San Lucas

by on December 24, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

The New Andes Mountains are the tallest mountain range on San Lucas. They bisect the New Andes/Gangani continent from western to eastern shores, and even continue as underwater ranges for hundreds of kilometers into the twin oceans surrounding the continent. They are tectonically-active on their northern face, with several living volcanoes slowly encroaching onto the surrounding highlands. Extinct volcanoes and jagged mountains dominate the southern edges looking over the lowland rainforests. It is a wild and treacherous area, with deep mountain valleys the only link between the northern forests and the southern jungles. Those valleys and the roads built into them are what the Gangani used to conquer the north, and are still major highways of trade to this day.

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Seasons Greetings

by on December 23, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Tis the season for Minnesotans to ask each other if it’s warm enough out there. Tis the season to decorate our houses with lights and wreaths. To cut down trees and light them up. Some of us shovel snow now. Some of us tell tales of flying reindeer and fat guys in red suits. It’s time to celebrate the beginning of winter. Or mourn it. Time to memorialize the dying year and watch a new one born to the sight of a falling ball of light and fireworks. It’s time to be thankful we survived the last year. Mostly. Maybe barely. Tis the season to make promises about how we’ll live the next year that we’ll probably forget. And tis the season to thank God for coming on down and spending a spell of time with us.

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San Lucas Cats

by on December 22, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

The two larger San Lucas continents were home to four other cat species that we had little to no knowledge of until one of them Contacted us decades after colonization. They were genetically modified from Earth’s panthers, with human-level intellect and hand-feet that could use tools just as well as humanity. They had dominated the western continent’s primary empire for hundreds of years, building it into what had the possibility of being the most powerful civilization on the planet. They were not the majority, though. That honor went to the jaguar-based felines that lived all over the western continent, and who had ruled for thousands of years in the past. Before the panthers took over in a bloody coup.

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San Lucas

by on December 21, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

The westernmost continent home to intelligent cats on San Lucas was originally named New Andes, after the New Andes Mountains that bisected it. We officially renamed it Gangani after the local cats made Contact with us. That is the name of their primary empire in the rainforests south of the mountains. They called the entire continent Gangani, and obviously considered it their territory in full. The cats who lived in the central mountains and the northern forested highlands had other ideas. And then there are the rather large number of colonists who refuse to accept the “new” name. They continue to call it New Andes, and dare anyone to correct them. There may be some stubborn colonists in the group.

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Happy Holidays

by on December 20, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I love the holiday season. We start out by thanking God for what we have. And the next day we have the time-honored tradition of ritual combat over the best sales on the planet. Then we cut down a tree, stuff it into our house, put ornaments on it, and light it up like a roman candle. The hope is that it will stand there for a month or two, drying out the whole time, and pray to God it never gets dry and hot enough that it actually bursts into flame. We hang stockings from our fireplaces for a fat man to come down our chimneys and stuff with gifts, and hope a stray ember doesn’t get caught in their fabric. We throw chestnuts into the fireplace, and hope they don’t scatter the flames when they explode. We place multi-piece candelabras on our pianos and hope the molten wax doesn’t seep into places we’d rather not. And I haven’t even started on the food. I gain ten pounds just looking at it. Maybe the happiest part of the holidays is somehow managing to avoid killing ourselves before we get through them.

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