Road to Hope

[firestar464]

How did they evolve without exiting water?

[Jakob]

How did they evolve without exiting water?

Wdym exiting water?

[firestar464]

You know, how fish moved on land to make reptiles. (OVERSIMPLIFICATION IKR)

[Jakob]

You know, how fish moved on land to make reptiles. (OVERSIMPLIFICATION IKR)

Oh I see...well the Kyanah homeworld doesn't have fish and reptiles

The bestiary post kinda explains this, but the primordial animals were the kenits, which showed up around 500 million Earth years ago. These were colonial organisms shaped like masses of tentacles extending from a substrate attached to the oasis floor, feeding on plants, microbes, and detritus that they were able to ensnare and reproducing by having individual kenits detach from the substrate and swim somewhere else to put down a substrate and become sessile once more. At the time, the planet was warmer and wetter than in modern times, so riparian web biomes were more widespread, allowing the kenits to traverse between oases easily.

Fast forward to around 300 million years ago and the planet was becoming cooler and drier, so the riparian webs were receding, making propagating between oases more difficult. As a result, some kenits gradually evolved into the first neuz, a much more advanced form of life. Neuz were permanently mobile and amphibious, requiring much more sophisticated eyes and brains to function, as well as an internal skeleton to support their movement. They were also amphibious, able to prowl the shorelines for plants and crawlcritters to eat. To spread between oases, some relied on wind-borne eggs, while others, often the larger species, simply slithered over land to get to another oasis, taking advantage of their new skeletons to move much more efficiently than kenits.

That being said, the neuz weren't the first land creatures on the Kyanah homeworld; the crawlcritters had beaten them to the punch by a hundred million years, also evolving from kenits by gaining independent mobility and protective shells and spreading to land. Initially confined to worm-like forms, they quickly diversified and ruled the land during this time. The dominant life on land at this time were the colonial crawlcritters, eusocial land-dwelling vaguely crab-like forms (carcinization is so powerful it even exists on alien planets!) who lived by the thousands or even millions in vast burrows or mounds, attacking and defending in swarms and could reach considerable sizes, upwards of 20 centimeters for the largest species, making it difficult for the individualistic, unarmored, and legless neuz to gain a permanent foothold on land, despite their modest size advantage (for some species) and more sophisticated brains. However, this order ultimately went extinct in the mass extinction of 267.3 million years ago, which created the Red Mountains impact range, leaving the land open for the taking. The neuz, being more aquatic and able to hide out in oases, were naturally spared.

And so by around 250 million years ago, some neuz species had developed into the first walkers, gaining primitive legs and scaly skin to adapt to permanent life on land.

[Jakob]

The Kyanah do not have a world government like so many stereotypical alien civilizations, nor even large nation-states like Earth. The vast majority of the Kyanah population live inside city-states instead. This arises from the fact that Kyanah by nature distrust centralization, deep hierarchies, and collectivization. Any social unit larger than a pack must continuously justify its own existence and demonstrate that any obligations or restrictions it places on packs are outweighed by the benefits they bring to said packs. There is a school of Kyanah philosophical thought known as Fractalism, which posits that relationships between natural and societal structures at differing levels are essentially the same, and the relationship between a pack and its members is essentially a "zoomed in" version of the relationship between the state and citizen packs. But this is controversial even in the more communal and collectivist southern hemisphere, and generally regarded as complete hogwash in the north, where Centralism is much more prevalent, positing that the pack is the center of society, and every other component and societal structure exists to serve the pack structure. Under Centralist thought, it's quite difficult to justify huge governments spanning billions of citizens and vast stretches of territory, as the benefit to individual packs is much less clear than something like a city-state.

The prevalence of city-states over nation-states also means that there have never been large colonial empires in Kyanah history. There have been attempts to establish them, especially during the heyday of the Utopian era, but inevitably they have crashed and burned within a matter of years, with local administrators and populations simply failing to comply with directives from central authorities and ignoring the would-be colonial powers whenever their backs were turned, to an extreme degree. Thus, controlling fast colonial territories inevitably tends to be a money sink for outweighing any possible economic gain. That is not, of course to say, that the Kyanah have a peaceful history or that city-states haven't invaded and overthrown each other. All throughout history, plenty of city-states have been invaded and overthrown; Ikun alone has been responsible for hundreds of regime changes during the Hegemony Era. The difference between this and colonialism, is that Kyanah will tend to leave the conquered city-state once they've gotten what they wanted, whether that be resources, or putting a different government in power, instead of sticking around to try and administrate faraway territories themselves. The exceptions to this rule throughout Kyanah history have almost exclusively involved groups being driven from their home city-states by either natural disasters or persecution or war, and forcefully relocating themselves to someone else's land--again not exactly the same as establishing colonies.

The closest thing to colonialism in Kyanah geopolitics is likely the Globalist doctrine--so named because city-states use their influence to extract natural resources on a global scale. This is an outgrowth of treaties concerning so-called "open land" that exists outside the political and economic borders of any city-state and is thus free for any city-state or any citizens thereof to extract natural resources and develop infrastructure anywhere they please, as long as they don't attack foreign citizens or damage foreign infrastructure they come across in open land. While in theory a fair and just way to handle resources outside the purview of any jurisdiction, rich and powerful city-states were quick to find ways to game the system. Essentially, corporations and city-states in the affluent and heavily industrialized Rktakian Kwardniet could afford to send ultra long-range missions to acquire natural resources in ways that many others could not. Corporations based in city-states like Ikun, and the states themselves, were able to travel halfway around the world to extract resources from right under the snouts of smaller and weaker city-states that may not have the finances to send such resource-gathering expeditions very far afield. The developed northern city-states are thus able get the raw materials they want while cutting out the middleman and avoiding a morass of tariffs and regulations that are inevitable when dealing with global trade networks with thousands of city-states. Meanwhile, weaker city-states are locked out of natural resources that might be sitting just outside their borders.

Of course, private and state-sponsored expeditions to cut out the middleman in trade networks have existed for centuries in all parts of the Kyanah homeworld, but in the period after the Utopian Wars, marked by the exploding popularity of civilian cargo aircraft, nuclear power, and rapidly expanding road and rail networks, made it far more practical to do this on a massive scale. This led to the Globalist doctrine, with city-states in the Rktakian Kwardniet (especially Ikun) getting far more systematic and tactical with it; instead of just getting their hands on natural resources, these expeditions serve secondary, sometimes multiple strategic purposes, with who doesn't get access to resources often being just as important as who does. Ikun has, for instance, been known to orchestrate blatantly unprofitable mining ventures or burn down ecosystems in open lands, solely to block specific developing city-states from mining and harvesting easily accessible resources just outside their borders, in order to advance some geopolitical goal of their own. As the Far South city-states such as Koranah have developed economically, they have also begun to employ Globalist tactics, despite consistently railing against Ikun's implementation of the same tactics in inter-city forums. Despite these tactics, global trade networks continue to grow and grow; no city-state can make everything on their own, every city-state has to import something. Ikun in particular, despite being the most powerful city-state in the world, is a net importer of food, and also extensively imports nanogears--critical components for the Kyanahs' mechanical computers--from Koranah, who produce them at the highest quality and the highest quantity of any city-state.

