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Geology of Natural Disasters and How to write them into your fictional universe.

So, you want to write about a natural disaster to advance your plot and torture your players/characters even more? Let me tell you how, accurately.

I feel like unless it is a volcano, natural disasters are a pretty slept on plot drivers, and some of them are really cool and unique! Today, I will talk to you about land slides, earthquakes (And earthquake related disasters), and volcanoes.

Landslides: Probably one I see the least in stories, but one that would be incredibly interesting to write into a plot where they believe in curses. Landslides can happen along ocean bluffs, slightly hilly areas, and highly mountainous areas, this means it is something that can happen in most landscapes. But what can trigger a landslide? Mostly all you need to trigger a landslide could be just abnormally large amounts of rain, excessive deforestation (with a little bit of rain), or an earthquake. If you don't want to use deforestation or an earthquake as a catalyst, a really cool indicator that the land is slipping and may be prone to a collapse is J hooked trees.

This indicates that there is soil creeping slowly over time, and it may lead to a major landslide.

2. Earthquakes: Probably one of the easiest things to write, earthquakes can happen anywhere, but they are most common in places that are tectonically active areas. There are about three types of environments you can expect earthquakes to be common. The first is just rugged mountains, if your landscape looks like this, you should write in earthquakes. Associated hazards could be landslides, avalanches, and large falling rocks.

The next landscape could be a thin mountain range, next to the ocean, very scenic, but very dangerous. Essentially, I am describing a subduction zone environment.

Earthquakes in these areas could equal a couple different associated disasters. Scenario one: A very large earthquake happens, and the ocean begins to recede. This is a tsunami, enough said. If you are writing a tsunami though, please, please, do not write it as a large wave, thank you. Also, a common way people are hurt by tsunami's are from them going into the ocean because they don't understand a tsunami is going to happen.

Scenario two: A large earthquake happens, your characters are in a valley and suddenly the ground begins to liquify as the ground shakes, once the shaking stops, the ground becomes solid like nothing ever happened, except everything has suddenly sunk into the now hard ground. This is called liquefaction and it typically happens in areas that have loose dirt or lots of saturated soil.

Scenario three: There are a lot of small earthquakes, they do not cause a lot of damage, but you begin to notice that one of the isolated mountains has a plume rising. Earthquakes can indicate lava moving underground and the filling of magma chambers.

The next environment that can host lots of earthquakes would be regions that have a lot of really deep valleys and small mountain ranges (not cone volcanoes), but overall seems pretty flat.

This indicates a transform fault like the San Andreas. If you want to hint at there being earthquakes in the area, you can show fence posts that are suddenly several feet out of line at a dilapidated farm or something similar.

(These earthquakes are different because they are cased from sideways movement, not an up-and-down movement this hint can only be used for this environment). Volcanoes would not be found here, but liquefaction and landslides could still occur here.

4. Volcanoes: If you thought earthquakes had a lot of information, volcanoes do too. First you have to ask yourself, what kind of volcano you want to have, what kind of eruption style? So lets break down the kind of eruptions you can have and what their landscapes look like. Hawaiian Shield volcano: This will produce a smooth fast lava, the landscape typically is pretty flat, but there will be small cones and the rocks can have a ropey or jagged texture and the rocks will be almost exclusively black to dark red.

Stratovolcanoes: These will be solitary mountains, typically, that look like perfect cones (Picture shown in earthquake section). These will have large ash cloud eruptions and pyroclastic flows, they may have some lava, but typically most damage is done from the pyroclastic flows (think Pompeii). Some hints of these, other than describing the cone features (which can be hidden by other mountains), would be to talk about petrified wood! Trees can get fossilized in the ash and I imagine it would be very strange to find this rock that clearly looks to be a piece of wood, but its a rock. Subcategory- Calderas: Used to be a large stratovolcano, but they erupt so explosively that the entire cone collapses and creates a basin.

There are a lot of kinds of volcanoes out there, so forgive me for just putting an infographic and then talking to you about these really rare types of eruptions that I feel like people should know about.

Okay lets talk about blue lava (kind of) and black lava

You will notice the lava is still red in the middle of this image, during the day these would look like a normal eruption, but at night the burning sulfur would make it appear blue. Some cool features other than this, would be that any water in the area would become very acidic and burn the skin due to sulfuric acid. This would again be really cool if you are trying to describe a 'cursed' land.

Black lava: This happens only in the east African rift I believe, but it is a carbonatite lava, but if you are writing in a rift valley (where the continent is tearing apart to form a new ocean) this might be a cool feature. The lava will cool white and will quickly erode, it makes for a very alien landscape!

Anyway as always, this is supposed to be an introductive guide for the basics of writing geology to create cool landscapes/features into dnd or fictional universes, if you are a geologist please understand my oversimplification of tectonics, I didn't want people to run away.

A quick history of Vietnamese women’s fashion (part 2: 16th-18th century North Vietnam)

Before we dive in, please note that Hanoi (and by extension North Vietnam) at that time was called Tonkin (東京).

