Agaro Lush Tundra

Geography

Agar Lush Tundra is a sub-polar lowland covering the arctic portion of the Twilight Age world. In many ways it is the antithesis of Aeni Mountains' dead alpine ice and Adisay's parched plains; this landscape is one of overwhelming cold life. The ground is a colossal field of rolling tundra, a morass of swampy moss basins, and frigid wetlands, where the temperature's extremity is the direct cause of abundant biological life, the explosive thaws, and constant groundwater saturation, which permeates the hostile northland.

Topography and geology

While Agar is a largely flat terrain when compared to the southern continental masses, the topography is extremely tumultuous at ground level. The tundra is a sprawling field of subtle, rolling hills cut through by low metamorphic ridges, gently carving river valleys, and wide thermokarst basins the result of millennia of sporadic permafrost collapse. At first sight it seems to be an undulating plain, soft and level, but the surface is a volatile, treacherous surface of deeply saturated peat bogs, hidden melt water channels, and deeply fractured stone.

The geologic makeup of the basin is one of a base of deeply compressed permafrost sediments overlaid with the thick layers of rotting peat, topped with dense glacial tills, all marked with the devastating effects of receding continental ice sheets that scoured the plains with massive boulder deposits, scattered ice-scoured outcrops, and remnants of metamorphic bedrock. With the ground subject to a constant freeze and thaw the land buckles and shifts, churning with immense forces from constant cryoturbation.

Climate and hydrography

Agar is an exceptionally harsh land in terms of climate, with each season possessing its own radical atmospheric conditions. While the winters are brutally dark and achingly long with ferocious wind beating against the endless tundra, the spring thaw turns Agar into a churning, flooding field where biological life explodes amidst the landscape changing flood waters, spurred on by the continuous daylight. In terms of hydrography, the tundra is extremely wet.

Being a completely frozen permafrost based land the deeper layers prevent drainage, and the immense meltwater collected from the springtime thaw remains at the very surface. This causes a colossal network of flooded peat bogs, braided river systems, and interconnected wetlands, and the interaction between these fields and the northern airmasses cause heavy, cold fog to be prevalent in the warmer months, or in winter, the polar winds create constant snow storms and the thaw often involves rapid cold snaps and freezes.

Traversability

Agar Lush Tundra is not an easy land to traverse, and its difficulty varies entirely by season. In the deep winter Agar freezes solid and the swampy terrain becomes solid highway of snow and ice. Traversing Agar during the spring thaw is, however, an incredibly tiresome, challenging task. The freezing ground collapses and floods, leaving travelers to march through a chest-high muskeg field, avoid numerous unseen thaws, and circle immense flooded rivers on an unending journey to find solid land.

Plants

Tundra Vegetation (Moss Plains and Cryptogamic Flora)

The flora in the Agaro Lush Tundra is an achievement of miniaturized biological productivity. Unlike the deeply established canopies of Acken, Agaro flora are governed by the shallow "active layer" of permafrost that begins to thaw with rising temperatures just above the frozen soil. To withstand the howling polar winds and conserve any and all heat possible, plants grow in completely prostrate, or flat on the ground, growth patterns. Vast, spongy plains of sphagnum moss, hardy, spread-out mats of lichen, and low, wind-resilient shrubbery carpet the moist land.

Because of the difficulty of deep taproot systems in freezing soil, roots extend horizontally instead, forming a tight and interwoven subterranean mat that actually insulates the ground beneath it. Agaro's tundra undergoes extreme seasonal color changes; in the rapid blooming of summer, it's a brilliant, vivid tapestry of emerald mosses, golden sedges, and red shrubbery, but as soon as the seasons change back, it reverts to its frosty silver and muted brown colors.

Wetland Flora (Muskeg and Peat Basin Vegetation)

The sunken bogs and thawed-out lakes are the habitats for vast muskeg (peat bog) systems, and they are the most productive cold wetlands on earth. They occur where meltwater can't penetrate the permafrost above and stays on the surface, making the area permanently waterlogged and oxygen-deprived. The sedges and reeds that thrive in this suffocating mud are capable of pumping oxygen through air-filled vascular tissue called aerenchyma directly to the submerged roots.

This organic material has extremely slow decomposition rates because the freezing temperatures and acidic environment preserve the material for millennia, creating giant, deep deposits of peat. Flooded basins can, therefore, be seen as biologically productive wetlands as well as carbon storage units.

Boreal Ridge Flora (Krummholz and Taiga Systems)

The wetter areas of Agaro are interspersed with areas of metomorphic ridges where more drained land supports isolated pockets of subarctic taiga systems. Here the winds are much more biting than in the bogs and they keep conifers small and stunted; these low growing, gnarled trees are also called krummholz, or crooked wood. The trees of these small pockets of taiga are also adapted to conserve moisture by having waxy, narrow leaves and are also very pliable so that heavy snow loads are deflected from the branches instead of breaking them.

Where the river valleys are more sheltered from the winds the pockets of taiga become much larger and denser, supporting resin-filled woodland corridors, before gradually thinning out again as they re-enter the barren tundra.