Possibly the biggest example of Globalist doctrine in action in Kyanah history is the Water Distribution System. The WDS originated after the Utopian Wars as a highly decentralized project, with hundreds of corporations and city-states each building water piplines, silos, collection plants, wells, and all the other necessary infrastructure to efficiently exchange water between themselves and their neighbors and allies. However, Ikun saw the opportunity to use its own technology and infrastructure to merge it all into a cohesive system by bridging crucial gaps in strategic locations around the world, refining and optimizing the infrastructure, and vastly expanding the number of control nodes used to direct the flow of water. This way, flow of water could be optimized across the entire planet, swiftly moving excess water to drought-stricken regions and eliminating droughts. This vision was realized early in the administration of Ikun City Alpha Nyektak-pack, creating the Water Distribution System in its modern form. However, with Ikun technology and Ikun control nodes dominating the system, this gave them an outsized level of control over where the water would flow, with their control nodes being in some cases able to cancel out and override those of other city-states by virtue of numbers. This didn't give Ikun absolute mastery over all water on the planet--other city-states had control nodes too--but it did give them the ability to put their finger on the scale at critical moments and exert undue influence. That being said, water actually did get cheaper and deaths by drought actually did decrease--at least until increasing ecological disasters began to strain the system--so the Water Distribution System has a rather controversial reputation globally.

Eventually, Koranah city-state, Ikun's strongest foreign rival, would come to take inspiration from the Water Distribution System. As environmental destruction intensified year by year, many city-states had the idea to use advanced geoengineering technologies to combat this, planning to construct vast control nodes like living factories that would pump out genetically engineered microbes and nanobots to eat pollution, stabilize ecosystems, and control local weather patterns. Koranah's diplomats encouraged this, secretly planning to do what Ikun did with the Water Distribution System and bring these disparate projects together into a cohesive system, which Koranah would seek to control by establishing their own control nodes at the points in the world where they could have the greatest influence for the least effort. This would create the Climate Control System, able to optimize weather and ecosystems globally instead of just locally, while allowing Koranah to use their control nodes to influence the weather at key points to maximize their own interests. Naturally, Ikun was highly opposed to this and moved to ban geoengineering and use its network of allies and privileged position in the Coalition of Cities to pressure other city-states into following suit or facing sanctions. As an alternative, Ikun touted its own plan Project Hope, a military invasion of Earth designed to revitalize its own faltering economy and demonstrate its unparalleled capability of force projection to allies and enemies alike, thereby keeping the Hegemony alive while still giving their city-state's citizens hope (hence the name) that they will be able to escape the looming ecological disaster coming from geoengineering being banned, and start a new life on Earth.

The interesting thing about all of these is that Kyanah city-states are exerting their influence in foreign lands without actually creating empires and directly controlling other city-states, they're not really making colonies per se even if their activities have a global reach. City-states utilizing Globalist doctrine aren't ruling over or directly plundering foreign cities, they're extracting resources and developing infrastructure in the Kyanah equivalent of international waters, albeit with occasionally devastating consequences to weaker and poorer city-states. Even the invasion of Earth by Ikun city-state doesn't involve Ikun establishing direct control over all or even part of Earth. They couldn't do that even if they wanted to, not with the Kyanah tendency to reject centralized authority, and the 12 year speed of light delay for all communications. The goal is simply to establish independent but Ikun-friendly regimes in politically dominant positions on Earth to expand the Hegemony from one world to two.

Though the Hegemony, Ikun's policy of outsized, unparalleled influence on global affairs, is backed by more than just subtle economic manipulation. The Globalist doctrine, including the Water Distribution System, is just one pillar. Another key pillar is the nuclear monopoly. Having used their own nuclear weapons to preemptively destroy every other city-state seeking to develop them, Ikun maintains the policy that while all city-states may use nuclear power for peaceful purposes, only Ikun can have nuclear bombs. They know good and well that if other city-states developed them--especially Koranah, whose economy and conventional military have all but caught up to Ikun--the Hegemony would collapse in an instant and be replaced by a multi-polar world dominated by mutually assured destruction, diminishing Ikun from hyperpower to mere superpower. Ikun also retains an extremely strong conventional military that it uses to project force across the world, overthrowing and propping up regimes as it sees fit, though during the Nyektak-pack administration, such overt methods are less commonly used than the early days of the Hegemony Era.

The third pillar of the Hegemony is Ikun's influence in the Coalition of Cities. Originally conceived by young idealists and activists as a neutral forum for city-states to resolve their issues in a civilized manner, professional bureaucrats and politicians quickly joined and took over the organization, and Ikun adopted the strategy of using the Coalition as a very much not neutral forum to coordinate its own allies and target its enemies with sanctions and weaponized diplomacy. Much like the Water Distribution System, they carefully select their allies--there are thousands to choose from thanks to the Kyanah having city-states rather than nation-states--to maximize their influence over the Coalition for minimum effort. Normally, as there are over 3000 member states, it's not practical for all ambassador-packs to be at Coalition HQ at all times, especially as a lot of the time, city-states may be using the forum for relatively trivial matters of only regional interest. It can be a crapshoot which members are being represented there at any given time, but savvy ambassadors will try to be present whenever inter-city deals are being made that might concern their city-states, or use occasions when ambassadors from rival city-states aren't present to ram through treaties that are harmful to them. Ikun has an have an uncanny knack for both of these; it's likely no coincidence that they maintain very close diplomatic ties and very preferential trade deals with Kutwenyah, the ostensibly neutral city-state where the Coalition of Cities is headquartered.

[Jakob]

Finally, after eight years, a definitive map of the Kyanah homeworld. No more vague handwaving and here-be-dragons nonsense.



(Here's another version without the regions labeled)

In red are the impact ranges, the equivalent to mountain ranges since they have no tectonic plates on their homeworld. These are, as previously discussed, formed by debris streams from colossal asteroids--dozens of kilometers across before breaking apart--crossing orbits with the world, creating devastating meteor showers year after year, each event creating more and more craters and impact peaks and ejecta piles until the large rocks mostly run out after a few centuries. These impacts aren't always uniformly distributed across their entire great circle, and geological processes like erosion can wear away parts of an impact range over millions of years, so all the ranges have discontinuities, giving the illusion that they're separate mountain chains. However, by the time Kyanah science reached the level of 17th century Earth, geologists realized that they were all connected to others along great circle lines, and for this reason their maps usually fill in the gaps where the mountains have eroded away over time, hence the thin red lines. All the impact ranges are named after colors, a fact which has everything to do with early modern cartographers drawing each one in a particular color, and nothing to do with me being lazy. Exactly how these debris streams impact along great circles instead of just randomly impacting all over the place was not discovered until their science reached the level of the 20th century, and the Aktektan Effect was discovered: unique minerals in the Tau Ceti system's asteroid belt interact with the solar wind to produce a slight electrostatic charge preventing asteroid fragments from rapidly dispersing and instead holding them together in a relatively dense and narrow stream, allowing for the creation of cohesive impact ranges. (In-universe, the Aktektan Effect also explains how the Tau Ceti system has an enormously dense asteroid belt despite being older than the Solar System.)

