dorsal and caudal spikes, a pointed tail, often inhabiting caves in mountainous habitats, intelligent and with a diet of large animals, capable of breathing fire, acid or frost. They are magical. There is a single species comprising several races.

Colouring varies, and is either iridescent or a single, solid colour. 131

Here Be Dragons

They have four limbs capable of terrestrial locomotion and two limbs with four digits each in the form of wings. These are dorsal and rooted medially to the scapulae, so their articulations and muscle origins are part of the shoulder girdle. The forelimbs have opposable thumbs and since they are intelligent, dragons are capable of purposeful manipulation.

They mate during flight with internal fertilisation and lay eggs in warm places, but do not actively incubate them. Males are larger than females. A young adult dragon is the size of a small pony and grows constantly, though this growth slows with age. Although they mature, their health does not deteriorate with age: they suffer only accidental death and are potentially immortal. However, in extreme old age, they are dormant most of the time, waking only when disturbed.

Their eyes are typical of vertebrates and have golden irises. They communicate telepathically with each other and with practice, humans are also able to acquire this ability.

Exhalation: Different races have specialised forms of this: plain concentrated acid, poisonous gas, fire and frost. These are variations of the same substance. All dragons produce acid, which they expel through their mouths (i.e. they secrete hydrogen ions). This can simply be in the form of hydrogen (and chloride) ions, i.e. hydrochloric acid in concentrated aqueous solution, in the form of a fog of hydrochloric acid droplets (poison gas), as hydrogen gas in the process of being ignited or as frost. This last technique is achieved by an unusually efficient countercurrent multiplier system in the neck, where blood carries heat away from the hydrogen as it is expelled, and involves specialised glands. Dragons of this kind have highly exotic anatomy - further details available on request. 132

Here Be Dragons

As a result of the acid secretion, dragon blood is highly alkaline and corrosive.

Dragons (and others) and humans The Davies' dragon is not a suitable beast of burden or steed because its wings are attached all the way down its back. The Sell's dragon cannot be seen as domesticated because it's sapient, as is the Chinese dragon. Nonetheless it does interact with humans and humans can ride dragons. Two things which need to be understood about dragons and humans: Dragons are in the driving seat, not humans, and they're telepathic. All of the equipment used for riding dragons or pulling or bearing loads as transport was invented many millenia ago by the dragons themselves, which are able to work metal because they can breathe fire. Humans have taken some of the equipment and adapted it for riding gryphons, horses and pegasi, which are not sentient and treated as normal beasts of burden. Useful mammalian beasts of burden are camels and oxen, though see the doc on camels, which are somewhat different in Ancient World. Unicorns cannot be ridden. Apart from anything else, they are too small. Dragon tack: Saddle: Used with a breastplate, crupper and girth but shaped to avoid chafing or other restriction of movement of the wings. It is more important that the rider doesn't fall off a flying animal than a terrestrial one since it would usually be fatal to do so, so instead of stirrups, there are leg-iron type arrangements which keep the rider in place. There are no breastcollars because the sterna of all of the animals concerned except horses have keels for the attachment of wings. Chafing is not a major problem for dragons, however, so much as the scales biting through the straps. 133

Here Be Dragons Dragons have no headgear at all because they aren't told where to go, won't be steered and so on. Gryphons have headgear but the bridle is bitless because they have no teeth. Bridles are however used with horses and pegasi. About 7000 years ago, dragons invented a system for communicating with humans. Dragon telepathy involves the production and focus of amplitudemodulated radio waves by use of parabolic reflectors in their heads. These signals are a Morse-like series of electromagnetic clicks, which constitute a pidgin for communication between dragons and humans, and are perceived in the visual field by humans with the SHC trait. This means that radio was invented in the Bronze Age. Humans have adapted this for interpersonal communication and broadcasting of music and speech along with telegraphy. There is also recorded sound - the wax cylinder was invented several thousand years ago, initially cranked by hand and later clockwork. Clockwork gramophones have existed since about the twelfth Christian century. There has been little progress since then: telecommunication has been at 1920s levels since what we would think of as mediaeval times. Chinese Dragons Chinese dragons are related to Western dragons but have radically adapted to their unusual lifestyle. They are serpentine in form, covered in a fixed number of gold-plated scales, very lightly built and highly streamlined. They spend most of their lives in the upper atmosphere, where they feed on organisms living in the regions while moving at supersonic speeds, but return annually to an aquatic spawning site to reproduce. Their method of flight is highly unusual and would be impossible in World Zero. Wings would be ripped off by shock waves, so they have none. Instead, they use diamagnetism to levitate. Selective pressure has led to the content of their bodies being dominated by diamagnetic materials. Their skeletons are made of keratin, they have no bone or dentine in their make-up, they store energy using wax rather than fat, which they also use for insulation and to protect themselves from ionising radiation due to the absence of Bremsstrahlung, and their muscles are high in a copper-rich globulin which stores oxygen. Although this is also found in their blood, their respiration is 134

Here Be Dragons largely anaerobic. They use ammonium ions as electrolytes and re-route nitrogenous waste into the production of this compound, meaning that their excretory needs are small. They have a crucial relationship with bismuth and its compounds. They chew bismutite pebbles into a paste which lines their gastrointestinal tract to protect against radiation and provide levitation. They also roll their gelatinous, adhesive eggs in bismuth subcarbonate to protect them from desiccation. Finally, they carry spheres of bismutite for levitation purposes. In Ancient World, bismuth and many of its compounds are extremely diamagnetic. In order to reach their usual habitat, Chinese dragons pull themselves onto the land and seek out deposits of lodestone. Once found, they carry themselves and a sphere of bismutite to the ore and the diamagnetic repulsion propels them dramatically upwards at near the speed of sound into the upper atmosphere. Once there, they accelerate further using reaction mass, again derived from bismuth being expelled from their cloacas, to reach and maintain supersonic velocity. This keeps them warm and they take advantage of various features of the environment. Along with wax deposits, they protect themselves from radiation using the bismuth subcarbonate lining while simultaneously using ultraviolet light to synthesise and break down important biological compounds. They use stored oxygen in their muscles and combine this with primarily anaerobic respiration to break the wax down for energy. They also maintain buoyancy by using the UV radiation to break down the water in their bodies into hydrogen while respiring with the oxygen and expelling it as carbon dioxide, leaving a "vapour trail" of dry ice used again as reaction mass. The radiation is also used to kill parasites and pathogens. The temperature difference between the sunlight side and the side in shadow is used to help pump blood round the body.

Dragons and related reptiles. Dragons have their own order but their ancestors were lizards. The most primitive surviving dragons have four limbs, wings and breathe fire. The order is polyphyletic - the common ancestor of the Sells and Daviess 135

Here Be Dragons dragons is a lizard rather than a dragon, so they are not closely related but have become superficially similar. Therefore, the taxonomy of dragons is based on tradition rather than genetic affinity. The Sells dragon is most closely related to the tatzelwurm, lindworm, wyvern and sea wyvern because all of these animals have modified or lost limbs in their evolutionary history. Any wings are limbs, unlike the Daviess dragon which has wings based on ribs and therefore does not have a tendency towards changing the form of its forelimbs. Not all organisms can evolve every organ. For instance, snakes evolved transparent closed eyelids, which protect the eyes against dust, but camels could not evolve that system in spite of it being advantageous to them if they could. Therefore the Sells dragon is more likely to evolve along the lines of limb changes than the Daviess one. In order to compensate for this, because this makes the Daviess dragon lonely, and because i keep getting told it looks like a sea creature, ive decided to make the Daviess dragon related to the Chinese dragon, which i havent done yet. Sells dragon: most primitive, with four limbs and wings. Wyvern: the closest relative to the Sells dragon, it lives in lowland areas of Europe, including parts of Albion such as East Anglia and Mercia. Its fierce, breathes fire and flies, with bat-like wings. There are two species: a legless version which never lands and a bipedal version, both in the same genus. Sea Wyvern: lives in the German Ocean and the shores around it, for instance southern Scandinavia, the Low Countries and the east coats of Albion. It is similar to the two-legged wyvern but has webbed feet and a vertical fish-like tail, living a somewhat seal-like lifestyle. It is amphibious. Lindworm: Found in northern Europe, Scandinavia and Northumbria, this is a bipedal, wingless dragon with two horns on its nose, one behind the other. Its white and lives in caves.

136

Here Be Dragons Tatzelwurm: A smaller serpentine animal, up to 2 metres long, also white and with a cat-like head along with two limbs near the front of its body (but actually hindlimbs), this also lives in caves and eats medium-sized herbivores such as sheep and goats. Native to Alpine caves.

137

Here Be Dragons MOLLUSCS Kraken Kraken - mollusc, cephalopod, cuttlefish. Reasons for giantism: deep sea gigantism and cold water gigantism combined. Possible explanations: Size increases with lower temperature (Bergmann's rule) and depth, pressure (marginally higher in Ancient World, but this is too small to be relevant), scarcer food resources, large amounts of energy due to hydrothermal vents. Ancient and New Worlds, also Midgard because its a Nordic myth, but Midgard krakens are smaller and more numerous. Krakens are the largest animals in the world. There are only two of them, each 2.5 kilometres across, and eat fish and other sea animals. Each weighs two million tons, and is therefore heavier than any other living thing, a full-term pregnant blue whale, by a factor of about 10 000. They attack and eat ships. When floating on the surface of the ocean, they look like islands and are camouflaged to the extent that they appear to be covered in grass and trees. They can only live out in the ocean due to their size, which is larger even than the depth of the water on continental shelves. They have eyes and eight tentacles. The size of krakens is probably not problematic, though they might be rather lightly built, e.g. a fairly flimsy mantle and long, very spindly tentacles. However, they have to be strong enough to destroy ships and drag them under, though this could be due to turbulence. A bigger problem is that there are only two of them because its all the ecosystem can stand, according to legend. How has the situation arisen where the ideal situation is that there are only two of them? I suspect they dont reproduce and are instead practically immortal. Im going to say they gradually evolved from smaller ancestors of which there were many more, with steadily longer lifespans and less fertility, until they completely lost their reproductive systems. The question therefore arises of whether theyre really alive at all, as they lack one of the seven characteristics of 138

Here Be Dragons living things. However, they are able to heal, which means their cells do divide. They also lack growth, although they did grow when they were younger. Tennysons poem on the Kraken: Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee About his shadowy sides: above him swell Huge sponges of millennial growth and height; And far away into the sickly light, From many a wondrous grot and secret cell Unnumbered and enormous polypi Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green. There hath he lain for ages and will lie Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep, Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die. Each kraken has a name: Hafgufa and Lyngbakr. Quote from a passage in Konungs Skuggja chapter 12, written in the thirteenth century: There is a fish not yet mentioned which it is scarcely advisable to speak about on account of its size, which to most men will seem incredible. There 139

Here Be Dragons are, moreover, but very few who can tell anything definite about it, inasmuch as it is rarely seen by men; for it almost never approaches the shore or appears where fishermen can see it, and I doubt that this sort of fish is very plentiful in the sea. In our language it is usually called the "kraken." I can say nothing definite as to its length in ells, for on those occasions when men have seen it, it has appeared more like an island than a fish. Nor have I heard that one has ever been caught or found dead. It seems likely that there are but two in all the ocean and that these beget no offspring, for I believe it is always the same ones that appear. Nor would it be well for other fishes if they were as numerous as the other whales, seeing that they are so immense and need so much food. It is said, that when these fishes Want something to eat, they are in the habit of giving forth a violent belch, which brings up so much food that all sorts of fish in the neighborhood, both large and small, will rush up in the hope of getting nourishment and good fare. Meanwhile the monster keeps it mouth open, and inasmuch as its opening is about as wide as a sound or fjord, the fishes cannot help crowding in great numbers. But as soon as its mouth and belly are full, the monster closes its mouth and thus catches and shuts in all the fishes that just previously had rushed in eagerly to seek food. In World Zero, Linnaeus believed in the kraken. The first edition of his book on classification of living things, the Systema Naturae published in 1735, lists the kraken under the scientific binomial Sepia microcosmus. To a modern reader, that suggests its a kind of cuttlefish rather than a squid, and in fact that makes a lot of sense. A cuttlefish, unlike a squid, contains a buoyant cuttlebone and is flattened, meaning that an enormous cuttlefish, 2.5 km long, would be better at mimicking an island than a squid or octopus. Each kraken has an estimated mass of 160 million tons. Nordic myth also describes the kraken as being covered in heather. Its skin has a heather-like surface. It makes sense to see the kraken as an organism which forms a highly specialised ecosystem to which seaweed and sessile animals such as coral or bryozoa are anchored as symbiotic organisms which feed off other living things associated with it. 140

Here Be Dragons Given that a kraken is a cuttlefish, it has the display capabilities of one, though it would need neither to defend itself from predators nor apparently to conduct mating displays. I assume it has no predators, at least successful ones, though it might have parasites. It doesnt really make sense to think of an animal that size as being prey for anything, though it could be a host. Immortality Immortality in dragons and krakens The Sells dragon had ancestors which were shorter-lived, with normal lifespans. These evolved into wyverns and the other dragon-like species with the exception of the Daviess and Chinese dragons. Sells dragons are primitive because they are long-lived and reproduce slowly, so they tend to evolve slowly. They are therefore living fossils like horseshoe crabs, horseshoe bats, grey and red squirrels and rhinos. Ancestors of both lineages of dragon were large lizards, possibly like the Australian Megalania in World Zero. In a similar way to the development of an aquatic lifestyle by mosasaurs, dragons developed an airborne lifestyle. Processes of ageing affect the Sells dragon and the kraken hardly at all. It stands to reason that krakens live forever because they have large bodies and theres a tendency for large animals to live longer than small ones, though there are many exceptions. Also, its size and length of life are consistent with living in a cold environment like the giant isopods of World Zero, of the genus Bathynomus, found in the Southern Ocean. The largest Bathynomus are 76 cm long and weigh 1.7 kg, compared to the sea slater, Ligia oceanica, which is 3 cm long. Since a colossal squid is up to 14 metres long, a similar variation in scale would make the kraken only 141

Here Be Dragons 350 metres long. Krakens are giant partly because they live in polar waters, one in the east and one in the west. They cannot live near each other because their environments can only support one individual of that size, and they are unable to cross the ocean between the poles due to temperature and ocean currents. Although there are many commensal and symbiotic organisms associated with them, there are neither parasites nor predators. There is absolutely no reproductive system. The parents of the two krakens were, however, able to move across the ocean due to being smaller and less dependent on cold water. The krakens grew very slowly over many millenia. The metabolism is such that they would overheat if they left polar waters, due to their size - they rely on the cold water to keep their body temperature low enough to enable the chemical reactions within their bodies to function properly and are strongly repelled by warmth. In World Zero, all cephalopods except nautiloids are short-lived, breeding once and dying. This is known as being semelparous. In the last generation of krakens, a single mutation occurred which induced sterility, immortality and giantism, and also the absence of meiosis and the disappearance of the Hayflick Limit, if that exists in cephalopods: the point beyond which dividing cells become cancerous. Hence they grew very slowly but for a very large number of cell divisions compared to other animals, but nowadays they only exhibit growth to repair injury. Since the same mutation is unlikely to occur twice, the kraken are probably clones or identical twins. Like other cephalopods, the kraken are more intelligent than any other animals apart from some chordates. They have a further advantage of being immortal, meaning that they are also wise due to many millenia of experience. Unlike other cephalopods, they have a very long lifespan. It isnt clear how this wisdom manifests itself. The question of identity is also significant with kraken, unless they have perfect memory due perhaps to a very large brain. Can the kraken be considered the same animal as it was when it hatched out? If its body substance has completely changed and its memories are completely different, is it the same animal? How are the kraken at each end of the 142

Here Be Dragons poles different in a way which one of them differs from the same kraken thousands of years ago? The fact that they are genetically identical also raises an issue. The Western Kraken Expeditions International teams of marine biologists have explored the surface and interior of the Western Kraken, starting in 1957. This culminated in a voyage into the organism's interior and mantle. Ancient World Slugs

Slugs evolved from aeolid

nudibranch sea slugs during the Eocene period. Just as their ancestors ate sea anemones and retained the venom to render themselves poisonous to potential predators and were therefore brightly coloured, slugs consume plants which contain irritants, making them distasteful to the animals which would eat them. They also have a high...er concentration of salt in their body fluids which they excrete in their slime, which tends to be colonised by yeast and can be scooped up and spread on bread, a practice confined largely to Albion. Their diet consists mainly of stinging nettles and plants in the cabbage family, and their skin is lined with glands which contain histamine, formic acid and mustard oil. As a result, they taste spicy and their bodies are dried and used as a condiment, although they need to be boiled first to denature the histamine. Since they are distasteful, they are brightly coloured to warn animals which would otherwise eat them. Humans exploit this by breeding them for their beautiful appearance and keep them in parks and gardens, where they do a useful job keeping the flowers from proliferating. The main focus of gardening is on the care and breeding of slugs rather than flowers. In order to keep their salt levels up, 143

Here Be Dragons gardeners frequently use brine ponds. Slugs have few natural predators, but are preyed upon by snakes and land frogs, both of which can deal with the saltiness because of their own concentrated bodily fluids. Both land frogs and some species of snake reuse the irritants concentrated by slugs, in the frogs' case as defence and in snakes as venom. Slugs breathe using gills in a dorsal pouch, which have to stay moist to work, but also through their skins to some extent. They are not vulnerable to rain because their kidneys can deal with the water. Slugs and their relatives cannot be killed by salt. Adding carbohydrates to their slime sometimes produces liquids which can be fermented into a alcoholic beverages due to the symbiotic yeast which is shed into the slime fermenting sugar. Slug metabolism is less dependent on sugar than that of most life forms, and instead uses ethanol as a major source of energy. When they eat sugars, although they use some themselves, symbiotic yeast breaks much of the sugar down into ethanol, making them high in alcohol. It is in fact possible to get drunk by eating slugs, though few people pursue this method. Slugs convert the ethanol via ethanoic acid to acetyl-coenzyme A, which then enters the Krebs cycle. The Albion esculent slug is found only in these islands, but there are a variety of other species throughout the world, notably the southern esculent slug, native to Terra Australis. Although their slimes are very popular spreads in Albion and Terra Australis, elsewhere in the world most people think scooping up slime and spreading it on toast to eat is disgusting and mad. Delay Fish Also known as the remora, this is a bivalve mollusc which produces a cobweb-like funnel of byssal threads and lives in shallow water. It finds a place where the current tends to move in the same direction for long periods, then spins a network of tough fibres anchored to nearby solid objects. These direct plankton and other small organisms towards its feeding siphon and it can grow to a considerable size rapidly. It is a nuisance to shipping as it spins its web very quickly and its threads are very difficult to remove, but it can also be used as a source of fibre for fishing nets and textiles. Rope is generally harvested from delay fish and is much tougher than hemp-based rope. 144

Here Be Dragons The Catoblepas This is a bison-like animal, possibly inspired by the gnu, which lives in Ethiopia, i.e. a bigger region than the name now suggests - the South Atlantic used to be called the Ethiopian Ocean because a large part of Africa was seen as Ethiopia. It is sometimes described as having a long neck, a scaly back, hair covering its eyes and a heavy, hog-like head which it holds down most of the time, which is just as well because its gaze kills or turns people into stone. However, this is sometimes changed to it having a toxic breath which kills people soon afterwards, and it is said to eat toxic plants to maintain this faculty. The second is more feasible but the first is interesting because it illustrates the emission theory of vision. A number of entities are seen as having petrifying vision, for instance the Gorgon, and this can be seen later in the idea of the evil eye, and even in the modern offence of watching and besetting, used during the Miners Strike in the 80s and as a means of bringing prosecutions against stalkers. This is related to the emission theory of vision - the theory that the eye emits rays of light which illuminate objects in the field of vision. It partly arises from the observation that many animals eyes, such as owls and dogs, seem to glow in the dark due to the fact that they have a reflective layer behind the retina increasing the chances of light being captured by the light sensitive cells of the eye, which face backwards. The philosopher Empedocles, who lived in the fifth century BCE and was largely responsible for the theory of the four elements of earth, air, fire and water, formalised this theory as follows: Aphrodite created eyes from all four elements and therefore lit a fire in them which emits light. This was accepted by Plato but rejected by Aristotle and Lucretius, then sophisticated in the second century CE by Ptolemy, who proposed that a cone of sensitive rays had its vertex in the eye. Although this seems to be the wrong way round for us and appears to fail to explain either darkness or the blackness of the pupil, it does explain other phenomena, such as objects at a distance looking smaller, and the actual geometry of optics is exactly the same the other way round. Light was also assumed to travel at infinite velocity by most ancient natural philosophers, though not by Empedocles. The emission theory of vision began to decline in popularity after the first millenium of the Christian era when Ab Al al-asan ibn al-asan ibn al-Haytham conducted experiments which demonstrated that it was untrue. However, since he was in the Islamic world this seems not to have influenced Europe much 145

Here Be Dragons for a long time afterward. I think the idea of a glare so baleful that it kills, sets fire to things or turns them to stone depends on the extramission theory of vision. The questions are, should we maintain this theory or abandon it for the likes of the Catoblepas, and can it be made to work in a scientifically plausible way? Could their eyes have poisonous tendrils like jellyfish tentacles, for example, or be radioactive? Back to the Catoblepas. First of all, it reminds me of Eeyore. If it lives in a region where the soil or groundwater is high in arsenic, i think this can be made to work thus. The Catoblepas has a heavy head so that it can easily graze and its skull rests on the ground so it can mow the plants high in arsenic that it needs to eat.

146

Here Be Dragons Like the fish Opisthoproctus soleatus:

its eyes are fixed so that its gaze is perpendicular to the surface, but unlike the fish, they face down. Its face is shrouded in long hair, so the eyes are adapted to dim light, it has no irises, only pupils, and a reflective back to the retina. Its skull is heavy and contains massive bone composed of an arsenic compound of strontium (or some other dense inorganic compound - there are sharks whose bodies are high in arsenic, so this could work without killing it). Because it cant look up, it needs some other defence against predators, which is its ability to eructate the toxic gas arsine. It swallows plants into a rumen in which arsenic-rich microbes live. They generate small amounts of arsine - arsenic tetrahydride. On perceiving a threat, the Catoblepas burps arsine, which is toxic to the predators over a period of several hours. It has an odour of garlic and fish. Since the animal is not immediately toxic, just as is the case in some bestiaries, it may have warning colouration, so it might be brightly coloured like a poison arrow frog or have yellow and black stripes like a wasp or a cinnabar caterpillar. As it can burp arsine, its nostrils are on top of its head, possibly with a trunk, in order to avoid inhaling it, and it holds its breath when it does so. Arsenic compounds are all poisonous because they interfere with adenosine triphosphate, the high-energy compound used by living things to couple the energy released by the breakdown of sugars to the metabolism. Arsine itself is poisonous because it damages red blood corpuscles, triggering their breakdown by the body. Hence i propose that the Catoblepas has a slow metabolism, does not generate its own body heat (it lives in the tropics after all) and a short lifespan. It also secretes milk which is high in arsenic to feed its calves and has hardly any immune system because it depends on its toxicity to kill infections. Consequently, its calves are born pregnant like aphids, and it doesnt mate, though its nowhere near as prolific as aphids because it has a highly specialised niche. Its also possible to make deadly dairy products from it such as death cheese, death butter and death yoghurt. All Catoblepones (i think thats the 147

Here Be Dragons plural) are female. Ancient World has plenty of species in common with World Zero, but also many that are absent. One interesting case is that of bears. Polar bears in World Zero are very closely related to brown bears and in fact some brown bears are more closely related to polar bears than they are to other brown bears. The Arctic bears of the Pterophorus Range are white, large and predominantly carnivorous, but unlike polar bears are not predominantly marine and don't eat seals or other sea life. They would, however, be able to interbreed with polar bears if they came into contact (which they can't because they're in different universes). There is also a very small population of maritime white bears in south-western Atlantis, which are even more similar to polar bears (and related). A number of types of organisms do not exist in Ancient World but there are myths about them. These include edentates (anteaters, armadillos and sloths), caviomorph rodents such as guinea pigs, capybaras and maras, and humpless camels such as llamas. There are also no tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco and maize, and no chocolate, because there is no New World. There are penguins living in the Great Ocean and as far east as Europe and West Africa, and on the southern ice cap, but they differ from World Zero penguins. I also think that the Americas, Australia and Antarctica should somehow be included as legends in Ancient World, maybe as follows: The Americas: The Church declared that there must be land on the other side of the world because God would not have a reason to create a world which was the size it is and not populate it with human beings - the Great Ocean would be pointless otherwise. Therefore, it was believed that there were two continents to the West, and exhibitions were sent to find them. Most went missing, and it was therefore maintained for a long time that the world must be flat and they were falling off the edge. When explorers finally reached Cathay from Europe, it was realised that there could be no substantial land at all between the two, and this caused a crisis in the 148

Here Be Dragons Church hierarchy. Australia: When European explorers first reached Terra Australis from Lemuria, they thought it was a small isolated continent. They also found land south of Africa but weren't convinced it was the same continent because it was so far from it and it would mean that a continent the size of Africa was unknown to them, which seemed an audacious conclusion. It was only when they were able to meet in the middle that they realised it was all one enormous piece of land. Antarctica: People living in Southern Africa were aware that as they went west, the Great Ocean became colder, and they were also vaguely aware that there was a continent to the south. They mixed these two ideas up and formed the legend of a cold, southern continent which was initially nicknamed Antarctica by the Europeans, because it was opposite the Arctic Sea. Later exploration disproved the hypothesis. List of absent plants: Tomato Potato Maize Tobacco Chocolate Cranberry Avocado Peanut Peppers Pineapple Sunflower Pumpkin CRUSTACEANS Barnacle geese/goose barnacles - Ancient World 149

Here Be Dragons

A fanciful interpretation of a barnacle goose tree Gerard the herbalist describes the situation thus, calling them Britanica Concha anatifera: There are found in the North parts of Scotland and the Islands adjacent, called Orchades, certaine trees whereon grow certaine shells of a white colour tending to russet, wherein are contained little living creatures: which shells in time of maturity doe open, and out of them grow those little living things, which falling into the water do become fowles, which we call Barnacles; in the North of England brant Geese, and in Lancashire, tree Geese: but the other that do fall upon the land perish and come to nothing. Thus much by the writings of others, and also from the mouthes of people of those parts, which may very well accord with truth. This story was often treated with some scepticism, partly because it was one of those things which was used as a ruse to define a bird as a fish in order that it could be eaten during fasts, similar to the beaver and the capybara. However, there is a real (World Zero) animal called the goose barnacle - Lepas anatifera and other species - which looks superficially like a goose attached to driftwood by its beak, and also a World Zero species of goose called a barnacle goose - Branta leucopsis. The reproduction of the latter used to be a mystery because they migrated and did not lay eggs in the more densely populated latitudes of Europe and were absent during the summer here for that reason. 150

Here Be Dragons Related to real goose barnacles are the parasitic barnacles, for instance Scalpellum, which lives on sessile animals such as coral and bryozoa (moss animals). These are very similar in appearance to goose barnacles themselves. More radically modified barnacles are the parasitic ones which develop systems of tubes to eat crabs on which they live from the inside. The life cycle of many real barnacles begins with a small floating form called a nauplius larva, which has normal legs and a head like other crustaceans. This develops into a more mollusc-like form called a cypris larva, with a large shell. The cypris settles onto a surface and develops into the familiar kind of barnacle which lives out its life anchored to rocks, driftwood and so forth.

