#sso lore

[sso-maev]

PUTTING JORVIK ON THE MAP: SIZE AND LOCATION

WHERE IS JORVIK?

Finding Jorvik’s exact location is actually pretty easy.

”Jorvik, located somewhere between Norway, Iceland, and the British Isles, of which it was once part, is a nexus of worlds.” - Jorvik Calling, Prologue.

This is still a pretty large area, but one that’s significantly narrowed down by reading Four Stories from Jorvik. Anne’s segment Midnight Sun establishes that Jorvik is at the very least partly above the arctic circle, to the point where Anne can see it while riding by Jorvik Stables in the middle of the night. This also puts Jorvik pretty close to the tectonic rift between the European and American continental plates, which handily explains why Jorvik is a volcanic Island.

HOW BIG IS JORVIK?

Jorvik’s size requires a bit more speculation, and I’m relying on two book sources.

1: Jorvik stables is a bus trip from Jorvik city.

Anne lives in Jorvik City but goes to school with the other soul riders in Jarlaheim, and has her horse at Jorvik stables. We know that she goes there by bus, so the distance between Jarlaheim and Jorvik City shouldn’t be too large; I’m capping the max length of the bus ride to about an hour.

2: Valedale is less than a day’s ride from the wineyard.

In The Legend Awakens, Elizabeth and the soul riders are heading to Pi’s Swamp and sleep over at the Wineyard. The soul riders wake up late and leave after having eaten breakfast and lunch. The sun is ”at its highest point in the sky” when they leave, so probably around 1-2PM. It’s twilight when they arrive, and the Baroness comments that they showed up in time for the evening feeding of the horses. Since the days are shorter in late October/early November, which is when this chapter takes place, we can guess that they arrived at around 5-6 PM.

Mapping out the most likely routes for these two trips, the route to the Wineyard is about a third of the bus route from Jorvik City to Jarlaheim. Additionally, the bus would drive on average ~70 km/h because of Jorvik’s smaller roads. The average walking speed of a horse is 6 km/h.

Now, the Valedale-Wineyard trip could take anywhere between 3-5 hours, but I’m inclined to believe that it’s on the lower end of that scale to keep Anne’s commute as short as possible. That leaves us with a 18 km long ride, and a 54 km long bus tour that takes 46 minutes. Pretty reasonable!

RESULTS

With these new measurements, we can figure out the actual distance between different places on Jorvik. Most importantly, we can measure the absolute width from Jorviks westernmost to easternmost point: 92 km, or ~57 miles!

Having figured out an estimate of the island’s size and location, we can now put Jorvik on the map!

[nancyfriendstream]

if you ever think you’re too much of a people pleaser, just remember your star stable character;

tended to an entire garden, with little to no reward

learnt to fish and then used said fishing skills to aid not one, not two but THREE fishermen for months on end

repaired a bridge just for the shits and gigs

took hundreds of pictures of a plushie in return for what… 10xp?

helped a creepy dude relocate his 100 spiders that hid all over jorvik

stopped g.e.d taking over moorland, from the kindness of our doormat heart

helped a jojo siwa lookalike save horse from yet another creepy guy

played hide and seek with TERRIFYING twins im sorry those quests were giving uncanny valley so bad

traversed alternate dimensions to save characters that have lowkey never done anything to help us

travelled to an oil rig to stop dark cores evil plans

blew up said oil rig !!! yay us !!!

all because we were asked to.

we are overworked and severely underpaid. lets hope in the next wednesday update our character learns the word ‘no.’

i thought we were meant to be here for one summer to ride a horse through fields of flowers and rainbows >.<

[corinne-eaglebridge-sso]

Please do not spoil it in the tags! Also, feel free to reblog so that this is more likely to meet non-sso people :D

[wildwoods-sworn]

Imprisoned by whom, Sive? Finish the damn sentence. Care to tell me who did the imprisoning if Rúnhammar was "the key"?

"For another millennium"? As in, she was already sealed for a millennium previously? Or maybe something closer to 900 years?

THEY. Could be multiple. Could be just two. A horse and rider. Morrigan and Gunnar.

[natduskfall]

Today is the second time I read online that Rosalinda, Mr Sand's love, died by being burned at the stake.

I think they changed her cause of death in the second edition of The Legend Awakens.

Source:

Now there are two causes of death for her i guess.

[esmeralda-dragonstar]

An MCs Diary

November 20th 2024

The Baroness has been renovating the Silverglade Manor and the vineyards for weeks now. Today‘s the big day of the reveal and it feels like all of Jorvik is sizzling, there’s a common eclecticity in the air I haven’t seen for a long time, all eyes are on her.

Though it’s not only anticipation, a lot of voices have been critical as well. They are afraid of the changes, especially those who have been riding in the Jorvik Riding Centre for a long time, nostalgia has a grip on them which is understandable. Others have criticized how the Baroness is spending her royal money on this seemingly selfish project, renovating her own home instead of considering to help Jarlaheim which has basically been falling apart, having trouble to keep the historical buildings from crumbling. It’s not like the manor and it’s surroundings aren’t historical buildings which need renovation as well though, there’s been trouble with the plumbing for years now and the vine cellar has seen better days too.

Linda has been fearing for her beloved library but the Baroness promised that all she would do is improve it and make it more open. I wonder if our book worm will be happy with it, surely she’s already missing her old safe space.

Anyway, we can’t change Annabelle Silverglade‘s mind now so all there’s to do is to wait and see. And pick out an outfit of course. What should I wear? Something chique and lilac of course, I‘m thinking something rather plain. Wouldn’t wanna be the center of attention today.