Of course, not all impacts arrive in the form of debris streams, there have been plenty of one-off impacts over the eons. Dozens of recognizable independent impact craters over 50 kilometers across can be found on the planet, with the biggest being 300 kilometers across and still almost 2 kilometers deep despite being filled in over millions of years. The lack of oceans and less frequent rain has kept many of these craters well preserved, with who knows how many having eroded away or been buried. While there are no plate tectonics to create large volcano chains, some volcanoes have formed over hot spots or as a result of asteroid impacts; these stand alone or in small clusters, with only dozens of active ones instead of thousands like on Earth.

This is also a BIG world, with a radius of 10,100 km (compared to Earth's 6300) and a lack of oceans, there's 9 times the surface area to work with. It's not uncommon to have trade routes that are 20-30,000 kilometers long. For instance, getting from Ikun to Koranah by car is about 28-29,000 kilometers by the most popular route and takes weeks to drive. For obvious reasons, most Kyanah who want to go from Ikun to Koranah or vice versa fly.

There are a bit over a hundred major Kyanah city-states with populations over 10 million individuals. Most of these occur in clusters, though there are a few one-off ones that gained such a high population due to their own assorted economic or political quirks. These clusters also, needless to say, have hundreds or even thousands of smaller city-states in between the larger ones. Major city-state clusters include:

The Rktakian Kwardniet (literally Civilized Plateau) (region 1), with 9 major city-states. As a whole, this is the wealthiest and most developed region on the planet, with 14 of the 20 strongest militaries. However, it wasn't always the political and economic center of the world; in pre-modern times, it was far from the wealthiest region, as it as locked out of the major ancient trade routes on all sides. To the north was the White Impact Range, to the west, the Red Impact Range, and to the south, the hot and desolate Dunelands, and the treacherous Shatter, where extant parts of the Yellow, Blue, and Black Impact Ranges (the first of which being the newest and thus most chaotic one, only 34 million Earth years old) cross each other in the same place, creating the widest and highest reach of shattered land in the world. Even in modern times, there are no railways or paved roads through the Shatter, and the vast majority of all travelers and commerce go around or fly over it; to pre-modern Kyanah in the Dunelands and the Rktakian Kwardniet, it truly seemed like the edge of the world. As time went on, they eventually had their own Age of Discovery and joined the ever-expanding global trade networks in earnest. However, the increase in contact between different parts of the world also spread disease and started a deadly pandemic called the Shadow. Without a scientific understanding of viruses or oceans to stop its spread, it circled out the planet, wiping out as many as a billion lives according to some estimates. The Rktakian Kwardniet was particularly hard-hit, losing over a quarter of their population in a generation, which necessitated the adoption of mechanization and industrialization to adapt to the labor shortage. Naturally, this proved to be a blessing in disguise, as the region underwent a meteoric rise in wealth and prosperity, and the first city-states to industrialize gained enormous political influence over the rest of the world. After the Utopian Wars, the rise of Ikun, the establishment of the Hegemony, and the Globalist doctrine further boosted the region's strength, partially at the expense of the poor equatorial regions. The gradual shift to a post-industrial service/information economy and their extensive lead in commercializing space during the Hegemony also contributed significantly. Though as of the Project Hope era, their crown is slipping as city-states in several other regions are rapidly catching up. Many packs from the Dunelands to the south have been immigrating here in recent decades, fleeing drought, corruption, and war to start anew in the wealthier northern city-states.

The Far South (region 2), with 20 major city-states. Currently the second most economically developed region on the planet, this cluster is located along an extant section of the Green Impact Range in the far southern hemisphere (duh). The northern side of the mountains tends to have a surprisingly mild climate for its latitude due to the westerlies bringing warmer air into the region, though the southern side (where a few major city-states have set up shop) is the opposite, with the very same mountains trapping them in a wind shadow with the dry, frigid polar air, creating exceptionally frigid (by Kyanah standards) climates; snow flurries aren't an uncommon sight in the winter, though they rarely accumulate. Most Far South city-states on both sides have the midnight sun and polar night, which both play a big role in their religion and culture, with huge festivals and ceremonies every year at the last sunset before polar night, and the sunrise of the polar day. The biggest reason these areas are densely inhabited in the first place is for the mining of precious metals and valuable minerals deposited by asteroids via the impact range. This meant that the Far South had a relatively poor economy centered around resource extraction and raw materials until after the Utopian Wars and the establishment of the Hegemony. It was at this point that they began to rapidly industrialize and undergo a second population boom to reach the vast population levels of modern times. While plenty of mining cities remain, the most prosperous ones have pivoted to high-tech industry, including but not limited to vehicles, satellites, robotics, consumer electronics, and computer hardware/software. This factor alone doesn't entirely explain the vast population boom; additionally, many of these city-states have a deeply religious populace that puts a high value on procreation. This is often encouraged by their governments, some of which even have hatchling quotas in order to boost their population to economically (and perhaps eventually militarily) compete with the Rktakian Kwardniet; many governments in the region dislike the Hegemony and are neutral to hostile towards the north, though Ikun and other Rktakian Kwardniet have various allies in the region all the same.

The Meatbucket (region 3), with 5 major city-states. This region is characterized by having some of the wettest climates on the planet, with rains exceeding 50 centimeters per Earth year. Trade winds being deflected northwards by an outcropping of the Black Impact Range, westerlies being deflected around the White Impact Range, and polar easterlies from the north all meet here, creating extensive storm systems. Combined with fertile soil being deposited against the White Impact Range by these winds, this is the best agricultural region in the northern hemisphere, a fact which the Kyanah have taken full advantage of; even in modern times, it remains the planet's breadbasket. Despite most city-states having an economy primarily based around agriculture and light industry, it has an average standard of living rivaling that of the Rktakian Kwardniet itself. Due to being next door to said region, it has enjoyed some of the knock-on effects from early industrialization and was an early adopter of high-tech mechanized agriculture, allowing it to produce more meat and livestock feed than any other region. Politically, while the Meatbucket city-states tend to stay out of the drama and convoluted geopolitical games between the north and the south, they also tend to maintain friendly relations with city-states in the Rktakian Kwardniet. Most governments in this region are quite stable and have relatively low levels of corruption. Though much like the Rktakian Kwardniet, the Meatbucket also has many immigrants coming from their south (the Nyruietkot Riyentkin), and also like the Rktakian Kwardniet, this tends to be politically controversial.

