Part 15 of the Palaververse: Pachydermia · 2:30am Jan 6th, 2016
Happy new year to ane and a'! I hope everyone's own festivities to bring in the occasion were as (un)civilised as personally preferred, and that the year ahead offers nothing but greater amounts of happiness and (un)civilisedness. My apologies for a complete lack of writing or blog posts in the past while. Hopefully, the post below should get things back into gear with its look at the most southerly of the civilized species and realms, the elephants of Pachydermia!
The usual applies here, as it most always does. If you have a keen preference for a particular nation or subject or anything-in-particular to be covered in the next post, then leave a nomination for it in the comments. By my reckoning, the last major player to not be covered is Ceratos, after which I'll open up Antlertis for nominations if people are still keen on it. If you have any other follow-up questions about something I've neglected or skimmed over only briefly in the post itself, then feel free to pose them as well. Themaskedferret persists in unparalleled proofreading for these and in being an all-round groovy person.
Past the picture, pachyderms!
South of the Fractious Lands, the continent of Dactylia curves southwards, stretching around the azure waters of the Asinial Main. Great savannah plains sweep down from the rocky coastline, pockmarked with meandering rivers, light forest, foothills cast off from the Stormshield Mountains, and tendrils of jungle spilling out from the Dactylian Interior. Eventually, even these few features give way to expanses of chilly steppes, broken only by a thin band of glaciar ridges and forested mountains. And past these, vast and haunted ice plains run all the way to Utmost South.
This land, from the savannahs to the steppes, is Ancient and Glorious Pachydermia, home of the elephant tribes of Dactylia. An old and disunited kingdom at the end of the world, caught between the arctic wastes and the sea, Pachydermia remains aloof in the face of many outside affairs. An outsider here would find themselves in a powerful land of apparent plenty, divided by lines of allegiance and caste and mutual suspicion. Pachydermia lies mired in intrigue and secrets — some more grimly guarded than others.
The elephants are the largest of all the world’s sentient and communal beings, with even members of the smallest elephant tribe — the forest elephants — nearly twice the height of a pony at the withers when fully-grown, with brush elephants and mammoths coming in anywhere between twice and nearly three times a pony’s height. All elephant tribes possess great natural strength and resilience in accordance with their size, can deftly manipulate objects and tools with their trunk, and all can channel magic to at least a rudimentary extent through their tusks. Different tribes have their own specialties, with the relatively small forest elephants wielding superior magic-channeling capabilties on a par with any unicorn, while the physically bigger and larger-eared brush elephants possess strength and endurance to an outright unfair degree. (Unfounded rumours even persist that some brush elephant calves have been able to use their large ears to fly.) The southern mammoths, in addition to a body of fur that would do the average shag carpet proud, likewise possess great endurance as well as a natural rapport for any terrain in which they find themselves, allowing them to instinctively suss out healthy land, possible dangers, and any supernatural wrongness even in territories that are new to them.
And past even all these talents shared with other sentient species, elephants possess a gift unique to themselves. From adolescence onwards, elephants develop a nigh-eidetic memory. The prodigious and indelible amounts of knowledge this allows elephants to absorb over their course of their lifetimes has allowed many great scholars to emerge across the species, many dabbling widely in a multitude of fields. The talent isn’t an entirely clear-cut benefit - extricating relevant memories from the sheer quantities accumulated can be a skill all in itself, and an excess of unpleasant and unforgettable memories can pose severe mental problems for elephants as they age. Regardless, their memories have allowed many elephant scholars to become true masters in their fields and has allowed elephantkind as a whole to accumulate great amounts of lore.
