B'gor

B'gor (pronounced /bəˈgɔr/) is a highly industrialized world of Qabede, its people having made good use of the plentiful oil that falls into the world from a worlddisk above it to fuel all sorts of mechanical creations. The ultimate origin of the oil is uncertain, but on B'gor it pools into a huge expanse called the Rainbow Sea, occupying an enormous area of the center of the disk. Whatever its source, the oil seems to be inexhaustible, and is burned in enormous quantities to run factories and machinery, though at a cost of considerable pollution in some of the world's busiest areas. There are, however, disadvantages to the presence of the Rainbow Sea—the nations bordering it, though plentifully supplied with oil, have few convenient sources of unpolluted water, and have to import it from lands on the other sides of the continents.

Geography

B'gor is on a standard round worlddisk, about twenty-four thousand kilometers across. As on many worlddisks of Qabede, B'gor's ocean completely surrounds the land surface, falling off the edges onto the disks far below. Most of B'gor's land surface is contiguous, though conventionally divided into four continents, surrounding the Rainbow Sea a little northeast of the world's center. A few large islands in the sea and one off its southeast corner make up most of the remaining land, though they're all much smaller than the continents.

Three spacefalls cascade onto B'gor's surface from the disks above, one in the northwest, one southwest, and one running roughly north to south across the middle of the world. This last, the Oleo, is the most unusual, in that rather than water, it is made entirely of oil, fallen from a world far above with oceans of oil around the edges. Most of the oil from the Oleo collects into the Rainbow Sea, an enormous expanse of oil more than eight thousand kilometers across, while a little of it flows out south across the other edge of the land into a large bog of mixed oil and water called the Metal Marsh. The Rainbow Sea has a single outlet, the Grand Strait to the northeast.

Life

Humans are a dominant species on B'gor, but share the world with a number of others. Several kinds of paque live in the world, including the half-crab laomal and the half-palm tirithi. A number of small noetic creatures also live there specific to the world, including little creatures called gremlins that enjoy fiddling with mechanical devices, and various unique kinds of mengue. In addition, some artificial creatures have also been created there, most notably living mechanisms called omorga.

Culture

The people of B'gor have made good use of the oil of the Rainbow Sea to fuel any number of different mechanical devices, and have developed very sophisticated mechanisms and instruments. B'gor has become an industrial world, with cities covered with huge buildings and complex machines. Naturally, not every nation of B'gor shares in the technological bounty, and some poorer nations must rely on the largesse of their richer neighbors to acquire the goods they want. Pollution is also a serious problem in B'gor, especially far from the wealthy nations where they can dump their wastes without serious impedance.

The Corporations

Taking advantage of the world's industrialization, multinational corporations have sprung up some of which wield more control than any actual nation. Some of the smaller nations are entirely under the control of some particular corporation, and while the most powerful nations may resist the domination of the corporations, but even they can't entirely escape their influence. The most powerful of the corporations include Marblehouse, which manufactures heavy machinery; Precision Mechanical, which deals with clockwork; and QDV, which controls most of B'gor's trains; but many other companies also vie for supremacy over B'gor's industrial and economic sector.