During 16th century, the fashion of North Vietnamese women was similar to that of South Vietnamese women as recorded in Boxer Codex (see Part 1). Below is the relief of the Mạc dynasty’s Dowager Empress Vũ Thị Ngọc Toàn, dated 1562, a National Treasure at Trà Phương pagoda in Hải Phòng province. In the relief, she is wearing an yếm undergarment, with thường skirt and đối khâm coat.

(Image source)

Moving on to the 17th century, in Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts, we can find the statue of Ducchess Nguyen The My dated 1632 depicting noble North Vietnamese women’s fashion. She wore her hair long, with yếm undergarment and đối khâm coat, but in between the layers she also wore a giao lĩnh cross collar robe. Her clothes are richly trimmed with gold decorations.

(Image source)

How about the common North Vietnamese (Tonkin, 東京) woman? The earliest illustration of them I can find is in the Japanese book “Vạn quốc nhân vật đồ thuyết” (Illustrations and explanations about characters from 10,000 countries, 1720). If you are asking yourself if this illustration could instead be about Tokyo (as its Chinese character is also 東京) woman, this could not be the case. In 1720, Tokyo was known as Edo (江戸). It was only in 1868 during the Meiji Restoration that Edo was renamed to Tokyo. Back to the illustration, we can see that during this time North Vietnamese common women wore a giao lĩnh cross collar robe outside, with two layers of thường skirts, with the outer layer shorter than the inner layer.

(Image source)

Illustration of North Vietnamese women in “Hải ngoại chư đảo đồ thuyết” (Illustrations of foreign islands) is also similar. This book is dated to the 18th century too, but I cannot find the exact year.

(Image source)

There is a wide-ranging variety of patterns possible on the giao lĩnh cross collar robe, as can be seen in the below tố nữ đồ (素女圖) also from the 18th century. These women wear their robes loosely so that the top part of yếm undergarment is shown like the statue of Duchess Nguyen The My and their robes is long enough to cover their thường skirts.

(Image source)

The same North Vietnamese women’s fashion style is also recorded in Qing dynasty’s imperial book Hoàng Thanh chức cống đồ (皇清職貢圖) created in mid-18th century, with the noble lady (left) wearing more layers than the common woman (right).

(Image source)

North Vietnamese noble ladies layered multiple giao lĩnh cross collar robe in early 19th century too. Painted in 1804, the below portrait of Lady Minh Nhẫn at the Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts shows that they wore at least 3 layers.

(Image source)

The viên lĩnh round collar robe can also be found in North Vietnamese women’s fashion during this era, as can be seen in the extracts from 18th century paintings “Võ quan vinh quy đồ” and “Văn quan vinh quy đồ” (Celebrated return of the martial/civil mandarin) belonging to the Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts. The robes can either be tucked inside or cover the thường skirt.

(Image source)

By early 19th century, Tonkin (North Vietnam) and Caupchy (South Vietnam) was unified under the rule of Nguyễn dynasty. The new dynasty implemented many changes, including naming the country “Viet Nam” and the former capital city Tonkin (東京) into “Hanoi”. As Nguyễn dynasty emperors are the descendants of the Nguyễn lords who used to rule Caupchy, they continue to enforce the clothings reform started by Lord Nguyễn Phúc Khoát in 1744. The emperors were persistent despite the push back from former Tonkin population. Their numerous decrees about Tonkin clothings reform are recorded in the book “Khâm định Đại Nam hội điển sự lệ” (Collected statutes of the Nguyễn dynasty, 欽定大南會典事例, 1843 – 1914). The women’s reluctance to change was humorously reflected in the following folk rhyme  (apologies that my translation has no rhyme):

“In August, the emperor decreed

Banning bottomless pants, making us so fearful

If all of us stay at home, the market will be empty

But if we go, we must robe our husbands of their pants!

If you have pants, go and sell your produces at the market

If not, go to the village gate and watch out for the inspector.”

Tháng tám có chiếu vua ra

Cấm quần không đáy người ta hãi hùng

Không đi thì chợ không đông

Đi thì phải lột quần chồng sao đang!

Có quần ra quán bán hàng

Không quần ra đứng đầu làng trông quan.

(Source)

Although women in North Vietnam gradual accepted to wear the same áo ngũ thân five-panel robe as their sisters in the South, they had a distinct fashion that call back to their favourite giao lĩnh cross collar robe and đối khâm coat. I will explore more on that in Part 3 of this series.

sometimes i need to remind myself that i'm writing fanfiction for free and i'm allowed to have a shitty sentence or two

Jeans!

Want to collaborate on a Google Doc with Nietzsche, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Dickinson, Dickens and Poe? 

Click here. Start typing. Enjoy the hilarity. 

Ninja Update: Wanna see something fun? Mention Shakespeare in a sentence and see what happens. 

a pal asked me how i drew teeth so i made this quick lil mini tutorial on how i do it!! this is by no means a professional tutorial and im still learning but i hope this might b helpful to some!

Starting Old World Blues with low intelligence

I’m, I’m at my capacity,