Evidence of early settlements and kingdoms in Pachydermia dates back nearly two-and-a-half thousand years, with the first agricultural communities of forest and brush elephants blossoming along the banks of the rivers flowing through the savannah and into the sea. Although the earliest distinct tribes largely settled in the areas after which they are named, the proximity of the forest and brush elephants soon led to common intermingling. Dozens of petty tribal communities and kingdoms developed across the coast and up into the savannah. A relative lack of natural barriers and the natural routes provided by the rivers allowed for constant trade and communication across the little shahdoms, and although conflict was sparked from time to time as both populations and demand for arable land increased, the ongoing taming of the savannah allowed most communities to keep themselves fed and peaceful.
As these early settlements grew and flourished and stone walls and gilded spires became common sights across the savannah skies, sophisticated systems of aristocratic rule supported by bureaucrats and scholars became the norm across most of early Pachydermia. The relative interconnectedness of the land allowed for many common customs and ideas to spread, and when inventions such as the written word emerged - independently from the rest of the world — they proliferated. The accumulating lore of elephantkind, previously passed down in oral style, was transcribed at last.
However, such developments brought about a backlash from many of the elephant scholars and elite, who recognised such transcription as a threat to their own monopoly on whatever knowledge they’d acquired and passed down within their own families. Many agitated for the control and suppression of written knowledge, lest unworthy eyes see it fleetingly and irretrievably learn it as a consequence. Whatever libraries existed soon came to be jealously guarded, and the value of lore and knowledge that was passed on only within a particular family or trade became another common custom across the early Pachydermians.
Something like a rough caste system slowly emerged, with families of scholars, warriors, and artisans safeguarding the secrets of their trades to ensure their own continued value and bringing only those deemed trustworthy into their families, while nobles and shahs hoarded their own lore and engaged in countless intrigues and deals to try and acquire the private lore of others. This emerging division in class and caste even saw the settlements themselves fracture, with different castes coming to occupy their own neighbourhoods and learning only from their own families and ad-hoc neighbourhood schools. Extremes of specialisation developed as a result, with many becoming experts in their own field - whether medicine, the arts of war, mechanics, or proper farming - whilst being denied the lore of other fields.
While this fractiousness set in across the savannahs of Pachydermia and amongst the intermingled brush and forest elephants, the mammoth clans had mostly kept themselves to themselves on the great steppes and amidst the distant mountains and glaciers. Nomadic clans of mammoths traversed the harsh terrain of the steppes, passing down their own knowledge in a patchwork oral manner. Their clans were as diverse as the communities of their northern kin with each ruled by its own khan, though the sheer size of the steppes, the small numbers of mammoths, and the lack of any lore-hoarding meant that conflict amongst them was even more of a rarity.
Thus did the lands of what would become Pachydermia stand fifteen-hundred years ago. And they may still stand thus today, if the outside world hadn’t interfered. But unlike for other nations, no conquering army or aggressive traders forced a change.
Past the ring of glaciers and mountains, amidst the endless ice and howling winds of the Utmost South, something stirred. And one winter, when the regular motion of the then-unicorn-controlled sun saw the Utmost South shrouded under six months of twilight, that same something moved north.
The first any of the northern brush or forest elephant shahs knew of anything out of the ordinary was when the shattered and traumatised remains of a mammoth clan appeared at the court of Shahzadi Nelly, a young and powerful forest elephant shah whose domains spread across the edge of the steppes. Alarmed by the hunted and haunted look of the mammoths, whose youngest looked as mentally worn as elderly warriors, Nelly spoke privately with the broken clan’s khan, Goliath.
The complete and exact details of what Goliath revealed to Nelly has never been discovered, and remains sealed away to this day. Only fragments have emerged, including the fact that the mammoth clan had been fleeing from something and that many other clans had already been caught and lost, as well as a few patchwork details and images. Cold light pulsing above vast and black stormclouds. Bodies filled with frozen blood that managed to keep moving. Skulls crowned with writhing antlers. And thunder that filled the world, sounding all around from beneath sheets of mile-thick ice.
