Oh, neat map, mate8888! As some people already said, do post that link!
I also continue to be amazed by your wisdom and stories, Róisín. That apprechiation-thread is very well-deserved indeed!
Thanks! The link is
https://www.deviantart.com/mate888/art/The-edge-of-the-Earth-an-SSSS-fanmap-863860157?ga_changes=1&ga_submit_new=10%3A1616479521&ga_type=editOh, wow mate888, that is a very cool map! I am also curious what media did you use or what softwear?
Great job, mate)
What software did you use for this?
I used paint.net and mspaint. Not at all the best software to use I'm sure but its the ones i'm more familiar with.
Lovely detailed map. That is interesting. And many parts of that area would have a lot of natural protection from danger of the Silent World because of their terrain, isolation and weather. Plus there are those tiny cats - kodkod, guna, something like that? Which can, if I remember correctly, live mostly on moths when their small mammal prey can’t be had. I imagine that they would be as useful as any cat around trolls and beasts, however tiny they may be.
And I am delighted that you have druids there, because Argentina still has them in real life. About fifty years ago I met a family from Argentina who were resettling to Australia. I had been asked to help them settle in, which I cheerfully did. Nowadays they live in outback New South Wales, where the old man of the family and his son build harps and teach music. They have a small farm and a good life. I taught the kids Australian bushcraft, they taught me some useful old songs and stories.
They were descendants of a family with druidic traditions who had come to Argentina back in the 1800s when whole villages of Welsh silver miners moved to Argentina, the miners bringing their families and their traditions in much the same way as the Cornish copper miners did here in South Australia. Which is why we still have Cornish druidic and other cultural traditions here in SA (Lowender Kernewek happens 17-23 May 2021 in the Copper Coast towns, if anyone is interested.). Anyway, the language they have is a bit archaic, but still Welsh with Spanish loanwords. The settlement that family came from was called Arianín, which like Argentina means ‘place of silver’.
Pardon the real-life interpolation, but I thought it might give you some references for worldbuilding.
Thanks for the comment and the story! Its very interesting to know how a similar situation to the Patagonian Welsh happened in Australia with the Cornish, Argentina and Australia do have a lot of parallels.
Also yeah, kodkod/guna/huiña would have done quite well considering they have their natural feline immunity plus their small size. I doubt they could be actually tamed, as they are rather evasive of humans and like all wild cats rather aggressive if cornered, but maybe the druids in Alerces and others tried because look at em who wouldn't want one?
And anent the map, I wonder what has survived of the native styles of magic? The Quechua might have produced some interesting mages of their traditional shamanic style, as might the Guarani. (all I know of their stuff is some of the plant lore but I know there is more than that). And do the Gauchos hunt trolls on horseback?
Well, the Quechua and Guarani are quite a ways north of this map so I haven't really thought much of their styles of magic, but I did think about how, since the dreamworld of SSSS seems to be connected irrespective of what kind of magic one practices (like how Finnic Lalli, Norse Reynir and Lutheran Anne can both be in the same place of the dream/spiritworld) I was thinking maybe Andean ayahuasca rites could be used by Quechua mages as a way to access the dreamworld in a way different to just sleeping and entering it. As for the Guarani, they have been pretty solidly christianized since the 16th century, but I do think their mages would keep some native rites different from southern Christians, like the belief in Duendes and maybe even some African influences like Macumba rituals.
For the map I had thought of three (ish) kinds of magic going off the assumption that in the SSSSverse all dieties seem to coexist and/or it works in a way similar to the warp in warhammer where magic occurs based on belief (hence why the atheist Swedes and Danes don't have mages among them but the Norwegians, Icelanders and Finns do). So the three kinds of magic practiced in Patagonia would be Christian magic, heavily regulated by the Fueguian church and practiced mostly in Argentina, Celtic magic practiced overwhelmingly by the Wladfans and Alerceans, and native magic, which itself would in fact be three different branches of magic, Kaweksar magic, Aonikenk magic and Mapuche magic, but as there are very few of the former two groups, people usually refer to native magic as a synonym for Mapuche magic. I went into more detail on how those work in the deviant art page but feel free to ask anything over here!
Also, gauchos do go on horseback for scouting missions and ocassionally hunting, but many go on wheeled vehicles as immune horses at this stage are used mostly to breed more immune horses for future use. The Argentines usually take a very "kill it with fire" approach to dealing with trolls, while Kelpers and Chileans are more seafarers than anything, so most of the horse usage for troll-hunting is done by Wladfans and the Mapuche.
Róisín, that's a fascinating story. Like nefnef I'm always amazed for the many interesting things you did on your life! (You know I'm your fan, right?)
Mate888, I love your map. I've never been there, but studied the area when I was writing "The Remembering Man".
(However in my story the main city was Punta Arenas, that on your map is an unsafe zone. I thought that being on a peninsula gave it a good defensive position.)
I was also interested in natives, their culture and magic, but there was no space to develop that in my story.
The Falklands and all those islands on the Southern tip are, indeed, a perfect place to find surviving communities.
Thanks! I also originally thought of keeping Punta Arenas alive as Chile's capital, but then I realized that given the sheer amount of people in Punta Arenas plus the amount of Chileans that would flock there from elsewhere once Santiago got troll'd would make that city into a disaster waiting to happen the moment one infected person slipped through the cracks, especially when people still didn't quite know how the Rash worked. Thankfully, being on a peninsula, it was relatively simple for the (very few) surviving Chileans to set up a perimeter around the region.
As for the natives, their culture is very fascinating, and seeing how trolls and other nasty things seem to be releted in some way to local folklore, i could see kade-like "gualichos" stalking mages, or some sort of spirit or troll taking shapes similar to the Selk'Nam shoort spirits.
Map! I love maps. Please do post more details in the Survivors in other parts of the World thread. This is really nicely done, and like others, I'd love to know more technical details as well.
Thanks! Will do!