The Droga River

The Droga River is a major south-flowing river in Northern Dawn, and is commonly regarded as the longest river in Dawn, although some sources cite the Kalada River as the longest in the world due to its tributaries. The Droga, which is 685 kilometers (426 miles) in length, has long been an “international” river as its drainage basin has covered the lands of a multitude of different cultures and states, namely the Riewaye Confederation, the Seyirvae cities such as Duzekuveta, and the Shuvri chiefdoms. After the Red Death (the local name for the Miecalism plague that caused the collapse of the Dawnic Late Chalcolithic) hit the region, the subsequent depopulation allowed for significant settlement of Seyirvaes people into the region, creating ethnic conflicts.

The River Droga has no major tributaries, but its headwaters fan out to the north in the foothills of the Tawani Mountains, where annual rains ensure that the Droga maintains its volume and cause the regular yearly floods. Its most northern reaches run through the shrubland and dry steppe of the Northern Droga Valley, so gloriously named the Upper Droga Steppe. The Central Droga Steppe, on the other hand, has the river much wider, its floods covering much more area (and therefore depositing rich sedimented soil on a much larger area), and the rainfall being significant enough to provide for densely grassed and sparsely wooded steppes. The Lower Droga Steppe is much similar, although with more rainfall, and mostly exists as a purely geographic label.

The Droga River enters the Golden Sea as the Droga Delta, where dozens outlets flow into the sea, creating a large area of marsh, with drier islands, and it is heavily forested and populated by many species of birds (such as pelicans, flamingoes, raptors, cormorants, and swans), fish, snakes, turtles, tortoises, lizards, amphibians, and various megafauna from the steppe and woodlands around the Delta.

The Kakapopo-Droga Steppe

The Kakapopo-Droga Steppe, or the Kakapopo Steppe, the Great Steppe, or the Riewaye Steppe, is the vast region of steppeland stretching from the northern shores of the Golden Sea in the south to the Tawani Mountains in the north, from the Sune Mountains in the east to Lake Kakapopo in the west. It forms a part of the Great Western Dawn Steppe, and often the two are confused.

The Kakapopo Steppe is an expanse of mostly flat plains of dense grass, with uncommonly broken by trees, except by the coast and along the Droga, as well as up north closer to the forests, where patches of woodlands have grown.

The steppe formed after the drying up of the Ashullaqucha Sea between nine and eleven million years ago, leaving behind the Kuntialpa Aquifer in the west and the Antialpa Aquifer in the east. The Kakapopo-Droga Steppe also is home to one of the world’s chernozem belts, the rich dark soil, formed over the millennia (although no one has a universally accepted theory as to how it formed, yet it is generally accepted that the good drainage of the soil and the millennia upon millennia of grasses decomposing, as well as the calcium-rich limestone belts of the region, contributed) and became a massively important part of the local cultures during the Bronze Age. The fertile soil contributed greatly towards the settlement of the region by the Riewaye colonists and salt traders, and would become a principal factor in the later grain trade.