Goliath pleaded for aid, and Nelly, eager for glory in spite of whatever horrors awaited her on the steppe, mustered her warrior castes to lead an expedition back alongside Goliath to fight whatever problem awaited. Five thousand warriors marched out alongside their shah. Over a year later, under two thousand returned, all of them harrowed and shell-shocked by memories they refused to describe. Nelly herself, as hollow-eyed and grim as any of her soldiers, returned to her own palace to carefully write down what she’d witnessed. The knowledge was placed under unprecedented lock and bar, withheld to all but Nelly’s own eyes. She extended her authority and protection to the mammoth clans, and many of the survivors were all too happy to take shelter in her lands.
Nelly passed away soon after, succumbing at an early age to the same eventual madness that afflicts elephants with an indelible head full of horrors. In her last lucid moments, she left the sternest of instructions to her heir, Elmer. He had to read the sealed knowledge, for all that it may harrow him as it had done her. He had to continue to safeguard all the tribes under his rule, forest and brush elephants and mammoths alike, and to extend the shahdom’s authority over the steppe. Once he was ready and their warriors had recovered, he would have to sally forth to bring other shahs under his rule so that their own resources could also be used to safeguard the realm. And he would have to show the same knowledge to his own heir in time and pass down the same instructions. If all that was followed, Pachydermia might be ready for the next time the Utmost South stirred.
Elmer, as naturally dutiful as water was wet, set out to obey these instructions in dramatic style. Uniting the mammoth’s own warriors with his disciplined soldiers, he embarked on a series of rapid military campaigns into smaller adjacent shahdoms, extracting oaths of fealty from those he conquered. Their forces were broken up and mixed with his own, and further expeditions were sent into the steppe to erect magically-warded forts and watchtowers along the ring of mountains running around the Utmost South, ostensibly to mark the border of his new holdings in the steppes. The rapid series of conquests encouraged many small rulers to peacefully bend the knee to Elmer in advance, and the shah found himself the overlord of many of his theoretical equals. He created the new title of Shahanshah — King of Kings — to add an air of legitimacy to his new overlordship across much of Pachydermia. Unity had been suddenly and violently pressed upon the land, and the continued inscrutability of Elmer’s motives frustrated many of his vassals and bewildered those external enemies that yet remained. Some of these same enemies found common cause in resisting Elmer’s expansion, and a few of their number took the unprecedented step of pooling their lore to try and find an edge.
An edge was duly found, and one night as Elmer and some of his personal guard were crossing the savannah, they abruptly found themselves the unhappy targets of a magically-enhanced and maddened giant sand kraken. The first Shahanshah and his entire entourage were devoured in a matter of moments, before any heir could have been sired and taught the secrets. The mammoths drifted away from the north, escaping any potential retribution, but keeping certain oral accounts and legends alive in the minds of a few trusted khans. Their silent watch over the mercifully-silent south began. In the north, the threat of an all-conquering Shahanshah had seemingly vanished, and the liberated shahs could rest easy. For now.
The legacy of the conquest and the concept of a Shahanshah remained alive in the hearts of many of those shahs who’d escaped the worst of the fighting, particularly those who’d conspired to assassinate Elmer and who though it only fair that they get first crack at filling the vacuum created. They struck out from their coastal holdings, populous and enriched by the trade that existed between them, Zebrica, the Fractious Lands, and remote Ceratos. A mere few decades after Elmer’s passing, Shah Jumbo became the second Shahanshah by right of conquest and his expanding-hegemony, and succeeded in ensuring the title passed down to his heir.
In the centuries since, the title of Shahanshah and rule over all Pachydermia has passed from dynasty to dynasty, tossed around by the constant intrigue and feuding between the different great families of the noble caste. In the few longer periods of stability and rule provided by the longer-lived and more competent Shahanshahs, the nation has been knitted gradually closer together by the creation of roads, large-scale fertilisation of the savannah, and securing trade routes against any piracy.