The Boreal Cities (region 4), with 14 major city-states. Spread widely across the planet's far northern hemisphere, and often not very culturally or diplomatically involved with each other these city-states are mostly found in the boreal scrubland, with a few in the boreal savanna. Despite mostly having a middling income and unremarkable economy by global standards, several city-states have attained a vast population simply by being very old, though it hasn't been a global power center for centuries, if not millennia. The boreal scrublands are the Kyanahs' ancestral homeland and the hatching place of the first civilizations, so many city-states have been around for thousands of years and gradually accumulated many, many packs. The low density of oases also encourages populations to clump together. The region tends to have a cool and damp climate by the planet's standards...though humans would call it warm and semi-arid.

The Western Sector (region 5), with 5 major city-states. Like the Rktakian Kwardniet to its immediate east, it is also wedged between the White and Red Impact Ranges, though it's separated from the other region by the White Impact Range. While being early to industrialize due to their proximity to the Rktakian Kwardniet, and thus having a high standard of living, most of them never caught up to their eastern neighbors and thus never gained the same tremendous influence on global affairs. Despite considerable cultural differences with the Rktakian Kwardniet, Kyanah in other parts of the world often see them as one and the same, something which neither the Rktakian Kwardniet nor the Western Sector are particularly amused by.

The Nyruietkot Riyentkin (literally Rising East) (region 6), with 33 major city-states. Located in a scorching yet not particularly arid part of the equatorial region, between several old and relatively broken down impact ranges, this region is actually one of the poorest despite its huge population. With an economy heavily centered on resource extraction and cash crops--despite attempts by some of the more well-to-do city-states to break into energy production and manufacturing--having large numbers of young is necessary to have enough helping hands for such demanding industries. Efforts by these city-states to modernize their economies have been hampered by ecological catastrophes, civil unrest caused by the large populations of said city-states, and the use of the region by both the Rktakian Kwardniet and the Far South and a proving ground for Globalist doctrine. Many refugees have fled the region and immigrated to the Meatbucket to the north.

The Middle South (region 7), with 17 major city-states. Rather obviously, it's located in between the Far South and the Near South (not a commonly used term, but typically referring to everything from the Dunelands south to the Shatter. It's easy to see why the Middle South is densely populated; large open plains with wind and precipitation from the westerlies (often carrying rich volcanic soil from the volcanic cluster at the west end of the region) have created a region almost as suitable for agriculture as the Meatbucket. Indeed, in the last few centuries before the Rktakian Kwardniet industrialized, the Middle South was the richest region on the planet, with massive trade hubs dealing in alcohol, hides, spices, and slaves from the northern hemisphere; gold, gems, meteoric iron, and exotic preserved meats from the Far South; and exporting their own textiles, printed books and paper, ceramics, and timber to everyone around them. Though naturally, many other goods were imported and exported over the centuries as well. However, the Middle South was relatively lightly affected by the Shadow, which proved to be a double-edged sword, as they didn't have the same pressure to industrialize and were rather late to the party. Coal would be discovered there in the industrial age, boosting its relevance again somewhat. Development remains mixed in modern times, with some city-states adopting high-tech economies and others sticking to agriculture or coal.

The Dunelands (region 8), with 0 major city-states (the largest is Orokun, with a population of just 8.6 million). However, as the Rktakian Kwardniet's immediate neighbors, they deserve a mention, especially as one pack in Road to Hope comes from the Dunelands. This region is located in a scorching hot and dry basin filled with extensive sand dunes, hence the name. It has a relatively low population-density overall, with most city states having lower middle income economies. The spent the pre-industrial era mostly locked in their own microcosm, with the Rktakian Kwardniet, as to their immediate south are the equally arid Ptekyen Highlands and the treacherous Shatter. They ultimately did not industrialize as quickly as the Rktakian Kwardniet, despite being right next door, which can mostly be attributed to political factors. The Dunelands were thus left in the dust by their northern neighbors and remain plagued by droughts, environmental destruction, and in many city-states, corruption, dictators, and civil unrest.

[Jakob]

Some of the city-states! As previously mentioned, there is no exact count of the number of Kyanah city-states, but there is an exact count of Coalition of Cities members. Of these, the breakdown as of Y976 is 283 tier 1 cities, 1469 tier 2 cities, 1195 tier 3 cities, and 460 tier 4 cities. Tier 1 is usually characterized by "luxurious" living standards, basic needs being obtainable for all working packs, with a high variety and quality available for most consumer products and a near universal access to high-tech appliances, electronics, and robotics. Slums are virtually nonexistent. Tier 2 is characterized by "comfortable" living standards, basic needs are still generally obtainable, but there may not be as large of a variety of consumer products and luxuries are not as common. Slums are uncommon. Tier 3 is characterized by "adequate" living standards, power, water, and internet are generally present, but can be inconsistent and luxuries are sparse except for the upper classes. A significant minority of the population lives in slums. Tier 4 is characterized by "inadequate" living standards, a significant part of the population rarely if ever has necessary amenities, and the majority of the population lives in slums.
Ikun. Location: 38N, 0W; Elevation: +0m; Population: 13.7 million; GDP: $2.8 trillion. Tier: 1. The largest economy and strongest military in the world--the only one with nukes in fact--equal parts revered and reviled across the world as the Hegemon. It is Ikun city-state who is responsible for the Kyanah invasion of Earth, with their four starships taking 20 Earth years to build and arriving after a 160 Earth year journey. It's rather like if humans were invading another planet, but instead of the combined forces of all humanity, it was just New York City. Ikun is at the center of the world both figuratively and literally, as the prime meridian is defined by a special monument in the city center, which also serves to define the baseline elevation in the absence of oceans on the Kyanah homeworld. Confusingly, though, hundreds of city-states define coordinates and elevation relative to their own locations, and the scientific community is increasingly gravitating towards the use of the planet's average elevation as a baseline. Ikun is a very modern and high-tech city, with many tall buildings over 200 meters high, their steel and concrete frames often covered with ornately detailed stone facades. Like most Kyanah architecture, tall buildings tend to have flying buttresses as a countermeasure against the high gravity, which all intermesh with each other to provide mutual support, making the aesthetic quite different from Earth cities. It sits at the center of a vast network of infrastructure, including the Water Distribution System, is a large trade hub, and has the largest spaceport in the world, with dozens of space stations for tourism, research, and zero-G manufacturing, especially of room temperature superconductors and superalloys. They also have constructed some of the only legitimate megaprojects in space in Kyanah history: the 2-kilometer-wide spinning-ring Interstellar Vehicle Assembly Hub (for processing asteroids and assembling the starships for Project Hope), the Project Hope starships themselves, a cycler that makes regular intersections with Ryitu (Tau Ceti f) and a base on said planet (rather similar in size and character to human Antarctic bases, with space for 1000 Kyanah, though their presence there has been downsized to a bit over 200 due to Project Hope).

