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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 history of an area.
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 alongside 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 liquified 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, gradually slowing 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 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.
Though this period of the Plane’s geological history is characterized primarily by tectonic interactions, the accumulation of new strata in the form of Gods, and simple weathering from wind, the Plane’s geography would also experience its first major change towards the end. The First Crater System documents the first major asteroidal impact which would occur during the war.
A battle between the God of Calcium and the God of Carbon would leave a lasting scar across the Plane, searing a massive crater into a chunk of oceanic crust. Though the exact location of this impact is lost to time, descriptions of the impact detail its incredible destructiveness, having showered a large chunk of the northern Plane in debris and decreasing visibility throughout much of the Plane.