One such period of stable rule saw Pachydermia successfully resist the initial forays from the Asinians and their merchants/corsairs, after they’d freed themselves from the Capric Empire and set an avaricious gaze abroad. Shahanshah Echo recognised the threat these foreign interlopers posed to Pachydermia’s wealth, and upon seeing the thorough job they’d done of dismantling the An-Antelan fleet, she ordered the creation of a Pachydermian fleet with which to secure the shipping lanes. Scholarship and secrets were bartered for with Zebrica, and soon large alchemically-hardened Pachydermian ships could be commonly seen ploughing through the ocean waves. The mass of the ships and their occupants meant that magical engines were often employed to power them in addition to — or in place of — wind alone, and the robustness of the Pachydermian fleet in response to piracy and in the face of Asinian predation ensured that the Asinial fleet always had one part of the waves it didn’t entirely rule. Even throughout subsequent periods of misrule and strife, the fleet of Pachydermia has remained consistently disciplined and high-quality, ensuring a constant flow of spices, timber, foreign manufacturing, and other goods into the nation.
One such period of misrule came after the disastrous attempted conquest of the Fractious Lands by Shahanshah Greyhide and his close friend, Pharaoh Zero of Zebrica. Pachydermia had always had a mixed history with the little realms to its north, with trade, alliances of convenience, raids, and open hostilities constantly shifting on the border between the Shahs and the Fractious rulers. Several of the Shahanshahs had even tried to bring parts of the Fractious Land forcefully under Pachydermian rulership, but Greyhide’s great attempted conquest was the most ambitious yet. He marched north with tens of thousands of professional warrior caste elephants, and saw both himself and much of his army eventually perish in the Battle of the Black Barrens. The shock of the defeat saw Greyhide’s successor, Stonetusk, offer terms of surrender to the Fractious coalition, and the perceived weakness of the move saw Stonetusk’s own lords and vassal shahs turn against his rule. Another long period of strife for the throne followed between all manner of claimants, reversing Pachydermia’s foreign ambitions and leaving it unable to meaningfully respond to the formation of the Serene Confederation of Gazellen to its north.
The strife, which lasted for nearly three centuries and saw no Shahanshah claim the title for longer than a few years or pass it to their heirs, only recently came to an end. Shahanshah Tantor, a brush elephant noble from the Gazellen border, came to power as part of a grand coalition to establish order at long last. He ruled for over ten years, securing the peace of Pachydermia and forcing some semblance of order on every noble and shah that hadn’t willingly knelt. An attempt to secure his rule was also made to a prominent shahzadi, Topsy, although their initial inability to produce an heir left the risk that the succession could fall to Tantor’s feckless younger brother, Trumpeter. Trumpeter, an adventurer at heart and uninterested in the affairs of court, spent long stretches of time away from the court, often ranging out into the southern savannah and dwelling among the mammoths. While in their company, Trumpeter earned enough trust to hear a few old cryptic legends, some of which suggested at the existence of an old stronghold formerly owned by the first Shahanshah containing great treasure and secrets. Trumpeter spent much of his time seeking it out, comfortably far enough away from court to not be a source of stress to his brother. He returned only briefly to celebrate the long-awaited birth of his nephew Sailears, the new heir to the Pachydermian throne, before setting off into the wild once more.
Two years after Sailears’ birth, a tragic accident on a ship saw both Tantor and Topsy drowned on the high seas, leaving the calf as the new Shahanshah. Some nobles and shahs squabbled over who would act as the Lord Regent during Sailears’ infancy, while others sharpened their blades in anticipation of another series of wars for the throne.
At the height of the bickering, however, a familiar figure trudged in through the palace gates. Trumpeter, a grim and hollow look in his eyes, coldly asserted his right to act as Lord Regent for his dead brother’s son, flatly refused to discuss where he’d been or what he’d been doing, and calmly kicked a tusk off the first petty shah to protest both issues.