Among plants, the life cycle shows a pattern of alternating generations with an often small form which develops gametes and produces a second form which can produce spores. I suggest that goose barnacles/barnacle geese are like this. Britannicaconcha anatifera - the barnacle goose. A goose barnacle is a very tree-like animal which grows in salt marshes and near estuaries. It feeds on detritus in the soil using root-like organs and grows over a period of several years to maturity, when it starts to produce mollusc-like forms. These develop necks, wings and feet while growing on the tree, but are sustained via their necks from the tree itself, so do not need in themselves to eat or respire. After ripening, they drop off the tree either into the water or the land - the ones which end up on the land usually die at that point. The individuals which reach the water initially breathe through gills on their legs, swimming and breathing simultaneously like many aquatic animals. They grow like other crustaceans by shedding their cuticles and develop wings and 151

Here Be Dragons branchiostegal lungs like coconut crabs (World Zero animals which are the largest currently living land arthropods with a weight of about 4 kg). They are then able to fly, but never develop the ability to walk on the land. As adults, they live off seaweed, other water plants and halophytes (salt-loving plants such as samphire), which they can digest directly due to having their own enzyme for breaking down cellulose. Very few animals can digest cellulose directly and usually rely on symbiotic microorganisms to do so, but it would be an advantage to do this directly. They are hermaphrodite like other barnacles and mate in the water. After mating, they beach themselves on the shore or bank and die. The embryos within them feed off their dead bodies and grow into the tree-like form. Adult barnacle geese grow to the size of about 2 kg and fly using wing-case and insect-like calcareous wings which they fold across their backs like beetles when they swim, and swim on the surface of estuaries. They are edible and have blue, copper-based blood. They have twelve swimming legs and their necks are an extended segment behind the head which enables them to reach land plants a little away from the waterline without leaving the water themselves. Goose barnacles evolved from parasitic barnacles living on crabs. These fungus-like animals were able to penetrate the carbohydrate, cellulose-like carapace of their hosts, made of chitin, because they had an enzyme which could break it down. Some of them underwent a mutation where the enzyme could also digest the similar cellulose and started to live on driftwood instead, which they penetrated using a similar system of tubes. When driftwood was washed up on the banks of estuaries, some barnacles started to live on the land instead, still breathing using gills and only being able to survive in damp conditions. These barnacles had already dropped the nauplius stage and developed immediately into the cypris, which developed fertility. It was advantageous to the barnacle to have a flying, swimming stage in order to distribute its offspring and enable it to exploit distant food sources without overcrowding. Related to goose barnacles are the Ancient World sawfish or serra, of which more later. 152

Here Be Dragons Ducks Ducks originated in the Black Sea and there are still primitive ducks living there. These are also crustaceans, related to geese. Like sea slugs, they eat cnidaria and use the poison to make themselves poisonous. Duck is a highly-prized luxury food in Turkish cuisine, where it is prepared by specialist chefs who are particularly familiar with the anatomy of the crustacean and are able to remove the poison sacs from its body. Serra (sawfish) Another flying crustacean, but not so closely related to ducks and geese.

Hens and roosters Although hens and roosters are the same size as those in World Zero, they are literally "foul". They are small flightless dinosaurs which have been bred to lay eggs for food but are not eaten because their flesh is disgusting, and they advertise this fact by being brightly coloured. Ducks and geese Both ducks and geese are crustaceans. Ducks are native to the Black Sea and eat jellyfish and sea anemones, retaining the poison in order that they are toxic to predators, and like hens they are brightly coloured. They lay eggs but these are also poisonous. However, like fugu in World Zero, there are highly-trained chefs who are able to prepare duck eggs for consumption. Barnacle geese have been covered elsewhere. Turkeys

153

Here Be Dragons No turkey-like birds exist in Ancient World because there are no Americas. Callithrix &c

Scitalis: A snake which kills by hypnotising its prey using the pattern on its back, so hot that it can shed its skin in the snow. I have chosen to assume that snakes in Ancient World are not reptiles but somewhat amphibian-like with a few significant differences. Ancient World snakes are descended from eel-like fish, or something similar, which have no paired fins, possibly lamprey-like, and are not closely related to reptiles, amphibians or any other land-living vertebrates. They are lungless, breathe through their moist skin but are well-adapted to saline environments, unlike amphibians. They are also primitively limbless - they have not lost their limbs at any point but simply never evolved them. They have jaws and often also venomous fangs. Development is direct, unlike amphibians, and their skin can be poisonous. They are similar to World Zero snakes in that they are serpentine, limbless, can be venomous, have jaws which can be moved to accommodate large prey which they swallow whole, are coldblooded and may lay eggs or give birth to live youngs. They have an enormous size range, from sea serpents down to species which are smaller than earthworms. Unlike real snakes, but like stereotypical ones, they are slimy. This slime is often poisonous to the touch and is necessary for respiration.

154

Here Be Dragons

Scitalis This snake is a cognitohazard to Ancient World humans and many other primates. It cannot be depicted safely for the reasons described below. The Scitalis: Described in MS Bodley 764 thus: The snake called scitalis has such a brightly-coloured back that all creatures that approach it slow down to admire its splendour. And because it is too lazy to approach its prey, the snake captures it by its extraordinary appearance. It is so hot that in the winter it will expose its glowing body in the open air. Lucan says of it: Only the scitalis will only lay out its body in the harsh chill of the frost. The scitalis is a phosphorescent snake which uses a somewhat similar technique to certain fish in the deep ocean such as the angler fish, which lure their prey using a luminous organ on the ends of their dorsal fins. The pattern on their backs is such that it stupefies many animals which see it. This can possibly happen, and the explanation is as follows (its rather convoluted): The mathematician Kurt Goedel proved that all consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable propositions. This is similar to the idea of paradoxes, and has been taken to imply that the human mind is more than a machine. A familiar plot device in Star Trek and other stories includes the idea of an android which, when presented with a paradox such as this statement is false, breaks down. David Langford wrote a story called Blit in which a fractal-like image was able to destroy the human mind on being viewed - its an image which proves fatal. 155

Here Be Dragons The back of the scitalis includes just such an image. It has a luminous, fractal-like image which destroys the central nervous system functions of its prey species, so that they cannot escape and it can eat them at leisure. This image is asymmetrical in appearance, and affects different individuals according to whether their left or right hemispheres dominate. The scitalis preys on primates and takes advantage of their visual sophistication and complex brains to find a weak point. SYNAPSIDS The first synapsids appeared in the late Carboniferous, 306 million years ago. Like their amphibian ancestors, they were sextupedal, and in fact all pelycosaurs and early therapsids had six legs. In the late Triassic, one group of pelycosaurs, the mammals, lost the middle pair of limbs and came to dominate most of the world. In Terra Australis, different mammaliforms prevailed, all of which were sextupedal. Consequently, there are two main surviving groups of synapsids, only one of which are mammalian. Terra Australis mammaliforms are sextupedal, secrete milk from abdominal patches and lay eggs. Their legs sometimes project out sideways, sometimes not. Some of them have venomous claws. The lower jaw consists of two bones and they have a bone which doubles as part of the upper jaw which they use for hearing, which is insensitive to high frequencies and generally less acute than that of mammals. They are never nocturnal. Their diet varies, but they only rarely eat small insects insectivores generally only eat large insects. Their eyesight is good and they all have colour vision. A few mammaliforms abandon their eggs. Mammaliform jaws open all the way to their ears. The mammaliforms in the rest of the world are simply mammals, which differ mainly from World Zero mammals by having dentine dermal appendages. Apart from ones which have lost the features concerned, the majority of mammaliforms are furry, have different types of teeth, are warm-blooded and secrete milk for their young. 156

Here Be Dragons There are both non-mammalian mammaliforms elsewhere in the world and a few mammals native to Terra Australis. Most of the mammaliforms elsewhere are found in South Africa and Lemuria, with a few in Indonesia. The Terra Australis mammals are sirenians, seals, whales, bats, rodents, feral dogs, fairies, pixies, humans and bats TERRA AUSTRALIS SYNAPSIDS

157

Here Be Dragons Centaurs

These are a sentient species which evolved on Terra Australis. They are ruminants which also eat fruit, and look like horses with human torsos, arms and heads springing from where the neck would be. Their diet consists largely of leaves and fruit and their anatomy is highly unusual. They have two pairs of lungs, the lower pair for respiration and the upper for speech. The digestive system is complex with a number of chambers to the stomach like those of many even-toed ungulates. They have a second brain in their hindquarters which coordinate their four back limbs. Although they have no nipples, they nurse their infants on their chests, 158

Here Be Dragons then, when the children are able to stand alone, they feed by licking the abdomen, where a different quality of milk is secreted more suitable for older children. Gestation lasts ten months and the babies hatch helpless, not being able to walk, then move sextupedally and finally rear up at their front ends. The front quarters of centaurs are very similar to humans, the main differences being the wider jaws and absence of nipples. They are able to sleep standing up but there is a distinction between REM and NREM sleep where NREM takes place while standing and REM while lying. Goats Horned mammaliforms living in volcanic areas, these are extremophiles. They thrive at temperatures near boiling point and eat a wide variety of foods, including bacterial colonies which grow in hot springs they also drink water near boiling point. They hibernate if the temperature drops below about 65 degrees C and lay eggs which they abandon, which can overwinter at lower temperatures and are triggered into development when conditions become warm again. They live in a permanently volcanic area of tropical Terra Australis covering an area of about 1.5 million square kilometres. Their own body temperature is close to the boiling point of water. Hyaenas In World Zero, the ancestors of dogs evolved in America and spread to Eurasia. In the meantime, two kinds of hyaena had evolved in Africa and Eurasia. When dogs had spread to Eurasia, the dog-like hyaena type couldn't compete and became almost extinct, leaving only the aardwolf. In Ancient World, canines didn't evolve because there are no Americas. Instead, the more dog-like hyaenas survived and became the animals now called dogs there. They are not quite the same as dogs in World Zero because their habits are somewhat more catlike and they have a few features which are unique to them, such as a nuchal ligament which prevents them from flexing their necks, so they can't look up. They are also pack animals like World Zero dogs but unlike most of the hyaenas here. The animals referred to as hyaenas in Ancient World, which are native to Terra Australis, are not mammals but cynognathid therapsids with unusually wide jaws, since the mammalian ear ossicles are included in 159

Here Be Dragons their jaws as well as the dentaries. They are also pack animals, unlike World Zero hyaenas, but unlike them they are almost exclusively scavengers of transversodonts. They have the unusual feature of consisting of packs with an alpha male and a number of females. If the alpha male is killed, the female at the top of the pecking order changes sex to become a fertile male. From this it can be seen that sex determination among hyaenas is not based on chromosomes, unlike mammals. Centaurs have a ceremonial symbiotic relationship with hyaenas which has no direct equivalent in humans but is somewhat similar to the Zoroastrian practice of disposing of the dead in Towers of Silence. When a centaur dies, the corpse is fed to a specially sacred pack of hyaenas, whose only food is the bodies of centaurs. As a result, centaurs take care not to use medication toxic to hyaenas when it accumulates in their own bodies. Occasionally, a centaur has died of a cause which means consuming its body would harm the hyaenas. This is very shameful for the relatives of the centaur affected, and the bodies are then sealed in metal capsules and buried. Flying pigs Flying pigs: Distant descendants of lystrosaurs, these live in the more elevated regions of the Campi Amazonis and seem to have evolved the power of flight partly for defence against predators and partly to aid their leaping from peak to peak. They appear to have begun by rearing up to attack potential predators with their trotters, which they were able to do more efficiently after they developed wings from the middle limbs. They are about 25 cm long and weigh around eleven kilos, so as pig-like animals go, they're quite small, due to the harsh conditions on the karst of the former islands, where food is scarce.

PRIMATES Primates in Ancient World are in a sense more primitive than World Zero, Realistic or New World primates because theyre robots: their brains work like computers or some other kind of formal system and have weak points which other organisms can exploit. This applies to humans. 160

Here Be Dragons However, the reason primates evolved intelligence in the first place is the presence of basilisk-like animals which could entrance them in their native continent of Lemuria, where the scitalis lives. As these predators evolved complex visual patterns which they could use against their prey, primates evolved to avoid the entrancing effects of these perceptions. Some became blind, for example. Others became more sophisticated psychologically as a defence. A reflection of the pattern is harmless to some individuals, depending on their dominant cerebral hemispheres. This has important consequences for monkeys and apes, including humans. Ancient World apes, according to bestiaries, give birth to twins, hating one and loving the other, and abandon them to their fate. However, they then smother the loved twin with love by hugging it too tightly and only the hated twin survives. This is reminiscent of the story about giant pandas, that they give birth to twins and abandon one, raising the question of whether this belief itself is in fact true and suggesting that the panda and ape stories are related, one causing the other - but which way round? This is how it could work. The callithrix, like other apes, has twins, which are mirror images of each other because the early fertilised embryo has begun to differentiate before it splits. They are not identical twins in the same sense as human mirror image twins in World Zero because their phenotype differs in ways other than appearance. At birth, this results in one being left-handed and the other right-handed, and a number of other things including innate behavioural differences such that the left-handed twin is less aggressive than the right-handed one. The left-handed twin is carried by the mother and can be killed by smothering while the mother is awake, but the right-handed twin is abandoned, though it still hangs around. Right-handed twins develop faster and have shorter childhoods, and only suckle while the mother is asleep. They can also cannibalise the other twin after its death. The selective advantage of mirror-image twins is that one of the pair is immune to the scitalis.

161

Here Be Dragons The mirror-image twin mutation arose several million years ago and affects all hominids to a degree, but in humans it is a rare phenomenon. However, it has consequences for humans. Most humans in Ancient World are left-handed and most scripts are written from right to left. Tools in Ancient World are therefore also usually left-handed. Most human twin pregnancies in Ancient World are cases of mirror-image twins, and result in one of each pair being both right-handed and having a tendency towards sociopathy. Right-handedness in non-twins is rare and when it does occur it is probably due to a missing twin rather than a genuine singleton birth. As a result, right-handedness is associated with evil and there is considerable discrimination against them. In some societies, twins are killed at birth. The incidence of mirror-image twins among humans is highest in Lemuria itself, where it is sometimes still a useful adaptation. There are also mirror-image scitalis, but they are very rare - only about one scitalis in 10 000 is mirror-image. Another way in which Ancient World humans are unlike World Zero humans at least (not sure about New World) is that they are vulnerable to paradoxes. They cannot conceive of certain paradoxes themselves and on being introduced to paradoxes, they become psychotic. Giants and Dwarfs Giants Cyclopes are hominins which evolved originally in Eastern Lemuria. They have a mutation in the sonic hedgehog homologue gene which prevents the development of a brain with two hemispheres. Due to their different brain anatomy and physiology, they are less intelligent than humans, 5 metres in height and have a single eye in the centre of their foreheads over a small, tapir-like trunk, and have spread from their original habitat across Asia to the eastern Mediterranean. They are now extinct across most of their former range and are now confined to a single Greek island. However, their height is not the result of their habitat. Like humans, they are not hairy except on the head. Their extinction was caused by an inability to obtain 162

Here Be Dragons sufficient food for their size compared to humans - their bodies are more than thirty times more massive than those of humans. Their demeanour is aggressive and stubborn, but they have invented a number of tools, including a number of projectile weapons. Historically, they did not use fire but used active volcanoes as heat sources for metalworking, cooking and warmth for their bodies. Compared to their past, their current condition is deprived and they are in decline. Consequently, they are a protected species. Buildings constructed by cyclopes are found in some parts of Asia, Lemuria, Africa and Europe. They are much larger in scale than human dwellings and tend to be close to volcanoes. Three-story cyclops houses are not uncommon and each floor is generally about eight metres high, giving the whole building a height of twenty-four metres. They have also been persuaded to help in building projects for humans, though their cantankerous nature makes this risky and they are difficult to manage. However, humans often use their abandoned buildings as dwellings themselves. Common Giants Ogres Dwarfs. There are two types of dwarf. One originates in Lemuria and comprises a number of non-sentient species of humanoid 90 mm in height. The other is found throughout the world and has an average height of 45 cm, and is sentient and has its own culture and technology. Gnomes Fairies and pixies: Fairies first evolved in Western Lemuria and are an early offshoot of the lineage leading to simians. They are like winged, diurnal tarsiers and in Lemuria itself fill the niches occupied by perching birds elsewhere in Ancient World, and have spread to Afro-Eurasia. 163

Here Be Dragons Although they are somewhat bat-like, they are not closely related to them and differ in several respects. Northern European fairies are typical. These are bipedal, plantigrade and 90 mm in height, making them about the size of blue tits and smaller than sparrows. Their membranous wings are like those of pterosaurs, being supported by their fifth digits and enabling the other three fingers and the opposable thumb to be used to climb and manipulate objects. They have binocular vision with smaller eyes than tarsiers set in proportionately large heads and look somewhat chubby, giving them a resemblance to babies. They are covered in blond fur and have only vestigial tails like those of carinate birds. Sense of smell is poor and hearing is not used for echolocation because of their sleep cycle being like that of humans - they have little need to get about at night. Like bats, however, they can hear high frequencies and vocalise ultrasonically, though unlike bats this is solely for communication. They lack language but have a strong magnetic sense and can generate magnetism themselves. They can use tools to a limited degree, for instance using twigs to probe holes in bark and extract insects for food. The diet includes insects, small vertebrates, resin, gum, fruit, flowers, nectar, leaves and buds. There is a six-month gestation and usually single babies. Advanced pregnancy prevents flight. They are secretive and tend to hide away, not having been established to exist until 1917, when they were photographed successfully for the first time. They tend to live either in holes in trees or burrows in the ground. They have a special ability linked to a vulnerability. Their ability to induce magnetic fields is used to hypnotise humans, particularly children, whom they use to defend themselves against potential predators. A human enslaved to a fairy will hang around their dwellings in a trance unless used as a means of transport, and is chiefly used to frighten away larger animals such as cats and foxes. While in this state, humans are unable to care for themselves and unless found and rescued will die of thirst within a few days. Fairies also use quadrupedal mammals for transport, either by simply hitching a ride or in a similar method of enslavement. They creep into people's homes at night and cause somnambulism, and houses need to be rendered secure against them to prevent this. This usually happens to children rather than adults, and children need to be warned about fairies 164

Here Be Dragons early on so they can take precautions. This hypnotic ability also renders them vulnerable to ferromagnetism, which causes fatal brain damage, and they can easily be killed by magnets. Unfortunately, because magnets are fire risks, they are not suitable to protect homes or children from fairies. Fairies have undergone selective pressure to look and behave cutely to human children due to the advantages of enslavement. It's also possible that fairies crossed the bridge into Realistic World and are hiding there. These fairies somewhat resemble small versions of putti (so-called "cherubim") with the wings looking like cloaks, and would also be covered in fine downy fur. Pixies are the flightless relatives of fairies. Lemurian "mice" which have been carried accidentally in ships throughout the world. A similar size to fairies but flightless still humanoid but not as cute because they don't exploit human children to the same degree. Particularly common on moorland. Tend to fight with fairies like cats and dogs fight. They are attracted to "finery" like ribbons and jewellery in a similar way to magpies and bower birds (for the same reasons?). Generally benign. Naked skins which are green, due to Rayleigh scattering - not sure to make the skin green like "green" irises or green by including a yellow pigment, e.g. a bile pigment, carotenoid or melanin-like yellow pigment. Instinctively clothe themselves in bark and other materials like caddis flies do (but cannot secrete silk - they take it from moth cocoons or cobwebs). They live in caverns or infest houses, and tend to huddle together for warmth. They also engage instinctively in agriculture of fungi in subterranean chambers. Sphinxes and Manticores Female and male Lemurian and East African predatory primates. These look like big cats except for their heads, which look human except for the three rows of teeth, and they also have a venomous sting in their tails. Zombies

165

Here Be Dragons Zombification: A form of brain damage which leads to permanent loss of consciousness combined with a permanent hypnotic state, induced by a poisonous plant. The ability of the brain to switch back to wakeful consciousness is destroyed. As such, their existence provides support for the arguments that logical behaviourism is not true in Ancient World and that type-identity physicalism is not true. The Mary's Room argument could be resolved by an actual experiment - "Interview with the zombie". In Southern Africa, there are groups of zombies which operate trains which are not in use and run them through stations in the middle of the night. When passengers board these trains, which obviously do not show up on timetables, they are poisoned and join the zombies.

Ancient World Turtles Ancient World turtles are not reptiles but amphibians. They lay gelatinous eggs in water, possibly buried or in nests. Fish-like tadpoles hatch from them and proceed to develop in the same way as the evolutionary past of the turtles themselves, shedding their shells with each growth spurt like arthropods. They have flexible dentine shells and initially breathe only through their cloacas, later developing lungs, breathing with the pump system in the same way as turtles in World Zero. Finally, they develop hard external shells. The largest species of turtle lives in the Great Ocean and is 21 metres long nose to tail. It floats and swims at the surface of the sea with the top of its shell above the surface of the ocean, buoyed up by a gas chamber just below the top of the shell. Various organisms live on this shell, including pygmy elephants which have specialised in living in the sea. They hitch rides on turtles and perform the function of defending the turtle against potential predators such as sharks. They do this by facing outwards from the centre, and are usually in groups of four. Great Ocean elephants evolved from the Atlantean elephants, which are smaller than African or Asian ones. They have continued the elephantine trend towards an amphibious lifestyle, have flippers and breathe through their trunks. They also have a pair of razor-sharp tusks in each jaw which they use to deter threats. Being somewhat intelligent and able to 166

Here Be Dragons manipulate objects, they build shelters for themselves from driftwood and seaweed against the sun and support them with their backs to some extent, though they also have pillars, and there is a whole mini-ecosystem of animals, plants and fungi found only in the shelters. It was this behaviour which led to the model of the Universe, which is relevant to Aphrodite. Miscellaneous Camels evolved in North America in World Zero, so there are no true camels in Ancient World. Instead, giraffes have evolved into camel-like animals, smaller and stockier than giraffes with camel feet rather than hooves and sandy-coloured, which live in the deserts. They are used as beasts of burden. Pelicans: Feed from their mothers blood. This is somewhat similar to mammals suckling their young. Caterpillars: Do not develop into butterflies. Butterflies: Have incomplete metamorphosis like locusts and bugs, hatching without wings from eggs and developing them after moulting. Echineis: Probably a mollusc. Spins byssal threads and secures itself to a variety of nearby objects in order to capture prey, largely in the form of a funnel to enable it to filter feed better. Also called the delay fish. Viper: Chiefly interesting for its reproduction and clearly related to the Sells Dragon. The male sticks his head in the females mouth to copulate and is then eaten by the female. Embryos then form inside the female which bite their way out - there is no birth canal. This kills the female. The process is akin to the common phenomenon of animals mating and dying. Male vipers sometimes also mate with eels. Swans: Originally native to Hyperborea, these are descended from coleurosaurs. They are white (no black swans, even in Terra Australis), highly social and speak with a music-like language, being as intelligent as humans but capable also of flight. Humans do not recognise their intelligence. They fly to other parts of the world but feign lack of intelligence when in the presence of human beings, whom they study and secretly observe out of interest and in case they constitute a threat. However, they have a religion-like tradition which is near-universal that 167

Here Be Dragons when they die, they become one with the music that constitutes the Universe. In order to do this, throughout their lives they compose a private song which is meant to capture their essence, and sing this when they believe they are about to die. If it turns out they would have survived, they kill themselves by a technique which involves a Yoga-like control of their biological functions and simply voluntarily stop their own hearts, because continuing to live after having sung the life song would violate the sense of beauty, harmony and unity with the world it is intended to convey. INSECTS Phoenix: This is not a bird but an insect related to flies. It is somewhat like a large crane fly but has proportionately larger purple wings. After mating, the female develops a single egg inside itself. It then builds a cocoon of various aromatic plants which are antibacterial and generates a powerful magnetic field, which increases the concentration of oxygen in the immediate vicinity and causes spontaneous combustion, reducing the insect to ashes, though it manages to keep its abdomen below boiling point. After three days, the egg hatches into a larva which feeds on the minerals and vegetable matter inside the cocoon, ecdysing and growing rapidly until it pupates and emerges as an imago. Griffinfly This is a true, two-winged fly which mimics the appearance of the dwarf gryphons which are bees in Ancient World. It has a beak, four legs plus two front legs which are very small, golden fur and a reduced abdomen. Bees, Ants and Wasps Ants and bees: In many bestiaries, bees are seen as emerging from the flesh of dead calves, oxen and horses. Bees are classified as birds, for instance they are usually among the section dealing with birds. Ants are beasts and are sometimes described as resembling wolves. Ants are said to march in columns, sharing their burden of grain and being 168

Here Be Dragons selective, preferring barley to wheat. They break wheat grains in half to prevent germination and throw out wet grains to avoid spoilage. Ethiopian ants gather gold and all ants defend themselves fiercely and successfully against those who attempt to plunder them. Bees build castles and use wax to construct honeycomb. They have kings, an army and fight battles. The workers were seen as virginal. Both gryphons and ants use gold. In Ancient World, there is a clade including horses, pegasi, gryphons, male gryphons, opinici and bonnacons, all of which are types of archosaur. They have a tendency to develop wings attached to their scapulae. Oxen are of course mammals and wingless. It is possible to preserve the myth of bees emerging from horses at least and illustrate a scientific fact as follows: bees and ants evolved as teratomas. A teratoma is a somewhat organised and differentiated tumour. For instance, its fairly common for equine testicular teratomas to develop teeth. There are also transmissible tumours, examples being devil facial tumour and canine transmissible venereal tumour. I therefore propose that the emergence of bees from the dead flesh of horses, but not oxen, is feasible in Ancient World in the following way: The clade mentioned above has a collective tendency to acquire teratomas which become tiny, simple independent organisms which are able to fly or glide to other members of their species, attracted by smell. This is an infectious teratoma which even affects horses because though they are themselves almost wingless, they retain the genes for producing wings. Oncogenes activate these genes. Once they are in contact with the other animal, they begin to spread and ultimately kill it. They tend to affect several members of a harras in turn. 169