Aside from their space industry, manufacturing in Ikun has been on the decline, (though the manufacturing and construction sectors are still vast by global standards, Ikun was no longer #1 before the start of Project Hope) with the economy increasingly pivoting to services, knowledge work, and finance; in fact one of the key goals of Project Hope was to revitalize domestic manufacturing. Standards of living in Ikun are fairly high even by the standards of the Rktakian Kwardniet, and extremely high by global standards, though they can vary a lot by district, and Project Hope has severely strained the economy. Ikun has an aggressive and interventionist foreign policy, maintaining a nuclear monopoly under threat of nuclear annihilation and regularly intervening in the domestic affairs of foreign city-states with both military action and sanctions. They have the most powerful military in the world, with around 150,000 personnel (slightly over 1% of the population) who have extremely high-tech equipment and advanced AI engines. However, overt regime changes have become less frequent under Nyektak-pack's administration in favor of exerting economic and diplomatic control through the Water Distribution System and other means. The city-state is a prime target for immigrants from all corners of the world, and hundreds of ethnic and linguistic groups in its borders--though educated Kyanah in most of the world tend to learn at least some of Ikun's native vernacular due to its considerable soft power. Ikun is located deep inside a large crater in a transition zone between seasonal plains and semi-arid desert, with the former being predominantly found to the north of the city. Temperatures vary considerably, from around 30C in the winter up to 60 in the summer. Ikun is a very chaotic and noisy city; buildings have traditionally just been plopped down wherever, with streets being added to accommodate them; music, radio, and TV broadcasts are being randomly blasted everywhere at all hours, and traffic can be quite aggressive and unpredictable--autonomous vehicles are a must to be able to safely navigate the streets. Being a huge city-state located in the middle of a crater, there is a nearly omnipresent industrial smog. However, the streets are kept relatively clean due to advanced technology and robotics--along with cheap immigrant labor. Activity in Ikun never really dies down, even in the middle of the night.

Nktan. Location: 38N, 0E (~25 km from Ikun); Elevation: +35m; Population: 2.3 million; GDP: $400 billion. Tier: 1. Nestled against the eastern wall of Ikun's crater, Nktan is actually just a part of the Ikun metropolitan area that was granted independence in Epoch 10 (Y640-Y703) to prevent Ikun city-state from becoming too large and unstable; it's the largest of four city-states created around that time for the same reason. Ikun, Nktan and the other three city-states are collectively known as the Craterzone (or by detractors as the Ikunzone or Greater Ikun, in reference to Ikun's massive influence on the area). The entire Craterzone has a population of just under 19 million. While Nktan has their own independent City Alpha, Lawspeakers, bureaucracy, and legal system, the entire Craterzone share the same language and currency, and citizens of one city-state are free to live and work in any of the other. Nktan's military, while equipped with very modern and high-tech gear from Ikun, are so small--eight army cohorts and two air force cohorts, or about 1700 Kyanah in total--as to be basically a formality, with the city-state almost entirely relying on Ikun's military and nuclear umbrella for protection. Nktan University, which is (obviously) located here, is considered to be the most prestigious university in the world (as a private university, students must be invited to attend rather than applying) and the surrounding districts have a distinct college town vibe in contrast to the vast corporate campuses and sprawling middle class high rises that dominate the rest of the city-state.

Ryden. Location: 41N, 5W (~800 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1200m; Population: 11.9 million; GDP: $2.0 trillion. Tier: 1. One of Ikun's closest major neighbors, so naturally it sees a lot of tourists from Ikun who are looking to go to a foreign city without traveling particularly far or having to deal with a drastically different culture. Culturally they are only slightly different from Ikun and the vernacular is close enough to be mutually intelligible without study, though some words and a few niche aspects of grammar are different, and the locals have a noticeably different accent. Other than that, Ryden is just another large and powerful Rktakian Kwardniet city-state with a post-industrial service/information economy, friendly relations with Ikun, and economic interests stretching around the world, including a fair bit of dabbling in Globalist doctrine and military interventionism--though far less than Ikun--and Kyanah living there enjoy all the comforts of a tier 1 city-state. As they are not down in a crater, the climate is slightly cooler, with the city-state being located firmly within a seasonal plains biome. Ryden is connected to Ikun and the city-state of Aktan by the Ryden-Aktan Highway, which extends across open land and is maintained by all three, along with various private companies. It's not shown on the map for space reasons, but there are about a dozen independent city-states along the road between Ikun and Ryden, ranging in population from around 200k up to a few million; the Rktakian Kwardniet is overall pretty densely populated.

Aktan. Location: 38N, 5E (~700 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1100m; Population: 10.6 million; GDP: $1.3 trillion. Tier: 1. Another one of Ikun's close neighbors, located at the far end of the Ryden-Akten Highway. Aktan is firmly inside the semi-arid desert biome, with climates almost the same as Ikun, and like most city-states in the Rktakian Kwardniet, has a high standard of living. During the Utopian Wars, Ikun and Aktan fought in Y788 and again in Y819-820, but during the Hegemony Era, they have consistently retained relatively solid relations, as Ikun has generally tried to avoid making enemies right next door. There are a number of medium-sized city-states between Ikun and Aktan, and like Ryden, Aktan often uses Ikun's spaceport--located along the Ryden-Aktan Highway--for its commercial space activity. Language and culture tend to be fairly similar to Ikun as well, though as with Ryden, there are noticeable differences in the vernacular and specific traditions.

Lakyanah. Location: 27N, 22W (~3800 km from Ikun); Elevation: +440m; Population: 0; GDP: $0. Tier: N/A. Located at the southwestern end of the Rktakian Kwardniet, not far from the edge of the Dunelands Basin. This is a former city-state that is no more, having been deleted by Ikun's nukes during the Day of Tower Clouds in Y831. At the time, this came as a shock to many, as Ikun and Lakyanah were staunch allies during the later years of the Utopian Wars. However, Lakyanah had rejected Ikun's offer to be under their nuclear umbrella, preferring instead to pursue their own independent nuclear weapons program. To Ikun, any nuclear proliferation was an unacceptable security risk, and so Lakyanah met the same fate as all 13 city-states pursuing nuclear weapons in Y831. It's believed that Lakyanah was just weeks away from its first nuclear test when the Day of Tower Clouds happened, which is probably why it happened when it did. With a 5.5 megaton fusion bomb to the city center and eight 200 kiloton fission bombs taking out every major military installation and infrastructure in the city-state, Lakyanah functionally didn't exist any more, and the survivors gradually trickled out to start over elsewhere; with the government, military, and infrastructure gone, and the looming threat of radiation poisoning (at the time, nobody knew for sure how long it would take to subside to safe levels), most Kyanah had no reason to remain in the area and it emptied out within a few years. In modern times, the radiation has subsided considerably and it's relatively safe to visit, but the city remains abandoned, with nature creeping in and many areas crumbling away or being buried under the sand. The area might remind a human observer of Pripyat, only with more ruins and outright leveled buildings along with the merely abandoned ones. As of Y976, it's been about 66 Earth years since the Day of Tower Clouds, most of the OG survivors are dead except a few who were hatchlings or children at the time, and their descendants have largely assimilated into nearby city-states. While there's no permanent population around Lakyanah's oasis, tourists and salvage companies looking to make some qoin do occasionally visit. It's possible that in the future, some group may migrate there to clean up the rubble and establish a new city-state under a different name, but this has yet to happen as of Y976.

