Earth

**Earth** is a spinning globe with ice at the top or bottom. It has seven continents and two large oceans. Juniper Smith used to live there.

Some people on Aerb know it as the dream that skewers.

## Locations

### The United States of America

**The United States of America** is the name for a collection of states. Kansas is one of those states. It has an army and a government, and its currency is the dollar. A Civil War once took place there.

### Midwest

The **Midwest** is an area of America. Gas stations in the Midwest typically have cheap cinder block construction, unadorned metal doors, and gas pumps. Waiting areas in the Midwest typically have uncomfortable chairs, stale coffee, and a few out-of-date magazines. Farmhouses in the Midwest often have two stories, wood siding, and wide, wrap around porches. The town of Comfort on Aerb appears typical of those found in the Midwest, particularly those found in Kansas.

The Midwest is in the middle of an obesity epidemic. Nudity is frowned upon in the Midwest, along with talking about sex, large age gaps in relationships, and watching people undress.

Midwestern comfort foods include barbeque, fried chicken, collard greens, cornbread, and coleslaw.

### Kansas

**Kansas** is a particular area of the Midwest. Buildings in Kansas are not typically made of cobblestone with thatched roofs. Tornadoes occasionally strike Kansas. In Kansas, having sex with a fifteen-year-old is classed as criminal sodomy, a felony that carries a sentence of up to five years in prison, with no close-in-age exemption to speak of.

### Nebraska

**Nebraska** is an area of the Midwest, much like Kansas.

### Bumblefuck

**Bumblefuck** is a town in Kansas. It is not important to the state. Locations within Bumblefuck include the Great Wall (a Chinese takeout place), Bumblefuck High School, and a tattoo shop. Bumblefuck was large enough for Juniper's high school to offer exactly one computer science elective, and had a population of ten thousand.

### Reading

**Reading** is a town in Kansas that was once struck by a tornado. It was almost completely rebuilt a few years later.

### Grain Belt

The **Grain Belt** is a name for an area of the United States roughly equivalent in size to the area of farmland around Parsmont.

### Flint

**Flint** is, presumably, a town in Michigan.

### San Fransisco

**San Fransisco** is a city on Earth. It served as the inspiration for Cranberry Bay, which lacked San Fransisco's trademark bridge.

### Chernobyl

**Chernobyl** is a location on Earth - one that is apparently as representative of the planet as a whole as the Risen Lands are of Aerb.