Here Be Dragons Bees and ants both evolved from these teratomas. They are now entirely independent and non-parasitic, and have a lot in common. Both are tiny gryphons with castes like social insects. The worker caste consists of sterile females and is around five centimetres in length. Ants are opinici of about the same size. The royal caste of both is a somewhat larger animal but still quite small. Ants eat seeds and in some places build their nests out of, among other substances, grains of gold which they mine themselves, just as true gryphons make their nests from gold. Gold is chosen in both cases because of its extreme malleability. Both ants and bees live in castlelike habitations containing thousands of individuals. The queen is fertilised by the king, who then dies. This produces a tumour-like mass of cells in the queens reproductive system which produces eggs. These hatch into sterile workers earlier in the animals life, but under stress or with old age, female and male fertile animals are produced which lead to swarming, fight with each other and enable new colonies to form. Ants attack potential predators. Both ants and bees have sharp beaks and claws and defend the colonies en masse to the death. Bees secrete wax which has developed from preening oil and build cuboid cells in which eggs are laid. They have a dance which indicates where flowers can be found for nectar. They are, with butterflies, the main vectors for animal pollination and therefore, just as hummingbirdpollinated flowers are red, many flowers in Ancient World are also red. Masonry gryphons: These are small gryphons which assemble colonies once a year by mining tunnels in rocks and laying eggs inside them. They are useful for pollination and peaceable but can damage buildings if left to themselves. Therefore, it is helpful to provide them with a west-facing ready-made gryphon hive to prevent them from attacking houses and the like. There are also brood parasites like cuckoos, which lay eggs in other ants or bees colonies and have them raised by the colonial animals. A further species is the bumblegryphon or dumbledore, which is slightly larger, founds only small annual colonies and appears clumsy and to have unusually small wings for its size. For many years it was a puzzle to natural philosophers how it flew. 170

Here Be Dragons Mongooses: Related to gryphons, they roll in mud and bake it onto themselves in several layers and attack snakes, to whose venom they are somewhat immune because their acetylcholine receptors are different. However, because snake venom varies somewhat, they still need the protection of the dried mud. As well as eating snakes, they lay eggs in the larger species. The young hatch out and eat them from the inside, emerging when the snake dies. In order to do this, they have long ovipositors which enable them to penetrate the snake's body and the young hatch out almost immediately in embryonic form, growing a placenta-like organ which invades the snake's tissues with blood vessels of its own, destroying the muscles first to conserve energy. Like the related hagfish, snakes in Ancient World have little specific immune response. The snake effectively becomes pregnant with the mongoose's offspring, which live off nutrients from its blood until they are ready to emerge. They then eat the remains of the dead snake. There are also mongooses in Lemuria, which are the main small predators there but they lack the resistance to venom because Lemurian snakes kill by brain-scrambling primates, to which mongooses are immune, and they therefore occupy a predatory niche unavailable to animals such as mantichores and sphinxes. Ants and bees are immune to cancer? A brief note on pegasi: These are winged horses whose terrestrial habitat is marshes. This means that when their hooves strike the ground, water emerges as in the legend. Lepidosaurs and Archosaurs More rigorous definition of lepidosauria and archosauria in Ancient World: Ancient World land vertebrates do not fall neatly into the categories of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals like they do in World Zero. In fact, even in World Zero, reptiles are difficult to classify as a single group because crocodiles and birds have much in common with each other compared to reptiles as they're commonly understood, so the choice "here" is between putting up with a rather sloppy group of reptiles which include 171

Here Be Dragons crocodiles but exclude birds, the status quo, and the rather peculiar idea of saying there's a group of animals including crocodiles and birds, then a more distantly related group including lizards, meaning that a monitor lizard is in a different group than a caiman but a saltwater crocodile and a humming bird are in the same group. In Ancient World, there are different groupings because there are more "mythical" animals which have a mixture of characteristics. Birds as such form a wider group but also, there are feathered, flying quadrupeds such as gryphons, i.e. in a sense intermediate between the quadrupedal, predatory crocodiles and the feathered, winged eagles. Hence there is a natural class of archosaurs - the group which includes dinosaurs, crocodiles and birds in World Zero. This leaves the other reptiles as two disparate groupings: lizards and tuatara (there are no reptilian snakes in Ancient World) and turtles and tortoises. However, the amphibians are also different because they are more like World Zero primitive amphibians than the kind of amphibians familiar to humans "here". I've therefore chosen to include turtles and tortoises among the amphibians rather than the reptiles and to see them as evolving separately from them. The reptiles left over would all fit into the Lepidosauromorpha in World Zero except for the "non-existent" dragons and dragon-like animals. For this reason, i've decided there's a class of animals including tuatara and their relatives along with lizards and "dragonoids" and called them the lepidosauria. This means that dragons &c probably have tails which can fall off and be regenerated, though how exactly they'd encounter a big enough threat to use that as a defence is a bit of a scary thought because it suggests there's some kind of ueberpredator out there somewhere in Ancient World which wants to eat dragons! The other thing is, some sphenodonts and amphibians are now very similar, as i mention below, and a similar problem emerges again: separate two types of similar animals while lumping one lot together with the dissimilar tortoises and turtles or include dragons with frogs.

172

Here Be Dragons Primitively, lepidosaurs can voluntarily lose and regrow their tails. They have tesselated scales like tiles, made of dentine. They have a primitive, sprawling gait with a sliding joint between the coracoid and sternum, enabling them to take long strides for their size, and teeth whose sides are anchored to their jaws rather than the roots or teeth in sockets. It is easier for a lepidosaur to stay cold-blooded than an archosaur because the latter have to use more energy to stand and walk, but dragons and related animals are obviously able to generate their own heat. No lepidosaurs can generate body heat for the entire body in their internal environment, e.g. the liver and muscles. However, they can sometimes generate their own body heat either by producing fire or by refrigerating their breath, meaning that the rest of their bodies automatically get warmer by the laws of thermodynamics - making their breath a lot colder than their surroundings has to be compensated by an increase in body temperature. Archosaurs cannot regrow their tails, have overlapping horny scales or feathers and their femurs are always angled downwards rather than sideways. They are often able to generate their own body heat. Birds are considerably more genetically diverse. This is partly because it is easier to achieve flight in Ancient World due to the denser atmosphere and higher oxygen content, so feathered dinosaurs were more easily able to become airborne. As a result, flying birds are paraphyletic and do not form a clade. Flight has evolved independently several times: 1. The passerine and near-passerine group among the birds exists. Orders include: Passeriformes Piciformes Coraciiformes Apodiformes Strigiformes 2. There is a second group of flying birds which are less closely related to the passerines but have flying common ancestors. These are: Charadriformes: These include penguin-like forms which live 173

Here Be Dragons around the West Pole and along the West coast of Africa, but also gulls and plovers. Procellariformes: Albatrosses and petrels. Somewhat more significant due to the existence of the Great Ocean, which is bigger even than the Pacific. Phaethoniformes: Tropic birds. Again, these are more important for the same reason as the Procellariformes. Pelecaniformes: Include pelicans, which feed their young on their own blood. Together, these birds form a group referred to as the Neoaves, which are substantially like the group of the same name in World Zero, and can also be referred to as the True Birds. All other birds in Ancient World are at most only superficially similar to World Zero birds. 3. Psittaciformes, Coliiformes and Columbiformes are both descended from Psittacosaurs in the Cretaceous, which had diverged from the lineage leading to birds by the late Triassic. They are ornithischians whose closest relatives are gryphons and horses. These names are the same as those used for the parrots, mousebirds and pigeons but they are not closely related to them, though they are superficially similar. 4. Cuculiformes: Cuckoos and turacos. Descended from pygmy gryphons and therefore distantly related to parrots. Again, this name is used for convenience's sake. 5. Cygniformes: There are no Anseriformes because geese and ducks are both types of crustacean and swans are flying coelurosaurs. As well as swans, this group includes flamingoes and storks. It can therefore be seen that the flying birds are not closely related to each other. The flying bird is a grade rather than a clade here. As well as the flying birds, there are primarily flightless birds, effectively 174

Here Be Dragons modern dinosaurs along with a few birds which are secondarily flightless. Among the neoaves, there are few secondarily flightless birds, penguins being a rare example. Ornithomimosauria: Related to birds but not the same. They have always been feathered, and are in fact the earliest feathered animals. A few of them can fly and they include the only example of sentient archosaurs the swans. They also include the following animals: Ostriches: Native to Africa. Emus: Terra Australis. Elephant Bird: Lemuria. Moa: Have vestigial forelimbs like Tyrannosaurs. Terra Australis. Kiwi: The smallest living coelurosaurs. Hadrosaurs: These are generally much smaller than their Mesozoic predecessors, and are game birds, though they have not evolved flight. They include hens, partridges and pheasants. Hens have distasteful flesh and are therefore brightly coloured, but they are farmed for eggs. The largest surviving hadrosaurs are the size of swans and the smallest about as big as blackbirds. Hesperornithiformes: Diverged from other avian dinosaurs in the early Cretaceous, so these are more bird-like than most of the rest of the birds mentioned here. These include the divers and the grebes. They are flightless birds specialised for water, often marine and cannot fly or move about easily on land because their legs are too far back. They have lobed rather than webbed feet and are up to 1.5 metres in length. They only come ashore to lay eggs.

175

Here Be Dragons

Amphibians: Always temnospondyls and able to be much larger than the amphibians were useful. Some of the larger ones are crocodile-like, and they fill the same roles as crocodiles near the East Pole and in Atlantis. These are remnants of much more widespread giant temnospondyls which were present in the Mesozoic. They are better at coping with cold climates than crocodiles, and in fact its even possible there are some in Albion. Several ancient forms had plates on their backs which became shells these were the turtles and tortoises. Primitive forms have dentine scales but some have lost them. There are salamanders and tailless forms (toads and frogs) but nothing like caecilians because that role is filled by Ancient World snakes. The earliest amphibians had six legs rather than four because their ancestors had six paired fins. This situation persisted in some until at least 310 million BP, when the first synapsids evolved, but had disappeared in at least some amphibians by 284 million BP, when the fully terrestrial ancestors of lepidosaurs and archosaurs appeared. Six-limbed amphibians were wiped out by the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. Sphenodonts: Lepidosaurs, but Ancient World amphibians and sphenodonts are more similar than World Zero sphenodonts and amphibians, partly because Ancient World amphibians are more like lepidosaurs anyway and partly because they are primitive. Found only in Terra Australis, with at least two types: the tuatara-like sphenodontidae themselves and the swimming, elongated pleurosauridae which have small legs and swim without using their limbs. There is a difficulty distinguishing between lepidosaurs and amphibians. They both have tesselated dentine scales, can give birth to fully-formed live young and a sprawling gait, and use lungs to breathe as adults. The distinction between them seems very minor, particularly between certain salamanders and sphenodonts. The smaller terrestrial urodela and the tuatara are particularly similar.

176

Here Be Dragons Sea creatures See the sea creatures image. Heraldic dolphins don't closely resemble World Zero dolphins. They are usually much more piscine in appearance, just as the larger whales are scaly. Like fish, they have scales, rays on their fins and vertical tail flukes. They are also S-shaped. Sea lions are leonine with fishy hindquarters. Seahorses are somewhat more like World Zero seahorses but are larger. They are ridden by mermaids and have hair. Unusually, there are also giant sea horses in Realistic World, so there's an overlap there: there's a merhorse cryptid claim. They have webbed feet rather than hooves. They are archosaurs like conventional horses in Ancient World. Sea dogs are scaly dogs and are quadrupedal. I think this is an entirely expected development considering the dentine scales of Ancient World mammals. However, it also means they are amphibious rather than marine. Vegetable kingdom Pineapple: Ancient World pineapples are not fruit but the fruiting bodies of a non-flowering plant. They are a form of gnetale, related to Welwitschia and ma huang, and consist largely of the fruiting body itself. They grow in cold parts of the world such as Atlantis, West Africa and Indonesia, and constitute an entire family within the Gnetales. They look like giant isolated pine cones surrounded by a rosette of leafy fronds, growing on forest floors, but somewhat fleshier and are used as food. They often produce edible seeds and the artichoke-like scales are sometimes also edible. Because they grow in low light conditions, they are bright red, enabling them to absorb more light. There are also carnivorous versions in the family, which live in marshy areas where the nitrogen content of the 177

Here Be Dragons soil is low. These have wells in the middle and are low-set, into which small animals fall and are eaten. Other related plants are parasitic or epiphytic, growing on conifers. Leeks: In Albion and the Isle of Destiny, a related plant in the pineapple family is the leek, which is edible. There are also native pineapples in Caledonia and the Isle of Destiny which form a part of North Atlantic insular cuisine (i.e. Thule, Albion, the Isle of Destiny and Atlantis). Plantimal kingdom Plantimals are an entire kingdom of organisms which are both heterotrophic and autotrophic. Many of them are multicellular and terrestrial, though aquatic species are more diverse. The most important biogeographical region for terrestrial plantimals is Tartary, since being equatorial, there is more radiation from the Sun than elsewhere. Also, being a rainforest, the biodiversity of the entire jungle is higher in any case. The situation is slightly complicated by the fact that some plants are also heterotrophic, such as the carnivorous leeks, and not all plantimals are both heterotrophic and autotrophic throughout their life cycles. The entire kingdom corresponds to a subset of the Protista of World Zero and many unicellular species are in fact identical in both worlds and classed as plantimals. Also, like World Zero protists, the subtaxon Archaeoplastida consists of basal plants, the subtaxon Unikonta includes sponges and some other subtaxa can be considered plants or animals. The plantimals are actually paraphyletic since they include the superphyla Excavata and Alveolata. The former are part of the Chromalveolata, which include many non-plantimal seaweeds and various algae, so the plantimals are not a real group, like the slime moulds, some of which are included amongst them. Terrestrial plantimals are currently quite successful due to the high level of atmospheric oxygen, which enables them to achieve a higher metabolic rate than plants quite easily, although that rate is still lower than that of most animals. However, in the fairly recent geological past, plantimals were a very minor and unsuccessful kingdom due to lower levels of oxygen. All terrestrial plantimals are sessile, rooted to the spot, but many of them have animal-like behaviour as well. Many are herbivorous, unlike most plants, although the dodders and mistletoes are exceptions to this among 178

Here Be Dragons plants. The most well-known terrestrial plantimals are the vegetable lambs of Tartary and the screaming mandrakes. Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (Barometz Fern) (Agnus scythicus)

This plantimal grows on the edges of Tartary where the canopy is thin enough for grass and other small herbaceous plants to grow on the ground but the rainfall is too high for frequent bushfires. It eats the herbs around it before fruiting and releasing pips, which are dispersed by the normally carnivorous animals which eat it. It is also covered in a wool-like substance which is used as a textile, being widely cultivated for this purpose. Its flesh is muscular and it also contains highly mineralised 179

Here Be Dragons bones. During the heterotrophic stage of its life cycle, it also has a nervous system and a brain, which it loses after it has ceased eating. After the eating stage, its nervous system atrophies and is reabsorbed by the rest of its body. This makes it ethically interesting because it is at a higher tropic level than plants but once its nervous system is gone, it can be considered to be incapable of suffering. It is widely used as a particularly realistic meat substitute. Faduah This plantimal is related to the mandrake. It

180

Here Be Dragons Screaming Mandrake These are dioecious female and male forms are separate plants.

Male and female mandrakes One of the most interesting and dangerous features of this plantimal is that if uprooted, it produces a loud noise which is the sonic equivalent of the scitalis brain-breaking visual pattern, which renders a human listener permanently catatonic. As a result, it should only be uprooted by deaf people, with substantial ear protection, or by tying a strong animal other than a primate to it and vacating the area. A dog is often used for this purpose. Mandrakes reproduce in an interesting way. Unlike most plants and plantimals, mandrakes are dioecious each individual is either female or male. They bear fruits containing microscopic seed-like bodies corresponding to those sexes. When an animal eats the fruit, they are activated by stomach acid and adhere to the sides of the intestines, releasing reproductive hormones which increase the fertility of the animal if they detect a high level of oestrogen and the libido of both sexes. They also change behaviour, causing cravings for fruit of the opposite sex, which the animal then seeks out and consumes. Fertilisation then takes place and the zygote burrows into the animal's internal environment, preferring the reproductive organs of the female. When the animal mates, the zygotes, or seeds, are deposited in the tissues of the embryo of the offspring. They are harmless to the host otherwise, provided the host is healthy, and lie dormant until the hosts die. After death, which is detected by a change in pH and carbon dioxide levels, the dormant seeds germinate, becoming new mandrakes. Mandrakes are used as a form of medicine to increase fertility and boost libido. 181

Here Be Dragons Megaeuglena There are various single-celled plantimals in rivers and seas. Many of these have followed an evolutionary trend towards large size for single-celled organisms, although there are also multicellular marine protists. Megaeuglena is an example of this. Its main body is fifty centimetres long but only a millimetre thick, with a flagellum several metres long. Its body is, however, intricately coiled and forms a roughly spherical knot less than a centimetre in diameter. It has a mouth and eye at the end from which the flagellum emerges, on the outer surface of the knot. The flagellum is highly modified and bears a series of webbed lateral projections and undulates to enable the plantimal to swim through the sea. It feeds on plankton as well as photosynthesising, and uses its eye to move towards light. However, at night it becomes temporarily blind, which enables it to avoid being trapped by luminescent fish. Mineral kingdom

182

Here Be Dragons Pantheons

Pyramid power exerts a natural purification process for certain compounds whose molecular weights are dominated by single atoms. These include silane, methane, water and ammonia, and as a result, in some regions of space, clouds form which have concentrations of these gases. The action of radiation and ionisation from interactions between the molecules leads to the formation of more complex compounds and ultimately self-sustaining processes resembling life. This took place in the leading and trailing Lagrangian points in the Moon's orbit, sixty degrees ahead and behind the Moon where there are concentrations of matter including gases and dust. This is a suitable environment for these structures to proliferate. The initial formation of the structures which later become pantheon units is determined by the distance at which pyramid power is strongest, though it isn't as simple as them springing into existence spontaneously at the corners of tetrahedra of that size. However, it does determine the size of pantheon units at 183

Here Be Dragons about 53 metres on a side, and also their tetrahedral form. Various selective processes operate to favour particular kinds of structure in these locations and also the similarity of four similar structures. Pantheon units are borderline cases of life, like viruses - it's open to question as to whether they are living things or not. A single pantheon unit is a rigid tetrahedron fifty-three metres across composed largely of silicon and silicon compounds. At the centre of each face there is a large circular formation which responds to radiation by harvesting the energy provided and resembling an eye, including an iris and eyelids. A retina at the back exploits the photoelectric effect, providing energy and information which influences the behaviour of the unit. Towards the vertices, vents release silane in an organised way which enable the unit to move and manoeuvre itself into particular positions. The tetrahedral shape enables it to absorb radiation and change temperature rapidly, which is to its advantage and disadvantage in various ways. Therefore, the units tend to form icosahedral and stellated icosahedral clusters which interlock with each other and the units work together to a common purpose. This involves the absorption of dust and incorporation into the bodies of the structures themselves. On a larger scale, amoeboid flocks of units form which sometimes develop specialised regions devoted to different functions such as the mechanical acquisition of dust or the detection of radiation or its occlusion by opaque objects. In the stellated icosahedral configuration, the units regularly swap positions to protect themselves from temperature changes and radiation damage. Pantheon units are covered in black obsidian, so it can be difficult to see them against the background of space. However, they can form clouds large and dense enough to occlude stars and planets when seen from Earth if the object concerned is close enough to the relevant Lagrangian point. Their eyes are also a contrasting colour to the surface of their faces. It is unclear whether pantheons can be considered life forms because they only satisfy some of the conditions of life: Sensation: Yes. They detect and respond to radiation and contact with each others' presence. Nutrition: Yes. They incorporate matter from dust into their structure. Growth: No. They assemble from smaller units but do not change size while functional. 184

Here Be Dragons Excretion: No. Impurities and changes in chemical processes build up during their function, ultimately increasing entropy to the point where they are irreversibly inactive. Reproduction: Yes. They manufacture subunits which self-organise into working pantheon units. Respiration: Yes. They exploit energy from solar and cosmic radiation to run processes within their bodies. Movement: Yes. They emit jets of oxidising silane from near their vertices which are either ejected alone or ignited with carbon dioxide. There is a central silicon network which both organises the building and function of the body and processes information. The "retinae" are pure amorphous silicon and exploit the photoelectric effect. Most of the processes taking place within pantheon units are electrical or mechanical rather than biochemical but they do synthesise compounds and refine elements from which their structures are composed. True liquid is never present due to the vacuum - the only states of matter they deal with are plasma, gas and solid. Oxygen and water are both harmful - oxygen causes them to combust spontaneously and they cease to function if exposed to moisture due to the formation of silica on surfaces, so terrestrial environments are very hostile to them. The silicon at the centre must stay below 150 C or the semiconductivity breaks down, and they need arsenic and boron to survive due to doping. The surface is made of obsidian and this is also used to (check the Mohs hardness) grind away at rocks with blades. The central eye has a lens made of fused silica covered in a protective cornea and tough eyelids with eyelashes which keep dust out. The Atlanteans adopted the single pantheon unit as a symbol of their culture because pantheons are native to space, and they aspired, eventually successfully, to be native citizens of the cosmos. The organisations they left behind in Realistic World continued to use the "eye in the pyramid" symbol themselves. Pantheons, i.e. the collective phenomena which can have a volume of millions of cubic kilometres, are also used in heraldry where they are shown as having the body of a panther with pig's trotters. The occasional pantheon unit enters the planet's atmosphere, but is usually damaged beyond recognition or completely destroyed before it reaches the 185

Here Be Dragons surface. There are more non-functional pantheon units on the Moon. During modern history, pantheons were rediscovered when naked-eye astronomers noticed the unexpected occultation of stars in particular parts of the sky from time to time. It was only realised that they were organism-like when it became possible to detect them by radar and their blockage of microwave background signals in the twentieth century.

Magnetite and magnets Lodestones occur naturally and are a form of magnetite. There are also non-ferrous magnets which derive their magnetism either from elements which are more strongly ferrimagnetic than the same World Zero metals or contain magnetic monopoles. Magnets themselves can be fire risks and corrode quickly because they attract oxygen, so they are stored carefully. Magnetite becomes haematite rapidly in nature. Fire Stones (monopolites) meteorites by origin. Fire stones are minerals containing traces of magnetic monopoles. Those which originate from Earth itself are rare because of the high density of the monopoles, but meteorites often contain monopoles. The concept of opposing magnetic effluvia was retained in Ancient World as there were four commonly encountered types of magnet: lodestone and female, male and hermaphrodite fire stones. It took a long time for it to be realised that lodestones were radically different than hermaphrodite fire stones. When female and male fire stones are brought together, they concentrate oxygen around themselves and cause fires. Magnetic monopoles are more easily found in Ancient and Realistic World because of paragravity. The strength of the force in the early universe led to a less dramatic inflationary epoch and consequently they are more concentrated. This has also led to galaxies being closer to each other than in World Zero and Midgard. Firestone deposits are concentrated around the east and west magnetic poles, that is, in Bermuda and an island in Leuconesia, drawn there by the magnetic field of the planet. However, they also move with the movement of the poles, enabling geologists to trace its prehistoric movements. 186

Here Be Dragons The Atlanteans used these deposits to anchor the Bermuda Pyramid and the Rainbow Bridge in place, though at the Realistic World end, artificiallydeposited monopoles are used and in Midgard they are simply absent, making the Rainbow Bridge unreliable and mainly one-way. It is theoretically possible to construct a second pair of interdimensional portals at the poles in Realistic World, and this may in fact have been done. The same technique is not, however, feasible in Midgard, whose physics are virtually the same as ours. In Realistic World, there are similar deposits in Antarctica and northern Canada. Monopoles in more detail The smallest monopoles weigh about four times as much as the heaviest atoms and about a thousand times as much as a hydrogen atom. Monopolium atoms, which are monopoles orbited by electrons, are also about a two millionth the size because magnetic charge is much stronger than electric charge, so pure monopolium would be immensely heavier than ordinary matter, about ten thousand million million million times in fact. Therefore there is nothing like pure monopolium anywhere on the surface of Ancient World: it would fall straight through to the Earth's core. However, there are less concentrated deposits in the form of rocks and minerals with tiny traces of monopolium held by magnetic forces near the surface. The Ancient World and Realistic World universes also host another kind of monopole matter consisting of interlocking orbiting monopoles and atomic nuclei like three-dimensional chain mail - chain matter. Firestone forms when magnetic monopoles are attracted to the magnetic poles of the reverse polarity on Ancient World Earth. Most of them quickly travel to the Core, but a few get trapped in paramagnetic and diamagnetic matter near or on the surface or enter into orbits with ionised atoms, particularly hydrogen, while falling. Firestone therefore has the following interesting properties: It is somewhat denser than ordinary matter a cubic centimetre has a mass of about three kilogrammes, which is three thousand times as dense as water and 137 times as dense as osmium and iridium, the next densest ordinary matter. This means that a piece the size of a fist weighs about two tonnes, another reason for the Bridges being built at 187

Here Be Dragons the magnetic poles as it is very difficult to transport. It is also immensely strong thousands of times stronger than ordinary matter. This means it can be used to make bullets for armoured animals, but again the energy required is so high that actually firing monopolite out of a gun is impractical. It can, however, be used to make armour. A mirror made of monopolite reflects all electromagnetic radiation, including radio waves, X-rays and gamma rays, so it can be used to make a tinfoil hat preventing telepathy. However, its density makes it difficult to use in this respect. It has a very high energy density and can be used to make long-life batteries able to store a lot of electricity.

