Throwback to when one of the characters was like "stop fucking. I'm trying to read"
brand new sentence right there
Road to Hope
Re: Road to Hope
Kyanah are obligate carnivores, a fact which obviously influences their diet to a strong degree. Virtually all of their calories come from some form of meat, eggs, or other animal products; while some plant matter can be safely consumed, they derive little or no energy from it and would eventually starve if placed on a vegetarian diet for some reason. Thus plant-based foods are usually only added in small amounts to meat-based dishes for flavor or micro-nutrients (which could usually be gotten from meat as well); animal products are around 90% of the average Kyanah's diet, depending on the region. The actual meat consumed by Kyanah varies a lot by region and culture, with animals from all major categories being consumed somewhere in the world, but walkers tend to be the most common and crawlcritters (the closest analogue to insects) are usually avoided except in desperate times or very poor and undeveloped city-states. In Ikun's cuisine, nyruds and tyukruds account for the significant majority of all meat consumed--perhaps unsurprising as the rud suffix indicates a livestock animal--with thukukens coming in a distant third. Though cuts and preparation styles vary considerably depending on the dish. The plants that they do consume, albeit in small amounts, tend to be spices, tubers, or "nuts". These nuts aren't botanical nuts in the same sense as Earth nuts, due to the paucity of seeds and complete nonexistence of fruits. However, similar-looking structures do exist in some structured plants, where many species store spores inside hard-shelled structures that, when mature, crack open to release large quantities of spores; the immature forms of these structures are called "nuts" by Kyanah. Leafy greens are taboo in most cultures, as they are seen as livestock food and also have an emetic effect in large quantities. Attitudes towards fungi vary widely and are not taboo in Ikun, but also not very popular.
Ikun is a melting pot city-state with hundreds of specialty stores and restaurants selling food from all regions of the world--with varying degrees of authenticity--but has its own mainstream cuisine as well, which is obviously high in meat. Nyrud or tyukrud steaks are an obvious choice--either as-is or with other ingredients on the side and sauces to dip it in--and a favorite of picky eaters and/or lazy Kyanah, but plenty of other options exist. Whole nyrud ribs are usually shared by entire packs (nyruds are very large animals) with each member taking turns to take a bite out of it. On the other end of the scale, ground-up nyrud, tyukrud, or other meats can be mixed with the eggs of these very animals and smaller amounts of the aforementioned tubers and "nuts" to create a sort of "salad". This mix can be eaten as is or stuffed into the gas bladder of a juvenile thukuken, or a tyukrud stomach, or wrapped tightly in cooked skins or thin strips of roasted meat. Various blood or animal oil based sauces exist, which are used to provide flavor and moisture. Fried bits of wingbeast wings and thukuken gas bladders, flavored bone marrow, and jerky-like strips of dried meat are common snack items. Meat cubes, consisting of one or more ground meats stuck together with eggs and sticky sauce and shaped into a cube, and sometimes subsequently fried, can be eaten as either a snack or full meal, depending on their size. Lower-grade meats are sometimes dried, powdered, and used as a condiment on other dishes. Spices are heavily used in Ikun and most northern cuisines, though in the far south, where spice plants are typically not as common, there is more of an emphasis on flavoring meats via salting and drying, or cold smoking. Hatchlings, whose teeth have not yet fully developed, eat chewed up and regurgitated food, which can be provided by any adult in their pack, or sometimes even older siblings; Kyanah have a specialized pouch in the upper esophagus to store food for this purpose.
As Kyanah biochemistry uses water as a solvent, they do naturally drink water more than anything else. Packs with a lot of money are often water snobs who will pay a premium for water that was bottled in some particular city-state, usually one with historical or religious significance, or just one that has a particularly nice mineral profile--despite the fact that any mineral profile can be created synthetically, and the Water Distribution System tends to mix water from different regions anyway. Flavor packets are commonly used to enhance the flavor of water; these tend to be savory or even bitter rather than sweet. As Kyanah haven't evolved to consume large amounts of sugar, and a lot of the bacteria found in spoiled meat on their planet produce saccharin as a by-product, so sweet tastes are generally avoided (the average Kyanah really wouldn't like cake even if a biochemically compatible version were somehow made). The blood of various animals, most commonly nyruds, is also drunk, either straight up--it's often considered to be very refreshing on a hot day, when chilled--or as the base for various sauces. This substance has a distinct indigo hue, much like the blood of the Kyanah themselves, or most other animals on their planet, for that matter.
It appears that ethanol has a fairly similar effect on Kyanah as on humans and alcoholic beverages have thus existed for thousands of years. However, the means of creating the Kyanahs' alcoholic drinks is quite different; it relies on strains of microbes unique to their planet that produce alcohol from amino acids rather than carbs or sugars. Naturally, this means that most such drinks are produced from "fermented" meat or blood. Roontkak, made from tyukrud blood, is the most popular alcoholic drink, both in Ikun and the broader world. The Kyanah have also been able to replicate this process using plant-based proteins found in tubers, nuts, and fungi. This process was discovered a few thousand years after the meat-based alcohols and tends to produce a slightly weaker drink, but it's rarer and harder to make, so tends to carry a connotation of culture and sophistication, while something like roontkak is seen as a lowbrow drink for the masses. Common plant-derived alcoholic drinks include roontyeti, from the tubers of the tyeti plant, and roonwerkdda, from the nuts of the werkdda bush. These tend to have spread to Ikun's region of the world from the far north and far south, where suitable plants for making alcohol are more common. Either alcohol category can be distilled to create the Kyanah version of hard liquors, which are usually denoted by the suffix -tyot (literally "strong" or "dominant").
Additionally, capsaicin is a psychoactive and moderately addictive drug to Kyanah, with a sizable chunk of the population smoking the dried and powdered skins of various endoskeleton plants that have evolved to use capsaicin to deter herbivores. Though in southern hemisphere cultures, it's more common to mix it into a tea and get high on capsaicin that way. Such mixtures usually contain no more than 2% actual capsaicin; purified industrial-grade capsaisin is much stronger and more addictive and restricted by many governments. There is no minimum age for substance use (nor any minimum age to do anything else, since adulthood is determined solely by separation from the birth-pack, regardless of the age) in most Kyanah societies, so it's up to the adults in a young Kyanah's birth-pack wehther they can access these items. However, it's seen as perfectly normal in Ikun society for older children and adolescents to be given small amounts of alcohol or some of the milder capsaicin variants on festive occasions, to partake with the adults.
Kyanah in most societies typically don't use personal utensils, instead simply taking food with their hands; at most they use ladles or tongs to take food from serving dishes. Rather than using their teeth or knives, they typically use their powerful neck muscles to rip away bite-sized chunks of whatever they are eating. In formal dining environments, eating gloves are used to keep their hands clean, but at home or in more casual venues, nobody really cares. As Kyanah drink by lapping rather than sipping, shallow bowls rather than cups are used for liquids; drinks are only kept in bottles for storage. Technology has advanced to the point where synthetic meat is fairly common and cheap, using colonies of genetically engineered microbes to essentially grow meat like a crop inside industrial tanks, with artificial flavoring being added to simulate various actual meats. While often cheaper than real meat, it has its limitations; it can only create homogenous patties rather than the complex textures of an actual animal, while there's no scientific evidence that they're unsafe, many feel that they're unnatural or unhealthy. So this tends to mostly be food for the poor. However, it has also found a use as military rations during the Kyanah invasion of Earth, as it would be stupid to try to farm livestock in space, or on an alien planet in the middle of a war zone.
Eating is generally not a social occasion for Kyanah, it's seen as something of a private and vulnerable time, when they're weak and in need of nourishment, not strong and ready to defend or advance their pack's position in society (most Kyanah won't absolutely refuse to eat if outsiders happen to be around, but all else being equal, most will prefer to have only the company of their own packs). So it's very rare for them to eat or drink with anyone who isn't already in their pack, unless they don't have one yet, or want to expand it. Even ikoin who go "together" to eat out somewhere will split up into their own separate areas and just eat with their packs. So their restaurants and bars--which still exist, as even Kyanah, much like humans, often like eating professional-quality food without having to prepare it for themselves--have a considerably different layout and atmosphere. Usually there will be a bunch of stalls where diners can sit and eat while being walled off from other Kyanah while still providing a good view of the kitchen via a curtain or window so they can keep an eye on their food being prepared. Mid-range establishments will usually just have the food and drinks, and few other amenities, while higher end ones have more elaborate measures to draw in diners and justify their price points, from ornate cushions, aromatic sprays, and elaborate light displays all the way to live music, holographic movies, and other performances like reenactments of historic duels and combat challenges, which diners can either open their window to get a good look at or ignore and eat in peace.
