24's World Building Extravaganza: Dioda · 2:18am Mar 24th, 2014

Here we are, children! Welcome to 24's very first World Building Extravaganza! I'm honored to have you all here with me. Truly, it's a pleasure. But enough with the formalities. Let's get on with what we're all here for. By popular demand, I will be answering the following question, posted by Sorren and asked again by numerous other people:

I want to know what happened after the exodus and what became of Dioda afterwards. As far as I am aware in my readings so far, Dioda has long since been forgotten.

Well, my child, consider your question answered!!

First things first, here's the mandatory spoiler reading:
Medium: The end of Of Skies Long Forgotten

Now that that's out of the way, let's give you all a refresher on what happened at the end of Of Skies Long Forgotten. At the climactic battle of Stratopolis, Emperor Magnus committed the majority of his army to destroying the final Cirran stronghold in the war. Emperor Hurricane, in a play to try and save his people, ordered civilians to evacuate Stratopolis and begged for soldiers to remain and die for them, buying enough time for the civilians to escape and fly across the sea to newly discovered lands. Hurricane managed to rally a sizable defense, and even though he was badly outnumbered, he and his legionaries fought tooth and nail for Stratopolis against overwhelming griffon forces. Regardless, it was not a fight the Legion could win; by the time Hurricane and Silver Sword had fallen back to the palace, the majority of Cirran defense in Stratopolis had been silenced and the griffons were clawing apart the last bits of the Legion.

Now here's the part that's largely been regarded by you, the readers, as one of the greatest moments in A Song of Storms. Silver Sword forces Hurricane to leave and flee to his wife, Swift Spear, and their unborn foal, giving him the chance to live while signing himself off to certain death. When the griffons break into the palace, lead by Emperor Magnus' High Guard, Silver kills several of them before finally being taken down by Magnus himself. However, that wasn't enough for Silver, and in the very definition of going out in a blaze of glory, burns himself and the griffon god-emperor alive, killing Magnus and himself in one fell swoop.

And that's the last we see of Dioda, apart from the Exodus from Altus.

Alright, that's all taken care of. Now let's go on to the fun part, where I actually answer the question.

Well, first let's take a look at what happened in the throne room, coupled with a little background knowledge. Magnus was a demigod. This isn't some sort of boastful claim on his behalf; he actually had control over the winds, much like how Celestia and Luna control the sun and moon. As such, he considers himself invincible, and with good reason.

But how did he manage to actually die if he's so powerful? Well, have you ever played a strategy game where you're so good at it that you decide to start it at a handicap to see if you could win? Congratulations, that's exactly what Magnus did in the Red Cloud War. He is a brilliant and cunning strategist, and he managed to outmaneuver Cirra and play its massive strength against it, even when badly outnumbered and starting from a subjugated position. But that would be easy anyway if he just swatted Cirra's cities like Nimbus and Stratopolis out of the sky with his control over the wind. So instead of doing that, Magnus took his power and locked it away, wanting to see if he could best the Cirrans without having to go beast mode on them and effectively "cheat". He purposefully cut off his access to his godlike abilities to give himself a challenge. An amusing challenge.

The best part about it? He won, too. It was a Pyrrhic victory, but he won. He simply wasn't around to fully revel in it. He was too busy being turned into KFC.

I could go on and on about Magnus, but more detail's not essential here. The point I was making first is that why didn't the griffons help him when he was burning alive, if he was their god?

The answer for that is exceedingly simple. The gods do not die.

You see, Magnus had spent all this time building up the faith in his followers that he was their god. That faith was supposed to be unshakeable. But the griffon High Guards in the palace that day, the ones who watched him burn to death before their eyes and did nothing, saw something to the contrary. If Magnus truly was their god, he wouldn't be felled by a cheating pegasus and fire alone. He'd have put out the fire at the snap of his talons. But no, that didn't happen. Magnus wasn't a god after all. He was just as mortal as everygriffon else.

And if he was a mortal, then there was a sudden vacancy at the top of the ladder that any other mortal could fill. It wasn't reserved for the gods anymore. Any griffon with the ferocity and cunning could claim it for themselves.

The Griffon States

When Magnus died, Gryphus died along with him. Magnus had no line of succession in his chain of command; he believed he was going to be around forever. That means that when he died, there were a hundred or so griffons that had just as much of a claim to the throne as their compatriots. And the griffon High Guard does not share.

In short, a hundred griffon brothers suddenly became a hundred griffon kings and emperors. Lines were drawn. People took sides. Blood was shed, and it wasn't pegasus blood.

The state of Gryphus splintered apart into dozens and dozens of tiny nation-states. Small towns either rose to power and collected their neighbors under their banners or pledged fealty to the larger, neighboring cities and any number of warlords who had seized power while it was still ripe for the taking. Militias rose up and proclaimed themselves to be the true will of the griffon people, expanding their territory and burning down the farms of their neighbors. Families split apart across divided loyalty lines. Towns were decimated by the infighting. Dioda ran red with more blood than it had ever seen before.