One drawback of monopolite is that it cannot usually be easily worked. It has a melting point above that of any ordinary matter, higher than can be practically achieved, once it has been melted it is a superfluid and flows uphill, and is usually far harder than diamond. However, the very impurest monopolite can be worked. It makes good paperweights and a little goes a long way. There is probably pure monopolium at the centre of the Earth. Xenonite a golden-yellow mineral associated with quartz. Throughout the history of the planet, xenon has steadily been released from surface deposits of this mineral, which is xenon dioxide and somewhat unstable. It's used today to manufacture an explosive xenon trioxide and the general anaesthetic xenon. Xenon trioxide is remarkable for not leaving any kind of residue after use, which makes it untraceable. Kryptonite Does exist in Ancient World but how? There would have to be a planet where lakes of concentrated sulphuric acid overlie fluorspar deposits, ultraviolet light or electrical discharges could easily reach the surface and there was substantial krypton in the atmosphere. Philosopher's Stone Gold Coral Sapphire Chromite A paramagnetic mineral which is attracted to pearls and can be used to detect them. Chromite has a magnetic susceptibility of 120 000. 188

Here Be Dragons Pearl produced by oysters near the East Pole, pearls are generated by a grain of magnetite. They open during the day and attract monopoles from the Sun using the magnetic field, which mix with ordinary matter to form a weight, which keeps the mollusc anchored to the sea bed. In order to protect themselves from excess radiation, oysters are high in lead and their shells have very sharp edges to defend themselves from predators. They are perfectly capable of severing a human wrist in one snap. Humans Mention SHC crises, auras, empathy, telekinesis and levitation. A human in Ancient World would instantly be recognised as human in World Zero, and could pass for human except under close examination. The three most significant differences between Ancient World humans and us are that they are slightly shorter and lither, though well within normal height, that they are usually left-handed and that their finger and toenails are made of dentine and do not grow. Their hair is keratin like ours, but it can change under some circumstances to brittle fibres of dentine. Their skin also becomes calcified when ours would become hornified. Average height of a woman: 1.35-1.57 m. Average height of a man: 1.45-1.7 m. (Reason for the range is that heights vary by country. These figures are for Homo sapiens, not dwarfs, giants or other hominins - only the truebreeding H. sapiens population is included here). Average mass is 48 kg for women, 56 kg for men, but their weight is higher due to the slightly stronger gravity (about 1%). From this it can be seen that BMIs are lower. Their bones are slightly denser, partly because of the minimally greater gravity and partly because they are higher in strontium and heavier stable isotopes of calcium and phosphorus than in World Zero. Therefore, the fat content of their bodies is lower.

189

Here Be Dragons Blood and respiration: There is less haemoglobin in human blood because of the greater partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere, though it is again still within normal range. Humans can hold their breath for longer and are less susceptible to asthma and COPD. The lungs and CNS together are less sensitive to the effects of general anaesthetics because of the large amount of xenon in the atmosphere. Hearts: 50% slower heart rate than humans of the same size, like many other terrestrial mammals but unlike any of the flying animals. It can also vary more in order to protect the body from oxidative damage or take advantage of the extra oxygen in the atmosphere if required. Respiration: Oxygen debt can be built up to a greater extent because it can be cleared more quickly. Anaerobic respiration continues for longer, so activities such as sprinting can continue for longer. Also, although their stride is shorter, they can sprint faster. Senses: Hearing is less acute, or rather, it would be in the atmosphere of World Zero, because the atmosphere is denser. More susceptible to blindness from corneal ulceration and macular degeneration than in World Zero. Vision: There are two important differences in Ancient World human vision. One is that the magnetic sense has the same sensory modality as vision, so they can literally see halos, auras and magnetic and electric fields. The thalamus does not separate the two senses, so although in a sense they are different senses, they are not subjectively different. Processes within the brain map magnetic stimuli onto probable sources and most of the time this is accurate, but on occasions, magnetic illusions are possible because of discrepancies in perception. The existence of the magnetic sense makes accidental electric shocks less likely. The other is that rather than cone cells sensitive to blue light, there are indigo-sensitive cone cells, changing colour perception. What we would consider ultraviolet is faintly visible, indigo rather than blue is a primary colour and the area of the spectrum between green and indigo is more 190

Here Be Dragons easily discriminated. Colour spaces are also different, and in a similar phenomenon to the consequences of the invisibility of red to many men in West World, basic colour terms develop in a different order, with a word for indigo occurring as a basic term in almost all languages. To an Ancient World human, violet and purple are completely different colours. If a World Zero human with good colour vision chose three torches, each of which looked like a perfect primary colour to them, and shone them overlapping on a wall, the image resulting would look something like this:

191

Here Be Dragons

The overlapping regions stimulate two colour receptors in World Zero human eyes equally, and the central region stimulates all three, leading to the perception of white. 192

Here Be Dragons If an Ancient World human did the same thing, this is how the result would look to a World Zero human with good colour vision:

To a World Zero human, the red and green look the same, but because the 193

Here Be Dragons blue receptors in Ancient World human eyes respond best to shorter wavelengths, the third primary colour is in fact indigo, not blue. This also means that Ancient World magenta and cyan, also known as fuchsia and aqua, look slightly different, the former appearing richer and the latter more washed out. In fact, because we perceive these colours differently, the pigments used to make these colours are less accurate due to the fact that we are not so good at distinguishing colours including wavelengths at this end of the spectrum. There are other differences. Whereas the cyan looks less colourful to us and the magenta more so, to an Ancient World human they are both equally colourful. Also, to an ancient world human, the green looks about as colourful as it does to a World Zero one with normal colour vision, but the red looks duller and the indigo, and in fact the blue, are both brighter to her or him. The reason for this is that the ability to perceive indigo well is tied up with the ability of some Ancient World humans to perceive magnetic fields using visual receptors in their skin, which works better with indigo combined with the yellow protein which changes colour in response to magnetism. Graphically represented, the distinction is quite subtle. The frequency response of World Zero human colour receptors can be plotted thus:

194

Here Be Dragons

Compare this to a similar graph for Ancient World human colour vision:

195

Here Be Dragons

Comparing these two graphs, it can be seen that the Ancient World indigo receptor is most sensitive at slightly shorter wavelengths than the World Zero equivalent. However, humans from both worlds have a second red receptor sensitivity peak in the short range of the spectrum, meaning that both perceive violet as blue tinged with a hint of red. Again though, there is a difference here because the red receptor is generally less sensitive relative to the indigo one, so violet looks bluer to an Ancient World human and the same shades of violet are in different places. This is very difficult to pinpoint due to the subjective nature of colour perception: most of the time people from the different worlds would never even discover they were talking at cross-purposes, and the question arises of how subjective impressions of colour can be compared. Ancient World colour wheels would be larger than World Zero ones because they must accommodate the extra shades of violet at the short end of the visual spectrum. Moreover, the fact that the red receptor has completely ceased to respond considerably before the indigo one means that in a sense the purest indigo of all, though it is less intense than that of indigo itself, is in the near-ultraviolet range, and almost forms a fourth 196

Here Be Dragons primary colour. Therefore, colour wheels are not feasible in the Ancient World because the choice would be between missing out the violet end of the gamut of colours to enable a relatively smooth blend to be achieved and introducing a sudden jarring edge in the wheel. It is consequently impossible to construct an effective colour wheel in Ancient World. Another consequence of this is that rainbows look slightly wider to Ancient World humans even in the other three physical worlds than they do to World Zero humans (incidentally, Aphrodite's Children see rainbows as simple white arcs with no colour at all). The development of basic colour terms in Ancient World: Like World Zero, languages in Ancient World develop words for colours in a particular order. Unlike World Zero, the order is different. Colour concepts are different for several reasons. Firstly, colours are never seen as warm or cold but as heavy and light. In World Zero, warm colours are associated with blood, fire and sunlight. This situation is vaguer to humans in Ancient World as red is not a clear colour to them and the colour of fire is yellow to white rather than orange or red due to there being more oxygen. The word light refers to weight, not brightness. Secondly, the cells in the retina which distinguish between colours are different. The red receptor is slightly less sensitive and instead of a blue receptor, there is an indigo cone cell. There are a few languages in both worlds which only have words for dark and light. The word for dark also refers to heavy colours. In these cases, the system is: Light: White, indigo, green. Heavy: Black, yellow, red. The next set of languages have actual colour words as well as words for black and white! These are distributed as follows: White, indigo/green, black/yellow/red. The third stage includes Chinese: 197

Here Be Dragons White, indigo/green, black, yellow/red The fifth stage includes words for white, indigo, green, yellow, red and black. Finally, English and various other languages use eleven colour terms, as follows (with the requisite colours): Blue, violet, lilac, purple, grey, white, vrick, green, yellow, red and black. Vrick is not a word in World Zero English. It refers to indigo but is a basic colour term in wide use. A notable omission is orange. It is usually referred to as red, brown or yellow in English although these words are not strictly accurate. Occasionally, the correct term, saffron, is used, but most people don't consider orange to be a real colour, seeing it as more something to make up the colours of the rainbow to seven and wouldn't be able to name the colour with certainty. If presented with an orange, or for that matter a piece of cloth dyed saffron, they would almost certainly either call the colour red or yellow, about equally divided. This is not because they are unable to see the colour but because they lack a common word for it.

This fruit is referred to as an orange, but in English and most other languages this name is simply the name of a fruit. It would be thought of as yellow or perhaps golden, not saffron. The word blue refers to a steely, greyish blue, not the colour of the sky. The sky is seen as indigo or violet, although even to our own eyes a clear 198

Here Be Dragons sky would often seem to be streaked with aquamarine due to the colour of the microorganisms living in the stratosphere. The Ironic language uses the same colour terms as Sarmatian but uses them for complementary colours. Due to these differences of perception, people can have difficulty seeing fire, except as pale flames giving off an almost white light. This is a hazard and it would be expected to be selected against in evolution, but there is a residual magnetic sense, and in some a pronounced one, which enables people to find their way around in complete darkness which compensates for this to some extent. Magnetoception This is probably absent from World Zero humans. Central Nervous System: The brain has more convolutions and is somewhat smaller due to scale. The right hemisphere is almost always dominant. Left hemisphere dominance leads to antisocial behaviour and aggression, and is pathological. Reproductive system: Can be afflicted by the Evil Twin Syndrome, where twins are born where a right-handed twin is aggressive and a left-handed twin more placid. Singleton pregnancies always start as twins but the righthanded twin almost always dies. The left testis is higher than the right. The left testis produces only male sperm, the right only female, so removal of one can guarantee the birth of only girl or boy children. Mandrake extracts can reliably stimulate libido in both sexes and promote fertility in some women, where infertility is hormonal in origin. They can also be used to trigger a herbal sex change in men. Magnetic organs: There is a subcutaneous network of nerve-like organs which generates and senses magnetic and therefore also electrical fields which change according to emotional states. As a sensory modality, this is subjectively perceived as part of the visual field and projected onto the sense of vision. It works best at very close ranges and its strength is an important factor in proxemics (sense of personal space). In certain 199

Here Be Dragons ceremonies and rituals, crowds of people generate stronger fields when their personal fields coordinate. As sensors, there is no link between vision, which is perceived by the eyes, and the magnetic sense. It's possible for some people to learn to manipulate the field to bend small pieces of ferrous metal and set fire to combustible materials (see Physics). Nutrition: Need more vitamins A, C and E, but this is compensated for by the larger quantities of these vitamins in the organisms in Ancient World. Levitation: Some people are able to levitate very slightly above particular substances. This ability disappears with growth but they retain the ability to reduce their weight by an effort of will. This is helped by the greater density of the atmosphere, though the effect is very minor and involves work. Diseases: The following diseases are very rare or non-existent: Osteoporosis, scleroderma, psoriasis, osteomyelitis, tooth decay. These problems are rarer but not rare as such: Obesity. Calciderma: the calcification of connective tissue. Causes shortness of breath and eventually fatal. "Cobbles": skin becomes covered in irregular dentine scutes. Not harmful but considered unsightly. Ichthyosis: Similar to cobbles but scaling and also a cosmetic problem, but differs from the World Zero version in that the scales are genuine fishlike scales, not cornified or detachable. Unlike cobbles, it is also usually congenital rather than acquired. Both cobbles and ichthyosis are harmful diseases because they reduce sweating and heatstroke and other problems occur. Febrile diseases can 200

Here Be Dragons easily be fatal for sufferers of either cobbles or ichthyosis. Alopecia: Hair loss proceeds differently. Instead of hair not being replaced, it is replaced by apatite fibres which are brittle and break easily without being replaced. Hence hair goes white and falls out but for different reasons. Women's hair never goes white, however - this is a predominantly male feature. Ingrowing hairs also become calcified and very painful. This is a common problem with shaving and men therefore tend to avoid shaving altogether. Women also retain all their body hair in most cultures. Shaving is unusual. Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC): This is a recessive characteristic which also occurs in Realistic World. A recessive allele leads to a runaway electromagnetic response triggered by geomagnetic storms, which leads to homozygous individuals generating a very strong magnetic field, which concentrates oxygen in the vicinity of their bodies and can result in involuntary self-immolation. This is similar to the ability of the phoenix to do the same. As a heterozygous gene, it enables individuals to start fires and manipulate iron, which makes it a selective advantage. The Realistic World Atlanteans discovered genetic engineering after leaving Ancient World permanently. They genetically modified certain humans to introduce this trait but unintentionally introduced susceptibility to SHC, though to a lesser extent than in Ancient World due to the lower concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere. As a result, some Realistic World humans can levitate, bend spoons and light fires without tools, though the latter is only possible with highly flammable materials. The subcutaneous quasineural network confers the following abilities: Aura reading Levitation (only very slight and in underweight individuals over diamagnetic solids, although it is possible for heavier people to reduce their weight by an act of will and it can be used to aid certain athletic and sporting activities such as swimming and the high jump) Telempathy close physical proximity enables people to perceive and share emotional states Telekinesis ferrimagnetic materials can be lifted, moved and bent Fire-starting: Oxygen can be concentrated in a small volume to encourage or cause combustion of flammable materials. This ability is more 201

Here Be Dragons pronounced in Ancient World. Hands-on healing: Electrical and magnetic influence inside the bodies of others enables gifted subjects to manipulate electrical processes, which enables them to restart hearts in cardiac arrest and alleviate seizures. However, it also enables them to act malevolently, though they are no more likely to do this than a random member of the unaffected population is to assault someone. Nonetheless this has led to prejudice and ill-treatment. The electromagnetic faculty has sensory and motor components, both part of the same system. The motor component consists of biological Marx Generators. Molecular pumps in cell membranes remove sodium and potassium ions out into the interstitial fluid. Pacemaker structures like those in the heart, each localised in small areas of the skin averaging about the size of the palm of the hand which are isolated electrically from each other, then discharge the cells simultaneously, generating an electric shock. These areas are mapped onto the cortex in an area anterior to the motor cortex, and the size of the areas corresponds roughly to that of the touch sensors, meaning there are more in the lips and fingertips than areas like the back. The sensory side consists of similarly distributed arrays of magnetoceptors. There are light-sensitive cells like indigo retinal light receptors near the surface of the epidermis containing flavoproteins sensitive to light, which evolved from ciliated epithelium. In blue light, this changes its structure for varying periods of time according to the strength of nearby magnetic fields, which influences the depolarisation of the sensors on exposure to blue light. This photoceptor connection explains the synaesthesia sensitive individuals have with vision, and also means that magnetoception does not function as well in complete darkness and best on naked skin. However, like the rod cell back up in dim light, there is an auxiliary set of magnetoceptors associated with temperature sensors in the skin which, however, only work with moist skin or if the body part concerned is immersed. The combination of the two increase the circumstances in which magnetoception can take place in a fairly complementary manner because of environments such as dark, damp caves and forests and dry, well-lit environments. Sufferers of the skin calcification conditions are generally unable to use either sensory or motor abilities. The electromagnetic motor faculty enables affected individuals to 202

Here Be Dragons concentrate oxygen at high altitudes, and therefore many people with the gene are from mountainous areas such as Pterophorus and the Himalayas. Identical twins in Realistic World are sometimes able to use each others' senses when in close proximity, so for example two twins back to back would both be able to see behind them. They can use this to compensate for sensory disabilities. In fact, some identical twins are even mentally conjoined and unable to function normally when far apart from each other. They frequently suffer from anxiety or depression when this occurs as well as sustaining certain health deficits which resolve spontaneously on coming back together, because brain function is shared. This situation does not occur in Ancient World because there are no human identical twins there. Dowsing: Some people can find water and certain metals. Sense of direction: Affected individuals are able to use the planet's magnetic field to orient themselves. This sometimes also leads to a form of insomnia where the bed needs to be aligned at a precise angle for the person to be able to sleep well. Tinfoil hats actually work! Diamagnetic metals are able to confer protection from telepathic influences. Therefore the use of tinfoil hats can be a form of self-medication, which however is not recognised by the medical profession. In Ancient World, Sell's dragons and humans with the SHC gene can have an empathic relationship due to this ability, the dragon being the dominant partner.

A World Zero human being in Ancient World: Somewhat tall, feared if righthanded and possibly considered a monstrosity, hunted down and killed. Better hearing. An Ancient World human being in World Zero: Slightly deaf, short, somewhat disadvantaged because of left-handedness, difficulty breathing. Humans in Ancient World are 11/12 of the scale of World Zero humans, and as a result their units are smaller. They are also more 203

Here Be Dragons like imperial units than metric in that there is a confusion of units which don't necessarily freely convert. The reason humans are smaller is to enable the animals in the world to appear to be bigger, though the difference is only quite small. There is however a bigger difference in mass: an Ancient World human is only 77% the weight of a World Zero human on average, which makes them easier to lift and reduces their food requirements in absolute terms but raises them in relative terms because their metabolic rate is slightly higher - larger surface area per volume means they need more calories per kilo to keep their body temperature at 37 C. This means they can ride on the backs of gryphons, dragons and pegasi more easily and they are somewhat less imposing on the landscape of the planet - for instance, not only is their population lower anyway (world population in 2012 is 580 million), but their farms and industry are proportionately smaller too. The units: 1 inch=2.3283 cm. (Metric units of length would be slightly larger than here but i've chosen to ignore this complication) 4 inches=1 hand. Used to measure the size of animals. 3 hands=1 foot. 18 inches=1 cubit. 2 cubits (3 feet)=1 yard. c 176 yards=1 edge - the range at which the strength of pyramid power is highest. 221 yards=1 stade 10 stades=1 mile (this is the nautical mile and is somewhat underestimated because the planet is slightly larger). 3 1/8 miles=1 league (1/1728 of the distance between the West Pole and the Equator). Metric units: 204

Here Be Dragons Ancient World Unit World Zero Equivalent (approximate) 1002 millimetres. Notes

Metre

The diameter of Ancient World Earth is 0.2% greater. Due to the cube of a decimetre and therefore (1.0023). See the note on newtons. Standardisation harder due to the increased levels of oxygen eighteen and tritium in water. The result of the longer day. The second was initially standardised by the length of the day, so it is longer in Ancient World

Kilogramme (mass)

1006 grammes

Second

1003 milliseconds

Ampere Litre Newton 1006 millilitres 1.002 newtons Since weight can be measured in these units, the situation is complicated by the higher gravity. Still in units of 100 but influenced by higher pressure.

Joule

1.004 joules

Celsius/Centigrade/Kel 1.17 vin

205

Here Be Dragons

206

Here Be Dragons The velocity of light in vacuo is 299 792.4562 km/s in Ancient World, just as it is in World Zero, but approximately 298,299.17 km/s in Ancient World units. It is also possible that the speed of light is different in absolute terms because of differences in physical constants. Mach number: Sounds are deeper and louder. They are deeper because of the xenon content [why?] and louder because the atmosphere is denser and therefore able to carry sound further. Gravitational acceleration is 9.85 m/s2 , which is slightly greater than ours, but in Ancient World units is almost exactly 9.8 m/s 2 . The Atlanteans Atlantis was colonised during the last Ice Age. Due to its volcanicity, it was possible to live there in spite of the heavy glaciation, since much of the ground was warm and there were hot springs and active volcanoes. Notes about Atlantean culture: They left a Rosetta Stone at a Lagrange point in Midgard which was intentionally aimed at helping others to reconstruct their history, culture and science. It consists of a series of platinum sheets with raised characters and diagrams on them. The text includes a primer, based on mathematical principles, introducing the language. It then does something rather surprising. Although it sophisticates the mathematics, as might be expected, the direction of the sophistication is often in a different direction than World Zero human mathematics. Advanced Atlantean mathematics can be seen to be valid from a Western perspective but this sometimes takes considerable work to establish. There are also a number of areas absent from Atlantean mathematics which appeared quite early in the history of mathematics in World Zero. This peculiarity is reflected in Atlantean science, which is also different from World Zero Western science and Ancient World contemporary science. These differences stem from the following: 207

Here Be Dragons Atlantean biology is largely vitalist. Biology and the other sciences are seen as different kinds of academic discipline which can't be meaningfully compared. Atlanteans have not generally considered this to be problematic. The electromagnetic spectrum was initially conceived as a gap between two edges of darkness rather than light, and this has influenced the way light and radiation is interpreted generally. Darkness is taken as primary and light as secondary. Aether is assumed to exist. This is partly because the Atlantean view of matter is hylomorphic. There is no concept of atoms as such, and instead all normal matter is seen as a fluid, with the vacuum as a particularly thin fluid. This includes electric current. The notion of phlogiston was conceived and not rejected, simply incorporated as matter with negative mass. From our perspective, Atlantean biology was primitive in Ancient World but physics was more advanced. Another difference is that the folk-based advance of technology carried on for longer than it did here, for instance there were alcohol-powered vehicles which were invented before scientific principles were anywhere near as advanced as they were by the time the internal combustion engine was invented in our world. The most notable biological influence Atlanteans had on the Ancient World was the breeding of the hippogryph. This was achieved by a long period of trial and error. The occasional fertile hippogryph was produced by artificial insemination and eventually a breeding community was established. This is the sole discernable influence the Atlanteans had on Ancient World biology, which is otherwise entirely untouched by their technology. The same is true of Midgard, although in that world they remained for a long time and were remembered by the Norse as deities. This is in contrast with Realistic World. There, the Atlanteans are still present in the Solar System, interact with human beings and have 208

Here Be Dragons tampered considerably with the world and human biology. Atlantean, World Zero, contemporary Ancient World science and West World science are collectively underdetermined. Ancient World and World Zero science are the same except that electromagnetism is stronger in fact it is exactly equal in strength in Ancient World and Realistic World, which is why the wormhole works so well. West World science is largely different because West World humans have poor colour vision, which has led to the absence of the line of investigation following from the discovery of the spectrum. West World humans have no concept of radio waves, Xrays and so forth. On arriving at Midgard, the Atlanteans established space colonies in orbit around Earth and did a survey of the sky. They found that one of the stars in the constellation of Sagittarius was both more massive than it was in Ancient World and that its axis was pointing close enough to the solar system that when it collapsed, it would cause a mass extinction by a gamma ray burst. However, they were also able to determine the moment of its collapse quite accurately and that the solar system was near the edge of the light cone, and they therefore stayed for a number of millenia. Some time in the ninth century, they left the solar system and headed for in the direction of the edge of the light cone and it can safely be assumed that they avoided the catastrophe, but they have not returned. However, they did leave detailed records behind for future investigations to discover, which in fact happened. In Realistic World, the Atlanteans have stayed in the solar system and terraformed Venus and Mars. Realistic and Ancient World Atlanteans are both quite playful and tend to interfere with things in a manner which is both playful and somewhat sinister. Midgard Atlanteans are more handsoff and their culture is more sober and stoical. There are no Atlanteans left in Ancient World, just their ruins, and the science and technology of Ancient World Atlantis was completely lost. When it developed again with the Greeks and Romans, and later in the Enlightenment, it was much more like World Zero science, except that medicine is still unlike ours to some degree, mainly because there are more widely used traditional remedies, 209

Here Be Dragons which work for different indications than they do here, and because disease processes are different. Holist underdetermination: theories or hypotheses can only be subjected to empirical testing in groups, not in isolation. For instance, the orbit of Saturn was disturbed by Uranus but that didn't lead to the rejection of Newton. There can be no crucial experiments because there are other theories than the ones being tested directly which are used to judge unexpected results. NB: If Vulcan exists in Ancient World, it muddies the waters vis a vis relativity and means the explanation for the precession of Mercury would seem to be its presence. This leaves gravitational lensing and the Michelson-Morley experiment. There are in fact a few people who still believe in the luminiferous aether. The things which Atlanteans held: Phlogiston is a form of matter with negative weight. Phlogiston: The Atlanteans had a theory similar to our early modern theory of phlogiston, holding that all inflammable substances contain a substance which is lost through heating in air. This applies to combustion, rusting and other similar processes of corrosion and aerobic respiration through breathing. Since oxidation clearly increases the mass of some substances, phlogiston was believed by some to have negative weight. The Atlanteans adopted this idea. When it turned out that oxygen itself had weight, they adjusted their assumptions in a manner we would consider appropriate. Substances we would think of as being lighter than air were interpreted as having negative weight The spectrum is a phenomenon resulting from the edges of opaque objects. This is similar to Goethe's theory of colour. Dark and light are polar opposites rather than darkness being the absence of light and colours are the result of their interaction. White light is seen as simple, a spectrum as the overlap of darkness and light, indigo and yellow are the only primary colours and the others are degrees of these and blue is seen as secondary to indigo. This last is because there are indigo cone cells in Ancient World human eyes and Ancient World humans can see some way into the 210

Here Be Dragons ultraviolet. These two theories were linked to an idea of general polarity in nature, so gravity was opposed to levity and all forces were understood as being opposed by counterparts. This eventually enabled There are no atoms. Instead, everything is a continuous fluid, including electrical current hylomorphism. Atoms have been measured but are conceived as quantisations of matter which is macroscopically continuous. I don't know how they understood crystals. Vitalism is true. This led to biology not being seen as reconcilable with the rest of science, but as a distinct discipline. Organisms were seen as having distinctive principles along with grosser physical and chemical principles. However, there was some interaction with other sciences, for instance in terms of respiration. Life is also seen as self-determining. As a result, the significance of DNA was not understood, though it was known to exist and even understood to carry inheritance. Nature abhors a vacuum. There is a luminiferous aether. As well as all this, Ancient World science is applied to a somewhat different universe. In particular, the following differences exist: 1. Biology: Many organisms are different in detail and there is an extra kingdom. There is life on Venus. 2. Astronomy: Vulcan, Venus has a moon and is habitable, the Galileans are larger. Mars has ruins of Atlantean colonisation. 3. Meteorology and geology: The atmosphere is denser and higher in xenon and oxygen, the crust has different minerals (particularly xenonite) and there are more heavy metals. 4. Physics: Magnetism is stronger in such a way that Einstein-Rosen bridges can be held open near Earth's magnetic poles. This is problematic because the real world's magnetic field is very weak. However, there may be a way round this. The same situation obtains in Realistic World. In both worlds, this leads to an anomalous occurrence: spontaneous human combustion, caused by the ability of the human body to generate a strong magnetic field, which attracts oxygen and can cause ignition. The phoenix exploits this phenomenon to reincarnate - don't know how to do this properly. Something about the Atlantean scientific differences led to their ability to build interdimensional bridges at the poles. It also helped them build 211

