#pangaea

Then we all would have to make rafts and there would be water raft traffic. And then occasionally there would be that one raft that's playing loud music for the whole world to hear.

Hm, not at all, really.

I'm not great at the nity-gritty logistics part of world building. But as nations ravaged by war and darklord respectively, I think both Carryn-yehl and Kayalana suffered a moderate to complete economic breakdown that no doubt took a long time to recover from.

Sirn and Ku'Ombos are relatively independent, though there is some trade between them, and presumably also with the lands further east. Bahari closed all relations with Kayalana once the civil war broke out, and have remained quite secluded, though of course their relationship with Machra-la is very complicated (Machra-la considers itself an independent city-state nation, Bahari thinks they're part of the Bahari empire that's allowed the leeway of autonomous regein at Bahari's mercy). There is a lot of trade between them, though, masked as "piracy" that both parties turn a willfully blind eye to in the name of profit.

But of course all local systems are upended once the two peoples unite and a passage is constructed through the mountains, along with the founding of the city Hope. How to handle the new booming trade (and sorting out all the gnarly unwanted side-effects) is a huge part of the politics of the later parts of the story.

The economic crash and influx of Machralese drugs and contraband to Sirn is one of the things that ultimately drives Aljana to condemn to joining of the peoples and being a catalyst for her crusade to bring Hope to ruin and closing the passage for good, keeping the world divided with everything in its designated place as the gods intended.

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