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An oft overlooked feature of the God-War Era is its impact on the Plane’s geography and how that geography can provide historians a glimpse into its past. Historians and geologists use a number of strategies and tools to extrapolate historical data about the Plane’s geography: stars, strata layers, weathering patterns, and more can tell historians a great deal about the Plane’s history.
Formation & Early Development
The earliest known information on the Plane’s geography is sourced from the First Epoch Star, published by the Gods of What Is and Is Not as they created the Plane and the Gods of Matter, Energy, Time, and Space. According to various translations of the star by astronomers, the Plane was originally created as an infinitely flat expanse of solid rock. The instantaneous creation of the Plane was followed by rapid heating; with an infinite expanse above the surface and seemingly endless earth below, the vertical compression forces placed upon the Plane generated extreme heat. This rapid heating liquefied the interior of the Plane, creating the mantle.
The solid crust which ‘floats’ atop the mantle would be broken apart into distinctive chunks referred to as plates. This would occur due to both the effect of gravity and the complex interactions of the liquid mantle, stressing the crust and fracturing it. These plates float across the mantle and interact with one another in complex ways. This system is known as the tectonics model. Ancient strata layers observed by geologists suggest that the mantle and plates were significantly more active during the early years of the war, slowing considerably over time.
Until the Dying Period—from 177 BT to 160 BT—the Plane remained relatively flat, its topology deformed only at the divides and collisions of its plates. The accumulation of approximately 11 million God’s corpses during the Dying Period would lead to the formation of the first continental landmasses. Though the exact pattern the corpses would accumulate in is unknown, it is hypothesized that it mostly occurred surrounding the central pole.
This period of the Plane’s geological history is characterized primarily by tectonic interactions and the accumulation of new strata in the form of Gods. Simple weathering from wind, and more complex weathering in the form of God’s battles would also shape the Plane. One event would shake up the routine, however: the First Crater System documents the first major crater impact which would occur during the war.
An altercation between the God of Calcium and the God of Carbon, in 147 BT, would sear the most massive craters in the Plane’s history into a chunk of oceanic crust—the Great Oceanic Crater. Though the coordinates of the event are described in the First Crater System, its impact is not easily recognized in the modern day. Stars like the Debris Raining Star, Evacuation Star, and Mending Earth Star provide fist-hand accounts of the tremendous destruction it wrecked. Shattering the tectonic plate it occurred on led to vast swaths of the Plane being consumed by debris storms, volcanic eruptions, and spontaneous mountain generation for years following the event.
The debris from the Great Oceanic Crater would be last mentioned in 139 BT in various children of First Crater System. By this time many of the newly formed micro-plates which the impact had created