Here Be Dragons flying saucer engines, which work in Realistic and Ancient Worlds but not in Midgard Midgard's physics are almost identical to World Zero's. This led to a bit of a panic when they realised there was an imminent extinction event and no working means of escaping it easily. One reason Atlantean science is unlike World Zero science is that different explanations were offered for unexpected experimental results and different hypotheses elsewhere in science were rejected, taking a science which was already different in an even more divergent direction. Ancient Atlantean science was not unified in the sense that it acknowledges unity in the world. Physics and chemistry are a single field of study with the life sciences forming a completely separate discipline with only a small overlap. This is because while it was developing in Ancient World, Atlantean biology never rejected vitalism the idea living things and processes were special and essentially different from the inanimate world. In fact, vitalism may be a misnomer because it lacked the idea that life had any kind of supernatural element, which was the case in World Zero. As a result, the only lasting legacy of Atlantean biology in Ancient World is the existence of hippogriffs their selective breeding techniques were sophisticated but they did not practice direct genetic manipulation. Hence they had sophisticated food crops and livestock, for example, and breeds of domesticated animal, but nothing genetically modified in the sense of fully intentional alteration of DNA. They were not even aware that DNA existed, though they were completely cognisant of genes and their modes of inheritance. However, there is a unity of thought in Atlantean science in the sense that the scientific method was applied rigorously in all areas, and such principles as the economy of thought and concepts, testing for falsification and the like were all practiced both within and outside biological thought. This set of circumstances completely changed for both groups of Atlanteans which left Ancient World. For those who reached Midgard, much of their technology immediately ceased to function as it entered the world, instigating a practical and theoretical crisis which took a long time to resolve since many of their instruments were completely useless to them there any technology which relied on the different physics in Ancient World stopped working and they were reduced to pre-industrial methods for a long time while experiencing a crisis of confidence in all of their 212

Here Be Dragons science due to the failure of so much of it, leading to the need to rebuild all of their science from basic principles. Fortunately for them, they were soon able to detect the risk from WR-104 and take evasive action. Optical instruments were known to work well as they had continued to function after arrival in Midgard, so it was immediately obvious that large reflecting telescopes based on the planet would work and these were built, laying the basis for radio telescopes. The situation in Realistic World was somewhat different. There, physics were identical and free movement between the worlds easy, so the scientific community was unified and the major challenges were biological rather than physical due to the different life forms in Realistic World. However, after about two millenia, by which time the Atlantean civilisation in Ancient World had vanished, it became clear to the Atlanteans there that there was a way of unifying the life sciences with chemistry and physics, and they proceeded to do so, although the way in which they did it led to a science which bore only a passing resemblance to their previous science or Western science in World Zero. Atlantean life sciences did not advance in the same way as Western biology, but in many ways was ahead of it. They were able to apply both mechanics and inorganic chemistry to their understanding of living systems but completely lacked organic chemistry as we would conceive of it, with the result that their biochemistry had a sort of peripheral feel to it they were, for example, able to account for the mineral matrix in bones, teeth and claws and had a working model of the physical behaviour of the proteins lending them flexibility but were not able to describe the chemical composition of the proteins themselves or even to realise that the question was there to be investigated. This also meant their pharmacology and toxicology were different, being combinations of traditional medicine and applied inorganic chemistry, which was of course itself unlike Western chemistry due to the absence of the concepts of molecules and atoms but the prominence of quantum-based models of matter. Thus they were able to solve some problems more easily than the West and in fact much of their technology didn't even create certain problems in the first place, although it did create others. For instance, they were quickly able to treat autoimmune conditions and hypersensitivity states and were equally capable of treating bacterial, viral and fungal infections, but were generally much better at preventing them than they were at curing them, which was much less successful than in Western medicine, and people were routinely poisoned for unknown reasons which they never discovered. Their biology 213

Here Be Dragons also lacked a theory for the origin of life which was consistent with their physics, with the result that physics and biology seemed to imply incompatible theories about the origin of the Universe. The former recognised the Big Bang theory, accounted for dark matter mainly in terms of magnetic monopoles and was able to discover the rate of expansion of the Universe, which was much slower than in World Zero they noted this fact themselves when they reached Midgard and observed that red shift was more pronounced there along with galaxies being more widely spaced. The latter hypothesised that non-living and living matter had always existed side by side, was spread through the Universe by natural or artificial means and therefore that the Universe had no beginning, accounting for this by accepting a Steady State theory where inanimate matter spontaneously sprang into being continuously. However, they were fully aware of evolution and had a sophisticated understanding of genetics, palaeontology and ecological and natural history-style investigation was able to back it up without any need for molecular biology. This meant that they were unable to see the details of genetic drift or compare the similarities of proteins in related species. This had the consequence of changing the details of their classification system, which did not advance far beyond that of Linnaeus and focussed more on a sort of mathematical modelling approach to biological form and function than on cladism. However, it was in no way less sophisticated than the Western understanding of life sciences in World Zero, just different. Ancient World Bermuda is littered with craft which have accidentally travelled from Realistic World. An internal combustion engine of Realistic World design would be dangerous in Ancient World because it would explode due to the higher oxygen concentration. Not all Realistic World craft even end up in Ancient World, but in the much more hostile environments found in nearby worlds, which often have no oxygen in their atmospheres or average temperatures permanently above the boiling point of water, below freezing (not so much of a problem for an aircraft) or simply very variable. Auras: visible or sensible in Ancient World and Realistic World and caused by magnetic effects which also cause spontaneous human combustion. They are however not visible to World Zero humans this is a physiological difference caused by the ability to detect magnetic fields which is subjectively a form of vision but not detected by the same organs. This also 214

Here Be Dragons means Ancient and Realistic World telepathy is possible, and in Ancient World, Sell's dragons can communicate with humans without help. Spontaneous human combustion and levitation are opposite phenomena, the former being caused by the paramagnetic attraction of oxygen, the latter by diamagnetic repulsion between the ground and the body, though it only occurs in Realistic World. Physics The basic physics of the worlds varies independently of the scientific theories applied to it. That is, there are two problems when discussing the physics of the different worlds. One is that the same experiments conducted in different worlds would sometimes give different results. The other is that the development of science in the worlds was different and in Ancient World, science not only developed twice but for the Atlanteans was not unified biology and the rest of natural science were seen as completely separate disciplines. The Atlanteans also revised their science twice, once in Realistic World about two millenia after they arrived there, and almost immediately after arriving in Midgard owing to the fact that it was immediately obvious that physics were different there. Millenia after the Atlanteans left, science developed again in Europe, this time along the same lines as Western science in World Zero, but again differed from World Zero science due to the differences in biological, physical, astronomical, medical and cosmological observations there. In West World, science is different again, in this instance as a result of the different colour perception of West World humans, where only half of women have full colour vision and men are never able to perceive red, let alone distinguish it from green. In a more patriarchal society, this would have led to a big problem but the balance of gender roles in West World human societies led to a more complex situation, including divergent female and male vocabulary in many languages. For instance, some words in female language are derived from metaphors or imagery using red and the words for red and female are often connected. Children learn female language first, then boys diverge as they mature and communicate with older boys. Basic colour terms are influenced by this difference too, so West World colour term universals show a different pattern in female and male language and so most primary colour terms vary between genders. Another consequence is that pink and blue are necessarily rather than contingently 215

Here Be Dragons associated with the sexes, as no men see pink as a colour, but simply a shade of grey.

World Zero and Midgard all share the same physics. Aphrodite's Children use physics as understood by the Aphrodite superintelligence, which is unlike contemporary human physics because Aphrodite lacks certain intuitions due to being a sessile life form. Realistic World and Ancient World are in a region of the multiverse where the electromagnetic force is stronger than in Midgard and World Zero and there is a fifth cohesive force akin to gravitation which comes into play only with masses larger than planets. Magnetic monopoles are common in Ancient World and have been experienced since ancient times. Midgard is in the same part of the multiverse as World Zero and West World. In detail, gravity in Ancient/Realistic Worlds and World Zero/Midgard differ in that at distances of the order of 1000 000 km and masses of the approximate sizes of stars, an extra attractive force much stronger than gravity but much weaker than electromagnetism operates. The range of this force is limited by a negative exponential law and it does not operate below a certain mass. This means that nucleosynthesis is possible in stars and the density of magnetic monopoles in the two universes is higher than in Midgard and World Zero because the inflationary epoch was less pronounced. The relative strengths of electromagnetism and gravitation along with the existence of paragravity make a number of interesting phenomena possible in the two worlds, including spontaneous human combustion, telekinesis, levitation, auras, telepathy, a space drive which doesn't use reaction mass, interdimensional wormholes, the Bermuda Triangle, fire stones and several other things. The difference in the nature of the forces in Ancient World and Midgard mean that ordinary matter can only travel from the former to the latter, not back the other way, although neutrinos can travel back. When something enters Midgard from Ancient World, its physics change to the latter world's. Paragravity completely ceases to operate and electrical charge scales down to the weaker level. However, magnetic monopoles continue to exist. The key differences for an Ancient World human going through the bridge are that they can no longer perceive auras and lose 216

Here Be Dragons telekinetic, fire-starting, telepathic and physiologically-enhanced empathic powers, but also are no longer in any danger from spontaneous human combustion. Dioecious fire stones no longer work as such but are still purified magnetic monopoles. Levitation and the space drive cease to function too, which was a major problem for the Atlanteans when they reached Midgard. The bridge is referred to as Bifrst in Midgard and is situated in Northern Australia. An enormous amount of energy is needed to open Bifrost from the Midgard end because electromagnetism is much weaker in this part of the multiverse, and the Ragnarok incident damaged the workings of the bridge, but it is theoretically possible to repair it from the Midgard end. Electromagnetism Much stronger in Ancient and Realistic Worlds, by a factor of about 10 14 . If the strong force were not also much stronger, the repulsion between protons would rip atomic nuclei apart immediately, leaving only the three isotopes of hydrogen. Nearby timelines to Ancient World are in fact influenced by this and have a tendency to be either hard vacua with the occasional hydrogen atom or molecule, or in milder cases to contain shortlived stars around which highly radioactive Jupiter-like planets orbit. In these worlds, chemistry can sometimes occur but there are no heavy elements. However, Ancient and Realistic Worlds have a strong force powerful enough to hold large atomic nuclei together and the greater strength of the electromagnetic force makes little or no difference to chemistry because the forces are still balanced. An electric shock in Ancient or Realistic World would be no more harmful than one in World Zero or Midgard for that reason. It does, however, make a difference in other ways. Magnetism is more powerful, in fact powerful enough to enable humans to levitate in selfgenerated magnetic fields. The properties of paramagnetic and diamagnetic substances are more marked, so for example switching on a magnetic field can be used as a form of propulsion if a diamagnetic object is nearby. Another marked difference is that the aurorae occidentalis and orientalis are visible further from the poles and brighter at the same latitudes. Animal magnetism 217

Here Be Dragons Magnetism is more significant in the biology of Ancient and Realistic World organisms than in World Zero and Midgard. This has been seen as animal magnetism, and the Atlanteans saw it as a fluid which was separate from mineral magnetism, a view shared in the early modern period in both worlds and present in World Zero. It was later established that animal and mineral magnetism were two manifestations of the same force. The Realistic World establishment denies the significance of magnetism in biology or medicine on the whole although they use it secretly, while it is openly known in Ancient World. Hypnosis in both worlds is a state of consciousness rather than a non-state. It is neurologically distinct from the brain's normal working and can be induced by magnetic fields generated by certain people. It can also be generated by a machine. While hypnotised, a subject has no willpower and their brain can be programmed. Anyone can be hypnotised. Ancient World hypnosis can also be induced by sensory stimuli which somewhat resemble the scitalis pattern visually, and auditory and tactile analogues also exist there. In Realistic World, the stimuli are different and hypnosis is harder to induce by such means because humans there lack the basilisk vulnerability, although patterns do exist. Hence the establishment of rapport between a hypnotist and their subject, although it makes the process easier, is completely unnecessary. Hypnosis is more effective than here, and can be used for the likes of pain relief, psychotherapy and relieving addiction. In Realistic World it is also used for social control and assassination, and there is a crowd control device which induces the state in groups of people to disperse riots, demonstrations and the like, and in battlefield situations. This device is disguised as a sonic/strobe technique. The Strong Nuclear force If the electromagnetic force was not at least matched in strength by an even more powerful strong force, there could be no heavy elements in Realistic and Ancient Worlds, and this is in fact the case in quite close adjacent worlds Realistic and Ancient Worlds are outliers on a multidimensional peninsula in the multiverse only made habitable by the existence of paragravity and a correspondingly more active strong nuclear force, though the weak nuclear force is exactly the same. In fact, in both worlds it is slightly stronger than necessary and as a result some elements which are 218

Here Be Dragons radioactive in Midgard and World Zero are stable in these worlds. These include polonium, astatine and radon, although francium and radium are still unstable. Technetium, whose radioactivity is due to beta decay, remains unstable. Promethium is slightly more common and tungsten is genuinely stable and therefore also slightly more abundant. The other elements affected are: Polonium is less toxic because it's not radioactive, although it's still toxic for chemical reasons. One historical consequence of this was that although the Curies discovered radioactivity and Marie Curie still died of it, she lived longer because she was only exposed to radioactivity from radium, not polonium. Another consequence is that Realistic World, tobacco is less carcinogenic. There is radon in smoked tobacco there but it is not radioactive and doesn't decay into polonium, but simply escapes from the plants into the atmosphere. In Ancient World, there is no tobacco, although there is Cannabis. Astatine: A dark, metallic-looking substance found in sea water. It evaporates spontaneously at room temperature without melting. There are various astatide salts, some of which form minerals. Though it has no biological role in humans, it is present in small traces in the body, with the result that if a human from Ancient World enters Midgard, there will be a sudden internal surge of alpha radiation, risking cancer. It also means that biological matter entering Midgard across the Rainbow Bridge will often be detectable on a Geiger Counter. The astatine also breaks down to the extremely toxic polonium. Atlanteans crossing into Midgard were initially unaware of this but dealt with this problem by eating a special diet and taking iodine tablets and chelation compounds for several weeks before crossing over. It was this phenomenon which was responsible for triggering the scientific revolution in the Midgard Atlanteans, as it was a challenge to their biology and physics. Radon: Not radioactive but generated by radioactive minerals as it is in Midgard and World Zero. Unlike world zero, radon does not decay in Realistic or Ancient Worlds, so the risk of lung cancer is lower. It contributes to the higher density of the atmosphere in Ancient World and also makes a minor contribution to the air pressure in Realistic World. 219

Here Be Dragons Radon difluoride exists as an element in both worlds. Radon itself is found as a liquid and a solid near the poles on both worlds, so there is an air current in polar regions blowing towards the poles in the winter caused by the condensation of radon in Bermuda, Indonesia, the Arctic and Antarctic. In Realistic World, there is a small increase in radon concentration in the Bermuda Triangle during the western Ancient World winter caused by a wind blowing between the two worlds. In Midgard, the same process only took place during transit over the Rainbow Bridge in the eastern Ancient World winter, but the radon decayed due to changes in the properties of matter. This meant that Atlanteans had to carry breathing apparatus with a specially-prepared gas mixture when they crossed. Francium: This is extremely dangerous. As a pure metal, it melts only slightly above room temperature and reacts violently with water and oxygen, particularly in Ancient World. It is also radioactive, and much more abundant in Ancient and Realistic Worlds than in World Zero. Radium: More or less the same as radium in World Zero and Midgard, though slightly more abundant and less radioactive. One compound which exists in Ancient and Realistic Worlds but not in our world is francium astatide, which is a salt-like substance found as a mineral. It is mildly toxic and the densest halide. Astatine occurs in a few biochemical compounds. Pyramid Power/Music of the Spheres This is somewhat like a scaled-up version of the strong nuclear force. The greater intensity of the strong nuclear force has an extra effect. Each atomic nucleus has an associated extra fermion which exerts a force using gluon-like fermions which behave somewhat like gluons here in that their attractive force grows with distance, reaching a maximum at a range of 160 metres. Each boson is randomly of one of four tones. Beyond the range of the maximum intensity, pyramid power is referred to as the music of the spheres and is of lower intensity, though it matches gravitational intensity at stellar masses and the range of the diameter of a star. There are four tones corresponding to the positive and negative charges 220

Here Be Dragons of electricity and the three colour charges of the strong force, referred to as earth, air, fire and water, though they have no real connection to them. The strength of the tetrahedral force is zero at zero range, climbs to a maximum at 160 metres, then declines more gradually with distance depending on circumstances. It operates between atomic nuclei with the same nucleon numbers, of which there are four varieties opposed to each other. This causes similar matter to concentrate at the corners of a tetrahedron. Beyond this range, if the tetrahedral configuration is satisfied, there is a residual force which declines with distance but is shared between nuclei at a greater range, such that the Sun balances the electromagnetic force to the same degree as it does in World Zero. The peak strength of the force is not particularly high, and can be overcome by electromagnetism. If matter is removed from one vertex, the appropriate matter will be attracted to that vertex beyond the usual range of the force until the situation returns to harmony, which is the name for the equivalent of electrical neutrality. All of this means that tetrahedral containers of dimensions up to the size of the Great Pyramid, but not square pyramids, show an increasing tendency to concentrate fluids or other movable matter at their vertices and repel it from their centres. This principle can be used to predict the locations of mineral ores, refine certain compounds and elements, and implies that corrosion and decomposition are slower in the centres of tetrahedra because the pressure and concentration of oxygen are lowest there. Tetrahedral structures also emerge within fluids naturally and weathering and erosion shows a tendency towards a tetrahedral pattern the size of the Great Pyramid, meaning that the Great Pyramid itself is an unusually durable artificial structure. Given sufficient room, a volume of more than about 170 cubic decametres, the tetrahedra will tend to cohere into a regular icosahedron, which itself attracts other tetrahedra and icosahedra in the same body. This applies to the atmosphere and the oceans and gives both a slight granularity which influences currents and winds. The force can also be used to support large structures because of the tendency towards a tetrahedral or icosahedral shape, which renders these stronger and means less material is needed to support their weight than otherwise. Flying animals and craft along with marine life are influenced by these 221

Here Be Dragons concentrations and rarefactions and use them for lift and timing respiration. Atmospheric acoustics also changes because of this: sound carries worse and better than expected respectively along lines passing through the centres of several tetrahedra or their vertices. The speed of sound is also altered. In transparent materials, the refractive index is greater towards the vertices of a tetrahedron and lower at the centres, which causes chromatic aberration. This is not entirely dependent on the object approximating such a shape. There are also concentrations of salt in sea water. Frozen sea water and lava often show triangular arrangements of cracks, and icebergs are often roughly tetrahedral with apices facing downwards. Molecules can be monotonous or chords. Monotonous molecules are those all of whose atoms have the same tone, and are most strongly influenced by pyramid power. Two diatomic molecules out of five are monotonous. Chord molecules have atoms of at least two tones. Large molecules are usually chords due to probability, but if a molecule has a single atom making up more than half its weight, such as water, ammonia or methane, it will behave somewhat monotonously. Noble gases are automatically monotonous, meaning that there are particularly high concentrations of noble gases in the icosahedral cells of the atmosphere, which influences the heat capacity of the relevant regions of the air. This also applies to mercury, though there is never a large enough concentration of that element in vapour form for it to be relevant. Ionic compounds are somewhat different, as they do not consist of molecules. In a large enough volume of a crystalline ionic compound, there will be three defects in the lattice for each element making it up. Although this is not usually noticeable in a solid, it does take place in the ocean, where sodium and chlorine concentrate in certain places. It also makes doping of semiconductor electronics difficult. Highly composite chord molecules concentrate at the centres of tetrahedra. Other molecules line up along the edges or in places appropriate to their tonal composition. The only single organisms large enough for pyramid power to operate entirely within it are the krakens. 222

Here Be Dragons Four strings operate between the vertices of a harmonious tetrahedron, meeting at the middle. Frog and fish falls The phenomenon of aquatic animals falling from the air during rainstorms is quite common. If precipitation takes place over a large lake, there can be a build up of droplets at a height of 160 metres due to the presence of the water below. If this is sufficient, it will cause a triangle of points of increasing density in the lake. The wind can then blow the vertex along, which carries the other vertices with it. If the altitude of the vertex increases, this can lift aquatic life out of the water and this leads to such animals as frogs and fish becoming airborne and carried along by the wind. The effect is increased by the presence of animals at the corners because objects of similar composition are attracted to them, which means that similar animals get grouped together and concentrated, which tends to filter out anchored bits of weed and so forth and select nekton and plankton over benthos. The Great Pyramid The Ancient World Great Pyramid along with the other pyramids, which are all the same size, are tetrahedra, not square-based pyramids. They have central chambers with three tunnels and one chimney leading to ventilated chambers at the vertices. This causes the oxygen, nitrogen and most of the noble gases to move towards the corners and leads to a greater concentration of argon in the centre, where the pressure is lower, helping to preserve the contents. The lower pressure also leads to desiccation, as does the removal of water vapour from the vicinity of the centre. In Realistic World, the Egyptian pyramids are of variable size and have square bases. They have limited powers due to these two factors, but the Great Pyramid of Giza is the most powerful. It's not generally realised that in order to make them work, they need to be tetrahedral. Lighter substances in a fluid feel a force drawing them towards the centre, though it's weaker than gravity. A helium balloon released in a tetrahedron at the centre rises more slowly and tends to be diverted towards the centre if released to one side near the base. 223

Here Be Dragons The corners of a large hollow tetrahedral magnet are particularly good at lighting fires, and even non-magnetic tetrahedral chambers concentrate oxygen at the vertices. As a result, the Ancient Greeks came to believe that atoms of fire were tetrahedral and proceeded to construct an atomic theory which ascribed the Platonic polyhedra to atoms of different elements. Astronomy The current west pole star is Vega and the current astronomical/astrological age is Leo, recently changed from Virgo. The sun rises in the south and sets in the north. A few notes about the following: An AU is an Astronomical Unit - the distance between the Sun and Earth. It is about 150 million kilometres. The square root of the cube of the mean distance from the Sun gives the length of a planet's year. NB: Do pictures of the different planets in the Solar System and their positions in the night sky. In WZ, the distances of most of the planets including Pluto and the asteroid belt but excluding Neptune is given by the Titus Series, also known as Bode's Law. This is given by the series 0, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, 192..., adding four to each number. In Ancient World, with the exception of Earth which is an escaped satellite of Jupiter here (not in WZ), the distances of the orbits of the planets are also in these proportions, but as the closest planet to the Sun is Vulcan, the distances are all smaller. Vulcan orbits at 0.14 AU. It has captured rotation: one side always faces the Sun, the other always faces away. It is hotter than Mercury on the solar side and about -200 C on the night side. It perturbs the orbit of Mercury and delayed the development of General Relativity in both the Atlantean and Western cultures as a result. There is a small carbonaceous asteroid 0.245 AU from the Sun, with a period of forty-four days. It was discovered after the invention of telescopes.

