Support - geology

This section is dedicated to Professor Ben Harte of Edinburgh University who aided me with developing and understanding the landforms of the Three Lands.

Many writers have produced maps to help them and their readers to explore their invented lands. It was perhaps inevitable that my background in computer games would lead me to tackle this particular issue with some thoroughness. What made me decide to put so much effort into this were the two specific landforms: the plateau of the Guarded Land and the caldera of Osrakum.

Though the Guarded Land plateau plays a central role in the Stone Dance it was the Osrakum landform that made me seek out Ben. It turned into a monumental undertaking - leading me eventually even to making a model of it. With its one way in and out; its coombs in which the Chosen have their palaces; the Isle within its lake; the Pillar of Heaven and the watermeadows of the Yden - to mention but a few topographical details - I felt that it was essential that I understood fully all of Osrakum's various elements, which in turn necessitated a study into how they might have come about. This process might well have been impossible without Ben. Certainly, the result would have been less elegant. Through many meetings and an extended, on going discussion, the caldera of Osrakum came into being as a very, real place...

• Ben Harte
• Three Lands geology
• Guarded Land geology
• Canyon of the Three Gates geology
• original concept for Osrakum
• Osrakum landform