By the end of the first year of fighting, around a dozen factions remained standing. The majority of the continent was split between them. At this point, each faction was powerful enough that it could survive going toe-to-toe with any of its neighbors, and nobody could commit an overwhelming invasion of their neighbor's land without leaving themselves at risk of invasion. Instead, border wars and skirmishes were fought for the next hundred years, and twelve factions eventually became twelve different nation-states by the turn of the century. These nation-states functioned a lot like the nation-states of medieval or renaissance Europe, and eventually an uneasy peace fell upon the continent, arisen from the necessity to focus more on surviving and growing rather than on any sort of wish by the respective leaders. This peace lasted for two thousand years, until Magnus inexplicably returned... but that's another story for another day. Suffice it to say, when Magnus returned, the age of the independent griffon states came to a crashing halt. The continent was once more unified through force, and in its place, Magnus recreated the state of Gryphus. Furthermore, he finished off the job he started in the Red Cloud War, because despite the victory at Stratopolis, not all the pegasi fled Dioda.

Pileus: The Last Remaining Cirran Stronghold

If you recall from the end of Of Skies Long Forgotten, in chapter 2, a legionary says the following:

“You’re Thunder Gale’s son, eh? I was just a recruit when he got hurt. Damn shame too, only heard good things about him. He would’ve made a good Praetorian.” The Legionnaire turned back to his companions and lazily waved a hoof at them. “You’re good to go. Enjoy yourselves down there. Wish I could get me some of that Pileus wine from the north while I’m on duty.”

During the Red Cloud War, Magnus pushed south through the mountains, sweeping aside the Cirran resistance at Feathertop and pushing deep into the pegasus heartland. He destroyed Zephyrus and several other cities, all of which were in the south of Dioda, before swinging north and attacking Stratopolis. When Stratopolis fell, and Magnus along with it, the Gryphon war machine stopped. No further progress was made; the griffon armies stopped where they were and began to pick sides. This means that Altus was never reached by the griffon war machine, and even though it was evacuated, more importantly, Pileus in the north was never reached. Pileus was not a small town like Altus; it had a population comparable to the city of Nyx in the eastern edge of the Cirran heartland. As such, it's inconceivable to think that the city was completely abandoned when the call for the exodus was sounded. Instead, a sizable group of proud pegasi, not willing to leave their homeland and die far to the west, were determined to stay and fight to the death against the final push of Magnus' armies.

But that push never came. Instead, the pegasi of Pileus waited one week, two weeks, a month, without seeing anything. They knew that Stratopolis had fallen, and they knew that the griffons were still in the area en masse. But they were confused why Magnus didn't destroy them; surely the griffon god-king would have any number of Cirran maps that showed exactly where their city was. He wouldn't push this hard to eradicate the pegasi only to give up in the final stretch. Something was terribly wrong, but they had no idea what it was.

With their comrades long since disappeared somewhere to the west and nowhere to really turn to, the pegasi of Pileus did the only thing they could do: watch, wait, and bide their time. While the griffon nation-states warred with each other, trying to take over Dioda and claim absolute power, Pileus refrained from making themselves known to the rest of the continent. Instead, they drew up fortifications, strengthened their legion, and prepared for anything. They remained hidden in the mountains to the north for many years before something finally happened.

Seventeen years after Stratopolis had fallen, a griffon army campaigning in the northern lands of their neighbors and rival in the area got waylaid by a storm (Magnus' control over the winds was released back into the wild with his death). The army ended up smashed and battered against the northern mountains, and with an enemy army hot on their tails, the griffons, led by their king, Windrich, withdrew into the safety of the mountain range. It was there, tired, bruised, and dying of starvation and thirst, that the griffon king and the remnants of his army stumbled upon Pileus, the last of the Cirran cities. The king of Pileus, a pegasus known as Aquila, surrounded the griffon army with his own legion and demanded that the griffons surrender or die.

The white flags were hard to see against the snow on the ground, but they were there alright, and the griffon king resigned to his fate at the hands-- no, hooves of a race he thought long since destroyed.

But Aquila was hardly a brash king. He knew that Windrich's army wasn't going to be the last griffons to ever stumble across Pileus. And certainly one day a larger and more powerful griffon army would discover Pileus and bring it to the ground. Windrich was in a desperate position, but Aquila was in deeper. Without allies, he realized, Pileus stood no chance against the griffons that he believed would one day conquer Dioda. Instead, he knew he had to throw his hat into the fight and side with a king who owed him something when it was all said and one. So one day, Aquila took Windrich out of cell and made a deal with him; Aquila would release and resupply his armies at no cost to help them get home, and he would fight with him (not for him, with him), in exchange for the king's friendship and trust once he had won the war. In doing so, Aquila had forged the first alliance between griffons and pegasi in hundreds of years.