In the six years since, Sailears has grown into a cheerful and well-adjusted Shahanshah-in-waiting, still undergoing his schooling in court etiquette, duelling, political affairs, and stern rulership whilst kept at the sidelines at Court sessions under the eyes of his uncle. His natural and casual familiarity with elephants across all castes and foreign diplomats has left many endeared and others greatly frustrated, and all hopes that he’ll acquire some form of proper aristocratic haughty reserve seem to be in vain. Palace guard have had to go on the hunt for him on multiple occasions to drag him away from blethering to anybody and everybody in the city and countryside. Although this would ordinarily place him at a high risk of kidnapping or assassination from scheming shahs, the private threats made by Trumpeter to many of the most obvious suspects regarding their limbs and blunt axes has served to keep the calf safe so far.
Pachydermia itself remains peaceful and stable under his notional rule as well. The lack of conflict between the nobility and shahs has allowed the lower caste labourers and farmers to know an unprecedented amount of peace. The brush and forest elephants remain as united as they’ve always done, and the few mammoths living on the savannah and within the settlements keep their heads down as a curious but mostly harmless minority. Those that still dwell on the steppes answer to the Shahanshah only in the loosest of theoretical senses, and are seemingly happy to repay the favour of being paid little mind by their brush and forest kin.
The castes remain fairly rigid in the modern day, and are still marked by the old customs of segregated neighbourhoods and each family or community organising their own schooling and social services. However, the changing times have blurred the lines between many of them and encouraged others to foray out into the wider world. While farmers may still largely dwell outside the larger settlements and on collective farmsteads running across the tamed savannah, many of their communities now include a family of artisans to help build and repair modern farm machinery, and a few discreet marriages between farmers and mechanics have even been reported. Many warrior caste members who find themselves surplus to the royal army’s or their liege lord’s requirements seek mercenary work in the outside world and send money home. Crews of elephant mercenaries are a regular sight in the Asinial Main and Ceratos Sea. The nobles, for their part, remain as insular and jealous of their secrets as they have always done, though some have begun to travel abroad to northern Dactylia and Ungula. The wealth of accessible lore available from the Zebrican Collegium and other universities there is always something of a pleasant culture shock, though the relatively casual familiarity between all ranks and professions poses more of a challenge.
Trumpeter himself loves his nephew and has every intention of acting as a good regent and securing the realm in time for Sailears’ rule, and has every confidence Sailears will grow into the strong and proper rule the nation needs, for all that his nephew’s apparent vacuum where a sense of proper decorum ought to exist may be an ongoing source of frustration,. Attempts have been made to finish his brother’s work in modernising the infrastructure, with both railways and airships gradually creeping across the savannah. The navy has received attention and funding in an effort to keep it capable of putting up a fight against Asinia’s Merchant Fleet should the need arise. The subjects of Gazellen and its own ambitions, Equestria’s current comfortable dominance, and the signs of stirring from Ceratos come up regularly in discussions between Trumpeter and his council, and plans, war strategies, and schemes for a renewed alliance with potential partners all lie in wait to be unleashed. And while the vassal shahs remain as generally tractable and united as grumpy cats, and undoubtedly continue to plot and hoard lore and secrets in their own courts, the risk of insurrection from them is as low as can be expected.
But it isn’t only the mundane political affairs of the realm and the world that hold Trumpeter’s attention, or which keep him awake at night. From fragmented legends told by mammoth shamans, from an ancient tome lying behind rusted locks in a ruined castle, and from tentative contacts amidst the outlying mammoth clans that still man Elmer’s old forts and watchtowers, he knows what dreams in the darkness past the glaciers. He knows that thunder can still be heard distantly from over the mountains, even when no stormclouds gather.
And he knows that after an age, cold wind has started to blow from the south once more.
One day, it’ll be a secret and duty to pass on to Sailears, an ancient duty now resurrected and hopefully never to be discharged. But for now, both Sailears and Pachydermia can enjoy peace of a sort under the savannah sun.
Ceratos please!
No Babar? Heresy!
How about some camels?
