[Zozer Games] Planetary Tool Kit 3: Mazandaran

[Mithras]

Mazandaran is most famous for its World River, a single river that cuts a channel almost the entire circumference of the planet. The river forms the heart of Mazandaran society, it is the life-blood of the economy and a single ribbon of settlement wrapping itself around the world. The World River itself is a marvel, boat trips are popular.

Society is civilised, law-abiding and peaceful. Once disparate tribes governed separate stretches of the river, but unification was followed by the institution of a sophisticated governing administration. But no-one goes to Hatrasis province. Tribal politics going back over a century fuel a modern-day insurgency there, a guerrilla conflict that the Mazandaran government is quietly attempting to put down with determined military force. Provinces on the river are links in a chain, and Hatrasis cannot opt out of the chain ... and so this easy-going government wages a brutal war that is played down and hidden from the sight of the average citizen.

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/118996/Planetary-Tool-Kit-3-Mazandaran

(Any similarities to current events in Syria are co-incidental, much of this book was written two years ago...)

 

[OneTrikPony]

How does that work?
If the river flows around nearly the entire circumference of the planet where does it flow to?
If there's a single river that huge then there must be thousands of great tributaries. if there are giant tributaries then why does all of the population settle on the banks of only that river?

I have to say I'm skeptical but curious about how this all works out.

 

[rust]

If there's a single river that huge then there must be thousands of great tributaries.

Not necessarily, for example the Nile's rather long northern section
between Khartoum and the Mediterranean has no major tributaries
at all. A river could exist with only a sufficient source, for example
large highlands where heavy rainfall is common, and no tributaries
at all. The bigger problem is that water flows downwards, and that
a planet where a river can flow downwards for almost the planet's
entire circumference requires a quite unusual topography.

 

[Mithras]

I have thought about it carefully... there is a large ocean that the river feeds into, and the river rises in a large mountain range, which receives much of the rain from off-shore weather fronts. So it acts as a large water cycle. The region was uplifted (like the Tharsis bulge on Mars), creating the Pillars of An, the huge mountain range, and forcing the stream to cut deeply into the bedrock carving its upper channel (this is a known phenomenon, the upper reaches of the Ganges have existed throughout the upthrust of the Himalyas, but the Brahmaputra has just continued to cut deeper and deeper as the mountains have risen.). As it travels through relatively flat desert terrain, there are few tributaries .. it is the ultimate 'exotic' river.

I'm sure there are loopholes and proplems with some aspects of the planet... but you could say the same about every planet in SF.