Resolving Environmental Implications of an Extremely Massive Mountain

I am doing some work within the setting of the Exalted tabletop role-playing game. In broad brush strokes, the defining feature of the world is the five elemental poles: Water (west), Wood (east), Air (north), Fire (south), and Earth (center) – the setting is on a plane rather than a globe, hence the "center" pole.

The Pole of Earth sits on an island roughly the size of Russia, and is expressed by Mount Meru (alternately called the Imperial Mountain). Similar to the Mount Meru in Hindu/Buddhist mythology, the Imperial Mountain has absurd dimensions: the setting information notes that the ancient city of Meru being located halfway up the mountain, 300 miles above the ground.

This is the only dimension for the mountain explicitly given. However, assuming the mountain's icon on the world map is to-scale, it would have an approximately 470,000 square mile base (larger than Greenland).

This startling geography naturally causes some problems. When the sun "rises," the entire world would enter "day" at (roughly) the same time. The Imperial Mountain should, then, cast massive shadows across the western ocean in the morning and across the eastern lowlands and forests in the afternoon. Winds around the mountain would cause all kind of havoc with temperatures and precipitation. I'm sure there are other major effects that would be caused by the giant spire of rock in the middle of the world, but I don't have the experience in the many varied fields that would be required to detail all of the problems with a 600-mile-tall-mountain.

The standard answer to a conundrum like this in the Exalted setting would be that the gods or the elementals handle it. Natural phenomena like storms and earthquakes require a bureaucratic paper trail, and the sun itself is basically "the Death Star, decorated like the Taj Mahal" (to quote a post by one of the freelance writers of the setting); why not just have the celestial bureaucracy stick their collective fingers in the problem and fix it with magic?

My main problem with leaning on the gods is that it's boring to simply say "a wizard god did fixed it." The secondary problem is that in the "modern" times of the setting, the celestial bureaucracy is broken: gods take bribes, slack off on their jobs, etc. – Heaven even suffers from unemployment, these days.

How could normal humans deal with the issue of a giant mountain causing world-ranging problems, without resorting to prayer or summoning supernatural entities?

Only gods, elementals, the titular Exalted, demons, faeries, and certain powerful undead are directly capable of using magical powers. The best that a normal human may be capable of is some ritual-type magic, such as reading the future in the stars (and even that is going to be about as specific as a Magic 8-Ball).

Technology level is generally medieval (with the exception of rare magical artifacts and ancient technology).

posted about 10 years ago

Brian S‭

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