### England

**England** is a country on Earth, once ruled by King Arthur Pendragon.

## References

1. ↑ “It has seven continents, two large oceans, and it’s a spinning globe with ice at the top or bottom. Right?”
I nodded, slowly.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 3: "Solely Responsible"
2. ↑ “I’m from a place called Earth.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 3: "Solely Responsible"
3. ↑ “I come from a small town in one of the United States called Kansas.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 109: "The Veil of the World"
4. ↑ It felt weird to phrase it like that, but I thought ‘United States Army general’ was needlessly specific.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 127: "Full House"
5. ↑ Amusingly, I could pull out a stack of hundred dollar bills, which were worthless on Aerb given that the backing of the United States government meant nothing.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 83: "The Familiar and the Foreign"
6. ↑ “The Empire of Common Cause operates under a legal framework that’s meant to govern interaction between polities, and which has slowly crept into everyday life -- lots of parallels with your own United States, actually, minus the Civil War.[...]”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 90: "Head of House"
7. ↑ It had some of the hallmarks of Midwest gas stations, like the cheap cinder block construction and the unadorned metal doors. Where there should have been gas pumps, there were instead black shards of obsidian jutting up from the pavement.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 1: "Taking the Fall"
8. ↑ The room that I’d come into was some kind of waiting area, the kind that in the Midwest had uncomfortable chairs, stale coffee, and a few out-of-date magazines, all of which mingled with the smell of car guts and wheel skins to create a very specific ambiance.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 2: "Thickenings"
9. ↑ Behind her was a large farmhouse that wouldn’t have been out of place anywhere in the Midwest, with two stories, wood siding, and a wide, wrap around porch.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 66: "The Long Night"
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 It looked like the kind of tiny town that you could find all over the Midwest in general and Kansas in specific, a place that existed mostly because there was a limit to how far farmers were willing to drive for groceries, gas, and a haircut.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 2: "Thickenings"
11. ↑ There were families bathing there with small children running around them, and though it didn’t seem like Aerb was in the middle of an obesity epidemic in the same way that the Midwest was, there were plenty of people whose bodies were far from what I’d define as aesthetically pleasing (in fact, there were a few people I thought looked malnourished).
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 18: "Communal"
12. ↑ Solace was lying in a shaft of sunlight, moving every so often to keep pace with it, like a cat; she had her garments pulled aside to reveal as much bare, green flesh as possible, which left her obscenely indecent by Midwestern standards.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 50: "Copse and Robbers"
13. ↑ That’s my Midwestern upbringing talking, and to put up that curtain would be, in a sense, to presuppose that there was nothing there worth talking about, that nothing changed between the two of us as a consequence of those nights.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 53: "A Tiptoe Through the Tulips"
14. ↑ That got added to the standard Midwestern cultural programming package, which would have considered me, at seventeen, dating a thirty-three-year-old woman as incredibly scandalous.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 61: "Animus"
15. ↑ I had a decision to make, about whether or not to look away as it pulled up her dress. Basic Midwestern modesty demanded it, but that would let the devil know that I cared, and not just this current one, but all future ones.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 68: "Seeing Red"
16. ↑ “And, ah,” I said. “In terms of modesty?”
“That … wasn’t really something I’d considered, sorry, I should have,” said Amaryllis. “We can put up a curtain, I suppose, would that be acceptable? It wasn’t really a problem with Grak, obviously.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Puritanical Midwestern views, et cetera.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 93: "Bottle Episode"
17. ↑ The foods on offer were all Midwestern comfort foods, with a dash of Southern cuisine thrown in there. I’d spotted barbeque, fried chicken, collard greens, cornbread, and coleslaw.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 126: "Ever Onward"
18. ↑ Now that I was paying more attention, I saw something I’d missed: half the buildings were made of cobblestone, with thatched roofs. That fact hadn’t even registered with me. I wasn’t sure whether I had mistaken them for something else or simply not processed them, but it was another reminder that this wasn’t Kansas.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 3: "Solely Responsible"
19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Back on Earth, my dad had been big into helping people out, and a few times I went with him when he would bring his truck and tools across Kansas to help people who had suffered through tornado strikes. Back in 2011 I remember going to Reading and helping pick through piles of merchandise at a yarn store to see what was salvageable after the roof had been torn off and let the rain in. As tornados went, that had been a bad one, an EF3 hitting the town almost perfectly … and yet we’d gone through Reading only a few years later, and even though half the town had been destroyed it was almost all back in place, all except the trees.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 11: "A Winding Course"
20. ↑ And legally? In Kansas, having sex with a fifteen-year-old was classed as criminal sodomy, a felony that carried a sentence of up to five years in prison, with no close-in-age exemption to speak of.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 121: "Maddie"
21. ↑ It could have been Kansas, or Nebraska, or virtually anywhere in the Midwest.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 8: "Diamond and Iron"
22. ↑ “And it’s not like I was someone special before coming here. I was probably one of the least important people in Bumblefuck, Kansas, and my home town wasn’t in any way important to the state, which in turn was, you know -- they called them flyover states because for the most part, the only interaction you had with them was to look down during a plane trip and then maybe think ‘man that’s a flat and boring state’.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 69: "In Mutual Congress"
23. ↑ “And that was Bumblefuck, Kansas,” I finally finished. “It’s where Uther was from, it’s where I was from, and it wasn’t at all special in any way, not in the context of a thousand other towns exactly like it. There’s no reason for me to be special.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 109: "The Veil of the World"
24. ↑ Dream-skewer theory: I was actually a guy from Aerb who was suffering from delusions that he was from a place called Earth, complete with memories of my pet hamster Mildew, the phone number of a Chinese takeout place in Bumblefuck, Kansas called the Great Wall, the time my grandmother had chastised me for using the salad fork during dinner, hundreds of little tiny things like that, along with all the big ones. Cypress had said that happened before, so maybe, but it didn’t explain the game overlay either.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 3: "Solely Responsible"
25. ↑ I hadn’t eaten since … well, since I had eaten a hamburger and fries in the cafeteria of Bumblefuck High School, and I wasn’t sure that counted. I hadn’t had any water in nearly as long.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 4: "Reaver"
26. ↑ The biggest difference between the tattoo shop in Bumblefuck, Kansas and the one in Barren Jewel was the effort put into sanitation; Amaryllis was getting a tattoo from a guy who didn’t seem like he’d ever heard of latex gloves, cross-contamination, blood-borne illnesses, or anything like that.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 17: "Voting Blocs"
27. ↑ Bumblefuck, Kansas was large enough that our high school offered exactly one computer science elective, and I had taken it the first semester of senior year.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 63: "The Chemical History of a Candle"
28. ↑ Then, when a fifth of the population of Bumblefuck died, two thousand people, I … I had no idea.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 137: "Darili Irid"
29. ↑ Before I bought the book, I looked for Parsmont, which was sat right in the middle of a huge area of mostly-flat farmland, an area that was equivalent in size to the entire Grain Belt of the United States.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 69: "In Mutual Congress"
30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 30.2 30.3 “Why do people live in Flint, Michigan, why don’t they just move somewhere where there’s clean water and functional city services? Why do people starve to death in Africa when they could just fly to America and buy food from supermarkets there? Why do those dumb Chinese peasants toil away in factories making cheap cellphones for pennies an hour instead of just moving to San Francisco?”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 15: "Whys and Wherefores"
31. ↑ Cranberry Bay was (very) loosely based off of San Francisco. It was built up on the tip of a peninsula that made up one side of the bay’s mouth. There was no enormous bridge spanning the bay here, but there were piers jutting out into the cold bay water, an island with a maximum security prison on it, and steep hills divided into colorful districts. Every year, cranberries floated up from the depths of Cranberry Bay and were scooped up with large floating nets, to be gathered and sold around the world.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 38: "Don't Split the Party"
32. ↑ “But no, they were nobodies, a teenage girl from medieval France, an idiot teenager who had been in the middle of the Civil War, disparate times and places, nothing obviously relevant to me. It took me some time to see the narrative purpose of them. They were a temptation from the path of heroism, an invitation to indulge in the past, or maybe a call to remember who I was and what I was doing. I’ve done a fair job at resisting those temptations, or at least cloaking them in the guise of art or work. You’ve seen some of that, I’m sure.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 109: "The Veil of the World"
33. ↑ (I hadn’t seen any in the shire-reeve’s or any of the shops that we’d been in, but I wasn’t sure that meant anything. The Risen Lands were in an exclusion zone, and making assumptions about the rest of the world based on what I saw here would be like an alien landing in Chernobyl and trying to infer what humanity was like from what it saw.)
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 7: "Twenty Questions"
34. ↑ “I mean, obviously you can’t start as the King of England, but I’ll see what I can do about a watery tart throwing a sword.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 7: "Twenty Questions"