ORUND

Orund was not drawn; it was grown. Fifteen tectonic plates were set drifting and their collisions raised the mountain arcs. Seven hundred thousand simulated raindrops carved the valleys; the rivers follow real watersheds, every one downhill all the way to the sea. Winds were blown across the map by latitude, wringing rain out on the windward slopes — the deserts sit exactly where the mountains left them in shadow. Cities grew where harbors, rivers and mild weather invited them; four invented languages named what grew. Then the whole world was engraved in the manner of a nineteenth-century atlas plate. Everything follows from seed 8. Nothing was placed by hand except the names.