[synamins-sso]

Something I've enjoyed in the recent quest lines + birthday guided tours

The depiction of Jon Jarl as a colonizer and not some brave adventurer is really refreshing. The fact that the Soul Riders (mainly Linda) say they don't want to visit Jon Jarl's grave and barely give him the time of day due to his nasty personality + past is such a mature angle for a kid's game to take on colonization. In the DV guided tour, the narrator describes the depletion of Kallter culture as they were pushed into a small corner of Jorvik by colonizers, which, again, is another amazingly mature worldbuilding tidbit that I appreciate being included. What I hope doesn't happen is the Kallters are never utilized again, because that is effectively reinforcing colonial ideals, and would therefore make even acknowledging the wrongness of colonization feel... backwards. What I hope DOES happen is the Kallters are brought back, not only to DV, but to the rest of Jorvik, and the culture is restored. This would be a wonderful way to teach players, young and old, to appreciate other cultures, especially native ones, and give them the space they need to heal from centuries of mistreatment.

This is another ranty post because I just have so many thoughts about this game, positive and negative. So, rant over!

[sso-brainrot]

SSO| Mr. Sands: Villian or Heartbroken

New Lore video from the Druidic Archives!!

" Is Mr. Sands the heartless villain in the Star Stable Universe, or is there more to him? While he constantly seems to want to take over Jorvik, is there a reason behind it, and is that reason justified? I hope to help explore those questions and shed light on some of the answers, though for some, you will have to decide for yourself. "

[adelaide-swiftheart-sso]

In order for the Bureau of Jorvegian Wilderness and WIldlife (BJWW) to ensure optimal employee safety, each mounted officer is required to undergo extensive training in classical horsemanship, as well as 10 weeks of mandatory pack string education. On completion of their courses, the officers are each outfitted with two full sets of tack, one in the english style, one in the American western style. They are permitted the use of two BJWW horses, freeze branded on the left neck utilizing Alpha Angle Code.

Pictured- Ranger Swiftheart of Redwood Point scouting with her BJWW partners

[regancastlelion]

I'm rewriting the lore surrounding the soul riders powers purely because how does the sun equal to teleportation and the stars relate to healing??

like the lightning circle being able to summon lightning makes sense, and the moon circle getting prophecies and visions, sure. but not the other two.

and I'll be writing out what the MC/Reggie can do as the fifth rider. then write to her own profile of unrelated abilities.

[sso-maev]

Ok so remember this map?

A complete map of Jorvik, with a semi-accurate scale to measure any distance on the island. I’m really proud of it! There is, however, one glaring problem with this map.

WHY IS JORVIK CITY SO SMALL????

I’m sorry but Jorviks capital should not be smaller than middle-of-nowhere ranger town Dundull. The generally accepted minimum population requirements for a city are 50 000 residents. Following the canon map, Jorvik city would need to fit at least 50 000 people in what looks like 2,25 square miles. That would mean Jorvik city houses 22 222 people per square mile, making it the 24th most densely populated city in the WORLD.

Possible? Sure. Likely? Considering the clear inspiration from the way less dense Stockholm, the lack of giant apartment complexes or slum neigbourhoods, which would imply that people live closely together, I’m gonna have to say no.

So how big should Jorvik city be, if the map size is inaccurate? Kind of hard to tell since we can’t see places like Governors Fall or Aideens Plaza on the map.

But there is one place we CAN see.

And if we can use this map, we can measure how long it takes to cross it.

I am very normal about the horse game.

From the barracks to the pier, it takes 38 seconds to cross the map. On a similarly flat surface on Jorvik, we can measure how long Pier 13 actually is, giving us this comparison.

Now, I’m going to show two theories on how big Jorvik City is based on these measurements.

The first one is the most canon-compliant, but also the most ridiculous. By comparing pier 13 to the area outside jorvik stables, we know that pier 13 is ~1 km long. Yes, this is an absolutely massive pier don’t worry about it. Looking at the jorvik city map, we can see that this smaller pier is meant to be to represent Pier 13, and we can do the math from there. Jorvik gets an area of 340 square km, and if we use Stockholms population density as a guide, Jorvik City has about 1,8 million citizens. Cool! One problem though.

You can’t fit it on the map. A city this big would take up almost one fourth of Jorvik, and you’d need to redraw the entire map to make it fit.

So my other option shifts the canon a bit to make the maps fit together. If we go against canon and assume that Pier 13 is actually the larger pier, that downsizes Jorvik City to ~47,5 square kilometres, with a population of around 250 000. This makes Jorvik more comparable to a more densely populated Reykjavik; smaller in area but with double the amount of people. And while it still messes with the coastline a bit, it at least fits into Central Bay.

Personally I think both theories work, but for consistency’s sake, I’m leaning more towards the second theory.

[pandoriasmostwanted]

Jorvegian Pantheon?

Been thinking about this for like two days but what if Jorvik had more gods than just Aideen. Jorvik strikes me as a polytheistic nation and considering it's history, especially with the Romans and Vikings arriving, both famously polytheistic peoples. Of course Aideen is the main deity with how important she is to the country's history.

[apples-stables]

Ya know sometimes I swear SSO forgets not everyone has read or consumed the other media they've made. But then OTHER times it's like they discredit it entirely. Like after reading the comic (which I just reblogged) Alex/Maya is SO MUCH COOLER??? And like they're just DEPRIVING PEOPLE OF THAT????

[j0them0971]

This is beautiful

[natduskfall]

SSO lore enthusiasts and theorists, are there any theories as to why Darko can sense MC's presence, or what is it that he feels inside us? It's been bugging me.

[esmeralda-dragonstar]

Esmeralda