Fun fact: Camels are almost all jerkfaces with rude and cantankerous attitudes, but they all seem to possess an innate understanding of quantum physics.
Sailears is such a cutie.
Okay so a Sailears Cutie Mark Crusaders team up seems to be a thing that needs to happen at some point. Any good ideas for excuses for them to tag along with the girls for a state visit to Pachydermia?
Is Ceratos the only major civilization left?
Gee, I hadn't expected Lovecraftian horrors. :O Guess it's on to Ceratos next. I'd had something else I wanted last time, but I can't recall it now.
An excellent entry as always, though a small detail caught my attention. In the opening bit you use both '(un)civilized' and '(un)civilisedness'. I'd been told that the British way of spelling with an 's' though in the US we use the 'z'. I believe you mentioned being Scottish. Any reason for the use of both the American and British forms of the word?
Anyway I do agree that Ceratos should be next. Any plans for stuff after Antlertis or will that finish the series of blogs?
3667306
After the things with the Diamond dogs, I expected similar, but more dangerous, creatures would appear elsewhere.
Wait, what? You're gonna leave it there? You're not even gonna tell us who or what is responsible for Pachydermia's imminent doom? But... but you don't have time to write a story about that between all the other stuff I know you're planning! Carabas, I need answers here! Hey! Don't you ignore me! Where do you think you're going?! Carabas! Carabaaaaaaaaaaas!
No, but really, what is it?
3667306
Well, you know, the uttermost South is where the Mountains of Madness lay and all. It seems only fitting.
Nightmares must come from somewhence, after all
Interesting. Very interesting. :)
Ceratos seems to be the next destination on our whistle stop tour. I have enjoyed some of your references here, and I particularly like the Lovecraftian whateveritis in the south. I shall hope for more juicy details in the future...
3667132
Nomination for Ceratos noted!
3667151
The camels would count as one of the small nations making up Gazellen. My ability to blather at length about them may be limited, though I can still give it a go if you're truly keen. Superb and accurate fact there, I shan't deny. Perhaps something could be spun out of dynasties with members like King Bloody-Minded Psychopath and Queen Evil Brute.
3667171
Ain't he just?
3667301
Ceratos are the only major state player left in town, yep. And that team-up definitely needs to happen, if I can think of an appropriate reason for it ...
3667306
Nomination for Ceratos noted! Last time round, I think you enquired about the Gazellen Interior, which is totally nominatable as well.
3667326
Nomination for Ceratos noted! And the British spelling does indeed use an 's'. Blame my spell-checker (undoubtedly made by those confounded colonials) for that: I think I must have mangled the spelling of that first instance and foolishly trusted the spell-checker to correct it in a manner the Queen would approve of.
After Antlertis, anything else about the 'verse can be nominated - such as broader social customs, weapons and warfare, wildernesses, individual characters, or whichever. Not everything might be coverable in much detail, and some topics may be bundled alongside others, but I'm quite content to keep doing these as long as people remain interested and nominate things for me to write about.
3667357
Mysteries, mysteries, mysteries, how I do adore them.
One word amidst the descriptions for the relevant nastiness should provide a clue, though.
3667407
Lovecraft did the Antarctic-based cosmic horror first, and it seems only wise to follow his example.
Well, when a mummy Nightmare and a daddy Nightmare love each other very much ...
3667491
Glad you think so.
3667608
Lovecraftian thingimabobs seemed only appropriate.
Nomination for Ceratos noted! And glad to earn your continued approval, as always.
Persia, the steppe, and northern India... I presume forest elephants are Indian Elephants and brush are African Elephants? Next, I say Ceratos to finish off the major players, as a proper China-analogue always comes last.
As for Pachydermia, are the shahs still independent enough to be able to field armies/significant opposition, or are they basically satraps with hereditary claims and less personal power? Basically, I guess I'm asking if the Shahanshah is a ruler in the traditional Persian sense or a High King of Ireland sense?