224

Here Be Dragons Mercury is similar to WZ Mercury except that its magnetic field is stronger, it's slightly closer to the Sun at 0.35 AU, it has a denser atmosphere and its year lasts seventy-five days. Although its orbit precesses like that of WZ Mercury, this is confused by the fact that Vulcan is pulling on it and it is not easy to isolate the precession resulting from General Relativity. Gravitational lensing can be observed as easily as in WZ but the difficulty arising from this means that the Atlanteans took a long time to conclude that General Relativity was true and in modern times, it is still not ubiquitously accepted in the scientific community. The third planet between Mercury and Venus is the size of Mars and referred to as Mars but is about as dense as Earth. It has a nitrogen-carbon dioxide atmosphere with a surface pressure of about 0.3 bars and orbits the Sun in 153 days at a distance of 0.56. Surface temperature is well above boiling point but below 400 C. It's red and can be brighter than Mars. Venus has an orbit only 3 million miles closer to the Sun than Earth. There is a small but close moon referred to as Neith, which provides it with a magnetic field. Neith orbits only 18000 km from the centre of Venus and if it were much closer, it would be ripped apart by the gravitational field of the planet. It is almost pure iron and 306 km in diameter, taking 5 hours, 27 minutes to orbit Venus, and its tidal influence on Venus is about the same as the Moon's on Earth. The Venusian day lasts about 100 hours. It is only uninhabitable due to the absence of oxygen in the atmosphere. It is covered in weak carbonic acid oceans, permanently shrouded in cloud and has continuous rainfall which erodes any land surface. There is a superintelligence living in the shallower parts of the ocean which dominates the planet. The Venusian year lasts 354 days. When Venus and Earth are at their closest, 3 million miles, which happens about once in fifty years, Venus is a third the apparent width of the Moon and is therefore not much harder to reach than the Moon. Since it is so close, the maximum elongation of Venus means that it is often not so much a morning or evening star as an ordinary planet appearing at night much of the time, and is also often visible during daylight even at noon. Venus and Earth are in no danger of colliding because of the tilt of Earth's orbit. Earth initially formed near Jupiter but at a considerable distance, and was drawn into the inner solar system by the Sun over a period of hundreds of millions of years, during which it suffered many asteroidal impacts, one of which led to the formation of the Moon. It now has a virtually circular, stable 225

Here Be Dragons orbit, but one which is tilted far out of the plane of the orbit of other planets in the Solar System at an angle of forty-three degrees. Therefore, the other planets seem to be orbiting at a considerable angle, meaning for example that the inner planets are "beside" the Sun rather than above it, so for example Mercury is even harder to observe than it is here. The Moon is similar to WZ's. Mars is absent. Instead, there is an asteroid belt between Earth and Jupiter which includes some of the material which would have formed Mars. Jupiter is 3.5 AU from the Sun and takes six and a half years to orbit it. Since it is closer to the Sun than in our world, it has a different character and its atmosphere is rich in ammonia and has less hydrogen. It has three very large satellites, two of which have liquid ammonia oceans and substantial atmospheres, and a large inner satellite which consists of molten rock and is the hottest celestial body in the solar system. There are a number of smaller satellites. Saturn is the outermost planet and has only tenuous rings. It orbits at a distance of 6.86 AU, taking eighteen years. It is rather more like Jupiter than in WZ, with a colourful and turbulent atmosphere. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto do not exist in Ancient World. The Ancient World Night Sky The Ancient World solar system is in exactly the same place in the Milky Way as that of World Zero. Moreover, in spite of such differences in the cosmic environment as more magnetic monopoles and therefore dark matter, the presence of pyramid power as an extra fundamental force and the fact that galaxies are considerably closer together, the fixed stars are in exactly the same locations as in the World Zero universe. On examination of other parts of the multiverse, this rather surprising fact can be observed to hold across a large stretch of the multiverse, extending into the outlying region of the extra force hyperspace - it also applies, for example, to Realistic World and Midgard, all of which have the same immediate cosmic environment. However, there are other parts of hyperspace where the distribution of stars is dramatically different, and Midgard itself has at least one obvious difference in the orientation of WR-104. 226

Here Be Dragons The volume containing the Solar System happens to be very stable. This would help explain the survival of life on Earth in much of the multiverse. The region within which this stability exists seems to be of the order of 10 000 light years in diameter, and may not extend as far as the location of WR-104, since this has been found to have various orientations and masses in nearby parts of the multiverse. Therefore, this region of space can be considered a "stable attractor" compared to the areas around it - it is in an equilibrium state compared to the rest, which are "strange attractors" - their situations depend on very small variations in the initial conditions of this part of the Universe. This situation can be observed directly by comparing the night sky of Ancient World to that of the other three well-known physical worlds (Aphrodite's Children merely see a frozen solid sphere punctured with holes corresponding to the locations of stars in the Ancient World sky, which has simply been copied wholesale, but interestingly corresponds to the position of those stars about 7000 years ago rather than when the Atlanteans are thought to have left). Beyond the familiar star patterns in the Ancient World night sky, the wider Universe looks considerably different than the World Zero universe. Firstly, the Magellanic Clouds are closer, brighter and in different locations. The Large Magellanic Cloud is about fifteen degrees across and the Small about ten degrees by six. This is because they are only half the distance. One of the consequences of this is that they are orbiting the Milky Way faster, and therefore both of them are in Ancient World's western celestial hemisphere. This has led to minor differences in Ancient World mythology and astrology. Another noticeable difference in the sky is that the Andromeda Galaxy looks roughly twice as far across as the Moon, although it is still located in the same constellation. This makes it large and bright enough to have been noticed by ancient peoples and again there are legends associated with it - it is like a small version of the Magellanic clouds subjectively. Finally, there is a particularly spectacular consequence of the reduced inflationary epoch in the early Universe. Rather than there being only a handful of naked eye galaxies in the sky, there are a total of fifty-six clearly visible galaxies. This is because all extragalactic distances in Ancient World are halved as a result of the slower expansion of the Universe. Even so, the spiral structure of the Milky Way is only slightly different than it is in World Zero and hardly at all at the 10 000 light year scale necessary to lead to a disturbance in the positions and types of visible stars. 227

Here Be Dragons Realistic World's situation is different. To the naked eye, there are no differences at all in the positions of galaxies and they are exactly as widely spaced as they are in World Zero. However, the superclusters are closer to each other and telescopic observation of distant galaxies reveals enormous differences - the Hubble Deep Field would show more galaxies in Realistic World than it does in ours and in Ancient World there is an even bigger difference on that scale. The reason for the similarities between Realistic World's and World Zero's skies are unknown and mysterious, as they are dramatically counterintuitive. Midgard's sky is almost identical to World Zero's except that the region of space in the direction of Sagittarius shows a different pattern of stars, notoriously including the larger and differently-oriented version of WR-104 there which caused the recent extinction event, but this cannot be seen with the naked eye. An exception to the stable attractor situation in Ancient World took place several thousand million years ago when there appears to have been a major supernova uncomfortably close to the Solar System, leading to a larger proportion of heavy elements on Earth than might otherwise be expected, although differences in the strong nuclear force also contribute to this. Constellations Although the patterns of the stars are identical to the naked eye on both Ancient World and World Zero, their orientation is different. The axis of the planet is at a different point in its precession such that the pole nearest to Europe points to Vega rather than Polaris, and the Sun moves through the zodiacal constellations in the opposite direction through the year, meaning that, for example, Leo is followed by Cancer rather than the other way round. In terms of the precession of the equinoctes, the vernal equinox occurs in Leo. Unlike World Zero, Ancient World has plenty of land both sides of the Equator. Furthermore, land bridges between the continents tend to run parallel to the Equator and communication between the two polar hemispheres is relatively straightforward, the main barriers being the torrid regions in Africa and Asia. As a result, literate farming cultures have existed over more of the Oecoumene for millenia and the whole of the night sky has been mapped and named for many millenia. No voyages of discovery involved the movement of a culture into an area of the globe where the stars were not yet thoroughly mapped. 228

Here Be Dragons The European situation is also different. As Ancient Greece, the first enduring literate European civilisation, was at a lower latitude than in World Zero, more of the other celestial hemisphere was visible. Also, the position of the Vernal Equinox is different, so at the Winter Solstice different stars are visible from Greece. This situation became more pronounced as a result of the activities of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE, who managed to claim for Hellenic civilisation territory right down to the Indus Valley, which is in the eastern hemisphere in Ancient World. This means that the East Celestial Pole became visible from the Byzantine Empire well before the birth of Ptolemy (who is referred to as Ptolemaios in Ancient World due to the continuing ascendancy of Byzantium). However, many of the constellation names were acquired from Cathay because the East Pole was more clearly visible from their territory, being more than halfway to the zenith in most parts of the Empire. Consequently, Ptolemaios was able to name constellations right across the celestial sphere rather than being unaware of much of one hemisphere of the sky as was the case in World Zero, although much was by hearsay and he was somewhat vaguer about the eastern sky than the western one he himself lived in Alexandria from which the eastern celestial pole was invisible and some of the southern sky hard to observe due to not spending much time above the horizon. Nonetheless, he was able to compile the named constellations of his time, those of the Zodiac and the western and eastern skies. The Zodiacal of Ancient World are as follows: Leo March-April Cancer - April-May Gemini - May-June Taurus - June-July Aries - July-August Pisces - August-September Aquarius - September-October Cornucopia October-November Innominatus Major - November-December Scorpio December-January Libra - January-February Virgo February-March. As with the contrast between astrological and astronomical constellations in World Zero, the astrological constellations as mentioned above refer to 30 arcs rather than the asterisms themselves, and the dates are distributed appropriately the Sun is in these sectors of the sky at the times of the year mentioned, 229

Here Be Dragons though in reverse order compared to World Zero. However, the big difference between World Zero and Ancient World planetary astronomy is that only the Sun and the Moon orbit in the same places in both worlds. All the other planets orbit at a considerable angle and only spend short periods of time in the Ecliptic. Also, Uranus and Neptune are absent. Two of the constellations need explanation. Cornucopia is the Ancient World equivalent of World Zero's Capricornus. In Ancient World, sea goats are real animals and the Horn of Plenty has prevailed over the symbol of the goat Amalthea as the infant Zeus's nurse. When playing with Amalthea, the superhuman strength of the future king of the gods led to him accidentally tearing off one of her horns, which

Timeline Timeline of the Ancient World Years ago: c 4600 million: A supernova explodes near the future solar system, causing heavier elements to be more common in the solar nebula and the planets which will form from it, including Earth. 375 million: Fish begin to emerge onto the land. 130 million: Hyperborea-Atlantis continent separates from Eastern Asia, leading to distinctive fauna on those continents. 100 million: Hyperborea splits from western Atlantis and starts to travel north towards the Arctic coast of Siberia. Islands lead to dwarfism in Hyperborean dinosaurs. 88 million: Lemuria separates from eastern Africa. 65 million: Asteroid collides with the approximate antipodes of the then position of Hyperborea, wiping out non-avian dinosaurs everywhere except for Hyperborea, where they are protected by a combination of distance and small size. The extinction of pterosaurs leaves a vacant niche globally. 230

Here Be Dragons 50 million: Dragons have evolved into the former pterosaur niche in AfroEurasia. 25 million: The Indian subcontinent splits off from Lemuria. 15 million: The approach of Hyperborea to Siberia leads to the rise of the Pterophorus Mountains in Northern Siberia. Gryphons begin to migrate into Asia and Africa. 10 million: India collides with Asia. 7 million: Hominins have evolved in Lemuria. 2 million: Early humans have spread across Lemuria. 1.5 million: Apes reach south-east Asia and spread to Tibet and the Himalayas, evolving into Yetis and Neanderthal-like forms. 800 000: Fire discovered. c 500 000: Primitive Homo sapiens cross the Mozambique Channel into Africa. Years BCE: 17000: Humans reach Atlantis and Hyperborea. c 13000: Invention of writing in Atlantis. 11000: Atlantean civilisation at its height. Golden Age begins. 10000: Atlantean civilisation destroyed by supervolcano, also causing a megatsunami and widespread flooding. Civilisation returns to a primitive state. 6000: Hyperboreans domesticate the gryphon and invade Asia, bringing the horse. 5000: Dragons introduce various forms of technology to humans, inspiring them to work metal, starting with bronze, and domesticate the horse. 4500:

231

Here Be Dragons

West World

West World is the counterweight to Ancient World, located in exactly the opposite position to Ancient World in hyperspace at approximate coordinates 15.-07.02.-06.-03.-43.21.-17. It contains all the continents of World Zero which do not exist in Ancient World and seems to lack most of the land which is present in World Zero. However, in fact the land is all there but the Old World is mainly below sea level. Some high altitude land in World Zero also exists in West World at a lower height.

The complement to Ancient World, West World consists of the Americas (including Greenland), Antarctica and Oceania. There are a few scattered islands where the highest mountains of the Old World are above sea level. Africa and Eurasia are shallow seas - they are still there but almost completely well below the water surface. All the continental plates and 232

Here Be Dragons shelves are where they are in World Zero. The axis and axial tilt are also exactly as they are in World Zero. There are three fairly poorly defined oceans: the Pacific, the Arctic and the Southern. The land surface of the Earth is 56.7% smaller than World Zeros, and land therefore covers only 12.6% of the planets surface. Just as it is here, Antarctica is almost completely ice-covered, and like here the Arctic ice cap is over an ocean, but like Ancient World the ice cap there is smaller due to the greater salinity of that ocean, so there is somewhat more water. Also like Ancient World, the size of the ocean enables larger waves to build up. The geological history of West World is different. Pangaea, for example, was smaller and roughly L-shaped. The Permian and Triassic were wetter and evolution is somewhat different too, mainly in minor details. There are no hedgehogs, odd-toed ungulates are less diverse with only tapirs surviving, and humans are descended from different primates and therefore have somewhat different anatomy and physiology. In fact most or all primates are different. There are sasquatches in the Rockies, krakens in the depths of the oceans and quite a number of animals are completely absent, including, among the mammals, camels, rhinos, hippos, horses, antelopes, gazelles, giraffes, lions, tigers and various others. There are also marsupials but no monotremes. Oxygen has a partial pressure of 0.17 bar and the atmospheric pressure generally is lower, so the climate tends to be more variable according to latitude. Humans cannot survive at all up high mountains, so the Rockies are uninhabited. Sasquatches are better adapted to the height however. The density of the atmosphere at sea level is also lower, at 550 millibars. This has result in there being fewer flying animals. There are no bats instead, there is a single colugo-like gliding order of mammals with no other gliders and flying birds are smaller. The maximum flying weight is about 45% of World Zero's. Insects are also smaller due to their respiratory anatomy and amphibians are also unable to exceed a considerably smaller size and more likely to rely on lungs for breathing. There are no frogs amphibians cannot generate enough energy to hop. 233

Here Be Dragons Animals at the bottom of the sea are larger than here but whales are smaller. The body temperatures of mammals tends to vary more with the environment and is generally lower. They are more likely to hibernate. Shallow Seas Although Afro-Eurasia does not exist as a continent in West World, it does exist as a shallow sea. Less than 1% is above sea level. All land less than 4 km above sea level is below it here. However, it is also flatter and aside from the sea mounts, most of the land surface of Africa, Europe and Asia is continental shelf. Most of Africa is a tropical sea, as is Southern Asia. These areas contain many tropical coral reefs. Eurasia is a colder sea but also has reefs. Physics As in other aspects, West World physics is the opposite of Ancient World physics. There is no pyramid power, electromagnetism is weaker and the strong force is proportionately weaker. The heaviest stable element is mercury. Gold is therefore rare but not entirely unknown even to the ancients. The ionising radiation at the surface is higher due to the weaker magnetic field of the planet. Animals cannot use the planet's magnetic field to migrate. History of West World West World is the counterpart of Ancient World. Its discovery suggests that the distribution of timelines about the World Zero timeline has a pattern. West World Earth formed only 0.2 AU from the Sun, by contrast with Ancient World Earth which was originally a moon of Jupiter's. Its rotation was quickly halted relative to the Sun by tidal forces, leading to a very hot day side and a very cold night side. This led to the future continents on the day side melting and sinking to a lower elevation above the future ocean floor. Later, a hot Jupiter moved Earth away from its previous location and it 234

Here Be Dragons now resides in a similar orbit to World Zero Earth. Once this had happened, cometary bombardment replenished the volatile content, leaving it with an Earth-like atmosphere and hydrosphere, but the portion of land which would later form Eurasia and Africa are somewhat lower, leaving that side of the planet with a mainly submarine series of plateaux instead of landmasses, but with a small fraction of the land above sea level, notably Tibet. This is close to the opposite situation to Ancient World, where the New World continents are largely absent, though for different reasons. The layout of the West World solar system is also different because the most massive planet was in a different place and was hot rather than cold. The inner solar system was formerly dominated by this planet, which has since left the solar system entirely and is now a brown dwarf somewhere in interstellar space, though still technically under the gravitational influence of the Sun. This world could be used to contain various animals present as cryptids in Realistic World, such as bunyips and sasquatches, animals present in World Zero, and also to explore how the world would be different with no Old World. Australia, for instance, was completely uninhabited until the eighteenth century and there were no indigenous people - its an entirely new continent to human beings which still has megafauna such as the ten metre long lizard Megalania:

Megalania There are no pangolins, aardvarks, gorillas, chimps, bonobos, gibbons, 235

Here Be Dragons siamangs, orangutan, old world monkeys and probably no marmosets because primates would have had to evolve in the Americas and there would be no niche for marmosets because that ecological niche is occupied by prosimians such as lemurs, bushbabies and so on. There are also no ostriches, elephant shrews or pandas, cow-like animals (so no buffalo for example), bears, rabbits or hares (not sure about this last bit). However, there are camels. * Sasquatch and West World Humans

Location: Realistic world, West World. Sasquatch are anthropoid primates not directly related to hominids but more closely related to Platyrrhini than Catarrhini. In West World, they are closely related to West World humans, who are not hominids as such but instead convergent with them. In World Zero, an early twentieth century expedition to South America alleged that they had discovered a primate called by the Latin name Ameranthropoides loysi - De Loyss Ape, and took a photograph. This seems to have been a hoax. However, this cryptid was said to have been indigenous to the Tarra River area on the borders of Venezuela and 236

Here Be Dragons Columbia. They were 157 cm tall, able to hold on to shrubs and branches and threw their faeces at the humans. However, the photo closely resembled a tailless spider monkey and a possible motive for creating such a hoax was to support a racist-sounding hypothesis that the ancestors of indigenous Americans were not anthropoid apes, which to contemporary ears sounds like an allegation that they are somehow subhuman. The same person who made this claim also believed that Africans were descended from gorillas and Asians from orangutan. It might therefore be better not to go there, except that in New World at least, theres no reason not to assume a common ancestry for all humans in New World primates, since this would not then be racist - New World humans are simply hominid-like intelligent, language and tool-using primates descended from different primate ancestors. In Realistic World, however, it would definitely be best to avoid this idea as an origin for humans unless something outlandish were posited such as all hominids being descended from New World monkeys. This cant be allowed either because it means altering Realistic World in a way inconsistent with dominant contemporary scientific beliefs. Therefore, i suggest the following: Ameranthropoides loysi exists in both Realistic and West Worlds and is related to the sasquatch in both. In New World, it is also related to humans. This means that humans are not strictly hominids in New World. Sasquatches then: Sasquatches and Ameranthropoides loysi constitute a ring species. There is a series of populations which can interbreed but species at either end cannot interbreed with each other. Ameranthropoides loysi is native to the northern Andes. Other anthropoids live all the way down to Tierra del Fuego, and they also extend north all the way through Central America and Mexico into the Rockies. In California, Oregon, Washington State and British Columbia, the creatures are like the sasquatch, and in Alaska and the Yukon they are white-haired abominable snowmen. They are somewhat similar to the extinct Gigantopithecus in appearance and build in North America. Like a number of other mammals, they invaded North America from the South when the two continents collided - they have this 237

Here Be Dragons in common with armadillos, llamas, opossums and felines, for example. In New World, this fact suggests that the ancestors of humans, if not all primates, evolved in South America, and only spread to North America when the Isthmus of Panama formed about three million years ago, which also diverted the Gulf Stream and encouraged the formation of a limited ice cap in the Arctic. In Realistic World, it suggests that the ancestors of the sasquatch arrived in the Pliocene. Bigfoot: Referred to as windigo by the Algonquin. Modal height is about 2.3 metres, footprints about 40 cm long. Fully erect gait like a human, reddish-brown or auburn hair covers most of the body, black skin, rubs itself against resinous trees such as conifers and proceeds to roll in the sand, leading to resembling a stone (camouflage?). Head hair is 15 cm long, broad shoulders, deep chest, short neck, sloping forehead. New and Old World Monkeys in World Zero: In World Zero, there are two families of New World monkeys and one of Old World. In New World, i would suggest, there is only one family of monkey because the ecological niches occupied by the other are occupied by prosimians - the ancestors of monkeys - in the Old World and in New World, primates evolved in America in the first place, so there would be no opportunity for the other family of primates to evolve, although the New World prosimians might be more like New World monkeys than World Zero Old World prosimians. Anyway: Two families: Callithricidae and Cebidae, distinguished by body weight, dentition, hands, method of feeding and social behaviour. Callithricids are the marmosets. They bear a similar name to the Callithrix found in bestiaries - a denizen of Ancient World. They are diurnal and eat insects, fruits and gums, forage in open forests, secondary growth areas and near rivers. All their digits but for the big toe have claws rather than nails. Galagos, which are prosimians, are somewhat similar. 238

Here Be Dragons Marmosets, uniquely among primates, always give birth to twins (Callithrix again) and they pair-bond with the males sharing care for the young. The combined weight of the young can be greater than the mothers. They buck the trend towards larger body size found in primates generally and therefore are probably descended from larger ancestors. They have scent glands on their chests and backsides and rely more on a sense of smell than other primates, with a Jacobsens organ. Although they dont exist as such in New World, their similarity to prosimians suggests that prosimians in New World are somewhat marmoset-like. Cebids exist in New World and of course in Realistic World. They are the closest relatives to the family which includes the sasquatch and Ameranthropoides in both, and in New World that family includes humans too. They weigh up to 11 kg, and there is a gradient in size down to the titi monkeys which weigh 680 grammes. They have nails and can use their hands to manipulate and feed. They have three rather than two molar teeth which are square rather than triangular. Diet is mainly fruit, with some insects and leaves. The prehensile tail acts as an extra limb. Some species pair-bond, others live in social groups. They give birth to one baby at a time which takes three years to mature in spider monkeys, giving them time to learn. Old World Monkeys: Found in World Zero, Ancient World (though also in Lemuria) and Realistic World but not New World. Again, two types but apparently more closely related than cebids and callithricids are: cheek pouch monkeys, which eat fruit, and leaf monkeys, which of course eat leaves. The closest relatives to apes in World Zero. Cheek pouch monkeys stuff their cheeks with food which they save for later. Leaf monkeys have chambered stomachs like those of ruminants, helping them to digest cellulose through bacterial action. Leaf monkeys live in trees and distribute themselves 1.2 to 1.8 metres from their nearest neighbours in a threedimensional arrangement, and sit and feed in one place because they dont store food and need to chew for longer. They need to eat for up to six hours a day due to the low nutritional content of leaves. Cheek pouch monkeys pick fruits and young leaves from the ends of 239

Here Be Dragons branches, store them and move between branches harvesting until the cheeks are full or theres no more food, then they find a shady place and push the food from their cheeks into their mouths to eat it properly, often in company. The pouches also mean they can obtain food on the ground and escape from threats. New and Old World Monkey anatomy: New World monkey nostrils face sideways, old forwards. Old World monkeys are larger and vary less in size. New World monkey thumbs are scissor-like and cant touch all the fingertips. Old World monkey tails cannot grasp and vary in length a lot. New World monkeys have three premolars, not two. New World monkeys have no external ear canals. They also live mainly in forests, in trees and females and males are very different. New World monkeys cant sit down. In New World itself, New World monkeys vary less in size because there are New World prosimians occupying the smaller niches. Clearly for there to be humans, sasquatches and Ameranthropoides, some New World primates need to be like hominids - tailless, walking upright. Therefore, i propose a sasquatch-like family in New World. The only difference between this family in Realistic World is that there are no humans in it in Realistic World. Family Ameranthropoididae: Relatively large, bipedal primates with no tails, terrestrial rather than arboreal, with pincer-like grip, platyrrhine noses (sideways nostrils), premolars and molars in sets of three each, longer faces than apes and humans, with little sexual dimorphism (females and males are similar) but living in large social groups. Humans themselves are also shorter than World Zero/Realistic/Ancient World humans. Sasquatches are the largest species. 240

Here Be Dragons Ameranthropoids evolved due to the growth of the Andes and spread to the Rockies. Later, as the closure of the Isthmus of Panama led to greater aridity, some of them began to populate the pampas regions of South America and evolved into human-like forms, which then spread across both Americas and developed civilisations. New World human cultures are different from ours because they have various different biological features such as less variation between the sexes (so for example they are always sexually egalitarian and share childcare) and a different kind of grip (tools are different and writing also because it needs to take the less precise grasp into consideration). As in World Zero and Realistic World, high civilisation arose in the Andes and Central America, but with the absence of European invasion it had a different history. Humans did not spread to Australia until very late in history: there are no Australian aborigines here. Humans: Average weight: 40 kg for both sexes. Average height: 140 cm with no difference between the sexes, so both are rather short compared to the average human, but not as short as dwarfs. About 50% of women can see red, whereas the rest of women and all men have only green and blue cone cells. This leads to differences in colour vocabulary and language based on colour between the sexes. Dental formula: Everyone has wisdom teeth and three premolars on each side of each jaw. Noses: Nostrils are laterally placed and can be closed. Sense of smell is fairly good but still not marvellous compared to most other mammals. Ears: Mobile and used in the expression of emotion. Pinnae are more pointed and parabolic than World Zero human pinnae. Voice: Sexually dimorphic. The male has a large resonant chamber in the hyoid bone which gives them a much louder and deeper voice which can produce different speech sounds. Baby language lacks these sounds and they are not learnt until later among adolescent boys. Thumbs: Only pseudo-opposable. They can touch the tips of their forefingers only with their thumbs, so they can grasp but their ability to gesture is limited. 241

Here Be Dragons They form biandrous pair bonds for life, do not have any urge to sleep around, almost always give birth to twins and have paternal care, the mothers confining themselves mainly to breastfeeding. Therefore they have no marriage. There is a juvenile speech style which lacks the distinctively adult male phonemes and female colour vocabulary and language which emerges from that vocabulary. During adolescence, the children start to imitate the speech of the appropriate sex. Men's roles are more likely than women's to be associated with childcare and nurturing, so for example doctors are usually women and nurses usually men. They resemble World Zero humans quite closely other than these details, being generally hairless with scalp hair, eyes with clearly visible whites, lips, no philtrum, erect posture and gait. They have breasts but not buttocks and sit like a dog would rather than as we do, although they often recline rather than sit. Consequently they have no chairs but do use couches for reclining. West World human history: Humans first evolved from amphibious small sasquatch-like animals in the Baja California area, then spread southward through Mexico into the Amazon. They later spread northwards again. They were primarily frugivorous, but eat some meat. They are also more likely to eat insects and tree leaves than we are, though they never consume dairy or gluten. There is rather less diversity in their cultures than ours because they were confined to two continents, both smaller than Africa, until less than a millenium ago. They were aware of Antarctica but found most of it too hostile to inhabit. Australia was discovered in the eighteenth century. Neither of these two newer continents has any premodern human history. The contemporary world is industrial and democratic, with the kind of technology we have. Cities are usually in the same places as in World Zero where there were sound geographical reasons for them being there, and large cities here are large there. The population of the planet is about 1000 million. Humans are more comfortable living in large settlements than they are here, and they are more likely to get lonely in small settlements, so large cities are both friendlier and more popular than here. This is because humans are able to have five hundred acquaintances quite comfortably, and many more close friends than here. People are generally more sociable and 242

Here Be Dragons have less need for personal space, even relative to their smaller size. Marriage: Generally consists of one woman and two men who engage in threesomes for sex, but also in pairings of any two. They are however usually faithful to each other within the marriage and extramarital sex is traditionally frowned upon. The ideal family has twins from each father, so the stereotypical nuclear family has six rather than four members. Language: Male language has four forms of voicing rather than the more common two found in World Zero: voiced, unvoiced, resonant voiced and resonant unvoiced. Men consequently have shorter words and fewer other distinctions between speech sounds than women. Female language is more like World Zero language in this respect, since they lack the hyoid cavity. Both sets of language have expressive adequacy except in the realm of colour and related vocabulary, where women's language is richer. Female colour terms never have exclusively male phonetic or linguistic features. The languages are generally dialects with a considerable overlap. However, baby language lacks both the colour vocabulary and the extra phonemes. Male colour vision is based on only two types of cone cells, green and blue, meaning there are only two additive primary colours and one secondary colour, thus:

243

Here Be Dragons

244

Here Be Dragons

245

Here Be Dragons

246

Here Be Dragons

Also, to a man the central secondary colour is the brightest, close to white, with the result that the visual spectrum seems brightest midway between green and blue. Male colour vision is also anomalous in that rod cells can detect a wider range of frequencies, resulting in red and violet looking grey rather than colourful. Yellow and indigo are about equally dull. Hence although the frequency range of visible light is the same for women and men, the latter cannot see actual colours at either end of the spectrum and the brightest colour, cyan, is also somewhat unsaturated. Male colour vocabulary is therefore very impoverished indeed: the only words they have correspond to black (including red, purple and violet), white (including cyan), green, blue, yellow-orange and grey. By contrast the female colour vocabulary is as rich as that of corresponding languages in World Zero and shows the same implicational universals. Taking the lingua franca as typical, the differences between female and 247

