OVERVIEW

Filipinia is a small continent or large island (2.5M sq km--about a million sq mi; like the eastern USA or western Europe), just east of our Philippines--which, here on Abyssia, are just a deep trench. No loss, though! Filipinia is ten times the size of our Philippine archipelago. True, the climate's not as lush--the deserts and mountains of southwest Pacifica lie upwind, stealing much of Filipinia's rain. (Pacifica's off the map to your right; only the tip of Cape Mariana is visible in the lower right near Yap Island.)

Filipinia's terrain is like a miniature USA: Eastern Filipinia is a wide plain with scattered hilly ranges, mostly long Appalachian ridges one or two km high (3-7000'); the west grows drier, than rises to one of the highest mountain ranges on Abyssia, with peaks up to 5200 meters (nearly 17,000'). And that's only their height above sea level; they rise out of offshore trenches 7-9 km deep (23-29,000').

REGIONS AND CLIMATES

The far north--Kazan, Cape Okinawa and Daito Bay--are lush subtropics, a bit drier than our Caribbean but nearly all forested. Pleasant country.

Much of the west coast is dry; the prevailing winds are off the mountains, not the sea. If this sounds like the Peruvian Andes and the Atacama Desert, it should; the latitude is comparable, and in most years similar wind-patterns blow surface water offshore, causing deep water rich in nutrients to upwell, creating some of the richest fishing in the world--and that's saying a lot on Abyssia, with its vast, teeming, healthy reefs. The east coast, for example, lacks this steady nutrient-fountain, but heavy seasonal runoff alternating with a long season of clear water and intense sun nourishes huge coral platforms. Still, the western fishing is extraordinary--and a good thing, since the coast is so dry most of the year. Fishing villages will thrive--though only at the mouths of perennial creeks, snowmelt-fed. Yes, snow--the Nansei Mountains are up to 2500 m high (7000'), and bear snow most winters.

The northwest coast of Filipinia is quite Southern Californian--warm, semiarid, but with streams from the mountains and fogs along the shore, and gentle rains in winter. But climb through the Nansei Range to the inland plains around Lake Batan, and you're in a very different climate--warm dry winters, with short but savage rains in the scorching summer. As sharp a contrast as driving inland from Los Angeles over the mountains into the desert! Though central Filipinia's nowhere near as dry as our Mohave, for it does get significant rain, drawn from the narrow seas to the southeast and northeast, and even from Benham Bay, while the Mohave is utterly landlocked. A better California analogy might be driving from the hot flat San Joaquin Valley (irrigation country par excellance) over the Coast Range to the fogs, redwoods and marshes of Santa Cruz or San Francisco. Continental to maritime in fifty miles; and western Filipinia is like that in spots. Cape Engaño and Cape Ildefonso are quite verdant: ecological islands.

In central Filipinia, a tongue of this mild maritime climate licks deep inland, around Benham Bay and its satellite lakes.

The wide plains and hills south and east of the Leyte Lakes are monsoon forest near the coast and tree-dotted savanna inland. Fierce rains in summer (rolling in from the east--nothing gets over the towering Philippine Range!), but dry much of the year--and even the winters can be hot. It's a bit like northern Australia--a land of extremes. Lakes dry to marsh, then flood again with the next rains--if they don't fail, as they occasionally do. Life here must cope with cycles of flood, fire, and drought. Stunted trees thrust taproots deep; animals migrate, if they can.

Far southern Filipinia is equatorial--slow rivers wind through lush forests. Here the rains never fail and the dry season's a relative thing--and a relief when it comes. If it comes.

The washboard ridges and wide plains of eastern Filipinia are distinctly more humid than the west; rains rarely fail. Most of the land is wooded, opening to to scrub and meadow on the west sides of some ridges.

WESTERN ISLANDS

Several hundred km west of Filipinia lies the Sulu Chain, three low, rolling, unlucky islands, none more than 40 km long. Unlucky? Prevailing winds most of the year leave them in the rainshadow of the Philippine Mountains. The annual rains are as short and unreliable as in our Galapagos, shadowed by the Andes. And Suluan life is equally strange--storm-dropped stragglers, survivors who adapted to roll with the climatic punches.

A second archipelago, the Sulawesis, lie further south--less in the rainshadow. The regular summer rains support tall monsoon forests. Celebes is 320 km long (200 mi). The sheer size of the Sulawesis helps; deeper soils, and aquifers big enough to help deep-rooted trees survive the occasional drought. And people; while wells on the Sulus might fail in a bad year, the Sulawesis have rivers. True, they shrink to creeks and ponds in winter, but they never fail entirely. Fishing villages dot the coasts, and not hardscrabble ones; fruit all year, too. Life here may be quiet--far from the heartlands of Abyssian culture--but it's pleasant.

Off the map to the west, far enough out to be free of Pacifica's rainshadow, a third archipelago may exist--the Paracels. Certainly they're low, and maybe just reefs. I'm not sure yet how large they'd be--my sources conflict. We'll see.

EASTERN ISLANDS

East of Filipinia is a labyrinth: the Vela Archipelago. The Velas seem to be built of fishbones. Arcuate ridges and sounds form a maze like the ripples on a sandbank, but magnified a million times. I'm just amazed at the complexity here. Earth does have a few coasts with this intricate splendor, as if designed by Slartibarfast the fjord-master... but they're all ice-carved. This is tropical--and structural. Not ice or even rain-erosion carved this strange maze.

Note that in this close-up, the orange ridges are only 500 meters high (1600'), not a kilometer high as orange indicates on other maps. And they're frankly speculative; I haven't seen an accurate, detailed topo map of this region of our sea floor; and I wouldn't fully trust it if I did. So I'm sure these ridges are here, but their exact shapes are largely guesswork.

Plus some esthetic hunger! I just like tigers.

That crazy fractal coastline, though it looks equally like a tiger on acid, isn't fanciful, though. Fairly accurate! What caused it, I'm not sure, but all Filipinia is under great pressure; it's a tiny but free-floating tectonic plate, being squeezed east and west. Around it are the highest ranges in the world, after all...

In the Vela Archipelago, geography trumps climate. Here there's no "coastal" and "interior"--every inch of the archipelago is coastal, or near enough. Maritime climate prevails, and those ridges snag clouds and squeeze out rain. While the deserts and mountains of Pacifica upwind do lessen the rain you'd expect at this latitude, keeping the Velas from looking as lush as our Philippines, these aren't desert islands. Well, the southwestern slopes of these ridges can be dry--baby veldts, minideserts--but overall, the land looks quite Caribbean, just as the archipelago's long, twisting isles and capes resemble the strange stretched shapes of the Bahamas... scaled up a lot. Vela alone is as big as California or all Japan.

The following route snakes around Abyssia's major lands; italicized names have no pages yet.

the Lena Is. (brr!) - the Greek Is. - Atlantis -- Azorea -- Nazca and Chilea -- Morningtonia -- Agassiz -- South Pacifica -- East Pacifica -- Hawaiian Sea -- Pacifica Desert -- Filipinia -- Vanuatu and Banda Is. -- Tasman Is. -- Diamantina Pen. -- Whartonia -- Chagosia -- Somalia -- Mascarenia -- Crozetia -- Weddellia -- Argenta -- Pernambuco -- Angolia -- Tristania -- Agulhas -- Natalia --

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