LEMURIAN

Lemurians (Dragon Kings) are a race of flightless dragons who founded the earliest civilization and the world's first empire, shortly after the KT event. to fully understand them, we must look at the entire history of the island.

Lemuria is a large island located between Hosstralia and the Unnamed Southern Continent. it contains a fair population of extant dinosaurs, as well as several non-native mammalian life forms, as well as the Lemurians and an equine race called the Morulak.

(NOTE: THE BELOW INFORMATION IS BASED ON ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE, MODERN LEMURIAN HISTORY, AND GOOD OLD-FASHIONED SCIENTIFIC GUESSING.)

Well, the lemurian's ancestors probably wouldn't have started off with superscience. Rather, most likely, they clawed their way up to civilization just like other races did, beginning with pointed sticks and stone tools. We could imagine that they would have done most of the things we did - domestication of animals, agriculture, metallurgy and textiles. They would have moved up to the bronze age and then the iron age, founded cities and then empires.

But there's probably a few things that would have happened differently. Lemuria is an Island continent, isolated. That will have consequences.

Lemuria's closest neighbors were the Unnamed Southern Continent and Hosstralia, both relatively inhospitable, neither particularly close. It's likely that the Lemurians didn't go sea exploring, and didn't discover the rest of the world until extremely late in their history, not until they'd reached a Renaissance level of technology, and perhaps not even until much, much later. And remember, they’d have been a long, long, much longer time than us, getting there, so their culture was likely more settled and less inclined to exploration and colonization.

So, we have a relatively intelligent species on a very small continent slowly climbing up the path to civilization? What happens? they probably screwed it up a lot. history is littered with dead and failed civilizations. Of course, most of our dead civilizations were mugged by other civilizations. The lemurians probably don't have that, or at least not as much of that. Their civilizations were probably a lot longer lasting. On the other hand, other civilizations and cultures have a good record of driving other species into extinction, wrecking the environment, spreading diseases, and using up all the available resources, or simply overpopulating their territories. All these things probably happened to the lemurians, and probably lead to their civilizations collapsing fairly regularly. But even when they didn't collapse, I’d bet that these reverses probably drove their civilizations back and left them reduced and impoverished for long periods. the likely model of lemurian civilization would be initial brilliant flowering until they screwed up somehow, and then a long period of decline and poverty where they just hung on, largely because there wasn’t anything to finish them off.

Finally, of course, the question becomes how far could they get, and what sort of technology they might produce. We can assume that they developed relatively sophisticated metallurgy. We can also assume that they probably discovered and developed electricity and steam power, from what evidence has been found. They almost certainly found their way to some grasp of chemistry.

But how much further? A lot of that depends on the resources available. Think of something as simple as rubber, for instance. Think of how essential rubber is to modern technology. But rubber originates from Tapiri. If Stirroppean civilization had never discovered rubber, well, it might have made do, but it would have taken a lot longer, been a lot costlier and more difficult, and there might be some things we'd never do. the Lemurians were not exploring the world. If Lemuria didn't have rubber at home, or some reasonable substitute, they were out of luck for most of their history. So who knows what absences might have held them back. So if Lemuria was unlucky, which is likely, it might not have had much in the way of accessible fossil fuel sources. Which means that the Lemurians might never have developed the sort of industrial society we developed, or if they did, limitations on resources meant it either didn't get very far or didn’t spread nearly as widely. Or for that matter, who knows what advantages in local plant or animal or mineral resources might have sent them catapulting ahead in directions that we never explored, or didn’t exploit until much later.

Take quartz, for example. there is a very interesting quality to quartz called piezo-electrics. Essentially, what this means is that if you run a current through a piece of quartz, you can make it vibrate. Alternately, if you hit quartz with a hammer, or induce pressure or vibration, you can produce electricity WITHOUT MAGIC. now suppose that the lemurians had better or more bountiful resources of piezo-electric crystals. Supposing that their resources of crystal were far better quality or more effective than we’ve found. Supposing that they encountered it earlier in their history and had fewer other opportunities or resources, and so were highly motivated to develop this technology in ways and for effects that we either can't accomplish nor, or can accomplish through other means. Supposing that their technological culture, from early on, was built on generating and manipulating small amounts of electricity in subtle ways.

it's safe to say that it took them far longer. Perhaps ten or twenty or a hundred times as long. It's likely that their technology and civilization paralleled equine's, broadly, but just as likely that it may have done different things in subtle or grand ways. At some point, however, we have to assume that the Lemurians built up a substantial civilization, one with the technological prowess to explore the rest of the world. What happens then? Well, if they were anything like other colonizing species, what happens then is that they screw things up the way others screwed things.

This probably happens with the Lemurians. Except that Lemuria's merely an Island. The parasites, the local flora and fauna are all pretty much tailored to the island continent and not terribly robust away from home. But foreign animals, foreign plants and foreign parasites.... particularly the ones from that big, robust biological Stirropean and Khaan continents would be all set to wreak havoc. The Lemurians, coming from their tamer and limited biosphere, wouldn’t have any idea what hit them until it was too late. They just wouldn't see it coming.