Since the end of the Utopian Wars, the traditional Kyanah dining experience has been steadily losing ground to fast food (DakDakDak--literally FastFastFast--being the most popular one in Ikun, with over 64 locations) and drone deliveries. The former allows Kyanah to simply come in, choose from the premade meals that are currently on the shelf, pay, and leave, or (for a premium) put in a special request, though these establishments by nature have limited menus and little room for customization; they will often use AI to predict what to make ahead of time, with high accuracy. While the latter allows them to avoid the hassle of dealing with anyone outside their pack entirely, while still getting high quality food. The one exception to the general dynamic at Kyanah restaurants and bars would be those that cater to the packless; these are set up to encourage rather than discourage interaction, as their entire purpose is for young adult Kyanah who have recently separated from their birth-packs to find love for themselves. To this end, such establishments have elaborate sets of rituals and social rules to attract the attention of other individuals. As a day on the Kyanah homeworld is only about 15.75 hours, there are customarily only two meals, the very creatively named day-meal, eaten before the beginning of the workday, and night-meal, eaten after the end of the workday. Though many do eat snacks during the day, especially if working physically demanding jobs.
In terms of inter-species compatibility, as humans and Kyanah are both carbon and water based life forms, most human foods wouldn't kill a Kyanah, nor vice versa (with a few niche exceptions, such as chocolate or grapes) neither species can properly digest the other's food and would likely throw up if they tried to eat a significant amount. Interestingly, hard liquors of either species are largely exempt from this, as they're mostly just alcohol and water anyway, while weaker booze like roontkak or beer has impurities that would definitely not be appreciated by the digestive system of the wrong species. During the post-war occupation of Earth, Kyanah have also been known to import chili powder into their occupied regions, apparently for the sole purpose of smoking it.
Ikun is a melting pot city-state with hundreds of specialty stores and restaurants selling food from all regions of the world--with varying degrees of authenticity--but has its own mainstream cuisine as well, which is obviously high in meat. Nyrud or tyukrud steaks are an obvious choice--either as-is or with other ingredients on the side and sauces to dip it in--and a favorite of picky eaters and/or lazy Kyanah, but plenty of other options exist. Whole nyrud ribs are usually shared by entire packs (nyruds are very large animals) with each member taking turns to take a bite out of it. On the other end of the scale, ground-up nyrud, tyukrud, or other meats can be mixed with the eggs of these very animals and smaller amounts of the aforementioned tubers and "nuts" to create a sort of "salad". This mix can be eaten as is or stuffed into the gas bladder of a juvenile thukuken, or a tyukrud stomach, or wrapped tightly in cooked skins or thin strips of roasted meat. Various blood or animal oil based sauces exist, which are used to provide flavor and moisture. Fried bits of wingbeast wings and thukuken gas bladders, flavored bone marrow, and jerky-like strips of dried meat are common snack items. Meat cubes, consisting of one or more ground meats stuck together with eggs and sticky sauce and shaped into a cube, and sometimes subsequently fried, can be eaten as either a snack or full meal, depending on their size. Lower-grade meats are sometimes dried, powdered, and used as a condiment on other dishes. Spices are heavily used in Ikun and most northern cuisines, though in the far south, where spice plants are typically not as common, there is more of an emphasis on flavoring meats via salting and drying, or cold smoking. Hatchlings, whose teeth have not yet fully developed, eat chewed up and regurgitated food, which can be provided by any adult in their pack, or sometimes even older siblings; Kyanah have a specialized pouch in the upper esophagus to store food for this purpose.
As Kyanah biochemistry uses water as a solvent, they do naturally drink water more than anything else. Packs with a lot of money are often water snobs who will pay a premium for water that was bottled in some particular city-state, usually one with historical or religious significance, or just one that has a particularly nice mineral profile--despite the fact that any mineral profile can be created synthetically, and the Water Distribution System tends to mix water from different regions anyway. Flavor packets are commonly used to enhance the flavor of water; these tend to be savory or even bitter rather than sweet. As Kyanah haven't evolved to consume large amounts of sugar, and a lot of the bacteria found in spoiled meat on their planet produce saccharin as a by-product, so sweet tastes are generally avoided (the average Kyanah really wouldn't like cake even if a biochemically compatible version were somehow made). The blood of various animals, most commonly nyruds, is also drunk, either straight up--it's often considered to be very refreshing on a hot day, when chilled--or as the base for various sauces. This substance has a distinct indigo hue, much like the blood of the Kyanah themselves, or most other animals on their planet, for that matter.
It appears that ethanol has a fairly similar effect on Kyanah as on humans and alcoholic beverages have thus existed for thousands of years. However, the means of creating the Kyanahs' alcoholic drinks is quite different; it relies on strains of microbes unique to their planet that produce alcohol from amino acids rather than carbs or sugars. Naturally, this means that most such drinks are produced from "fermented" meat or blood. Roontkak, made from tyukrud blood, is the most popular alcoholic drink, both in Ikun and the broader world. The Kyanah have also been able to replicate this process using plant-based proteins found in tubers, nuts, and fungi. This process was discovered a few thousand years after the meat-based alcohols and tends to produce a slightly weaker drink, but it's rarer and harder to make, so tends to carry a connotation of culture and sophistication, while something like roontkak is seen as a lowbrow drink for the masses. Common plant-derived alcoholic drinks include roontyeti, from the tubers of the tyeti plant, and roonwerkdda, from the nuts of the werkdda bush. These tend to have spread to Ikun's region of the world from the far north and far south, where suitable plants for making alcohol are more common. Either alcohol category can be distilled to create the Kyanah version of hard liquors, which are usually denoted by the suffix -tyot (literally "strong" or "dominant").
Additionally, capsaicin is a psychoactive and moderately addictive drug to Kyanah, with a sizable chunk of the population smoking the dried and powdered skins of various endoskeleton plants that have evolved to use capsaicin to deter herbivores. Though in southern hemisphere cultures, it's more common to mix it into a tea and get high on capsaicin that way. Such mixtures usually contain no more than 2% actual capsaicin; purified industrial-grade capsaisin is much stronger and more addictive and restricted by many governments. There is no minimum age for substance use (nor any minimum age to do anything else, since adulthood is determined solely by separation from the birth-pack, regardless of the age) in most Kyanah societies, so it's up to the adults in a young Kyanah's birth-pack wehther they can access these items. However, it's seen as perfectly normal in Ikun society for older children and adolescents to be given small amounts of alcohol or some of the milder capsaicin variants on festive occasions, to partake with the adults.
Kyanah in most societies typically don't use personal utensils, instead simply taking food with their hands; at most they use ladles or tongs to take food from serving dishes. Rather than using their teeth or knives, they typically use their powerful neck muscles to rip away bite-sized chunks of whatever they are eating. In formal dining environments, eating gloves are used to keep their hands clean, but at home or in more casual venues, nobody really cares. As Kyanah drink by lapping rather than sipping, shallow bowls rather than cups are used for liquids; drinks are only kept in bottles for storage. Technology has advanced to the point where synthetic meat is fairly common and cheap, using colonies of genetically engineered microbes to essentially grow meat like a crop inside industrial tanks, with artificial flavoring being added to simulate various actual meats. While often cheaper than real meat, it has its limitations; it can only create homogenous patties rather than the complex textures of an actual animal, while there's no scientific evidence that they're unsafe, many feel that they're unnatural or unhealthy. So this tends to mostly be food for the poor. However, it has also found a use as military rations during the Kyanah invasion of Earth, as it would be stupid to try to farm livestock in space, or on an alien planet in the middle of a war zone.
Eating is generally not a social occasion for Kyanah, it's seen as something of a private and vulnerable time, when they're weak and in need of nourishment, not strong and ready to defend or advance their pack's position in society (most Kyanah won't absolutely refuse to eat if outsiders happen to be around, but all else being equal, most will prefer to have only the company of their own packs). So it's very rare for them to eat or drink with anyone who isn't already in their pack, unless they don't have one yet, or want to expand it. Even ikoin who go "together" to eat out somewhere will split up into their own separate areas and just eat with their packs. So their restaurants and bars--which still exist, as even Kyanah, much like humans, often like eating professional-quality food without having to prepare it for themselves--have a considerably different layout and atmosphere. Usually there will be a bunch of stalls where diners can sit and eat while being walled off from other Kyanah while still providing a good view of the kitchen via a curtain or window so they can keep an eye on their food being prepared. Mid-range establishments will usually just have the food and drinks, and few other amenities, while higher end ones have more elaborate measures to draw in diners and justify their price points, from ornate cushions, aromatic sprays, and elaborate light displays all the way to live music, holographic movies, and other performances like reenactments of historic duels and combat challenges, which diners can either open their window to get a good look at or ignore and eat in peace.