Taktan. Location: 43N, 11W (~1700 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1300m; Population: <20k; GDP: Unknown. Tier: N/A. One of the first two city-states nuked by Ikun at the end of the Utopian Wars, in Y824; it was this abrupt destruction of an entire city-state that brought the chain reaction of the Utopian Wars to a halt in the first place. Like Lakyanah, the survivors abandoned the area after the city-state fell, but unlike Lakyanah, it does not remain completely abandoned. In the past 10-20 Earth years, companies have begun clearing away the remains of Taktan and developing properties there, and thousands of packs have moved into company towns in the vicinity. There is as yet no formal government, but it seems likely that a new city-state will be founded eventually. This area is in a seasonal plains biome, characterized by a mix of endoskeleton and exoskeleton type structured plants, with alternating periods of flower blooms, elevated fungal activity, and relatively dead, arid periods.

Awkoryah. Location: 27N, 24E (~4000 km from Ikun); Elevation: +500m; Population: 6.7 million; GDP: $450 billion. Tier: 2. One of the poorer city-states in the Rktakian Kwardniet, it is located at the southeast edge of the region, where semi-arid desert gives way to the hot desert of the Dunelands Basin. Some would in fact say it's an honorary Dunelands city-state at this point, as more than half the population are Dunelanders; many Kyanah from the eastern Dunelands immigrate here instead of pushing further into the Rktakian Kwardniet. While still having a higher standard of living than most (but not all) of the Dunelands, Awkoryah has seen better days; the manufacturing sector has been greatly reduced in the past couple of generations the same ecological disasters ravaging the Dunelands are also affecting them. "Awkoryah Sauce", a popular nyrud's blood based condiment takes its name from this city-state, though the actual product sold in Ikun is heavily modified for Ikun palates and no Kyanah from Awkoryah would be caught dead putting it on anything.

Kutwenyah. Location: 41N, 22E (~3000 km from Ikun); Elevation: +2400m; Population: 800k; GDP: $200 billion. Tier: 1. Positioned at the outskirts of the White Impact Range (one of the newer and thus more chaotic impact ranges), Kutwenyah is in a shattered biome, characterized by rapid swings in both climate and elevation, with a vast maze of craters, ejecta piles, and impact peaks, diverse micro-ecosystems hiding inside craters and harsh, windy conditions beyond the crater walls. Their economy is primarily based on a mix of tourism (packs coming to sightsee or climb the many craters and impact peaks) and luxury goods (ornate compute-watches, the Kyanah equivalent of a smartphone, and expensive alcohol are the most famous examples). However, it owes most of its influence to being the place where the Coalition of Cities, the largest and arguably most successful inter-city organization in history, was founded and the location of its headquarters. Thousands of packs of ambassadors visit throughout the year, looking to make deals with whatever diplomats they can find and advance the status of their home city-states. While ostensibly neutral, they maintain close economic ties to Ikun and in turn quietly keep them updated on any notable goings on with the Coalition, and sometimes, albeit rarely, straight up turn away diplomats whose presence would be inconvenient to Ikun.

[Jakob]

To-on Kan: Location: 57S, 66W (~19500 km from Ikun); Elevation: -1200m; Population: 1.2 million; GDP: $65 billion. Tier: 2. A little bit outside of the main Far South region, but nevertheless culturally and politically aligned. The climate is relatively cool and dry, though winds from the Middle South make it slightly warmer and wetter than it otherwise would be. Much like Ikun, they are located inside an impact crater, though this one is over 200 kilometers across. Almost the entire economy is centered around mining tantalum (despite some attempts to dabble in geoengineering, which were swiftly shut down by sanctions from Ikun), and they have the largest mines on the planet, though they aren't the only supplier. Tantalum is used in the alloys needed for high-performance nanogears for their mechanical computers. For this reason, it's an important strategic city; Ikun had an air base there until they removed it in order to extract political concessions from Koranah in other areas, at which point Koranah promptly invaded and installed a puppet regime as part of a plan to corner the tantalum market and vertically integrate their nanogear production.

Kanenhah: Location: 68S, 55W (~20200 km from Ikun); Elevation: +3200m; Population: 3.5 million; GDP: $500 billion. Tier: 1. Unlike most Far South city-states, Kanenhah is located not just near the Green Impact Range, but inside it, making the climate colder than most in the Far South; temperatures routinely drop as low as 5C in the winter and only rise to about 30-35 in the summer, so basically their summer is like Ikun's winter. Live there long enough and there's a good chance you'll even see snow flurries, a true sign of arctic climates on the Kyanah homeworld. The high elevation, due to its placement on an ejecta pile, makes the air thin and those from lower elevations often need time to acclimate, though on the flip side, this means that they produce a greater proportion of acclaimed athletes than most city-states. Politically, they are Ikun's closest ally in the Far South and one of the closest in the entire world, and thousands of Ikun troops are present in Kanenhah at all times. This has naturally drawn the wrath of Koranah, and relations between the two are extremely hostile. Koranah has thousands of railguns and missiles hidden in the mountains pointed at Kanenhah and accuse them of being an Ikun puppet. As Kanenhah's population is 1/8 that of their #1 enemy, they are one of only a couple hundred Kyanah city-states to have a draft in modern times, with all newly formed packs being required to join the military for 6 years (~2.7 Earth years). Combined with all the high-tech gear sold to them by Ikun at a discount, they are the 10th strongest military in the world, and the 3rd strongest outside the Rktakian Kwardniet. They still have some of their traditional textile and steel mills, but the bulk of their economy has shifted to cars and aircraft, robots, computers, and software. The city-state is also, oddly enough, something of a hub for high fashion and fine dining. Like most Far South city-states, religion is a much bigger part of life than in the Rktakian Kwardniet, and unlike most of the northern hemisphere, collective worship is common. While the government has secularized somewhat in recent decades, under pressure from both the younger generations and Ikun diplomats, and there are no longer any legal penalties for following the "wrong" religious practices, there may be social and professional consequences for packs that are vocal about it, and religious authorities are guaranteed one Lawspeaker seat (reduced from four packs to one a few years ago in Y967). Attending mass-worship is not mandatory, but businesses are required to close during this time, excluding emergency services and some government offices. As Kanenhah lies just inside the southern polar circle, there is a period of about 8 days where the sun does not rise in the winter and even at +4 there is only twilight; hundreds of thousands of locals and tens of thousands of tourists gather at the onset of polar night for the live music, street food, animal sacrifices, and light shows that mark this occasion.