As for the mammoths, are their clans particularly warlike, or more solely nomadic? If the former, is there any particular conflict between steppe clans/khans and nearby Gazellan nations?
3668048 Weapons huh?
Equestria is pretty Schizo Tech with stuff ranging from medieval (The Royal Guard's primary weapons appearing to be spears) to 1930's (The telephones in Manehatten). This could be explained by Ponies having little interest in weapons development and their innate magic already being OP at warfare. Maud Pie for example can do a very spectacular modern artillery impression with just some rocks and Pegasi have little need for bombs when they can already make guided tornadoes. I imagine the relatively advanced stuff would be in nations like Assinia where they have a tech base comparable to Equestria but whose innate magics are more subtle and less militarily relevant requiring ingenuity to close the gap.
3668364
Nomination for Ceratos noted! Spot on for the real-world equivalents to the forest and brush elephants. Using names pertaining to our own continents might have been a bit tricky to reconcile, after all, and other names had to be reproduced.
For the shahs, they're still capable in the modern day of mustering their own armies from the levies and warrior caste elephants in their domain, whether to serve at the pleasure of the Shahanshah or to rise up in insurrection. They still technically rule in their own names while pledging loyalty, nominal or otherwise, to the Shahanshah, and so Shahanshahs would probably better fit the High King mold. Shahanshahs tends to still possess substantial land and subjects in their own right, and so any disgruntled shah would at least need a few allies before openly rebelling.
The mammoths are primarily nomadic and ain't particularly warlike, so far as can be told at an outside glance, and they rarely raid other clans, other Pachydermians, and only have minimal contact with the outside world due to the distance between the steppes and the rest of Dactylia. Not that that stops some of the more southerly clans from possessing and maintaining old suits of barding and weaponry for some unspecified rainy day.
3668433
Schizo tech fully applies here, and outwith Corva and its black powder weaponry, most everyone's armaments cover the range from medieval to the most deranged of steam/clockpunk imaginings. Asinia's certainly a leading light in weapons development due to their own innate magic, and stuff like their onithopters and the Fear Nowt seen at the beginning of The Tempest would be amongst the most sophisticated military devices in the world.
I like Trumpter the wild adventurer, marshalling off to bring the light of civilization to the rural areas of the realm, a regular Timothy Elephant.
Poor Sailears, right now he's all cheerful and innocent, but eventually he's going to have to learn the truth about his southern border.
3669101
Giving current rulers some adventuring glory days seems to be a habit of mine. At least some of them retired from all that with their minds and souls relatively intact.
It's amazing how many elephant names you were able to mine for this entry.
3669565
Popular fiction is a wonderful source of names for glaikit and unimaginative authors, bless its heart.
Ice-Cthulhu. Fun.
Ceratos pls.
3671009
He's a cool guy, that Cthulhu. Cold, even.
Nomination for Ceratos noted!
You have no idea how much I squeed when I saw that you called one of the elephants Nelly...
Fantastic addition to the world, as always; loving the idea of a Cthulu type...thing... to the south (made me think of the Paris Burning world, don't know if you read that...)
My vote goes to Ceratos, or failing that, anything that involves Sailears (he is so cute!)
Also, did not know you were a Scot...that would explain a lot... :p
3672372
Nomination for Ceratos or anything involving Sailears noted! Glad you approve of the Nelly reference as well as the unspecified eldritch thingy in the Utmost South. I've not come across Paris Burning, alas - I assume it involves similar polar nastiness?
T'would indeed account for my facial hair, rampant alcoholism, and the kilt in my wardrobe.
3672507 Hey, don't worry, I'm from the valleys of Wales on my mother's side, alcoholism and weird clothing are familiar sights...
As for Paris Burning, it is a superb Les Mis fix that involves personifications of cities. There is also a strange...trying...in the south pole that sends messages ("Join us :):)))::):))):::):))::)):)") and doesn't seem too friendly.