With Aquila's help, Windrich was able to secure land for his nation and push against his neighbors, but he failed to accomplish his goal of becoming the one king of Gryphus. But Aquila's deal wasn't without any sort of payoff, however; Despite Windrich's failures, the griffon state of Der Unüberwindlich (The Invincible) and the pegasus state of Pileus remained steadfast allies for two thousand years. But it was not to last; when Magnus returned and set about unifying the griffon people, he finished what he started, wiping out both Pileus and Der Unüberwindlich and making sure that no record of his death had survived. Destroying the remains of the Cirran Empire was the final step in this process.

The Zebra Tribes

This is something that will be mentioned in the upcoming chapter of Summer Lands, and is something that some of you may already have noticed if you've read LoyalLiar's stories, Where Loyalties Lie. In modern times, the Zebras live in the western half of Dioda, in the jungles and rain forests neighboring the griffon state of Grivridge. In the map above, you can see something noted as "Unorganized Zebra Territory." During the time of OSLF, the zebras live on a small series of islands to the south of Dioda. As Commander Hurricane says in Summer Lands: Chapter 5,

Hurricane nodded. “At the very southern tip of Dioda, scattered across a few small island chains, were the striped tribals. They called themselves zebras. They didn’t have anything Cirra wanted, and they knew not to come to the mainland.” He paused. “I don’t know what’s happened to them since Magnus tore Cirra to the ground. If pegasi were below the Usurper, then I can’t imagine how much farther down the tribals are.”

The zebras thus had an established tribal civilization on these islands that knew not to try and head north to where the mighty pegasus empire resided. But once Cirra was gone, and the zebras noted that they never saw pegasi in their lands anymore, they grew curious. They built boats and sailed north, eventually making landfall in the rainforests. Scouting around the southern edge of Dioda and sticking mainly to the jungle, they found not a single pegasus. With the one check that had kept them from moving to the mainland gone, the zebras returned to the islands and spread the news. This led to whole tribes tearing up their roots on the islands and sailing north, replanting them somewhere within the jungle or the plains of southern Dioda. Four zebra tribes stayed behind, one for each island, but the rest moved onwards. The islands had been becoming too small and too depleted to support the zebra population for much longer, so the Exodus of the pegasi was an opportune time for the zebras to finally gain access to the mainland.

From there, the zebra tribes rapidly took root in the fertile and spacious land and began to prosper. Their advancement went widely unnoticed by the warring griffons, and by the time they actually were noticed, the zebras were too deeply rooted into relatively insignificant land for any griffon to focus on driving them out of their territory. It is because of this grace that the zebras have been able to survive into the present day with little interference from Magnus and the griffons to the east, when the griffon god-king was so eager to destroy the pegasi and solidify his hold over the continent. Border skirmishes between the griffons and the zebra tribes happen from time to time, but nobody really cares enough about the other to try to make significant headway into each other's territory.

*****

So that's what happened in Dioda after the Red Cloud War. There's so much story potential in this alone that I could pull numerous stories from it and easily have things to write for the next five years. Perhaps one day I will. But for now, I hope that this helped fill in your head cannons and give you some interesting lore to consider when thinking about what's going on back in Dioda simultaneous with the plot of Snow and Shadows and Summer Lands. It was sure fun to write about for me.

And that concludes 24's first (and hopefully not last) World Building Extravaganza! Now that you've read my 3000 words on this subject, maybe you have questions of your own. I'm more than willing to discuss questions further related to this topic with you in the comments below, or in the forums for our group, The Price of Loyalty. Furthermore, I encourage you guys to discuss what you think with each other and form your own ideas. Worldbuilding usually works in one direction, but sometimes you guys give me ideas of your own that I like to then retroactively incorporate into my stories. And nothing's more fun than having an intelligent conversation, am I right?

Lastly, feel free to ask your questions from the previous blog post again here, or come up with new ones that you'd like me to answer! Like before, I'll pick one based on popular demand or pick the one that interests me the most (in this case, it was both). I'll consider it for a few days, and then post a blog post around the same time (roughly) as this one, next Sunday night. Like I said, as long as you guys have the interest, I'll keep making these!

Ante Legionem nihil erat, et nihil erit post Legionem
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Armasyll

Armasyll #1 · Mar 24th, 2014 · · ·

Poor Pileus, we hardly knew thee

Boott

Boott #2 · Mar 24th, 2014 · · ·

"The fate of Pileus"
I like the sound of that.

I guess my question still stands:
You seem to draw a lot from Rome (and i guess the medieval middle ages in some way to) What are some things that you used from the IRL world and history to be adapted and ponyed for the story?
An example of this is when you used the gettysburg address in Jade's speech in SaS.

djthomp

djthomp #3 · Mar 24th, 2014 · · ·

Ooooo, fascinating. Makes me wonder how it might have gone down if Hurricane had sent the Cirran remnant north to Pileus instead of across the ocean to proto-Equestria, or if Pileus ever made contact with Equestria during those two thousand years.

Sorren