Seasonal Adaptations (Cryoprotectants and Rapid Phenology)

Adaptations to Agaro are largely in extreme biochemical resistance and extremely fast timing (phenology). The overwhelming portion of the year the land is experiencing an extreme cryogenic dormancy. Plants have developed substances they pump into their tissues during the winter that essentially act as natural antifreezes. As soon as the polar sun finally creates enough melt for the short and intensely brief summer, vegetation is able to bloom rapidly. All flora have a greatly shortened period for reproduction, rushing to sprout, bloom, and release seeds within a few week period before the polar winter returns and locks the land again in frost.

Animals

Tundra Fauna (migratory and plains species)

Fauna of Agaro Lush Tundra can be seen divided by whether they migrate seasonally to inhabit it or else they are permanent inhabitants of the Agaro plains. Although significantly removed from the hyper-localized vertical isolation found in the Aer Canyon Pit, Agaro is essentially a region of large, sprawling migratory routes. It is in this plains that many ungulate grazers live – in large herds that are huge and adapted for cold – they are followed very closely by numerous scavengers, as well as opportunistic predators. These grazers, due to the windy, cold environment and boggy, unstable ground have adapted to having extremely warm, insulative double-coats of fur and huge reserves of subcutaneous fat. Their hooves are often of huge proportions and fanned out very far so as to create much greater contact with the peat in which they walk as a broad "snow-shoe" so as to travel easily across the landscape regardless of whether there is snow on the peat or else just peat itself. Since there is nowhere to shelter in the plains on their own there must be numerous chase hunters. These are cursiorial running endurance-hunters whose speed, endurance and pack tactics allows them to take down larger grazers by wearing them out.

Wetland Fauna (muskeg and peat-basin species) These very marshy, bogy areas (muskeg) flood with great abundance and intensity when the summer ice melts off, causing massive amounts of water to flood through the holes in the peatlands. In the summertime, these wetlands bring in numerous grazing animals in form similar to waterfowl and numerous different types of insects that eat all these new forms of plants, and which are also eaten by hundreds of these somewhat amphibious ungulates. These wetland dwellers have had to adapt with physical features that facilitate existence in this flooded area. The typical creatures dwelling here have hydrophilic, or water-repelling, fur. These grazers can often be seen to partiallywebbedfeet, and their bodies are generally extremely buoyant so that they are able to travel easily through relatively shallow water. Theshallow, peat-basin lakes and marshes of Agaro become large nurseries for nearly all of the migratory life in Agaro-all these creatures and their young race to reproduce in this time frame so that young can be produced and can hatch, be nursed, and then either reproduce again in the summertime (and be a successful reproductive organism) or then get fat enough to be able to migrate south. Under the water, huge bottom-feeding detritivores are eating all this exploding organic matter, breaking it down with the peat in the rapid cycle before the returning cold can kill them.

Boreal Ridge Fauna (taiga and refuge species)

The pockets of Agaro taiga (boreal forest), located upon the rocky outcroppings on separate islands amidst the otherwise boggy lands of the area, contain each uniquely isolated, contained biomes. These subarctic woodlands escape the polar gales due to the more elevated nature of their existence. While these forests may contain such things as climbers and ambush predators which rely on smaller animal prey and Opportunistic-Opportunistic scavengers, most of the ridge dwellers are year-round residents of their forest pockets. These fauna are often unable to escape being crushed and killed in their cold environments through movement like migration; instead they must learn to find and store vast amounts of food for the cold periods, or by creating a cache of fat for warmth. Alternatively, they must take advantage of the sub-nivean zone-the layer of the ground where it remains warm under thick snow cover-and so use burrows dug into the ground which are often inhabited by very cold-adapted creatures. The forests on the ridges also act as barriers against the extremely fierce polar gales that would otherwise destroy inhabitants less capable of evading them; it is necessary for species not adapted for movement through extreme weather to hide from the wind and the accompanying storms.

Behavioral Cycles (nomadism and seasonal hyperphagia)

This cycle of survival in Agaro has a purely elemental explanation-it is all based on whether it is winter or summer. A long spell of polar winter caused many of the Agaro-bound creatures to migrate south in order to live through the frigid months; in the winter, unable to survive the cold on the plains, some of the non-migratory creatures were able to go into a state of true torpor or even hibernation in which all bodily functions were suspended. The winter season continued until its eventual melting, after which the entire region was once again allowed to flourish and blossom. The migratory ungulate herds, because they are unable to survive in the winter, migrate north with the thaw and continue their migratory route as far north as it will allow, and consume all plant life that grows there and blooms from being pushed out by the thaw. The animals give birth nearly instantly upon returning to the plains in spring and the young can then grow up extraordinarily quickly in time for winter; if an animal doesn't reach reproductive maturity in spring it's considered a loss and doesn't get bred. This extreme eating throughout the year is termed "hyperphagia", a state of extremely voracious eating behavior that can only be achieved through hormanal control.

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