Since the end of the Utopian Wars, the traditional Kyanah dining experience has been steadily losing ground to fast food (DakDakDak--literally FastFastFast--being the most popular one in Ikun, with over 64 locations) and drone deliveries. The former allows Kyanah to simply come in, choose from the premade meals that are currently on the shelf, pay, and leave, or (for a premium) put in a special request, though these establishments by nature have limited menus and little room for customization; they will often use AI to predict what to make ahead of time, with high accuracy. While the latter allows them to avoid the hassle of dealing with anyone outside their pack entirely, while still getting high quality food. The one exception to the general dynamic at Kyanah restaurants and bars would be those that cater to the packless; these are set up to encourage rather than discourage interaction, as their entire purpose is for young adult Kyanah who have recently separated from their birth-packs to find love for themselves. To this end, such establishments have elaborate sets of rituals and social rules to attract the attention of other individuals. As a day on the Kyanah homeworld is only about 15.75 hours, there are customarily only two meals, the very creatively named day-meal, eaten before the beginning of the workday, and night-meal, eaten after the end of the workday. Though many do eat snacks during the day, especially if working physically demanding jobs.
In terms of inter-species compatibility, as humans and Kyanah are both carbon and water based life forms, most human foods wouldn't kill a Kyanah, nor vice versa (with a few niche exceptions, such as chocolate or grapes) neither species can properly digest the other's food and would likely throw up if they tried to eat a significant amount. Interestingly, hard liquors of either species are largely exempt from this, as they're mostly just alcohol and water anyway, while weaker booze like roontkak or beer has impurities that would definitely not be appreciated by the digestive system of the wrong species. During the post-war occupation of Earth, Kyanah have also been known to import chili powder into their occupied regions, apparently for the sole purpose of smoking it.
Last edited by Jakob on Mon Apr 29, 2024 12:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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firestar464
- Posts: 902
- Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2022 7:45 am
Re: Road to Hope
It seems that you are going for Defeated Humans. Imma just throw out the different scenarios for humans vs aliens in sci-fi:
Destroyed Humans: Humans lose, and get destroyed. Not a single human lives, or if they do, they have been turned into livestock or mutated and contorted beyond recognition. The worst outcome for humans.
Defeated Humans: Humans lose, and get occupied. They live as an underclass but do not get absolutely enslaved.
Beaten Humans: Humans get drawn into an unfavorable settlement but do not necessarily get occupied as a whole. A bitter peace ensues, as well as a bitter exchange.
Human Victory: Humans win. They get decimated but they repel the invasion. The thing you usually see in the movies.
Human Revanchism: Not only do humans win, they enter an era of collective ultranationalism and vengefulness, and they turn around and destroy the other species. This is typically followed by some sort of galaxy-wide war due to this angering some sort of council.
Destroyed Humans: Humans lose, and get destroyed. Not a single human lives, or if they do, they have been turned into livestock or mutated and contorted beyond recognition. The worst outcome for humans.
Defeated Humans: Humans lose, and get occupied. They live as an underclass but do not get absolutely enslaved.
Beaten Humans: Humans get drawn into an unfavorable settlement but do not necessarily get occupied as a whole. A bitter peace ensues, as well as a bitter exchange.
Human Victory: Humans win. They get decimated but they repel the invasion. The thing you usually see in the movies.
Human Revanchism: Not only do humans win, they enter an era of collective ultranationalism and vengefulness, and they turn around and destroy the other species. This is typically followed by some sort of galaxy-wide war due to this angering some sort of council.
Re: Road to Hope
I've thought a lot about this already and #3 is right on the money. I'll go more into it later.firestar464 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 29, 2024 12:05 am It seems that you are going for Defeated Humans. Imma just throw out the different scenarios for humans vs aliens in sci-fi:
Destroyed Humans: Humans lose, and get destroyed. Not a single human lives, or if they do, they have been turned into livestock or mutated and contorted beyond recognition. The worst outcome for humans.
Defeated Humans: Humans lose, and get occupied. They live as an underclass but do not get absolutely enslaved.
Beaten Humans: Humans get drawn into an unfavorable settlement but do not necessarily get occupied as a whole. A bitter peace ensues, as well as a bitter exchange.
Human Victory: Humans win. They get decimated but they repel the invasion. The thing you usually see in the movies.
Human Revanchism: Not only do humans win, they enter an era of collective ultranationalism and vengefulness, and they turn around and destroy the other species. This is typically followed by some sort of galaxy-wide war due to this angering some sort of council.
If you call the Kyanah permanently holding onto a handful of cities in a few countries humanity being defeated, in any case.
Last edited by Jakob on Mon Apr 29, 2024 12:58 am, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Road to Hope
The Saharan Theater was the first of the three theaters of the Kyanah invasion where they achieved a victory, with fighting lasting from July 5-August 14, 2023. As such, it gave the humans in the North American and Asian theaters an early look at what a Kyanah victory might be like.firestar464 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 29, 2024 12:05 am It seems that you are going for Defeated Humans. Imma just throw out the different scenarios for humans vs aliens in sci-fi:
Destroyed Humans: Humans lose, and get destroyed. Not a single human lives, or if they do, they have been turned into livestock or mutated and contorted beyond recognition. The worst outcome for humans.
Defeated Humans: Humans lose, and get occupied. They live as an underclass but do not get absolutely enslaved.
Beaten Humans: Humans get drawn into an unfavorable settlement but do not necessarily get occupied as a whole. A bitter peace ensues, as well as a bitter exchange.
Human Victory: Humans win. They get decimated but they repel the invasion. The thing you usually see in the movies.
Human Revanchism: Not only do humans win, they enter an era of collective ultranationalism and vengefulness, and they turn around and destroy the other species. This is typically followed by some sort of galaxy-wide war due to this angering some sort of council.
- There appears to be no systematic attempt to exterminate humans in occupied regions of Egypt. Millions of civilians continue to go about their lives without being detained or killed by the Kyanah.
- However, the human government now answers to the Provisional Military Administration, led by a few packs of Kyanah senior officers, with lower-ranking soldiers and human collaborators reporting to them. Most of the country is under martial law, with widespread drone surveillance, strict curfews, limitations on freedom of movement between different cities and towns, and suspected agitators and their families being jailed together or executed without a trial. They seem not to understand why there is an uproar over families being subject to this, as Kyanah society considers members of a pack to share moral responsibility for actions committed by any member, and they simply assume that families are the human analogue of packs.
- Behind the scenes, there is considerable debate among Kyanah military leadership about when and how to transition from the Provisional Military Administration to civilian government(s). The more moderate-minded packs believe that working with the humans will be necessary as they lack the population base to sustainably administer the occupied territory by themselves. However the hardliners believe this is a security risk and they're better off just keeping the Provisional Military Administration until military reinforcements and civilian colonists start arriving. Though unbeknownst to them or humanity, Project Hope was cancelled a few years after they left Tau Ceti e, and no one else is coming.
- Weapons more powerful than small arms are gradually being confiscated from the human government and destroyed. Small arms are largely left alone, as the Kyanah are aware that they need loyalist humans to be able to help police the occupied territory and prevent it from falling into chaos and anarchy, as there are only about 8000 Kyanah soldiers in the Saharan theater.
- Rogue units from the Egyptian military, along with radical Islamic groups, continue to attack Kyanah bases, but these attacks are increasingly scattered and disorganized as time goes on, and do little to no damage to their intended targets, inadvertently mostly killing human bystanders instead.
- On September 1, 2023, shortly after Egypt surrenders, the Kyanah detonate a series of nukes to create a channel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Qattara Depression, which is subsequently flooded to create an artificial oasis with a hydroelectric plant, implementing the legendary Qattara Depression Project . The Kyanah have begun building a city from scratch surrounding the new oasis. Included in the Qattara Site are power plants, factories, launch facilities, and large amounts of what appears to be civilian housing. Most of the 10,000 civilian scientists and engineers affiliated with Project Hope are gradually relocated here, though some remain in orbit or at the Lunar facility. However, there is far more housing constructed than what would be necessary to support them, leading many to speculate (correctly) that the excess is intended for either humans or future Kyanah colonists.
- Thousands of human families who have been vetted by the Kyanah are permitted to relocate to the Qattara Site to help build the city and work in the factories; families are apparently strongly prefered as they remind the Kyanah of their own pack structures and are thus seen as more trustworthy than random individuals. Weapons and supplies produced here are being sent to the North American and Asian theaters, where fighting continues in full force.
