THE SPHERICAL MOUNTAIN

UEL ARAMCHEK

Some say that it was once a second moon. When viewed against the horizon, it’s easy to see why; the mountain is perfectly round when observed from any direction, and widest at its midsection. If positioned just right during dusk or dawn, its presence can cause the illusion of a total eclipse.

Today it is known as “the Wandering Pearl” in the Hyperborean tongue, but its name has changed many times during the course of its endless migration. For the past several hundred thousand years, it has wandered slowly across the planet’s surface, rolling ever onward from frontier to frontier. Though it appears to be stationary at any given moment, every point along its exterior has, at some point in time, been the mountain’s peak. A river marks the path it has taken across geological time, leading from its current position in the steppes down to a shoreline it emerged from after an eon spent underwater.

The majority of the mountain’s composition is uncertain, but it is known to have a magnetic core. Though its exterior is covered in veins of hematite dust, none of it slides down to the world below, even from the loose deposits that pepper its lower hemisphere. Climbers take advantage of this property, using magnetic tools to scale its underbelly in defiance of gravity. While this is beneficial during the first half of their journey as they dangle in the mountain’s shadow, their packs become significantly heavier once they’ve passed the equator.

Over time, emperors from all over the world have claimed ownership of the mountain, and some have even attempted to construct cities on its upper hemisphere. Only a few ruins of such endeavors can still be found; what few structures haven’t fallen off during the course of the mountain’s journey have been pulverized completely under its weight. Though little evidence remains of these civilizations upon its russet face, the graves that they left behind are still intact.

Every now and then, a Riphean Condor descends just far enough to be seen from the mountain's peak.

Some more radical scholars have posed that this mountain is all that remains of Nibiru.

Others believe that its shape was carved by the delicate work of Mechanical Glaciers.

hyperborea
WILD TRUMPETS

Wild trumpets must be dried out before they can be safely played by a human mouth. The local tribes of Hyperborea's easternmost islands have mastered this process: they hang the bulbous creatures over a pyre of burning inkwood, whose smoke drains their bells of any lingering venom and stains their skins an obsidian shade. The instrument that results has a limited range, yet this is counterbalanced by its powerful timbre.

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NORTH OF REALITY

The captain’s wrist bore a living tattoo of a compass rose; as the icy waves tossed her vessel about, its ink contorted so that its longest petal would always point north. Its pigment conspired with the iron in her blood to reveal the world’s magnetic winds. It hadn’t yet proven useful on this journey, as the tramontana had been making itself obvious for weeks, yet she knew that it would soon become a necessity.

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THE SPHERICAL MOUNTAIN

Some say that it was once a second moon. When viewed against the horizon, it’s easy to see why; the mountain is perfectly round when observed from any direction, and widest at its midsection. If positioned just right during dusk or dawn, its presence can cause the illusion of a total eclipse.

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THE RIPHEAN CONDOR

In Hyperborea’s northernmost mountains, there exists a sanctuary where comets come to roost. Here, natural philosophers have been able to observe some of their more avian characteristics up close: their bodies are covered from nucleus to tail in transparent feathers, and their parrot-like faces can be vaguely discerned underneath the icy mists that surrounds them. Their wings are extraordinary in span, yet are never unfurled during their travels through space, as there is no atmosphere against which to propel themselves.

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MAGNETIC FIRE

There are nine isotopes of elemental fire which can be found in nature, though only five of these are stable.  Classical fire, the sort which lights candles and powers engines, consists on the atomic level of exactly eight protons, eight neutrons, and eight electrons. For this reason, it is often mistaken for oxygen during experiments in modern chemistry. Remove one neutron from this arrangement, and the resultant isotope is phlogiston, classical fire’s nearly indistinguishable cousin. Remove yet another neutron, however, and the result is a volatile substance known to natural philosophers as phlox borealis.

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THE GODRIDER

Travel far enough to the north, and you’ll find a place where the living and their gods are not so easy to tell apart. Hyperborea has lost its classical syzygy, resulting in strange blends of divinity and mortality. In such a place, the simple act of picking a flower can cause a star to disappear from the southern sky.

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ON GNOMES AND THEIR SHADOWS

The gnomes of Hyperborea are neither born nor created; they enter our world by climbing out of their own shadows, and leave a few hours later when they inevitably tumble back down into them. At the bottom of each of these peculiar holes (sometimes over thirty miles in depth) is a pool of black lava of unknown origin. Some say that each such shadow is a window into a second underground, and that our planet hides multiple interiors beneath a single surface. Others claim that there is no such multitude of underworlds, and that the gnomes create a material debt by existing that eventually swallows their borrowed bodies whole.

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THE PINE JUNGLE

The Atlas Pines of Northwestern Hyperborea received their name for a good reason. Their trunks possess greater girth than those of the sequoia trees, and their uppermost branches lock together into a thick lattice of arbor and needles strong enough to uphold ten-meter snowdrifts. These pearlescent dunes are all that can be seen from above, obscuring the entirely separate landscape that exists at their roots.

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THE CURTAIN OF MYTH

After several delirious months spent wandering the Eastern Steppe, you’ve at last arrived at the Riphean Mountains. They hang from the cerulean sands of a diminishing sky above, jammed through cloudbanks by the strange tectonics of outer space. Two ancient cedars present their inverted trunks before you; their roots are planted somewhere in the mountains above. A curtain of black leaves hangs between them, untouched by any of the four winds. You drop your heavy satchel, collapse into the golden grasses, and laugh. 

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WORLD JELLY

Strange rivers of geothermal activity run beneath Hyperborea’s blue forests. The tender earth liquefies just below human body temperature, and becomes a warm, fluid stone that flows easily through the hands. The local terminology for this substance translates roughly to “world jelly.” 

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MECHANICAL GLACIERS

Hyperborean mountains are formed of pure hematite, with veins of naturally occurring steel sprawling throughout their interior. Some of the grandest peaks reach as far as the ionosphere, slicing the northern lights in two as they pass overhead. Their bodies resist climbers and prospectors as easily as they resist the wind, but erosion and entropy always find a way.

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ON SEA SERPENTS

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