Having finally found the time to get around to reading these fanon entries in order from start to finish, I think this one is by far the most pleasant surprise thus far. I love the political dynamics of eidetic memory, the hints of the terrible force in the south, and how these two factors play off of one another over the course of history. Though it's far removed from the central areas of worldbuilding, I would put this right up there with Capra for how it piqued my interest. And since it caught me so off-guard, I'm very intrigued by the potential of Ceratos.
3862068
Glad you like it so much! It's a fair way removed from anything associated with canon, so it's good to know that the elements I made up wholesale for it were still able to appeal. Exploring some of the societal consequences of species-wide eidetic memories seemed fun, as did mixing that with notions of forbidden knowledge and the long-term traumas inflicted by the eldritch nastiness in the south.
3669465 Oh my god! How did I not get the joke before. The current ruler of the elephants is Trumpeter, a former partier now obsessed with building a wall along his southern border!
3919193
I swear to everything ever held holy by mankind this was unintentional. Oh god, was it ever unintentional.
3919197 "Those nameless antartic horrors pouring across our border, they're not sending us their best." I bet Trumpeter admires the Capricious Crown, a strong leader who knows how to get things done.
3919490
You disassociate yourself from that DannyJ and his ways right the goddamned hell now. He's clearly a bad influence. There's still light in you, there has to be.
3920204 I was meant to bring balance to the comments section. But you, you never thought about what that balance would mean, did you?
This could be made clearer: "Thus did the lands of what would become Pachydermia stand fifteen-hundred years ago."
Also:
What, pray tell, is the clue?
4086204
Fixed, and thank you!
Skulls crowned with writhing antlers.
Fear not pachyderms, for HUMANS shall come and defeat the frigid demons of ice with the unstoppable power of carbon dioxide!
Uhm... then they might kinda kill you for your tusks... but still!
Initially, I wasn't particularly fond of Pachydermia - they seemed a lot like a simple filler nation for Dactylia. After this post though, they're probably among my favorite nations, even being favoured over some of the Ungulan nations. The dangers of the Utmost South, the tragedy befalling the first Shahanshah, as well as Tantor and Topsy, Trumpeter being a badass and so forth. It's just so awesome.
4435841
Glad to have inspired love for them! I'll admit I wasn't entirely sure what to do with them when I first conceived of them, other than 'occupies southern Dactylia' and 'elephants', but mixing together eidetic memory, feudal wars of succession, and Antarctic Lovecraftian horrors seemed to produce something worth spitting onto a page.
Day 15: Pachydermia
- Donkey's Cunning and Elephants memory are similar in nature, but different. Cunning allows a Donkey to learn new things quickly where as the Elephants remember everything they ever learned.
- I suppose PTSD is a much greater problem for the Elephants then it is for other races?
- What caused the six month twilight?
- Sand krakens? Really? How do they even survive?
- It's like ancient China with all the dynasties rising and falling.
- Out of all the nations in the Palaververse, Pachydermia is the most unstable and prone to unrest. They need to fix that.
- How far behind is Pachydermia in technology because of their unwillingness to share knowledge between families and castes?
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- Yep! Two different abilities focused on the mind, with different consequences for the species with them.
- Very much so. Whatever trauma happens to their minds stays there. This is a bit of a problem for a species in close proximity to Lovecraftian sources of horror and trauma on top of all the normal stuff.
- Regular annual solar cycles, just like on our own planet, where the polar regions get solid blocks of sunshine or darkness for months at a time. The unspecified horrors just happened to move north during one such period of darkness.
- By devouring unsuspecting pachydermians, mainly. Though sand-ships and sand-whales do spice up their diet as well.
- The Pachydermian dynasties would regard the Chinese ones as underachievers for sheer violent variety, really.
- It's a definite problem, aye.
- Also a definite problem, though caste mixing has been on the uptick in recent centuries, and Trumpeter's done his part to plant down some modern infrastructure.