- The Qattara Site is under heavy lockdown, with no unauthorized movement in or out and all communications being censored to prevent military secrets from reaching the rest of humanity. Between this and the destruction of humanitys' satellites, it's difficult for the rest of the world to know what's going on there. Nevertheless, photos and videos from the ground do gradually leak out onto the human internet. More information comes from an anonymous human worker--for his protection known only as Abdul, which may or may not be his real name--who escapes from the Qattara Site, defects to Europe, and does several interviews with the media, albeit with a mask and voice modulator to prevent retaliation against his family at the site.
- According to this "Abdul" guy, tensions between species are extremely high at the site, both both humans and Kyanah being extremely distrustful of each other. This is exacerbated by difficulties in communicating; neither species can physically pronounce the other's language, so they've slowly converged on a blend of human and Kyanah sign language, but this is rife with misunderstandings and misinterpretations that often lead to chaos and violence. Worker strikes and riots are commonplace, and suspected spies and saboteurs are summarily executed. Kyanah soldiers are constantly watching the humans like hawks, and frequently searching and confiscating their digital devices. Nevertheless, many humans don't regret coming to the Qattara Site, as the Provisional Military Administration is providing them with high wages and generous benefits, and also there's consistently enough to eat and 24/7 running water and electricity, which aren't guaranteed elsewhere, as much of the country's infrastructure was destroyed by the Kyanah air force and orbital bombardment during the initial invasion.
- While the majority of Kyanah soldiers from the Saharan Theater are stationed at the Qattara Site, they have also established a base at the Suez Canal, seeing the land as an important strategic chokepoint. This has led to fears across the world that the Kyanah will shut down the canal, but they have yet to do so; apparently they haven't yet fully grasped the economic and military significance of human ships, which aren't something they're familiar with, being from a desert planet. They do, however, often stop and search ships traveling through, and sometimes confiscate items for reasons known only to them. They also maintain a military base in Cairo itself, and a handful of cohorts are stationed at other strategic areas or sites with natural resources. Outside of these select few areas though, the Kyanah have no direct presence, and many locals haven't even seen one in person. However, humans working for the Provisional Military Administration enforce these directives in the rest of the country, with varying degrees of strictness.
- Both Kyanah soldiers and human workers are busy repairing the Egyptian infrastructure and even modernizing it to the Kyanahs' technological standards. However, such activities are largely limited to areas with a Kyanah military presence, such as the Qattara Site, the Suez Canal region, and Cairo, with most other cities and towns--many of which are still in ruins--being ignored. Outside Egypt's borders, many of its neighbors are arming themselves for war. However, the Kyanah haven't continued expanding after the fall of Egypt; they are very hesitant to over-extend due to their limited numbers and are focused on rebuilding and consolidating control. Indeed they have no particular desire to expand further, as they've already secured their main strategic goals in the Saharan theater, namely the creation of the Qattara Site.
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Time_Traveller
- Posts: 2290
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- Location: San Francisco, USA, June 7th 1929 C.E
Re: Road to Hope
Its so interesting to see that the Kyanah would starve to death if they were a vegetarian and how they would be poorly if they eat human foods.Jakob wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 11:30 pm Kyanah are obligate carnivores, a fact which obviously influences their diet to a strong degree. Virtually all of their calories come from some form of meat, eggs, or other animal products; while some plant matter can be safely consumed, they derive little or no energy from it and would eventually starve if placed on a vegetarian diet for some reason. Thus plant-based foods are usually only added in small amounts to meat-based dishes for flavor or micro-nutrients (which could usually be gotten from meat as well); animal products are around 90% of the average Kyanah's diet, depending on the region. The actual meat consumed by Kyanah varies a lot by region and culture, with animals from all major categories being consumed somewhere in the world, but walkers tend to be the most common and crawlcritters (the closest analogue to insects) are usually avoided except in desperate times or very poor and undeveloped city-states. In Ikun's cuisine, nyruds and tyukruds account for the significant majority of all meat consumed--perhaps unsurprising as the rud suffix indicates a livestock animal--with thukukens coming in a distant third. Though cuts and preparation styles vary considerably depending on the dish. The plants that they do consume, albeit in small amounts, tend to be spices, tubers, or "nuts". These nuts aren't botanical nuts in the same sense as Earth nuts, due to the paucity of seeds and complete nonexistence of fruits. However, similar-looking structures do exist in some structured plants, where many species store spores inside hard-shelled structures that, when mature, crack open to release large quantities of spores; the immature forms of these structures are called "nuts" by Kyanah. Leafy greens are taboo in most cultures, as they are seen as livestock food and also have an emetic effect in large quantities. Attitudes towards fungi vary widely and are not taboo in Ikun, but also not very popular.
Ikun is a melting pot city-state with hundreds of specialty stores and restaurants selling food from all regions of the world--with varying degrees of authenticity--but has its own mainstream cuisine as well, which is obviously high in meat. Nyrud or tyukrud steaks are an obvious choice--either as-is or with other ingredients on the side and sauces to dip it in--and a favorite of picky eaters and/or lazy Kyanah, but plenty of other options exist. Whole nyrud ribs are usually shared by entire packs (nyruds are very large animals) with each member taking turns to take a bite out of it. On the other end of the scale, ground-up nyrud, tyukrud, or other meats can be mixed with the eggs of these very animals and smaller amounts of the aforementioned tubers and "nuts" to create a sort of "salad". This mix can be eaten as is or stuffed into the gas bladder of a juvenile thukuken, or a tyukrud stomach, or wrapped tightly in cooked skins or thin strips of roasted meat. Various blood or animal oil based sauces exist, which are used to provide flavor and moisture. Fried bits of wingbeast wings and thukuken gas bladders, flavored bone marrow, and jerky-like strips of dried meat are common snack items. Meat cubes, consisting of one or more ground meats stuck together with eggs and sticky sauce and shaped into a cube, and sometimes subsequently fried, can be eaten as either a snack or full meal, depending on their size. Lower-grade meats are sometimes dried, powdered, and used as a condiment on other dishes. Spices are heavily used in Ikun and most northern cuisines, though in the far south, where spice plants are typically not as common, there is more of an emphasis on flavoring meats via salting and drying, or cold smoking. Hatchlings, whose teeth have not yet fully developed, eat chewed up and regurgitated food, which can be provided by any adult in their pack, or sometimes even older siblings; Kyanah have a specialized pouch in the upper esophagus to store food for this purpose.
As Kyanah biochemistry uses water as a solvent, they do naturally drink water more than anything else. Packs with a lot of money are often water snobs who will pay a premium for water that was bottled in some particular city-state, usually one with historical or religious significance, or just one that has a particularly nice mineral profile--despite the fact that any mineral profile can be created synthetically, and the Water Distribution System tends to mix water from different regions anyway. Flavor packets are commonly used to enhance the flavor of water; these tend to be savory or even bitter rather than sweet. As Kyanah haven't evolved to consume large amounts of sugar, and a lot of the bacteria found in spoiled meat on their planet produce saccharin as a by-product, so sweet tastes are generally avoided (the average Kyanah really wouldn't like cake even if a biochemically compatible version were somehow made). The blood of various animals, most commonly nyruds, is also drunk, either straight up--it's often considered to be very refreshing on a hot day, when chilled--or as the base for various sauces. This substance has a distinct indigo hue, much like the blood of the Kyanah themselves, or most other animals on their planet, for that matter.
It appears that ethanol has a fairly similar effect on Kyanah as on humans and alcoholic beverages have thus existed for thousands of years. However, the means of creating the Kyanahs' alcoholic drinks is quite different; it relies on strains of microbes unique to their planet that produce alcohol from amino acids rather than carbs or sugars. Naturally, this means that most such drinks are produced from "fermented" meat or blood. Roontkak, made from tyukrud blood, is the most popular alcoholic drink, both in Ikun and the broader world. The Kyanah have also been able to replicate this process using plant-based proteins found in tubers, nuts, and fungi. This process was discovered a few thousand years after the meat-based alcohols and tends to produce a slightly weaker drink, but it's rarer and harder to make, so tends to carry a connotation of culture and sophistication, while something like roontkak is seen as a lowbrow drink for the masses. Common plant-derived alcoholic drinks include roontyeti, from the tubers of the tyeti plant, and roonwerkdda, from the nuts of the werkdda bush. These tend to have spread to Ikun's region of the world from the far north and far south, where suitable plants for making alcohol are more common. Either alcohol category can be distilled to create the Kyanah version of hard liquors, which are usually denoted by the suffix -tyot (literally "strong" or "dominant").