Here Be Dragons male colour terms also spill over into connotations, particularly in female vocabulary. The colour terms themselves differ because in male language, colours are named after objects which are typically of that colour to a male eye, whereas in female language colours have their own names. For example, the term for black and red in male language is bloodcoloured, but they have their own words in female language. Female connotations for colour influence other parts of female vocabulary, so that words for emotions, for example, correspond to colour terms. They work as follows in female language: Black: This is usually pejorative, meaning mischievous or evil, but with reference to human beings it is positive. Black when referring to human appearance means beautiful, partly because humans always have dark skin, the darker the better, with black irises and hair. Paradoxically, it also means ugly when referring to inanimate objects. A black-hearted person is seen as clean and pure in thought. In male language, black is the colour of blood, giving it extra connotations. The dual of black refers to the daylight hours, that is, a period of brightness separated by two periods of darkness in female language. To a man, the corresponding phrase would be the two bloods, which makes little sense, but the word the three bloods refers to a married triad, i.e. one woman and two men in a stable sexual relationship. White: May be pejorative as it's associated with dirt and soiling on human skin but also with cleanliness elsewhere. The sunrise and the early morning are referred to as the white line and the sunset and early evening as the black line. The word for white means ugly when referring to human beings, but can also mean old, wise and experienced. The distinctive five-number system of West World languages also come into play here, as the dual for white also means date and day in the sense of a single rotation of the planet. West World cultures outside the Arctic Circle judge the day as beginning and ending at noon, and therefore consisting of two bright periods separated by two dark ones. Red: This colour is only perceived separately by females, and in fact, red, orange and yellow are the brightest colours to women but yellow is only a very faint colour to a man and orange and yellow are completely imperceptible as saturated colours at all to them. As it is associated with blood, the trial of red, i.e. the word the three reds is the female equivalent of the male the three blacks, the word for a married triad. Red 248

Here Be Dragons is also associated with embarrassment and anger, as women find red such a bright colour that even though humans are dark-skinned, they can detect the flush of anger and the blush of self-consciousness. Men are only aware of this in abstract terms and cannot see it. Hence the female word for red also means angry or shy. Pink is associated with the female too because it can only be seen by women: men see pink as light grey. The word for pink actually means female, and the words the two pinks and the three pinks refer to lesbian dyads and triads. Blue: Associated with healing, tranquility, calm and cleanliness by both sexes, but also with blindness and metaphorical blindness. A blind person is described as blue-eyed, which also has connotations of ignorance in both neutral and pejorative senses. The male term for blue translates as sky-coloured. The only blue-eyed people in West World are those with cataracts, who are therefore blind. The word for blue is also the female word for male. Blue-blooded means the same as blackhearted in English, and in male language also means duplicitous or equivocal because to the male ear the phrase sounds contradictory: black which is blue. Green: Envy in both sex sociolects there is no concept of jealousy in West World. Also, inexperience, the prime of life, unripeness. A greensouled person is someone who in some sense has failed to grow up. The connotations for green are close for both sexes, and it forms a kind of neutral ground. When talking to each other, women and men will tend to use the words for green more often, and the male phrase, sea-coloured is used because the male word for sea is pronounceable by women whereas more obvious phrases such as leaf-coloured are not. The range of colours referred to as green is also wider in communication between the sexes than within them. Yellow: Age in male language, illness in female, but also sometimes vigour and health. Men see autumn leaves as yellow, which they cannot distinguish from brown, or black, and therefore use the term autumnal to refer to yellow with the added connotation of a dying fall. The female usage refers to liveliness and sunshine. Yellow-eyed means jaundiced to women but not to men, since they would not be able to distinguish between healthy whites of eyes and yellowed ones. See also tomatoes. 249

Here Be Dragons Number: West World human language most commonly has five numbers by contrast with the two of the English language (singular and plural). These are singular (for one item), dual (two), trial (three), paucal (four to six) and plural (six or above). Psychologically, the mathematical intuition of the West World mind is slightly more advanced than the human minds of the other world because it can grasp six items easily in one go and also has a slightly larger short-term memory capacity. As a result, the likes of telephone numbers in West World can be slightly longer. The reason for this difference appears to be innate social adaptations, namely the need to deal with three-person sexual relationships and the tendency to have larger intimate social groups. In the dominant West World language, number is expressed by changing the vowel of the stem of nouns. Personal pronouns are also richer, as there are eighteen first person pronouns depending on inclusivity, number and gender mix. The second person has eighteen pronouns and the third person is organised in a way which breaks World Zero linguistic universals. In fact, West World languages have many of their own universals and routinely violate those of World Zero. Object always precedes subject in declarative sentences. Genitive is before/after governing noun and positional words opposite. Y/N intonational pattern is distinctive reckoned from the start of the sentence (if it exists). Question particles are in the opposite position as pre-/postpositions. Subordinate verb forms to the main verb are after the verb but the object precedes it. Conditional clause follows conclusion. Demonstrative, numeral, descriptive adjectives before the noun are never in that order or the reverse. Pronominal and nominal objects are in different positions (implying that the dominant word orders are OVS and OSV i think) No tense-mode categories despite person-number and gender categories. Noun always agrees with verb in gender but the adjective is unmarked for gender. Plural is always expressed by the zero morpheme, singular never. Trial is often expressed by zero. The case including the subject is never unmarked. Expression of number is never between noun base and the case, i.e. vowels change for case and number together. 250

Here Be Dragons Adjectives follow nouns but are uninflected. The second and third persons are the same. Gender distinctions only present in non-singular pronouns. "I" and "it/you" are both common gender. Megalania: This could be seen as the West World dragon, though it doesn't fly. It's the world's largest lizard, being nine metres long, and is extremely dangerous. It can be considered to be related to the Ancient World dragons, and a similar species exists in Ancient World. The Vegetable Kingdom Recreational drugs in West World: Tobacco in West World is incorporated culturally into rituals and is not smoked on a regular basis. Caffeine and xanthines: Coffee does not exist, nor are there any cola nuts, but chocolate, guarana and yerba mate are used. Therefore, caffeine is known. Cocaine: This is a normal, legal, recreational drug used as a stimulant and is freely available in soft drinks. Opiates: These exist but are derived from different species of poppy such as Eschscholzia. Cannabis is absent. Mescaline and peyote are more widely used. Tomatoes. Tomatoes in West World are identical to those of World Zero, but look different to some humans there. Here are some pictures indicating how they appear to men there:

251

Here Be Dragons

252

Here Be Dragons

Midgard
Midgard has a Point Of Divergence from World Zero in the year 1000 CE, when a gamma ray burst from the star WR-104, which points directly at the Solar System in the local timeline cluster, destroyed most life in the Western Hemisphere. It is a somewhat improbable timeline in which mutations led to the appearance of a number of species similar to those described in Norse mythology. It can be reached from Ancient World via Bifrst, also known as the Rainbow Bridge, an interdimensional bridge built by the Atlanteans from Ancient World, and communication is possible between the two worlds, but transport from Midgard to Ancient World is only theoretically possible. Enormous amounts of electromagnetic energy would be needed to hold it open even if the machinery needed to operate it had not been severely damaged by Ragnarok, although WR-104 was not in the sky when the event occurred from the location of Bifrst. However, magnetic monopoles are essential to the working of the bridge, meaning that they either have to be collected in the Midgard universe or transported from Ancient World, and therefore it makes more sense to try to construct a Yates-Leason device than to try to mend the bridge. Midgard is Earth in an alternate timeline with a point of divergence (POD, see the Althist Wiki on Wikia) in the Neolithic, but the light cone influencing the change didn't reach us until about 1000 CE. Consequently, the POD itself has a "cone" more noticeable than many other PODs such as Hitler winning WWII, since it begins at a point more than two thousand parsecs from the Solar System in the different part. The result was an apocalypse which made sense of Nordic and Abrahamic views of the end of the world, and a world where organisms somewhat similar to those of Nordic mythology really exist. Having said that, they are not as similar as the organisms in Ancient World are to mythical organisms in European bestiaries and the like.

253

Here Be Dragons

WR-104

A false-colour superimposition of eleven images of WR-104 acquired in World Zero at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

254

Here Be Dragons WR-104 is a Wolf-Rayet star system in the direction of Sagittarius, about eight thousand light years from Earth. In World Zero, it is relatively small and the axis about which the stars rotate does not point towards Earth. In Midgard's universe, the total mass of the system was quite a bit bigger than it is in this world and the same axis was pointing closer to the position of this solar system. When it suffered an explosion some time near the beginning of the New Stone Age, a burst of gamma radiation was emitted towards Earth and triggered off the mass extinction event which took place from the year 1000 CE. This event is similar to a possible event at the end of the Ordovician Period about 443 million years ago, which wiped out much life on Earth.

Sequence of the gamma ray burst which devastated Midgard's Earth 255

Here Be Dragons Wolf-Rayet Star: These are rare stars which are very large, more than twenty times the mass of the Sun, which have very strong solar winds. Due to their size, they have short lifetimes and tend to collapse into black holes. The strong solar winds may deplete hydrogen, leaving more heavy elements inside the star than otherwise. Their atmospheres are helium rather than hydrogen. Gamma Ray Burst: Gamma ray bursts are outrageously powerful bursts of radiation which were first detected by the VELA satellites, launched to monitor the testing of nuclear weapons in the 1960s. They were at one point seriously considered to be discharges from cosmic energy weapons in interstellar battles. The Ordovician mass extinction: At five points in the past 600 million years, major events have occurred which have wiped out many species in a short period compared to the total number of species on the planet. These are: The current mass extinction, which may be connected to human activity and the Ice Ages. The K-T event, when large dinosaurs and other animals were wiped out, apparently by an asteroid impact in the Gulf of Mexico or possibly a series of major volcanic eruptions in Pakistan. The Late Triassic event, 201 million years ago, involving the disappearance of the large close relatives of the mammals and leading to the takeover by dinosaurs for 120 million years. Without this event, mammal-like animals might have become more successful earlier and the dinosaurs would've been fairly insignificant. The Permian mass extinction, which was the worst of all, destroying 96% of all living things in the fossil record, possibly caused by extreme fluctuations in temperature or the loss of oxygen from the oceans. Trilobites were completely destroyed by this event. The Late Devonian extinction, which was the mildest, only involving the disappearance of life in the sea, taking up to 25 million years to happen and possibly consisting of up to ten different events over this period. Possible causes include the development of modern 256

Here Be Dragons soil leading to algal blooms absorbing too much oxygen and the loss of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere leading to an ice age after the first forests appeared. Trilobites never recovered completely from this extinction and were shadows of their former selves until the end of the Permian, when they disappeared completely. The relevant mass extinction to Midgard is the Ordovician one, which some scientists believe was caused by a gamma-ray burst. The alternative hypothesis is that it was caused by volcanism in the Appalachians. If this is not so, it is possible that a hypernova exploded less than six thousand light years from Earth, causing immediate deaths of most organisms over the half of the planet facing the explosion and the loss of the ozone layer exposing others to ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, along with the formation of nitrogen oxide in the stratosphere followed by nitric acid rain. Most complex life was in the sea at the time, and that was where most of the extinctions occurred. However, southern continents were also clustered around the South Pole at the time, which may have led to an ice age and the disappearance of continental shelves and therefore also the ecosystems in the seas there. Brachiopods, trilobites and bivalves were seriously affected. The Midgard mass extinction is still underway. Only a thousand years have passed since Ragnarok and the global ecosystem is nowhere near recovery. Before 7000 BCE: The Wolf-Rayet star system WR 104 forms in Sagittarius. It's more massive than in this timeline and its pole is oriented about 30 degrees closer to the future direction of the Solar System than in OTL. c 7000 BCE: WR 104 collapses into a black hole, releasing the equivalent of ten billion years' worth of solar radiation in a twenty second burst of gamma rays, directly at Earth. 7000 BCE-1000 CE: Life on Earth proceeds as it did in this timeline, with the Egyptians, Maya, Sumerians, Ancient China, Roman Empire, Germanic invasions, rise of Christianity and Islam and the onset of the Middle Ages in the West. Nordic paganism arises in Scandinavia. 257

Here Be Dragons 1000 CE: The gamma ray burst emitted by WR 104 hits Earth at a time when the Old World is on the opposite side of the planet. The hemisphere facing Sagittarius, including all of North and South America, the Pacific Ocean, Japan, New Zealand, eastern Siberia, Polynesia and much of Antarctica is almost completely sterilised, although some life survives in the deeper parts of the ocean. The ozone layer is depleted by 25% and nitrogen dioxide smog forms in the stratosphere, blotting out the Sun. After a few days, nitric acid starts to come down in rain, killing much of the land plant life and slightly increasing the acidity of the oceans. This leads to greater loss of life among animals too, but has little influence on the oxygen concentration at sea level or in the sea itself. 1000-1003 CE: The Fimbulwinter - three years of weak sunlight and cold throughout the planet lead to the death of many algae and land plants and the subsequent disruption of the food chain. At first, carrion feeders thrive but later they starve and die out themselves. Many species become extinct. Many taxa which only had representatives in the Western hemisphere have already disappeared instantly, e.g. opossums, tuataras, edentates, cacti, various prarie organisms and the whole Amazon basin. Therefore, the current tree of life is considerably pruned. Early 11th century: The smog clears but a new ice age has been triggered by the build-up of ice and snow, reflecting the Sun's heat back into space and switching the flow of the oceans to the cool phase. This leads to the advance of glaciers from polar regions and mountain ranges, falling sea level, expanding deserts and shrinking rain forests. There was also major soil erosion. The least affected biomes are in the abyssal plains and the poles. Mid-11th century. The population of Scandinavia has bottomed out at thirty individuals, though they are in contact. They also have some skills remaining such as fishing, boat-building and farming, which enable them to maintain a fair level of technology, at least early Iron Age. The rest of the Old World and Australia is similarly depleted. The advancing poor climate 258

Here Be Dragons is forcing the Scandinavians south but they are not coming into much conflict with others because the populations are so low. A similar situation obtains elsewhere in the world. Consequently the population of the planet is probably in the thousands. In the Americas, there are no humans and virtually no other life at all at the beginning of the century, but this rapidly changes. Microorganisms arrive within hours, enabling the corpses to decay, and over a period of years, windblown seeds, spores, insects and birds reach the continents. The Amazon rainforest, however, is gone and there is severe soil erosion. There are similar depletions in the population of all continents not exposed to the gamma ray burst, though not so severe, and also soil erosion. The Pacific Ocean is repopulated from below and from the Arctic and Southern Oceans. Phytoplankton return quickly, but there is a short period when carbon dioxide is high due to decomposition and the absence of algae to absorb it and release oxygen. The population gradually recovers. There is an epidemic of mutations, mainly useless, due to radioactivity immediately after the gamma ray burst due mainly to damage to the ozone layer, and cancer, sterility and radiation sickness wipes out most of the population. This is not necessarily very spectacular because it partly involves people simply dying childless, though ageing is also faster. However, one response to the trauma is that ships are built from skeletons and other body parts like Naglfar. Though the population is small and much knowledge is lost, the Chinese and Arab civilisations thrive. The culture of mainland Europe doesn't do so well because of the advancing ice and tundra, though one compensation is the drop in sea level, which leads to more land availability. Desert also advances into Europe, mainly affecting Iberia, Italy and Greece? The main point to recognise about this is that the event was only a 259

Here Be Dragons thousand years ago, so in terms of evolution, there's no time for much spectacular change to happen, so it's probably necessary to be conservative about what's happened. Also, the shift to the ice age may not be particularly advanced by this point either. North and South America: The northern part of North America is covered in ice and has typical Arctic flora and fauna, which is able to spread from Siberia and the Arctic Ocean. Further south, there are boreal forests, broadleaved forests and praries as before. The animal life in those regions consists largely of birds and insects. Europe: Dominated in the south by a broadleaved forest which is a single superorganism, stretching across thousands of square kilometres. A single ash tree underwent a mutation which led to it being able to spread by the root system and cloning. It no longer reproduces sexually but does produce fruit, which is eaten by symbiotic animals. Underneath the tree is a snake which survives by eating the roots - Nidhogg. There are also mutant eightlegged elks, referred to as Sleipnir:

260

Here Be Dragons

Oceans: There is a long, mutant whale in the tropical Pacific. It is ninety metres long and serpentine in shape, descended from sperm whales and it eats fish. This is Jormungand. It resembles the Basilosaurus of Eocene times:

261

Here Be Dragons

Jormungandr in the Pacific Ocean Megafauna is gradually returning. There are also unusually (for us) large rats and rabbits which are replacing the previous carnivores and ungulates. 262

Here Be Dragons Historically, the peoples of the Old World eventually did build boats and reach the Americas, where the absence of human habitation enabled them to establish colonies peacefully. They also discovered the ruins of the Maya and Inca cultures and it became clear to them that there had been human beings on the continent before them, which was a major shock. It is particularly remarkable that the organisms in this world resemble the mythical ones in Norse mythology so closely, not least because of the short time scale since the gamma ray burst but it's still interesting culturally and ecologically, partly because of the complete disappearance of life in America. The human population is still quite low. In the eleventh century it fell to 6000 and now, in 2012, it's about 200 000. The eschatological Norse myth of Ragnarok has similarities with the Christian apocalypse and some other end of the world myths. Some of these elements have been adapted into a plausible scenario explaining the gamma ray burst and its consequences for Europe. References to Ragnarok, the end of the world, occur in various places, notably the Voeluspa and the Gylfaginning. It was said to proceed as follows (some details are missed out in this and others vary - i could do with some comments on the accuracy of what i'm saying): The time will come when fathers and sons, and brothers, are overtaken by greed, lose kinship bonds and murder each other. The Fimbulwinter will follow - three years without a summer when the sun is useless - and something will swallow the sun and the moon. The mountains will shake and topple, trees will come loose from the soil and Fenrir will break free. The sea serpent Joermugandr will emerge from the water, spewing poison everywhere and Surtr will come from the south with his flaming sword. The ship Naglfar, made from the fingernails of the dead, will come free from its mooring. Muspells sons will ride across Bifroest, destroying it, and a battle will ensue between the gods on Vigrid, an expense a hundred leagues across in every direction. The land will submerge under the sea and only two human beings, Lif and Lifthrasir, will survive by hiding in 263

Here Be Dragons Hoddminis Holt, by consuming the morning due, and the world will then rise above the sea again and be repopulated by this pair. There will be many good places to live and also many bad ones. A scientific account of the events concerned follows: Sometime in the Neolithic period, a star called WR 104 by today's astronomers, 8000 light years from Earth in the constellation of Sagittarius, went supernova and released a gamma ray burst. Whereas in our timeline (OTL), the poles of WR 104 do not point in the direction of the sun, in Ragnarok they do, and the star was somewhat more massive than in OTL leading to an earlier supernova explosion. In the European middle ages, some time after 1000 CE and before OTL's period of the establishment of Christianity in Scandinavia, the gamma ray burst reached Earth, with a duration of a few seconds. At the time it took place, Sagittarius was on the opposite side of the sky from Northern Europe and most of the immediate damage therefore took place on the other side of the planet. The destruction in that hemisphere was severe: all life on land exposed to the sky at the time, and down into the top layers of the sea and the soil, was destroyed and the land on that side of the world became completely sterile, although there were a few surviving organisms in caves and otherwise hidden from the sky. The radiation depleted the ozone layer by 25% and caused nitrogen to oxidise in the stratosphere, generating photochemical smog and blotting out the sun and the moon the sun and moon being devoured by a wolf. Even on the European side of the globe, severe radiation killed much of the life, including the soil, and a global cold spell was triggered which lasted for three years - the Fimbulwinter. Soil erosion resulting from the death of plants and other soil organisms led to major landslides and the crumbling of hills and mountains along with the uprooting of trees. The increased radiation led to spectacular aurorae - Surt's flaming sword - and society broke down due to famine - brother against brother and son against father. This led to a major battle and most of the world's human population died - anyone living on the other side of the planet would've been killed instantly by the radiation. The only people to survive known to the Scandinavians hid in a forest and repopulated the Earth later. After this disaster, which is still going on and has devastated the human race and life elsewhere on the planet, there were some places on Earth hospitable to human life and others which were very 264

Here Be Dragons hostile to it. The "age" after Ragnarok was the "bone age". Human remains, and those of other animals, were used as structural resources and ships were built of them, such as Naglfar. This was mainly a psychological and cultural phenomenon, as plenty of other structural materials were available, and could be looked at as somewhat like a collective coping mechanism resulting from the trauma of the mass extinction event. The radiation caused major damage to DNA, mainly causing sterility, radiation sickness, cancer and the like, but occasionally advantageous mutations, which led to the appearance of new species and forms of life. The Nordic people identified these with their mythical equivalents such as Sleipnir, Yggdrasil and the like, and they resemble them to some extent. For instance, "Sleipnirs" are a species of eight-legged deer and Yggdrasil is a colonial forest of very large ash trees which are in fact the same individual plant. To the south of the Scandinavian area, the Christianised peoples of Europe saw the same events as a fulfilment of the content of the Book of Revelation and other apocalyptic literature. The reference to Wormwood in Revelation 8:10-11 was seen as an example of a fulfilled prophecy. One thing which is missing to outsiders is the Earthly paradise, because it really doesn't look like anywhere on the planet is a good place to live after the event, but the Church now maintains that the world has ended and that humanity is now living in the Kingdom of God. They also claim that the Norse, Saracens and other peoples are outside God's citadel, which they have literally built in the Middle East and corresponds to the city in Revelation chapter 21, although it is considerably smaller. It's basically an enormous cube in the Holy Land, where all Christians live, rich in precious stones and metals which have been taken from around the world in an epic construction effort which lasted over a century. Since all Christians live in this edifice, Europe is now pagan and Islamic. The side of the planet which was sterilised was gradually recolonised by animals and plants spreading from the relatively protected side. By the twenty-first century, there were forests, grasslands and the like, but no mammals or amphibians arrived for quite some time. Entire continents 265

Here Be Dragons had been sterilised. There hasn't been enough time for the ecosystem recover from the event or for evolution to have changed that much yet, so this world is very unstable and prone to disasters such as famines due to crop failures and plagues from mutated pathogens. Also, the incident triggered off a new ice age. Dating This looks like a successful fulfilment of the population's expectations to the people of this world. It happened at a "moment" when the constellation of Sagittarius was "beneath" Scandinavia, in June sometime in the day time for Northern Europe in the late tenth century CE. Areas sterilised The immediate destruction of life took place across the whole of both American continents, the surface of the Pacific, New Zealand, Japan and part of Antarctica (which is not very significant). The algae of the Pacific Ocean were destroyed and the question arises of how much oxygen was left in the atmosphere, since the biomass left over absorbed much of it. However, there was very rapid repopulation of algae from the unexposed ocean. Glacial Cosmology Yggdrasil is part of the traditional Nordic cosmology, along with the likes of Niflheim and Muspelheim. As it happens, these notions ended up forming part of a more modern nineteenth and twentieth century cosmology which was for a while a European rival to the dominant scientific paradigm of the time. Moreover, this cosmology became ideologically associated with a more fundamental scientific understanding of the laws of physics which was dominant for a while. It's also somewhat disturbing, because both of 266

Here Be Dragons these were adopted by the Nazis, though not wholeheartedly, as a truly German science which was superior to the supposedly "Jewish" ideas of early twentieth century physics and astronomy. Heinrich Himmler was particularly keen on what became known as the Welteislehre or "WEL", and Hitler supported it in various ways, such as planning a planetarium illustrating it, regarding it as opposed to "Judaeo-Liberal Science" and saw it as following from the Ymir creation myth of the Nordic people. This makes this all potentially dodgy stuff and i wouldn't be at all surprised if attempts were made to link this and Deutsche Physik to biological theories where you just shouldn't go. Having said that, it has certain interesting features and is interesting as a case study in what happens when ideology dominates science in a particularly obvious way. It's also been suggested that Deutsche Physik held back the Nazi development of nuclear energy and the atom bomb, and besides the association with Nazism, Glacial Cosmology has connections with people who have nothing at all to do with the Third Reich and the Nazi party itself issued an official proclamation saying it wasn't necessary to accept it in order to be a "good Nazi", whatever that is. So then, with that massive disclaimer in place, this is the history of Glacial Cosmology: First of all, the idea of the Nine Homeworlds in Nordic mythology seems to form the historical basis of the belief system, making it particularly germane. These are not well-attested but appear to be those of men (Middle Earth), aesir (Asgard), vanir (Vanaheim), elves ("Elfhome"), giants (Joetunheim), corpses (Hell), dwarfs/dwarves/dwarrows (Svartalfheim "swart elf home"), Niflheim (ice world) and Muspellsheim (fire world). The connections between them are obscure and one way of looking at the creation myth is as starting with the "Gap", "Gape" or void, Ginnungagap, with the world of ice, Niflheim, to the north, and the world of fire, Muspellsheim, to the south. The world began when the two met in the middle. This is described in the Gylfaginning, and the process is sort of alluded to in the Glacial Cosmology itself. 267

Here Be Dragons Figures associated with the Glacial Cosmology include the nineteenth century Norwegian Ericsson, the important lunar astronomer Philipp Fauth and the Briton S E Peal. The two most important proponents of the model were Hans Hoerbiger and Hans Bellamy. Later on, Immanuel Velikovsky, who was actually Jewish, came up with a rather similar theory which made interesting assertions on the origin of Venus as a comet. The basic cosmology as proposed by Hoerbiger and Bellamy states that ice is the most common substance in the Universe - most things are either made of ice or covered in them, with the exception of Earth and the Sun. The solar system was formed when a large body of ice collided with the Sun, causing an explosion. This threw out all the planets and also the stars, which are distant blocks of ice. Space is filled with hydrogen (this is true) which exerts drag on the objects moving through it, causing smaller objects to spiral down slowly into larger ones over millions of years. This is happening to the Moon, which is merely the latest in a series of satellites of this planet, all of which ended up crashing into it. The previous Moon is remembered in myths worldwide as the cause of the Flood - it pulled all the water into a girdle around the equator and gave rise to myths of dragons and the like - and the one before that wiped out the dinosaurs. It is encrusted in about 200 km of ice. Mars has 400 km of ice and its canals are cracks in that (see my "Mars Calendar" project for more on that if you can find one - there are two or three copies left somewhere but i no longer have any). Cirrus clouds are the result of the stars falling into the Sun and evaporating - they freeze when they reach this planet's atmosphere. Atlantis was destroyed by the capture of the current Moon. Velikovsky's theories are somewhat similar in some ways. His claim was that Jupiter suffered an impact which gouged out the Great Red Spot and released a comet which later became Venus, and that many of the cataclysms mentioned in mythologies refer to events associated with its encounter with Earth. He also attributed the presence of oil deposits to Venus, seeing them as raining down from the comet which eventually became the planet as it stands. He made a number of predictions about the solar system:

268

Here Be Dragons The Sun is electrically charged. Mercury has a magnetic field and the night side is warm. Venus rotates anomalously, has a massive atmosphere, is very hot, split from Jupiter, is steadily cooling and has hydrocarbons in its atmosphere. Earth's magnetosphere extends to the Moon, changes its rotation, undergoes magnetic field reversals associated with mass extinctions, has recent oil deposits from space, underwent a major climatic change during the Bronze Age and the Bronze Age collapse is due to the catastrophe. Ocean salt is from space, there was a world Flood and the sea level changed drastically in the Bronze Age. Mars has a lunar-like surface, radioactive hotspots and argon in its atmosphere. Its ice caps are solid carbohydrates and the life on Mars includes harmful bacteria. Jupiter emits radio signals. Saturn contains water and chlorine and emits X-rays. Uranus has a magnetic field. Neptune is highly charged. The Moon has remnant magnetism in rocks, heat flow from its interior, argon and neon in its rocks, frequent quakes, hydrocarbons on its surface and radioactive hotspots. Its surface was recently molten and most craters are formed from giant bubbles. 269

Here Be Dragons Comets are sometimes recent, their tails contain hydrocarbons and some meteorites contain argon and neon. Velikovsky's views are quite detailed and wide-ranging, and some of them are corroborated. They are also linked to current ideas about Nibiru. Deutsche Physik: Also known as "Aryan Physics", this is an attempt to remove ideas perceived to be "Jewish" from physical science in order to create a racially pure "Nordic" science, and was held by the Germans during the Third Reich along with the Glacial Cosmology. A major difference is that Einstein's ideas are rejected, although quantum physics is accepted. The Lorentz transformations are accepted but attributed to the action of luminiferous aether, the medium through which light was seen as vibrating. This led to the rejection of gravitational lensing, the precession of Mercury (perhaps they believed in Vulcan?), and they sought to explain the Michelson-Morley experiment in a different way. Although it is claimed that it held back the German nuclear programme while boosting that of the Allies due to the exodus of scientists from central Europe, it's more likely that if this happened, it was due to the hostility towards Jewish and other scientists in Germany and so forth at the time, with the result that more effective scientists were working outside the Axis powers than within them. There was also Deutsche Mathematik, which attempted to link mathematics to race. This was not very influential outside Germany and the periodical espousing it was ignored elsewhere. However, this has led to the problem of an area of topology called Teichmueller Theory being neglected and difficult to research because several early papers were published in that journal.