Koranah: Location: 70S, 48W (~20100 km from Ikun); Elevation: +800m; Population: 29.0 million; GDP: $3.5 trillion. Tier: 1. Ikun's main economic and political rival and the largest economy on the planet by raw GDP. One of the few major Far South city-states to actually be located on the south side of the Green Impact Range, it's in a polar barrens biome, locked off from any moderating climatic (and political) influences by the impact range, so despite their lower elevation, the climate is similar to Kanenhah, but with a slightly longer polar night and midnight sun. In Y839, Ikun invaded Koranah, at the time a backwater city-state with an economy based primarily on resource extraction and low-tech manufacturing, and overthrew the non-aligned government, replacing the reigning City Alpha with a pro-Ikun ethnic minority pack who killed thousands of the majority group and ruled with an iron fist until being deposed in Y861 by the current government, which has proven to be even more authoritarian. City Alphas rule for life, passing on power to close ikoin, Lawspeakers may as well just be there for decoration, and packs who are brave (and stupid) enough to file a challenge against the City Alpha have a mysterious tendency to get into fatal car accidents or be arrested on trumped up charges. Surveillance is omnipresent both outside and sometimes inside homes, and leaving requires permission from the government (there's a meme circulating around net zone 1, which includes Ikun, that goes like 'we need a fence to keep everyone out, they need a fence to keep everyone in'). Koranah's populace tend to be deeply religious and have a tendency to participate in mass worship sessions, as with most of the Far South, and regular attendance is mandatory, as the state uses religious leaders to disseminate propaganda, along with having agents in every net zone stirring the pot and spreading anti-Ikun messaging. Despite all of this, Koranah is a very wealthy and prosperous city-state, in the tier 1 category. Ever since the current regime took over, they have been trying to economically and militarily catch up to Ikun by any means necessary, making vast investments in shifting to high-tech manufacturing, knowledge work, and financial services, implementing an egg quota to boost their population and thus economy, building countless new districts at an astonishingly fast rate, razing many slums and historic buildings alike in the process (with a dictatorial government, they can ram through projects that would be bogged down with years of red tape in a city-state like Ikun), and bolstering their military to a point that their conventional weapons have achieved parity with Ikun, although they haven't dared to challenge Ikun's nuclear monopoly.

Modern Koranah has what humans would call a cyberpunk vibe, a vast sea of plain cookie-cutter skyscrapers extending out to the horizon in a grid pattern, with extensive buttresses blocking out large chunks of the sky at street level, and seemingly every surface being a screen of some sort--useful for displaying larger than life propaganda everywhere, while endless flocks of drones soar through the skies. As laws against littering and noise pollution are very strict, Koranah tends to be cleaner and quieter than Ikun--except when the city-wide loudspeaker network is summoning citizens to mass worship or blasting the city anthem as it does every morning. The city has a very sleek and extensive mass transit system and a network of tunnels below street level to allow residents to traverse between buildings without facing the cold outside, so private car ownership is not very common. As Koranah's economy and population have grown, they have participated in the same Globalist tactics used by the Rktakian Kwardniet, siphoning away natural resources from faraway impoverished regions and seeking to grow their influence abroad through military and economic interventionism. They are also the mastermind behind the Climate Control System, a hypothetical network capable of controlling weather and ecosystems on a global scale in much the same way as Ikun controls the Water Distribution System; for this reason Ikun has spent large amounts of political capital getting as many city-states as possible to ban geoengineering technology. Koranah is also the largest manufacturer of high-performance nanogears, important components for the Kyanahs' mechanical computers; if Koranah stopped nanogear exports, computers would likely become several times more expensive overnight, a fact which they use to their advantage politically. Additionally, they have a considerable footprint in space, with many zero-G manufacturing hubs and the current (as of Y976) largest Ryitu base, with a population of 400+.

[Jakob]

Adronkin. Location: 12N, 37W (~7400 km from Ikun); Elevation: -900m; Population: 700k; GDP: $18 billion. Tier: 3. A quintessential and fairly average Dunelands city-state, located deep in the west end of the Dunelands Basin where summertime temperatures can reach 70 Celsius in the summer and 60 in the winter, and rainfall is scarce, averaging 10-15 centimeters per year in most of the region. Even with the Water Distribution System, water is expensive and sometimes unreliable during extreme weather and civil unrest. Like most Dunelands cities, it lags behind the Rktakian Kwardniet in terms of economic development. While most citizens aren't starving, living conditions are noticeably more bare-bones than in Ikun, with considerably fewer packs having things like cars or desktop computers, and middle managers in Adronkin making about the same money as janitors in Ikun. The government is often run by dictators or quasi-dictators, leading to frequent paramilitary activity, attempted coups, and corruption, with police shaking down citizens for bribes and government officials selling off state property and pocketing the profits. However, the military doesn't even crack the top 2500 globally, with no air force and only nine army cohorts, mostly equipped with outdated surplus gear from the Far South. Textile mills and brick factories are the backbone of the local economy. Most of the city-state consists of plain concrete or brick mid-rises, industrial areas, and the occasional slum, but the city center and surrounding eight blocks or so have some stone-facade office buildings, high rises, and high-end shops and restaurants, as well as Adronkin's one university, which primarily serves to educate the rich and future government officials. Due to the scorching heat of the Dunelands, society tends to operate on a nocturnal schedule, with Kyanah working at night and sleeping during the day, in contrast to the diurnal rhythm most common outside the Dunelands. This place is honestly only on the map because one of the major packs in Road to Hope came from here and (understandably) immigrated to Ikun.
Orokun. Location: 14N, 24E (~5700 km from Ikun); Elevation: -500m; Population: 8.6 million; GDP: $300 billion. Tier: 3. The largest city-state in the Dunelands by both population and GDP, it is located in the more densely populated eastern side of the Dunelands. While authoritarian, it's also relatively stable for its size and is a regional power in the Dunelands, with a sizeable army and air force, though their budget and equipment lag far behind Ikun. Orokun's old town is famous for its distinct architecture featuring domed mud brick buildings adorned with brightly colored ceramic tiles. Obviously, plenty of modern steel and concrete skyscrapers are present as well in the more recently built districts. Naturally, some districts are dominated by slums as well. They depend heavily on the Water Distribution System to remain stable, and relations with Ikun have varied over the years, depending on how much water they're able to draw from the system, though even at their worst they have never aligned themselves with Koranah.