Additionally, capsaicin is a psychoactive and moderately addictive drug to Kyanah, with a sizable chunk of the population smoking the dried and powdered skins of various endoskeleton plants that have evolved to use capsaicin to deter herbivores. Though in southern hemisphere cultures, it's more common to mix it into a tea and get high on capsaicin that way. Such mixtures usually contain no more than 2% actual capsaicin; purified industrial-grade capsaisin is much stronger and more addictive and restricted by many governments. There is no minimum age for substance use (nor any minimum age to do anything else, since adulthood is determined solely by separation from the birth-pack, regardless of the age) in most Kyanah societies, so it's up to the adults in a young Kyanah's birth-pack wehther they can access these items. However, it's seen as perfectly normal in Ikun society for older children and adolescents to be given small amounts of alcohol or some of the milder capsaicin variants on festive occasions, to partake with the adults.
Kyanah in most societies typically don't use personal utensils, instead simply taking food with their hands; at most they use ladles or tongs to take food from serving dishes. Rather than using their teeth or knives, they typically use their powerful neck muscles to rip away bite-sized chunks of whatever they are eating. In formal dining environments, eating gloves are used to keep their hands clean, but at home or in more casual venues, nobody really cares. As Kyanah drink by lapping rather than sipping, shallow bowls rather than cups are used for liquids; drinks are only kept in bottles for storage. Technology has advanced to the point where synthetic meat is fairly common and cheap, using colonies of genetically engineered microbes to essentially grow meat like a crop inside industrial tanks, with artificial flavoring being added to simulate various actual meats. While often cheaper than real meat, it has its limitations; it can only create homogenous patties rather than the complex textures of an actual animal, while there's no scientific evidence that they're unsafe, many feel that they're unnatural or unhealthy. So this tends to mostly be food for the poor. However, it has also found a use as military rations during the Kyanah invasion of Earth, as it would be stupid to try to farm livestock in space, or on an alien planet in the middle of a war zone.
Eating is generally not a social occasion for Kyanah, it's seen as something of a private and vulnerable time, when they're weak and in need of nourishment, not strong and ready to defend or advance their pack's position in society (most Kyanah won't absolutely refuse to eat if outsiders happen to be around, but all else being equal, most will prefer to have only the company of their own packs). So it's very rare for them to eat or drink with anyone who isn't already in their pack, unless they don't have one yet, or want to expand it. Even ikoin who go "together" to eat out somewhere will split up into their own separate areas and just eat with their packs. So their restaurants and bars--which still exist, as even Kyanah, much like humans, often like eating professional-quality food without having to prepare it for themselves--have a considerably different layout and atmosphere. Usually there will be a bunch of stalls where diners can sit and eat while being walled off from other Kyanah while still providing a good view of the kitchen via a curtain or window so they can keep an eye on their food being prepared. Mid-range establishments will usually just have the food and drinks, and few other amenities, while higher end ones have more elaborate measures to draw in diners and justify their price points, from ornate cushions, aromatic sprays, and elaborate light displays all the way to live music, holographic movies, and other performances like reenactments of historic duels and combat challenges, which diners can either open their window to get a good look at or ignore and eat in peace.
Since the end of the Utopian Wars, the traditional Kyanah dining experience has been steadily losing ground to fast food (DakDakDak--literally FastFastFast--being the most popular one in Ikun, with over 64 locations) and drone deliveries. The former allows Kyanah to simply come in, choose from the premade meals that are currently on the shelf, pay, and leave, or (for a premium) put in a special request, though these establishments by nature have limited menus and little room for customization; they will often use AI to predict what to make ahead of time, with high accuracy. While the latter allows them to avoid the hassle of dealing with anyone outside their pack entirely, while still getting high quality food. The one exception to the general dynamic at Kyanah restaurants and bars would be those that cater to the packless; these are set up to encourage rather than discourage interaction, as their entire purpose is for young adult Kyanah who have recently separated from their birth-packs to find love for themselves. To this end, such establishments have elaborate sets of rituals and social rules to attract the attention of other individuals. As a day on the Kyanah homeworld is only about 15.75 hours, there are customarily only two meals, the very creatively named day-meal, eaten before the beginning of the workday, and night-meal, eaten after the end of the workday. Though many do eat snacks during the day, especially if working physically demanding jobs.
In terms of inter-species compatibility, as humans and Kyanah are both carbon and water based life forms, most human foods wouldn't kill a Kyanah, nor vice versa (with a few niche exceptions, such as chocolate or grapes) neither species can properly digest the other's food and would likely throw up if they tried to eat a significant amount. Interestingly, hard liquors of either species are largely exempt from this, as they're mostly just alcohol and water anyway, while weaker booze like roontkak or beer has impurities that would definitely not be appreciated by the digestive system of the wrong species. During the post-war occupation of Earth, Kyanah have also been known to import chili powder into their occupied regions, apparently for the sole purpose of smoking it.
"We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams."
-H.G Wells.
-H.G Wells.
Re: Road to Hope
To be fair, that's usually what happens if you try to eat alien foods. Lots of enzymes and biomolecules that your body either doesn't know what to do with, or are toxic.Its so interesting to see that the Kyanah would starve to death if they were a vegetarian and how they would be poorly if they eat human foods.
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firestar464
- Posts: 902
- Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2022 7:45 am
Re: Road to Hope
"An incident that outraged the public significantly was the execution of this individual, colloquially known in human language as a 'nerd,' who entered a restricted zone, seemingly asking if the Adminstration had built the ancient conical structures located in the zone."Jakob wrote: ↑Mon Apr 29, 2024 12:40 amThe Saharan Theater was the first of the three theaters of the Kyanah invasion where they achieved a victory, with fighting lasting from July 5-August 14, 2023. As such, it gave the humans in the North American and Asian theaters an early look at what a Kyanah victory might be like.firestar464 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 29, 2024 12:05 am It seems that you are going for Defeated Humans. Imma just throw out the different scenarios for humans vs aliens in sci-fi:
Destroyed Humans: Humans lose, and get destroyed. Not a single human lives, or if they do, they have been turned into livestock or mutated and contorted beyond recognition. The worst outcome for humans.
Defeated Humans: Humans lose, and get occupied. They live as an underclass but do not get absolutely enslaved.
Beaten Humans: Humans get drawn into an unfavorable settlement but do not necessarily get occupied as a whole. A bitter peace ensues, as well as a bitter exchange.
Human Victory: Humans win. They get decimated but they repel the invasion. The thing you usually see in the movies.
Human Revanchism: Not only do humans win, they enter an era of collective ultranationalism and vengefulness, and they turn around and destroy the other species. This is typically followed by some sort of galaxy-wide war due to this angering some sort of council.
- There appears to be no systematic attempt to exterminate humans in occupied regions of Egypt. Millions of civilians continue to go about their lives without being detained or killed by the Kyanah.
- However, the human government now answers to the Provisional Military Administration, led by a few packs of Kyanah senior officers, with lower-ranking soldiers and human collaborators reporting to them. Most of the country is under martial law, with widespread drone surveillance, strict curfews, limitations on freedom of movement between different cities and towns, and suspected agitators and their families being jailed together or executed without a trial. They seem not to understand why there is an uproar over families being subject to this, as Kyanah society considers members of a pack to share moral responsibility for actions committed by any member, and they simply assume that families are the human analogue of packs.
- Behind the scenes, there is considerable debate among Kyanah military leadership about when and how to transition from the Provisional Military Administration to civilian government(s). The more moderate-minded packs believe that working with the humans will be necessary as they lack the population base to sustainably administer the occupied territory by themselves. However the hardliners believe this is a security risk and they're better off just keeping the Provisional Military Administration until military reinforcements and civilian colonists start arriving. Though unbeknownst to them or humanity, Project Hope was cancelled a few years after they left Tau Ceti e, and no one else is coming.
- Weapons more powerful than small arms are gradually being confiscated from the human government and destroyed. Small arms are largely left alone, as the Kyanah are aware that they need loyalist humans to be able to help police the occupied territory and prevent it from falling into chaos and anarchy, as there are only about 8000 Kyanah soldiers in the Saharan theater.
- Rogue units from the Egyptian military, along with radical Islamic groups, continue to attack Kyanah bases, but these attacks are increasingly scattered and disorganized as time goes on, and do little to no damage to their intended targets, inadvertently mostly killing human bystanders instead.
- On September 1, 2023, shortly after Egypt surrenders, the Kyanah detonate a series of nukes to create a channel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Qattara Depression, which is subsequently flooded to create an artificial oasis with a hydroelectric plant, implementing the legendary Qattara Depression Project . The Kyanah have begun building a city from scratch surrounding the new oasis. Included in the Qattara Site are power plants, factories, launch facilities, and large amounts of what appears to be civilian housing. Most of the 10,000 civilian scientists and engineers affiliated with Project Hope are gradually relocated here, though some remain in orbit or at the Lunar facility. However, there is far more housing constructed than what would be necessary to support them, leading many to speculate (correctly) that the excess is intended for either humans or future Kyanah colonists.