270

Here Be Dragons

Aphrodite's Children

Map of Venus in Ancient World, the location of the Aphrodite entity

Aphrodite's Children form a dream-like entity in the Night Phase of the Aphrodite superintelligence found on Venus in the Ancient World universe. It is speculated that they may exist as a result of Atlantean intervention or other interaction with Aphrodite, but since Venusian micro-organisms arrived on Earth two million years ago, there may have been some other kind of connection between them. Turtle World is so far from anything which is physically possible that even variations in the laws of physics seem not to allow it. It's possible to imagine a giant turtle with a small "world" on its back but the scales involved make either the world devoid of any intelligent life or the turtle too big to function as a viable organism. 271

Here Be Dragons Turtle World is "in" Ancient World "on" Venus, but not in conventional senses. Ancient World Venus is more hospitable than World Zero Venus for reasons explained elsewhere. It is covered in water vapour clouds and an ocean in which carbon dioxide is dissolved, and it never stops raining. Erosion has led to the continents of Venus being slightly below sea level at low tide (Ancient World Venus has a moon: Neith). There is plenty of life on Venus and it is not very similar to life on Earth. Individual organisms are very often both photosynthetic and eat food and there are no plant or animal kingdoms as such. Although membranes are employed to separate biological processes from the outside world, there are no cells as such. The amino acids of Venusian life have the opposite chirality to those of life which originated on Earth. The dominant life form on Venus is a gelatinous web carpeting shallow parts of the sea bed over millions of square kilometres, coating the surface of the sea bed. It forms a communication network. The whole structure can behave with an enormous degree of intelligence, or something akin to it it is too alien to be clear whether the concept of intelligence can be meaningfully applied to it. During the day, it photosynthesises and at night it feeds by capturing organisms floating or swimming above it. It is able to clear sand and sediment off itself, "farms" the organisms above it, manipulates current and moves "shoals" of food around. It is also bioluminescent in different colours, which it uses to manipulate other organisms living nearby. The entire organism behaves as cellular automata and operates by a system of simple rules making it a self-organising system capable of processing copious amounts of information, far beyond the ability of a human brain, in large nets. However, it is also so different to human or most other terrestrial life forms that it's difficult to judge whether it's intelligent or conscious in the same way as we are, and it is utterly nonsocial in the sense that it does not interact or communicate purposefully with others. 272

Here Be Dragons There are two theories as to the reason for the presence of Aphrodite's Children. One is that towards the end of the last Ice Age, the Atlanteans visited Venus and either persuaded or modified the organism to "run" or "imagine" a meticulously detailed model of the world based on the ancient Turtle cosmology. This has continued to run ever since and forms the fabric of Turtle World's reality. The playful nature of Atlantean activities supports this idea, and Atlanteans did in fact travel to the planet, as is recorded in their archives. The other is based on the fact that Venusian micro-organisms are present on Earth. In this theory, the bacteria-like life forms left behind are the remnants or contaminants of some kind of biological probe sent by Aphrodite or a predecessor to observe this planet, before either returning or communicating what was found, and, to anthropomorphise, Aphrodite found the ecosystem based around the turtles of the Great Ocean inspiring and proceeded to base a simulation on its observations. Turtle World is an extremely complex "dream" of the dominant life form on Venus, which occurs during the night and moves around the planet across the network, so that it exists continuously but is transmitted round Venus. The organism is strongly committed to the world and it can be seen as akin to a religion, obsession, creative epic or all-consuming hobby for the life form. References to Turtle World need to be understood in this context. It does not literally exist as a physical realm but it does have firm physical laws and entities. The Venusian organism is referred to as "Aphrodite" and is considered to be female as a result, just as Mother Earth is considered female. The turtle itself is called "Anteros". The living contents of Aphrodite's dream are referred to as Aphrodite's Children. This is based on a widespread myth found in many apparently unconnected cultures and is of course also in Terry Pratchetts Discworld series of stories along with his Strata. Its also known from an anecdote about the world sitting on the back of a turtle which is itself on the back of 273

Here Be Dragons a larger turtle, which is itself on the back of a larger one, and so on forever, meaning that its turtles all the way down. The situation in this world is as follows. The Earth is flat and rests on the backs of four elephants, which in turn stand on the back of a larger turtle. Consequently, relative to the size of the Earth, both the elephants and the turtle are very large and anything living on the Earth would be thousands or millions of times smaller. Physics in this world are more Aristotelian than Newtonian or Einsteinian, because the turtle is clearly swimming through some kind of medium, suggesting that vacuum is rare or non-existent in its neighbourhood. This in itself is hard to explain if Aphrodite based the world on its observations of Earth and suggests that Aphrodite is itself ignorant of the laws of physics, meaning that the arrival of organisms from Venus on Earth seems to have been accidental rather than being based on any meticulous planning on the part of the superorganism. For Aphrodite's Children, gravity is not a force - if it was, it would either crush the turtle and elephants into spheres or be too weak for the Earth to retain water or an atmosphere - but a tendency and opposed by levity. There are five elements: earth, air, fire, water and aether. Atoms do not exist. Instead, solid and liquid objects are made of continuous substance which is more or less viscous. Apparently solid objects are really very, very thick liquids. In detail, what seems to have happened is that Aphrodite became aware of the existence of the giant turtles living in the Great Ocean, but then went on to elaborate the idea into the fully working simulation of an entire world which now takes place inside her mind. The world can sometimes be glimpsed through windows appearing on the surface of Aphrodite at night, which act as moving pictures of apparent events in the world itself. These can be very detailed and large, with areas of thousands of square kilometres and details down to microscopic scales and vary at a continuous level of frequency down to and beyond the limit of human vision. Aphrodite uses a remarkable technique to construct the world, involving the imagined eyes of organisms in the world. It begins from the eyes of the elephants, following straight lines of vision from points corresponding to 274

Here Be Dragons the focal points of the lenses of their eyes, and proceeds to extend its imaginative activity along straight lines outwards to cover their entire possible field of view. In this manner, it is able to simulate the elephants in each others' vision and Anteros itself, whose eyes are again visible from the viewpoint of two of the elephants. Anteros then views the space around it and the canopy of the shield-shaped world above it, including a point at its peak where a further all-seeing eye looks down on the whole world. Individual sighted organisms lower down also construct the world in the same way. Thus vision is emissive for Aphrodite's children straight rays travel instantaneously from the eyes of the organisms in the world. Each moment is constructed in this way, so that light can be seen as moving at infinite speed. Any object which is not observed does not exist, but there are innumerable organisms covering almost the whole surface which are able to see. The Sun, Moon and stars do exist and possess their own vision, which is unusually powerful and penetrating, making them the brightest objects in the world. Any luminous object has its own vision in fact. This has a number of remarkable consequences. One is that there are creatures in the world which can attack using their vision, such as the basilisk and Medusa. Another is that a sufficient number of creatures looking at an inflammable object can cause it to catch fire, and a third is that creatures can be fatally cursed by an angry look. Looks can literally kill for Aphrodite's children. The all-seeing eye, along with the eyes of the Sun and Moon and those of Anteros and the elephants, are the most powerful in this respect. The world is organised into four elements: earth, air, fire and water. These are combinations of the two sets of properties hot-cold and wet-dry. Everything is made of mixtures of these.

Appendix: The Interdimensional Travel

Multiverse

and

Without the Yates-Gerson device, interdimensional travel would in general be more difficult but there are some points in many physical universes which enable the movement of information between them and sometimes energy and matter, with varying degrees of success. These are often associated with singularities which arise in connection with particular 275

Here Be Dragons combinations of the laws of physics in that world. Two examples, found in Ancient World/Realistic World and Ancient World/Midgard, are electromagnetic singularities which hold open two wormholes at the magnetic poles of Ancient World. These, like many other interesting items in Ancient World, seem to be connected to the activity of Atlantean civilisation, which had advanced technology of a kind which cannot be understood by the science currently used in World Zero. This appears to have enabled them to tunnel between realities and in fact they may have left Ancient World entirely by these means. The operation of the polar dimensional tunnels is not at all similar to the Yates-Gerson Device. Yates-Gerson Device

This was discovered rather than invented, in World Zero, although it seems to have been invented by a team of scientists working at a university in a pair of timelines similar to ours and with relatively recent PODs. The Yates-Gerson Device is a booth large enough to contain two adults of World Zero size. It bears a membrane keypad on which a signed real number is to be entered, after which it exchanges its contents with an equivalent mass centred around a corresponding location along a line which is drawn diagonally through eight dimensions and does not obey the 276

Here Be Dragons laws of general or special relativity. The masses exchanged will be at the mean density of the two. The booth operates by accelerating two arrays of charged singularities from the top and bottom of the compartment at close to the speed of light, and the energy used is equivalent to moving twice the mass the distance concerned. It can only operate along a single diagonal line, but this line is diagonal in hyperspace rather than ordinary space and the objects therefore travel in time, though both backwards. The device was first encountered in a playground in a park of a large industrial Midlands city where three preschool children mistook it for a toy and accidentally operated it. In spite of the hazard of using the device unsupervised with a random set of coordinates, they successfully exchanged themselves with another three children from a parallel world where Earth and the human species were both similar to our own and the history had a relatively recent Point Of Divergence. However, none of the children were recovered and their fate is unknown. The individuals with whom they swapped were unable to say much about their origin, but they (incident timeline) were found to be bilingual in Esperanto and English and their religion seemed to be Baha'i, since they used that calendar. They were however too young to offer information about their situation and their fluency in both languages was poor compared to monoglot children of their age. It can be presumed that the children who disappeared survived the exchange but no further conclusions have been drawn regarding their fate. It was found that the booth could not be shifted from its position without damaging it and a facility was built around it to investigate its properties. The name of the device is taken from a metal plaque screwed into the back of the interior, which simply bore the legend YATES-GERSON DEVICE. CCTV footage of the playground revealed that the booth simply appeared suddenly without warning one morning shortly after sunrise. No explanation is forthcoming. Scans of the device enabled another to be built in another location, but it was found that these had a high probability of simply vanishing as soon as they were activated. The probability of success was found to be linked to factors such as the age of the building in which it was located or the reputation of the people working on it. The degree of similarity must be extreme in certain respects: even something as apparently trivial as a different font for the plaque or a slightly different shade or composition of paint is sufficient to prevent the device from 277

Here Be Dragons functioning at all. However, other apparently important details of the device may be completely irrelevant to the function. For instance, certain electronics can be replaced completely by clockwork without influencing the operation of the device. Once a device is successfully assembled, it cannot be moved relative to the movement of the planet, and in fact such activities as lowering the floor lead to it appearing to be suspended in midair, although it exerts no upward force. It is simply anchored in position relative to the ground somehow. When the device is assembled, the grids of charged singularities appear spontaneously at opposite ends of the chamber, which is also unexplained. The keypad expects a series of eight numbers to be entered before it will operate. These define a location in an eight-dimensional hyperspace by rectangular coordinates relative to the location of the device. Once activated, the entire contents of the booth will usually be swapped with the contents of the other location while conserving mass but not density. This location will be displaced backwards in time from the moment of activation by a period equivalent to the time light would take to travel the distance between the two locations and also by a physical distance in a fixed direction, which remarkably is not relativistic and does not vary in direction in absolute terms. This means that at certain times of day or year, among other factors, operating the booth will result in a sample of the ground beneath it or the air above it depending on Earth's position in its orbit. The energy expended is always equivalent to the sum of the two masses exchanged. However, the booth is not usable either as a time machine or a teleportation device because as well as exchanging items in space and time, it transfers them between universes with different properties. It is presumably always possible to determine the causes of the differences, though on some occasions these are to do with differences in physical constants or fundamental forces. More often, the situation is that a number of historical differences exist. Sometimes there seems to be a planet with a different history occupying the planet's orbit, as with Ancient and West World, and on very many occasions the planet, although Earth-like, has only micro-organisms living in its oceans and is not habitable. Even more frequently, there is no planet or stars at all but a dark, empty hard vacuum containing only hydrogen and helium atoms. 278

Here Be Dragons Ancient World was discovered by chance after a series of random numbers were input to the keypad. Most of the worlds adjacent to Ancient World are completely lifeless due to temperature extremes. West World was the result of a second attempt to reach Ancient World before the properties of the device were as well understood as they are now. The booth was operated with the sign reversed on several of the eight numbers due to an error in system software. The result was that a world was discovered which is in several respects opposite to Ancient World, suggesting some kind of non-random distribution of universes. This is also suggested by the fact that what are effectively different planets in parallel timelines have very similar geographies. Rainbow Bridges

Midgard and Realistic World were initially reached from Ancient World by the Atlanteans through a second kind of interdimensional device referred to in the respective worlds as the Rainbow Bridge and Bermuda Triangle. These operate on different principles than the Yates-Gerson device, which to some extent depend on the different physics operating in Ancient and Realistic Worlds. They are both tetrahedral cross-section 279

Here Be Dragons gravitational wormholes held open by a mechanism using pyramid power and magnetic monopoles, and taking advantage of the greater strength of electromagnetism in two of the universes concerned. The Rainbow Bridge is unidirectional for three reasons: electromagnetism is too weak in Midgard to keep it open at both ends; the gamma ray burst damaged the mechanism, although it was on the other side of the planet; magnetic monopoles are too scarce in Midgard to repair the device without a large number being carried over from another universe or some method of collection being devised. However, communication is possible without excess energy use. Atlantean bridges are anchored to magnetic fields and have to be an exact size the 160 metres of the pyramid power range - but do not display the anomalous absolute positional stasis of Yates-Gerson devices and their workings are more consistent with rational explanations, though the details are currently unknown and difficult to determine due to scientific underdetermination. The Rainbow Bridge and Bermuda Triangle both use pyramid power to warp space in their vicinity in the opposite direction to gravity. They create a regular four-dimensional pentachoron only one of whose cells is located in three-dimensional space. The other vertex is located at a different timeline and the bridge as a whole stretches across many timelines, appearing to be a tetrahedron of different sizes depending on the separation of the timeline concerned. Midgard is closer to a vertex than Realistic World, and is in a region of hyperspace where the physics is very similar to World Zero's, meaning that the pentachoric method cannot be used since it depends on pyramid power. The extra vertex uses a different tone referred to as quintessence, which is associated with empty space rather than matter. Atlantean bridges have various advantages over Yates-Gerson devices. Objects entering them obey Archimedes Principle and an equivalent mass is displaced into the universe of entry, usually largely of fluid. The densityaveraging effect does not apply and there is no sudden exchange of mass. Different timelines are accessible with a decreasing volume of matter being available according to the distance from the timeline. The main disadvantages are that they only allow access to timelines separated in a specific single dimension in one direction from the entrance and have a maximum range of about half a light-microsecond. In the case of the 280

Here Be Dragons Rainbow Bridge, the pentachoron is squashed by the fact that pyramid power ceases to exist between Ancient World and Midgard, which makes it less reliable and reduces the potential size of items being shifted into that realm.

Bit belonging in a different place: Operation of Yates-Gerson devices. Yates-Gerson devices seem to be the results of an attempt to construct either a time machine or an instantaneous matter transmitter. They have so far only ever been found or copied and their invention is unknown. A number have now been located in deep space and it is hypothesised that the majority of them are in fact sited away from Earth. At some point, the intention was apparently to use the singularities as massively parallel matter transmitters which create wormholes moving at the speed of light (thus violating special relativity) to relocate the matter in their vicinity. The operation of the Yates-Gerson device is connected to the Novikov selfconsistency principle that if an event exists that would give rise to a paradox, the probability of that event is zero. This rules out the possibility of time travel paradoxes such as killing your own grandmother, and it can be satisfied in at least two ways: 1) Travel backwards in time may involve changing spatial location on or outside the light cone of the start location. 2) Travel backwards in time involves entering a different timeline. These conditions are mutually compatible and appear to amount to similar processes. One ensures that present events cannot influence the past as the influence of an event travelling at the speed of light cannot reach the departure point and cause a paradox. Considered four-dimensionally, this means that an object travelling backwards in time is in a sense travelling forwards at the speed of light if it travels along the surface of the light cone, so time does not pass for it while travelling. It is also in a sense a diagonal line. Alternate timelines can be seen as branching off, and in cross-section being arrayed along a line where probability measures distances between them. However, if more than two events are equally probable, a single dimension 281

Here Be Dragons is insufficient to arrange the various equally probable outcomes of an event, so the timelines considered in this way must be arranged in at least two dimensions. Since every moment provides the possibility of a branch at a very large number of points in the Universe, even an infinitesimal period of time leads to a very large number of possibilities, which means that alternate timelines can be seen as separated in a space of at least two dimensions. The second aspect of the exchange can therefore be considered to be along a line drawn on this plane. In fact, both exchanges occur. Yates-Gerson exchanges are along diagonal lines in the three familiar space dimensions, time and as it turns out, four probability dimensions including the two that can be demonstrated to be necessary. This is why eight numbers are used to specify the exchange The effect is an exchange rather than a transfer two equal masses are exchanged along the line. This is because of the laws of thermodynamics. Moving a mass out of the Universe is equivalent to destroying it, so it would take energy equivalent to the mass of the object to do so, since energy and therefore mass, which is energy, can only be converted, not created or destroyed. As a result, displacing mass into a parallel universe leads to an equivalent displacement from that universe into the one from which the displacement was initiated. These exchanges are always of equivalent mass and are centred on a sphere whose volume is determined by that equivalent. Hence a kilogramme mass exchanged with distilled water will involve a litre of distilled water appearing in the centre of the booth. The mass exchanged occurs through two two-dimensional arrays of charged singularities moving towards each other at the speed of light by means of electromagnetic induction. These start at a distance of two metres from each other, suggesting an origin in a universe whose Point of Divergence (POD) took place after 1789 CE, since the design of the booth involves several precise metric measurements. The exchange takes about three nanoseconds. The exchange involves each particle encountered by a singularity being swapped with a particle of the same mass, whereas the volume of the interior is constant and there is often, but not always, no booth at the other end. Since the singularities have the same charges, when the tunnels enter the other universe, they mutually repel. This is a factor in the two masses concerned reaching the mean between the two. Therefore, water swapped with air converts the water into steam. 282

Here Be Dragons However, the kinetic energy of the molecules involved stays the same, so the less dense mass heats up and the denser one cools down. Solid objects are easily destroyed by the effect, since they are liable either to be mapped onto the molecular structure of a different substance or onto a fluid, although individual atoms are not destroyed due to the conservation of forces and quantum numbers needed. Interchanges often occur between booths because of the high probability of similar timelines being close together, so transfers are less likely to be harmful where the distances involved are small. Another anomaly is that the effect does not involve relativity but seems to be against the backdrop of an absolute frame of reference. This may be due to the fact that it occurs at the speed of light along a line exempt from the time dilation effect the passage of time cannot be said to be slowed if it is backwards for the observer and zero for the traveller, and such variables cannot be included in special relativity equations. Another reason may be that since the process involves an absolutely straight line, it would usually not involve movement to a different part of space warped by mass, so in terms of the objects concerned, general relativity does not apply either. This also means that objects seem to be displaced in different directions because of the movements of the Sun and Earth through space. It also suggests a connection to the tendency for the devices to maintain their position independent of gravity, though not apparently of intermolecular forces. This suggests that gravity cannot be unified with other fundamental interactions because it has no influence on the booth at all but all other forces do. Multiverse Geometry In terms of dimensions, the multiverse has eight coordinates corresponding to the position of world-lines for each universe. This is a form of hyperspace. Three of these locate points in ordinary threedimensional space, one in time and the four others do so in terms of a location in hyperspace representing the separation from a starting point in terms of probability. They do not, however, correspond straightforwardly to the extra dimensions referred to in string theory or the warping of space by gravity. Just as stars and galaxies are clumps of matter located in threedimensional space and forming identifiable patterns, so do universes form clumps of a similar kind. The four probability dimensions are not 283

Here Be Dragons influenced by relativity in the same way as the familiar space and time dimensions are. There is also an absolute origin in multiverse geometry a genuine coordinate which represents the most probable of all timelines. This timeline is basically empty. It consists of a flat three dimensional universe sparsely populated by matter somewhat resembling hydrogen atoms, and is only paradoxically interesting in being the most boring universe. It has no life, no solid objects, no stars or planets and is completely dark, consisting of a high vacuum. Although it is theorised to exist, it cannot be entered because that would cause it to diverge from its high degree of probability. Its location relative to the known multiverse is unknown, and may even be unknowable in principle. Therefore, locations within the multiverse are, by convention, reckoned using the location of World Zero and its most probable timeline from the instant of the appearance of the Yates-Gerson Device. This is, however, not precisely known. This is the system used by the Interdimensional Transit Authority: Ancient World uses coordinates based on the range of pyramid power and the instant the Bermuda Triangle was first activated, a convention also adopted in Midgard and Realistic World. The locations of individual timelines also use conventional space-time coordinates the first four figures in the coordinates which represents the instant and location of first known entry. Hence The coordinate system is also hyperbolic in nature, reckoning from World Zero, which maintains the fiction of being at the centre of the multiverse for practical purposes. Hence any coordinate of 100 or -100 is infinitely distant from World Zero. Using integers, the system can refer to 2 560 000 000 000 000 000 locations, but many of these would be in the same universe and in fact be non-existent due to limitations on that universe's size. Ignoring those, the real figure is more like 1600 million possible worlds. However, within each of these locations there are of course a very large number of possible worlds forming bunches or clusters of timelines, for which fractional or irrational numbers would be used. It is in fact not possible to distinguish with much accuracy which of these worlds one is located in because of their frequent extreme similarity. Topologically, each coordinate refers to an eight-dimensional measure polytope in hyperspace, but as these tesselate, in geometrical terms they are crooked, with outer cells larger than inner ones, and with no equilateral cells of any kind. 284

Here Be Dragons

Glossary
Adaptive Radiation: Parrots and griffins in Hyperborea. Allen's Rule: Animals have smaller extremities near the poles. Atlantean bears and the Atlantean human race have smaller ears, noses and digits. Batesian mimicry: A harmless organism which looks like a harmful or distasteful one because the resemblance leads to avoidance. Example: the griffinfly (not to be confused with the World Zero griffinfly, which is an extinct giant insect resembling a dragonfly). Brood parasite: An animal which uses the parental care of other, host, animals to raise its young to the detriment of the hosts. Ancient World cuckoos are brood parasites of bees. Browser: An animal whose main diet is tree leaves, such as the camelopard. Carnivore: Cline: A chain of subspecies distributed geographically, such as the sasquatch. Commensalism: The male griffin. Convergent evolution: Horses and unicorns, which are not closely related (about as closely as World Zero humming birds and cats), are very similar in appearance because of their similar life styles. Countershading: Sexual dimorphism: A marked difference between the sexes of a single species, such as mermaids and satyrs. Genus: The next level up from species. Horses and griffins are in the same genus. Muellerian mimicry: Resemblances between a number of harmful or distasteful species. Opposability: The ability of a thumb to touch all the fingertips on the same hand. West World humans lack this facility they can only touch their thumb and forefinger together. Parasitism: Patagia: Photosynthesis: The use of light by an organism to provide energy to generate organic from inorganic substances. Example: aerial plankton. Placental: There are none of these in Terra Australis. Plankton: Aerial plankton again. Plate tectonics: Illustrated by the marine plateaux in West World and the 285

Here Be Dragons general movement of continents in Ancient World. Predator: Prehensile: No animals in Ancient World have prehensile tails. Primates: See for example West World evolution and Lemuria. Prosimians: Replace marmosets in West World, very common in Lemuria. Lemuria is a little like Australia in World Zero in that most ecological niches occupied by mammals are in fact occupied by primates. Scavenger: Possibly barnacle geese. Symbiosis: ? Ungulate: Vertebrate: Wattle:

286