Some species would be deliberate introductions. useful food animals, herbivores, are possibly willfully introduced. Particularly if the Lemurians have already killed off species and made some holes in their ecosystem. Lions and Bears might be introduced to prey on runaway herbivore populations, or they might be imported for other purposes. The long and the short of it is that the formerly Dinosaur based ecology of Lemuria starts to get overrun with mammals, and in many areas, the Dinosaurs find themselves on their way out the door. There’s a risk of internal or insect parasites or diseases as well. The Lemurian island has been isolated for 60 million years, so the life forms there, and particularly the Lemurians themselves, may be very vulnerable - fleas, ticks, mosquitos, tapeworms, ringworms, bacteria, viruses may well devastate the population. Or it may devastate vulnerable aspects of their culture - a new kind of fungus or crop blight might well produce famines or even social collapse.

It's likely that for the Lemurians, world exploration poses a very mixed bag - lots of wonderful stuff to discover and bring home, and at the same time, lots of hidden horrible surprises. It might be that in the long run, they just figure its best to stay home. And this is why Lemuria's got such a strange mixture of animal types.

But the most interesting thing for the Lemurians is probably their discovery of Hipparion. A clever, useful, smart three-toed equine with all sorts of potential applications. Look, let's be fair here: Pretty much any time that any civilization went out and discovered a less advanced culture, the first thing they did was usually enslave them. They did it from the beginning. They did it small scale. They did it large scale. And they even continue to do it today in parts of the world.

Indeed, there might be advantages. If the Hipparion slaves were primarily vegetarian, and the Lemurians were primarily carnivorous, then it would change the dynamics of society. A basically carnivorous society would have a population limited to the amount of meat it could sustainably produce. And sustainable production would be governed by the muscle and power of those carnivores. On the other hoof, a carnivorous society of dragons sustained by a population of vegetarian "butlers".... Well, you could support a lot of Hipparion with a vegetarian diet. And if they were at work raising meat for you, you could sustain a lot larger population of Lemurians. So we might actually see some pretty rapid social transformation, as Lemurian society embraced equine slavery, and in fact, larger communities of dragons and much larger communities of Hipparion around them. large shifts in cultivation, urban centers, a shift to plantation economies.

But let's look at where this would have probably gone. We've had the benefit of our own chaotic and complex history, the rise and fall of empire after empire, kingdom after kingdom. And we never learn our lessons. The Lemurians, stuck on their Island, with more limited resources and a history of fewer and longer lasting civilizations, probably never see even see it coming.

Here’s how it probably went: The Lemurians finally get off their continent and go exploring. It's too late in their social history to really go into serious colonization, and historically, colonies have always been an expensive and time consuming proposition. But when they go out into the wide world, they suddenly gain the benefit of new species, new resources, new food animals, new substances and potential new slaves in Hipparion. We see a great flowering in Lemurian civilization, population and technology expands dramatically. Then the crunch hits. Invasive new species screw up the ecostructure, plant diseases and funguses wreck agriculture, there are new plagues, and as the overheated bubble of expansion slows and stops, the Lemurian economy goes into a depression. The society goes into its usual spiral of poverty and decline following dramatic expansions as they overrun their limits.

But this time, there's all these useful equine slaves. The slave population grows dramatically, as a source of cheap and easy to feed labor. The Lemurians use them to cushion their recession and thus humans become common through Lemuria. The Lemurians breed them to improve the form. Inevitably, of course, some of them go feral retreating to the wilds and mountains where they cause trouble. The Lemurians breed the Morulak to keep them down. But then the inevitable happens. The slaves revolt. Or perhaps enough escaped slaves and wild humans congregate and manage to start their own city. Either way, there’s suddenly a Hipparion ruled city, Nemedis. This is followed by Yb, Yaodar and Althaar. Either Hipparion crafted cities, or Lemurian reptile cities now ruled by equines. This is where the Lemurian equine civilization comes from. They've pretty much stolen or inherited it from the Dragon Kings.

By this time, there are at least four great Hipparion cities, and we can presume that the Hipparion are directly pressing on the Dragon Kings. The dragons have backed away enough, they've decided to make a stand. It doesn’t appear that the Dragon Kings had much of a unified government. From the few hints we have, they appear to have organized themselves as loosely federated city states. Initially, they were successful in their war, laying siege to the Hipparion cities. But sieges are expensive things, and likely a lot of the Dragon King cities forces eventually went home. The Hipparion outlasted the Dragon Kings, and eventually, in a decisive battle at Grimstrand Firth, the allied Hipparion broke their enemies forces. This began the thousand year war, a long period of off and on low intensity conflict in which, one by one, most of the Dragon King cities and fortresses fell, and equines took over the balance of Lemuria. I suppose this makes the "Dragon Kings" seem rather feeble. But then again, they had the head start, the population and the technology, all the advantages were theirs. But still, they lost. In the end, I think that we can assume that they had the same inherent flaws that we do, that while smart, they were no smarter than us, no wiser, no more thoughtful.

Muan Lemurian

of the various attempted Lemurian colonies, the only one which survived was one on the fourth island of the Muan archipelago.

The reason is that, of all the places in the world, this is the only one with no native draconic life forms, meaning that dragon-related diseases did not exist here.

after the empire's fall, these Muan colonists were stranded, and so reverted to a hunter-gatherer type society dwelling in the island's swamps

AMPHITERE

Native to the jungles of Tapiri, the Amphiteres are a secretive race of dragons, and more solitary than other dragon species. they are also potent aeromancers.