- Thousands of human families who have been vetted by the Kyanah are permitted to relocate to the Qattara Site to help build the city and work in the factories; families are apparently strongly prefered as they remind the Kyanah of their own pack structures and are thus seen as more trustworthy than random individuals. Weapons and supplies produced here are being sent to the North American and Asian theaters, where fighting continues in full force.
- The Qattara Site is under heavy lockdown, with no unauthorized movement in or out and all communications being censored to prevent military secrets from reaching the rest of humanity. Between this and the destruction of humanitys' satellites, it's difficult for the rest of the world to know what's going on there. Nevertheless, photos and videos from the ground do gradually leak out onto the human internet. More information comes from an anonymous human worker--for his protection known only as Abdul, which may or may not be his real name--who escapes from the Qattara Site, defects to Europe, and does several interviews with the media, albeit with a mask and voice modulator to prevent retaliation against his family at the site.
- According to this "Abdul" guy, tensions between species are extremely high at the site, both both humans and Kyanah being extremely distrustful of each other. This is exacerbated by difficulties in communicating; neither species can physically pronounce the other's language, so they've slowly converged on a blend of human and Kyanah sign language, but this is rife with misunderstandings and misinterpretations that often lead to chaos and violence. Worker strikes and riots are commonplace, and suspected spies and saboteurs are summarily executed. Kyanah soldiers are constantly watching the humans like hawks, and frequently searching and confiscating their digital devices. Nevertheless, many humans don't regret coming to the Qattara Site, as the Provisional Military Administration is providing them with high wages and generous benefits, and also there's consistently enough to eat and 24/7 running water and electricity, which aren't guaranteed elsewhere, as much of the country's infrastructure was destroyed by the Kyanah air force and orbital bombardment during the initial invasion.
- While the majority of Kyanah soldiers from the Saharan Theater are stationed at the Qattara Site, they have also established a base at the Suez Canal, seeing the land as an important strategic chokepoint. This has led to fears across the world that the Kyanah will shut down the canal, but they have yet to do so; apparently they haven't yet fully grasped the economic and military significance of human ships, which aren't something they're familiar with, being from a desert planet. They do, however, often stop and search ships traveling through, and sometimes confiscate items for reasons known only to them. They also maintain a military base in Cairo itself, and a handful of cohorts are stationed at other strategic areas or sites with natural resources. Outside of these select few areas though, the Kyanah have no direct presence, and many locals haven't even seen one in person. However, humans working for the Provisional Military Administration enforce these directives in the rest of the country, with varying degrees of strictness.
- Both Kyanah soldiers and human workers are busy repairing the Egyptian infrastructure and even modernizing it to the Kyanahs' technological standards. However, such activities are largely limited to areas with a Kyanah military presence, such as the Qattara Site, the Suez Canal region, and Cairo, with most other cities and towns--many of which are still in ruins--being ignored. Outside Egypt's borders, many of its neighbors are arming themselves for war. However, the Kyanah haven't continued expanding after the fall of Egypt; they are very hesitant to over-extend due to their limited numbers and are focused on rebuilding and consolidating control. Indeed they have no particular desire to expand further, as they've already secured their main strategic goals in the Saharan theater, namely the creation of the Qattara Site.
Re: Road to Hope
Ha, very funny. I'll have you know that it's the Qattara Site, not the Pyramids (on the opposite end of the country) that are a restricted zone. I'll also have you know that you made me pull an all nighter doing a serious one shot fic where the pyramids come up......firestar464 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 29, 2024 4:59 pm "An incident that outraged the public significantly was the execution of this individual, colloquially known in human language as a 'nerd,' who entered a restricted zone, seemingly asking if the Administration had built the ancient conical structures located in the zone."
Abdul stared in abject frustration at the tangle of multicolored wires leading into a flat metal box bolted to a pair of beams above him, about one meter by half a meter by ten centimeters. Dozens of wires snaked across the building frame from three other nearby boxes, leading into the one that was vexing him now. He held the last two now, one in each hand, two-centimeter thick cables that most definitely did not fit into the remaining two holes in the box. He peered closer at each of the wires to try and make out which connection the rogue wires were supposed to go in, but none that would fit there would allow the two wires in his hand to fit into their sockets.
As a last resort, he pulled the manual out of tool bag and flipped through it. Every page was full of diagrams and Kyanah writing, tree-like arrangements of text scattered across the page, seemingly at random. One of the senior electricians had helpfully scribbled Arabic over some of the alien text, but that only helped translate bits and pieces. Still, he hoped there might be a diagram that could explain the electrical mess above him. Pausing at a possibly helpful page, he squinted alternatively at it and the box, his frown deepening with every glance at the box as sweat dripped down his forehead and burned his eyes. At last he swore under his breath and threw down the manual and the cables. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes and made his way over to the edge of the building frame, hoping to catch a bit of wind.
Holding onto a large beam for support, Abdul gazed out at the vast expanse of the Qattara Site from his 24th story vantage point. An enormous lake sat smack in the middle of the endless desert, stretching over the horizon and seemingly defying all logic. Had someone told him a year ago that aliens would have taken over Egypt of all places and used a dozen nuclear bombs to blast a channel from the Mediterranean Sea and flood the entire Qattara Depression in a matter of days, he would have no doubt laughed, and wondered if someone had escaped from the nearest asylum. And yet, here he was. Scattered here and there, he could make out nascent groves of acacias and date palms taking root in the now lush soil.
Though something else was taking root far faster: thousands of skyscrapers, factories, and warehouses popping up like weeds around the new oasis, with several distinctive towers of nuclear power plants thrown into the mix as well. Many buildings had already been completed in the few months since the Qattara Site began, but for every completed one, he could see several more under construction. He could barely even see the outside desert though the building frames anymore, let alone the 5 meter high electrified fence, complete with guard towers and sentry guns, that surrounded the city. At the base, each building flared out into numerous buttresses, letting every building leaning on every other for support. A spiderweb of concrete roads branched chaotically in every direction, cutting between the buildings. Thousands of workers scurried back and forth, looking like so many ants from his height, jockeying for position amongst the buses, trucks, construction robots, and the occasional Kyanah tank that trundled past like a huge metal spider. Nests of cameras clung to every lamp post and building corner, peering in every direction. Above the street level, drones swarmed like a cloud of flies. One drifted past Abdul's building, multiple scanners swinging left and right. He stared back resolutely.
Abdul sat down to think about the problem at hand, a difficult task between the sweat that was once again dripping in his eyes and the otherworldly clanking and metallic scraping of the machines printing additional stories above him. He did not envy the men who worked the printers, carrying huge drums of metal powder in the scorching heat to feed the machines and reaching into their cavernous maws to straighten them out every time they jammed, all for lower pay than most other humans at the Qattara Site. Though right now, they were just making it hard to think about his own plight. The box had been printed wrong, that much was clear; it would have to be remade and all the wires extracted from it and inserted into the replacement. Abdul sighed heavily. This was unlike any electrical work he'd done before the Six Week War, unlike any human electrical work at all. If anything, it reminded him more of Ali's Lego sets, only the instructions were written in an alien language and required solving mathematical optimization problems at every step. Every piece slotted into place so easily, but there was no uniformity, no standardization; every component was custom-made according to some esoteric algorithm so as to not use a single centimeter of wire or a single watt more than absolutely needed, and now he had to figure out how it all fit together.
It was almost like it was more an art than a science, making the designs for the wire boxes. They certainly didn't seem to follow any rules that he had been taught as an apprentice. He supposed that was why Fatima seemed to have a knack for making them, and why she was assigned to spend long hours in the fab center making them. Despite his insistence that he would provide for his wife and son, that that was the way things should be, the authorities in the Provisional Military Administration had other ideas; every human at the Qattara Site was to contribute. So it was in Kyanah society; their families--their packs--always worked together, and so it would be at the Qattara Site. Abdul supposed that explained the occasional Kyanah children he'd seen being carried around by soldiers.
Abdul started as he suddenly heard several pairs of boots striding up to him before coming to an abrupt stop. He turned--it was four of them. They were all a good head shorter than him, clad in dull grayish armor covering their limbs, tails, and torsos, with helmets of a similar character and blocky black goggles covering their eyes. Each one had a strange pattern resembling a QR code on their upper left arm plate. All four had automatic railguns slung over their shoulders. Two were holding hands and one stood at the front of the pack, intently looking at something on a tablet. They seemed completely unphased by the heat, not even panting despite their heavy armor. Abdul resisted the urge to scramble to his feet as quickly as possible, instead making a slow and deliberate ascent, turning around carefully and keeping his gaze pointed downwards, away from their eyes.
