Wet, Wet, Wet Prax

From: Martin Dick <Martin.Dick_at_infotech.monash.edu.au>
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2000 11:11:44 +1100

> Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 09:04:36 -0800
> From: David Dunham <dunham_at_pensee.com>
> Subject: Re: Praxians
>
> Gian Gero thinks there's lots of rain in Prax, and writes:
>
> > I read that Praxians hate townspeople and call them "Smelly"; that could be
> > because Praxians (who love rain and pools water) like to wash themselves! (a
> > thing that most RW desert nomads consider an extreme luxury)
>
> I don't have time this morning to double-check the rainfall listed in
> River of Cradles, but I don't think it's much. That too is reduced
> due to Genert's death (there's a feedback cycle between the land and
> the weather even on Earth). It's probably true that even irrigation
> won't work quite as well as expected due to the lack of the land god,
> but there simply isn't enough water, at least outside Prax proper in
> the Wastes.

Prax may seem like a dry wasteland for those people from Europe or certain
parts of the USA :-), but to someone brought up in the Wimmera (the western part
of the state of Victoria in Australia, according to the rainfall charts in the
River of Cradles, it's wet, wet, wet. From memory, in River of Cradles, Prax
gets roughly 34" of rain per year, as compared to Horsham's 17" per year or so.
Wheat requires an annual rainfall of 10" to be practicable. The Wimmera happens
to be one of the largest grain growing areas in Australia, producing millions
of tonnes of wheat each year. Now, that includes modern technology and strains
of wheat, but the Wimmera has been a major wheat growing area since the 1880's,
when things wheren't quite so advanced.

IMO, the physical environment of Prax is not the reason for its lack of fertility,
it is "magically" infertile. In any case, I think this explanation is more fun
and with more potential than it just being an arid desert, a campaign based around
resurrecting Genert sounds like a lot of fun to me. Didn't someone mention that
they were doing this? Would they like to tell us how it is going?

Martin (who thinks deserts and arid areas are much nicer places than all those
soggy, dank places in the northern hemisphere)

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