Here’s a few notes I think some might find useful in thinking about the size of Glorantha and Genertela.
Glorantha is a big setting. The world is a big slab of Earth some 8000 kilometers on a side, floating atop an endless ocean. Waters, some very deep, cover much of the Earth, dividing its surface into two main continents and many islands. Above the Earth is the Sky Dome, its apex some 6000 kilometers above the center of the Earth.
Dragon Pass and Prax are in the northern continent, Genertela (named after a primordial Earth God). That continent is some 5000 kilometers east to west and 1700 kilometers north to south.
Dragon Pass is a strategic crossroads on the continent, the only pass between the vast grasslands of the north to the coastlands of the south. To the east of Dragon Pass are the plains of Prax, an arid land of scrubland and animal herds. The River of Cradles is a thin ribbon of arable land along the eastern edge of Prax and provides food for the only notable city in Prax — the Free City of Pavis. East of Pavis is Vultures Country, an even more inhospitable desert, and beyond that are the vast Genert’s Wastes.
It is about 4250 kilometers across the Homeward Ocean from Genertela to the southern continent of Pamaltela, named after its primordial Earth god.
Comparison To The Real World
Genertela is comparable in size to the contiguous (lower 48) United States— it’s a bit longer east-to-west and narrower north-to-south. The distance between Genertela and Pamaltela is somewhat smaller than the North Atlantic crossing.
Dragon Pass itself is comparable to the size of West Virginia or Switzerland plus Tyrol. Prax is about the size of Louisiana or Alabama. Together —imagine California’s Central Valley, Sierra Nevada, and Mojave Desert wrapped together. Or the Rocky Mountain Front Range bleeding east into the Great Plains, spanning from Denver to Kansas City.
For an ancient world comparison, Dragon Pass is about the size of the core of ancient Assyria (the heartland around Assur and Nineveh, plus fertile valleys and mountain frontiers) or the combined territories of the Hittite Old Kingdom (Anatolia’s central plateau and passes like the Cilician Gates) or the Achaemenid satrapy of Armenia (rugged highlands with narrow passes controlling north-south movement). Prax is comparable to the Syrian Desert fringes or the Negev/Arabah transition zones in the Levant—arid scrub/grasslands with oases, seasonal herding routes, and a thin arable strip (like the River of Cradles mirroring the ancient Euphrates or Jordan corridors).
Glorantha Is Not Our World
However, Glorantha is not our world. Glorantha is flat. Truly. Scribes use mathematics to prove the Earth is flat (and they are right).
The Sky Dome is a physical thing, made of crystal or divine substance. The Sun is a glowing disk tens of kilometers across and really does emerge from the Gates of Dawn each morning, climb up to the top of the Sky Dome and then descend to the Gates of Dusk.
The Red Moon really is about 3000 kilometers above the Crater in the Lunar Empire (where the Red Goddess raised it into the sky). The Red Moon hangs in the Middle Air, turning its phases without moving in the sky.
Beneath the world is the Underworld —as vast and deep as the world above, which the God Learners plumbed to catastrophic ends. The souls of the dead really do go to the Underworld.
- Search this site for posts tagged scale
So for Sartar itself, think something about the size of modern Wales, Slovenia, or New Jersey. Or ancient Macedonia under Philip or Israel under David/Solomon.
Or if you are in my part of the world, take Mesa County (Grand Junction), add Delta County, and Montrose County. Or Larimer, Weld, and Boulder counties. Although those places are actually even more mountainous than Sartar.
I prefer the latter, as I can then imagine exactly how hard it is to get from Virginia Dale to Nederland and transfer that from Clearwine to Swenstown. And then I thank the gods for Sartar’s roads.
Now something I like about that is that it is perfectly reasonable for a Sartarite to travel to New Pavis – that’s a little over two weeks. Or have made the week-long trek from Boldhome to Karse. It’s only about 4 days from Boldhome to Alda-Chur.
You can get to Boldhome from pretty much anywhere in Sartar in 4-5 days or less. Runegate to Boldhome is only 3 days, and Clearwine the same. Now that’s pretty standard for how far people went in order to go to regular assemblies in the ancient world. Before and after the Lunar Occupation, a significant percentage of free adults in Sartar went to Boldhome annually for the assembly – this could easily be 10,000+ people, doubling the population of Boldhome.
- For more on travel times search this site for posts tagged caravan