You are doing what? signed the tablet-wielding Kyanah in a mishmash of Arabic and Kyanah sign language--Abdul assumed this was this pack's Alpha.
I was thinking for my work, he signed back. He waited for their response, his wiry frame tense. He slowly rotated his hands so the palms were facing outwards without raising them above thigh level; some of the workers who had arrived before him had advised him not to try waving at Kyanah soldiers, or really, any Kyanah. The fourth member of the pack, with a silvery bracelet and several snout tattoos, repeated the gesture at him.
The Alpha--calmly examined the box Abdul had been working on. You have problem, yes? he signed at Abdul. Abdul had to think for a moment to properly interpret this statement; having only four fingers on each hand made some of the Kyanahs' signs...awkward.
Abdul's gaze quickly flickered across the pack. He realized this was a different pack than the one who came to inspect his work an hour ago. That one had five, not four, and two of them had been brown, whereas the current pack were all blue--though very little of their scaly skin was even visible with all their armor, only a few areas around the snout and cheeks. And the previous pack had bared their teeth and bellowed and roared at him in their native language while rummaging through his tool bag and phone; one had even pointed her gun at him. This pack kept a respectful distance of four or five meters and a downturned gaze. Yes, but I fix. That box is wrong, Abdul signed back, pointing at the offending box.
One of the two soldiers holding hands, the taller one with the longer snout, disengaged and went to look up at the box for herself. You use again not here, yes? she signed.
Yes yes, I reuse, signed Abdul quickly. He began thinking whether he could in fact work the box into the electrical system at one of the other job sites, or at least give it to one of the other electricians. The new guy two blocks north seemed to be struggling even more; Abdul supposed he'd take it there and see if it would be any use.
Good. No waste. Waste is weak. City-state new is strong, signed the Alpha, the soldier with the tablet. At least, that was Abdul's best guess; it should have at least been accurate a couple of weeks ago. But the meanings of hand gestures changed constantly as humans and Kyanah jockeyed for control of the developing lingua franca at the Qattara Site. The soldier went on, Your pack make wire boxes for you, yes? They not here, why?
My wife, sometimes. She is with my son now, Abdul signed back.
That seemed to pique the interest of the soldier with the snout tattoos. You miss them, why no? she signed, laying her hand on the tall one's chest; she responded in kind. Abdul could've sworn that both seemed somewhat dismayed that Fatima and Ali weren't up on the 24th story of this particular building skeleton with him at this very moment.
I was with them at morning and will again after working, signed Abdul, And we call in lunch time.
That seemed to provoke a strange reaction from the Kyanah. They promptly erupted in a strange screeching and hooting noise that--if the senior electricians weren't fibbing to him--was the Kyanah equivalent of laughter. The snout-tattooed soldier and the tall one rapped each other's chests several times with their claws and the former licked the latter's snout a couple of times, while the stocky one with the stubby snout banged his tail on the floor. You love them, why no? he signed.
Abdul stiffened, fighting back the urge to stare the soldier straight in the eyes--or the goggles in any case. I do. That's why I work here. Only reason. 80,000 pounds [~US $1700] a week, water, electricity, apartment. For them, he signed indignantly.
The Alpha glanced at his tablet and then spoke a few words to the rest of his pack, a fast-paced and rhythmic mix of grunts, hisses, and chirps, some almost low enough to be considered growls. The rest of the pack quickly settled down.
Okay. Your pack's analytics are 13th best in cohort. Top 12 get raise soon. Your pack work fast, work hard now, he signed at Abdul.
You fix wire box now. If you fast then you go home fast else you start missing pack maybe, added the tattooed soldier.
Okay, signed Abdul, unsure what else to say. The Alpha jotted something down in his tablet and he and the rest of his pack turned to leave, but the stubby snouted one whispered something into his ear and he turned around. Hey. Flat face, the Alpha signed back at him.
Abdul frowned slightly. He raised his hand to respond, but stopped, thinking for a moment if he wanted to keep unquestioningly responding to that label.
Human, the tattooed soldier tried, Was other sign wrong?
Yes. What is it? signed Abdul.
If you answer question we give water to you else nothing, signed the Alpha.
Abdul had to chuckle slightly at this odd statement. In all his months at the Qattara Site, no Kyanah had ever just offered him a favor, nor asked him for a favor; they always came in pairs, no matter how trivial the ask. Though as he had emptied his own water bottle an hour ago, there seemed to be only one reasonable answer: Yes, thank you.
The Alpha fished a large water bottle and a white plastic bowl out of his backpack and filled the bowl before handing it to Abdul. He gulped down half the water in a matter of seconds before pouring the rest over his head, triggering a few more amused-noises from the Kyanah.
No sooner was he done when the tattooed Kyanah signed, Your people built mountain brick in East, yes why?
We were talking and did not know, so we ask human, added the stubby-snouted Kyanah.
I don't understand, responded Abdul. Mountain brick in East? Brick mountain in the east? He shrugged.
The Alpha tapped on his watch a few times and showed Abdul the screen. There was a selfie of the pack cuddled up together in front of what appeared to be the Great Pyramid of Giza. They had taken off their helmets, and were holding their ears in a very perky position. Their goggles hung around their necks, revealing their eyes--yellow for the tattooed one, who apparently also had a tattoo on the top of her head, and varying shades of brown for the other three. All four of them had flung their arms up, crossing the two central fingers on each hand, while curling their two peripheral fingers into each palm--apparently, as Abdul had learned, this was a Kyanah gesture symbolizing victory. Indeed, in the far left of the photo, he could make out plumes of smoke and burning buildings in the background. He could not read the date on the photo, nor the caption--apparently, 'It's over!!' in their native language--but he guessed it must have been the day that Cairo fell and the human government surrendered.
Your people built this, why? signed the Alpha.
Abdul kept his face deliberately even. He was glad he didn't have to speak aloud to the Kyanah. The pyramid is a tomb for a dead king. Very, very old. Five thousand years, he responded.
We don't understand. You say again, signed the tall Kyanah, pointing her watch's camera at Abdul. He obliged, repeating the same signs as the Kyanah recorded them. After a few taps on her screen, she showed something to the Alpha.
I understand now. Dead king's pack rests on top. So gods see them easy, signed the Alpha.
Not very correct, Abdul began to sign, but the tattooed Kyanah went on before he was done signing.
People in our planet built mountain brick--pyramids--too. But not as big, not as old, she signed.
In spite of himself, Abdul had to smile ever so slightly. Humans are very smart. Humans work hard together, he responded proudly.
Yes. Kyanah too. Humans and Kyanah are allies later maybe, signed the Alpha.
Abdul wanted to respond with 'Do your people always treat allies like this?' but checked himself. Directly antagonizing the Kyanah would accomplish nothing at this point. Instead, he simply responded, When?
More strange chirps, hisses, and grunts followed from the Kyanah as they discussed something among themselves. At last the tattooed Kyanah responded We don't know. Only Provisional Military Administration know.
We leave now. We have many works to do. But we come later, bring more water, ask more questions, learn, make more signs, maybe? signed the Alpha.
Maybe, Abdul signed back.
Okay. You work again, hurry, signed the Alpha. He grabbed the hands of the stubby-nosed Kyanah and the tall one, who in turn took the hand of the tattooed one. The pack left as suddenly as they had come, leaving Abdul alone once more.
He sighed, pulled out his phone and began scrolling through the camera roll. There were a fair few pictures from the Qattara Site: random cityscapes, some shots of their apartment in one of the residential buildings, quite a few photos of Fatima and Ali in their new living quarters. There weren't any pictures from during the Six Week War or the chaos afterwards--there had been too many other things on his mind at the time. The last photo before the Qattara Site was from July 1, 2023: a view of the night sky, with four bright points of light shining brighter than the full moon: the decelerating engines of the Kyanah starships. The next one was dated June 28, 2023: him and his younger brother Mohammad arm-in-arm, laughing at the camera; the latter in his pristine Army uniform. Abdul had never seen him again, only his headstone. He kept scrolling: a shot of his friends at their last match at the football field, Ali on his shoulders at the beach, his new electrician's toolkit proudly laid out on the floor of the family's old Cairo apartment--long since reduced to rubble--a few shots of Fatima looking stunning, a beaming Ali showing off one of his lego creations in the very same aparment.
