For as long as anyone could remember, the land would change. Coasts would shift, subtly. A jetty here, a tide pool there. The outlet of a river might wander through, then be swallowed back up by the land as if it had never been. Hills would shake off the winter snow and roam under the planes.
And then the cartographers arrived, and everything stood still.
Based Xi engaging in dark cartographomancy to cast a curse on the apartheid state
Oh, that sounds like a fun historical fiction.
For as long as anyone could remember, the land would change. Coasts would shift, subtly. A jetty here, a tide pool there. The outlet of a river might wander through, then be swallowed back up by the land as if it had never been. Hills would shake off the winter snow and roam under the planes.
And then the cartographers arrived, and everything stood still.
there’s a fun inversion of “the map is not the territory” lurking in here
This is vaguely the plot of Loop Hero.