Andin: Location: 43N, 47E (~6300 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1700m; Population: 10.1 million; GDP: $1.1 trillion. Tier: 1. The largest economy in the Meatbucket, though a couple of city-states have it beat in terms of population. Andin is located in a riparian web biome, where the density of oases combined with the high rainfall (~55 cm/Earth year, making it one of the wettest major cities on the planet) cause water to overflow out of the oases and form interconnected webs that spread across large areas. Winds from the north, which get deflected around the White Impact Range, make the climate milder than Rktakian Kwardniet city-states at the same latitude; winters average around 20C and summers around 45C. Andin's economy is dominated by agriculture and agri-tech, with vast fields of feed crops for nyruds and tyukruds extending out to the city-state's economic borders. Despite its agriculture-heavy economy, Andin is a tier 1 city-state, and as such, the crops are highly genetically engineered and tended by swarms of robots and drones rather than manual laborers with hand tools. Andin has in recent years been quite bullish on geoengineering and Weather Control System technology, which has partially soured otherwise friendly relations between them and Ikun, though they still remain more on Ikun's side than Koranah's in the ongoing economic war between the two. Much as Ikun is a holy grail for immigrants from the Dunelands, Andin is a holy grail for immigrants from the Nyruietkot Riyentkin. Andin is the biggest participant in a regional Meatbucket alliance that has built a small Ryitu base with a population of a few dozen and otherwise has an active commercial space sector.

Aiyahah. Location: 63N, 34W (~5700 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1900m; Population: 2.3 million; GDP: $150 billion. Tier: 2. A large city-state in the boreal scrublands biome, with temperatures ranging from 10 Celsius in the winter to 40 in the summer and 30-40 cm of rain per Earth year. Tends to be a common destination for tourists from the Rktakian Kwardniet during the summer, due to the mild climate, exotic wildlife, and the fact that summer nights only last a couple of hours. Tends to be a net exporter in the Water Distribution System. Aiyahah city-state is thousands of years old as a political entity--one of the oldest continuously populated city-states--with unorganized settlements and nomadic presence at their oasis dating back even further; it is only a few hundred kilometers from the site of the oldest fossils of anatomically modern Kyanah. Their closest living relatives, the tkorks, can be found in large numbers in the surrounding scrubland, and some populations have migrated into the city, doing well for themselves and becoming something of a pest, especially as their chimpanzee-level intelligence prevents them from falling for obvious traps, and they tend to keep coming back when removed.

Dagtan. Location: 9S, 67W (~13800 km from Ikun);Elevation: +600m; Population: 11.5 million; GDP: $650 billion. Tier: 2. One of those city-states that reached a massive size due to one-off quirks instead of being part of some larger cluster. In Dagtan's case, it sits at one of the through accessible routes through the Yellow Impact Range and thus was historically right in the middle of the Merchant Paths. In pre-modern times, traders from the Rktakian Kwardniet or the Dunelands getting to the Middle and Far South (or vice versa) had no choice but to go through Dagtan (unless they wanted to either cross the Shatter or spend months going all the way around the Yellow Impact Range). Trade going through the Western Sector and even some parts of the Boreal Scrublands also passed through here. Air travel has reduced its relevance slightly, but it's still home to one of the largest rail hubs in the world and countless truck convoys pass through as well.

East Anweri. Location: 36S, 113W (~22700 km from Ikun); Elevation: +900m; Population: 35.4 million; GDP: $1.4 trillion. Tier: 3 (some sources say 2, it's a close call). The largest city-state in the Middle South. While they are rapidly developing, the benefits have been unevenly distributed; there are very well-off districts that would not look out of place in the Rktakian Kwardniet, and districts that are actual slums. Since the end of the Utopian Wars, they have shifted from agriculture and coal into energy production and manufacturing consumer goods and in recent years has developed a homegrown space sector with thousands of satellites, hundreds of astronauts, a spaceport with a fleet of SSTO nuclear spaceplanes, and a small spin gravity space station used mainly for research and tourism. The tallest building on the planet, the 343-meter 98-floor Tower Fantasy 98, is located in East Anweri. Politically, they tend to avoid overtly committing to either Ikun or Koranah's sphere of influence and work with both at the same time while being distrustful of both--Ikun because of their actions in West Anweri and Koranah because of their treatment of ethnic Anweri in their city-state and their general interventionist foreign policy. East Anweri has tried to paint themselves globally as an third way for city-states disaffected by Ikun and Koranah's geopolitical game, but without much success.
West Anweri: Location: 36S, 114W (~22800 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1400m; Population: 45k; GDP: $1 billion. Tier: 3. Formerly a twin city-state of East Anweri and located at the base of one of the planet's few dozen active volcanoes. In Y831, they were pursuing nuclear weapons development and so fell during the Day of Tower Clouds. While initially abandoned like all city-states destroyed in this manner, the region is too densely inhabited to just leave a prime oasis untouched and Kyanah settlements have been slowly making a resurgence around West Anweri's former oasis. This new West Anweri isn't politically or culturally closely related to the OG one and is considered a different city-state for all intents and purposes, as there was no continuity of governance.

Dyrnyoknyok: Location: 14S, 78E (~15800 km from Ikun); Elevation: -400m; Population: 40.4 million; GDP: $350 billion. Tier: 4. Has the dubious honor of being the largest city-state in the world by population, though with looming civil war, a largely non-functional and dictatorial government, spillover from other conflicts in the Nyruietkot Riyentkin, and a reliance on farming cash crops--which are often unreliable in this equatorial region--with relatively low-tech tools. Dyrnyoknyok is located in a relatively wet and hot climate with a high oasis density, putting it in a flood meadow biome; temperatures range from 55-65 Celsius with minimal variation throughout the year, but this is trending upwards due to industrial activity. Many packs from here are emigrating to the Meatbucket.
Ioktaknytor: Location: 25S, 66E (~15700 km from Ikun); Elevation: -600m; Population: 0; GDP: $0. Tier: N/A. Formerly seen as an economic success story in the Nyruietkot Riyentkin, having made substantial strides to modernize and diversify into manufacturing and solar power, albeit under a brutal dictatorship. Allegedly, they pursued nuclear weapons development, and so were annihilated by Ikun in Y866, the first and only city-state to meet this fate since the Day of Tower Clouds. Subsequent visitors to the former city-state failed to find the remains of nuclear weapons facilities and some have accused Ikun of launching the attack in response to the Ioktaknytor army attacking Ikun truckers and resource gathering expeditions near their borders, and seizing the assets of local companies and packs doing business with Ikun, in order to make an example of Ioktaknytor. The official narrative by the Ikun government is that these facilities were hidden in open land rather than the city-state itself, but no one has found them yet. It remains a very divisive mystery, to say the least, in certain net zones.

[firestar464]

I'm just imagining people and Kyanah coexisting on Earth and eventually becoming part of the same society.

Eventually one day, Ikun's inhabitants see some sort of rocket land, with strange organisms in suits exiting alongside some Kyanah- who have come home for the first time in centuries.