Abdul shakily put his phone away and stared out at the buildings of the Qattara Site once again from the edge of the building, his expression darkening as he pondered his next move. "I was supposed to give you a good life," he muttered under his breath, "Not whatever...this is." At last he turned away and made his way back to the malformatted wire box--not in a hurry, but very slowly and deliberately. He then carefully took out and inspected each tool in his tool bag, leafed through the manual on the floor, and only then did he at last pick up his tools and begin detaching the wires from the box, working slowly yet without real care and deliberation. Perhaps, he thought, this was be best he could do for now.
Re: Road to Hope
The Kyanah homeworld is technically a desert planet, in that most of the surface receives less than 25 centimeters of rain per (Earth) year, and almost all of the planet receives less than 50. But it is not a Desert Planet(TM) in the sense of a single-biome world with nothing but dunes and rocks stretching across its entire surface. There are multiple biomes, some of which are surprisingly lush, with many plants and animals that have adapted to the arid conditions; only a bit over half the world is stereotypical desert. There are, however, no oceans, nor anything that humans would call a proper forest. Instead, hundreds of thousands if not millions of oases dot the planet's surface, some as small as a few tens of meters across, others as large as tens of kilometers. These occur where the water table, normally buried far beneath the surface, rises up to intersect the surface, creating bodies of surface water. Away from these oases, the water table can drop as far as several kilometers beneath the surface. This has caused civilizations on the Kyanah homeworld to largely cling to oases for most of their history, with large-scale city-states not arising far away from them until their technology reached a level similar to 20th century Earth, with the invention of Ultra-Deep Water Wells and the creation of the Water Distribution System. In areas with high water tables, oases tend to be more common and closer together, with often irregular shapes, while areas with deep water tables tend to have smoother oases separated by larger distances. As rain does still occasionally fall in most areas, life is still possible even away from oases.
As the Kyanah homeworld doesn't have plates, the planet's geology is largely driven by other forces. Rather than Earth's tectonic mountains, they have impact mountains. As the Tau Ceti system has a far denser asteroid belt than Earth, asteroid impacts are far more common. While most of the instant planet-killers have been cleared out of the inner system, huge numbers of asteroids in the range of tens of kilometers or more still lurk in the asteroid belt, occasionally colliding into each other and creating colossal clouds of asteroid fragments. While many either coalesce back into one asteroid or drift apart harmlessly, or hit another planet, occasionally the fragments of a large asteroid will head their way, crashing into the Kyanah homeworld. Naturally a 50-kilometer asteroid would one-shot all multi-cellular life if it impacted in one piece, but fortunately for the Kyanah and everything else that lives on their planet, such large rocks tend to arrive in millions of pieces, kicked from asteroid belt by the constant chaos. Such events are thus not a single apocalyptic event, but more like the mother of all meteor showers, with building-sized to town-sized fragments raining down over a period of years in a long line across the surface of the Kyanah homeworld. The ejecta kicked up by these impacts, together with the raw mass of the asteroid themselves, serve to create most mountain ranges on their planet. Events large enough to create notable mountain ranges tend to occur once every 50-100 million years, causing mass extinctions when they arrive. In between, smaller fragment clouds create minor ranges of hills and sometimes lone impactors arrive, creating individual craters. Ikun city-state is actually located inside one such crater, about 1200 meters deep and 55 kilometers across. Prior to the development of aircraft and long-range artillery, this made Ikun virtually unassailable and even in modern times, their contingency plans for an attempted land invasion include blowing up all the roads leading down into the crater.
As a result, mountain ranges on the Kyanah homeworld aren't clean and pretty things. They're ugly scars slashed across the landscape with shattered, chaotic terrain, a mix of jagged, irregular peaks, debris flows, ejecta blankets, and countless overlapping craters connected to the peaks by sheer cliffs reaching hundreds or even thousands of meters. Despite being "mountain ranges", the average elevation doesn't differ too much from the surroundings; insead it's a complete mess of deep craters mixed with central peaks and ejecta. Some of the highest peaks can tower kilometers over the surrounding terrain. These tend to be a nightmare to climb, with the only routes up requiring treacherous ascents along narrow ridges with zero room for error while navigating through endless boulder fields and ejecta scree, along with the traditional hazards of Earth mountains, like cold weather and thin air. There's a reason why only 13 Kyanah packs have ever climbed the tallest mountain, the 6600-meter Irytkan Shard (dozens have attempted, but most died or turned back) and none have bothered with the second highest (all of the difficulty and none of the prestige). The highest one that's regularly climbed is the 4100 meter tall Ronyr Shard, as any Kyanah with the right training and equipment and a base level of fitness can reliably make it without bottled oxygen, and it's only a two hour flight from Ikun plus a several hour drive to base camp instead of being thousands of kilometers from anywhere and/or in a politically unstable region.
While most of the planet's mountain ranges are from asteroid fragment clouds, every one associated with a mass extinction event, some mountains and mountain ranges do occur from volcanism. Due to the lack of plate tectonics and arid climate, wind-based erosion is the dominant driver of geological processes, gradually carving out basins or carving out everything else and leaving plateaus behind. Another interesting geological feature unique to the Kyanah homeworld is their version of rivers. Such features don't occur on most of the planet, but in areas with a high oasis density and high rainfall (relatively speaking), water from overflowing oases can carve channels, connecting nearby oases at different elevations; this creates a web-like structure of river-like features that ultimately go nowhere since there are no oceans, rather than the tree-like river systems that feed into Terran oceans.
The geological features on the Kyanah homeworld, together with the weather patterns, determine the layout of biomes. Due to the lack of oceans or plates, their world doesn't have definable continents, so biomes are often used to divide up the world instead, with many cultural and geopolitical groupings tending to occur along biome lines. In general biomes can be grouped into five types: high rainfall, high oasis count; high rainfall, low oasis count; low rainfall, high oasis count; low rainfall, low oasis count; and shattered biomes, which often don't fit neatly into the aforementioned types due to the unique terrain of the impact ranges. Notably absent of course, are oceans, as well as anything that humans would consider a forest, since their tree analogues, the structured plants, take up considerable space and can't cluster densely together, in addition to being quite a bit smaller than a lot of Earth trees due to the higher gravity. As the world is quite large--10100 kilometers in radius, with no oceans to break things up, biomes can get rather large.
High rainfall (>25 cm/Earth year), high oasis count: these tend to be dominated by riparian webs. As the oases are interconnected by web-like water channels, the dense vegetation that surrounds natural oases also spreads between them, creating a web-like pattern of trees and bushes with semi-arid meadows in the middle. These especially occur in less flat areas, at the edge of impact ranges or plateaus. Riparian webs often serve as hubs for agriculture and livestock raising. The largest consecutive riparian web, about twice the size of Europe, is known as the Meatbucket, a play on the term breadbasket. This region is the largest producer of livestock, and feed for livestock on the Kyanah homeworld. In flatter areas, especially in hot climates of this type, there tend to be flood meadows. Due to the flat terrain, the annual wet seasons cause water from overflowing oases to just sit around, creating temporarily flooded terrain. Endoskeleton plants tend to be more common than exoskeleton plants, but both types can be found here, along with unstructured plants like flowers that take advantage of the periodic flooding.
High rainfall (>25 cm/Earth year), low oasis count. Often found in areas between 50 and 70 degrees from the equator, these areas include boreal scrublands and boreal savannas. While a warm climate by human standards, these tend to be cool to cold by Kyanah standards. Boreal scrublands tend to occur on plateaus and are of particular importance as the Kyanah themselves, along with many of their domesticated animals, originate in the northern hemisphere's boreal scrublands, and their first civilizations arose here. Boreal savannas tend to occur in the more eroded lower elevations, and were relatively quick to be settled by Kyanah once they began expanding out of their native biome. Temperatures in the boreal scrublands drop to around 10 Celsius in the winter and rise to 40 in the summer, while boreal savannas tend to range from 20 in the winter to 45 in the summer. Endoskeleton plants occur here, but hardy exoskeleton plants tend to be more common. Boreal savannas are characterized by a relative rarity of large structured plants, with crawlers (unstructured plants that crawl along the ground like Terran ivy, serving as an equivalent to grass) being the dominant plant here, whereas boreal scrublands have a dense layer of structured shrubs on the ground with the occasional larger structured plant protruding up. In the hotter areas at the lowest latitudes and elevations, perennial plains dominate. While not as lush as flood meadows, these are also characterized by year-round vegetation on the ground. Flowering plants tend to be less dominant, as it's harder for them to spread for from oases; they are instead replaced with other types of unstructured plants, including various airweed species that sit on the ground like carpets with no direct stems or other attachments, and plate-like desert fungi, and structured plants like small bushes. Endoskeleton and exoskeleton plants both occur here; it's kind of a mixed environment.
Low rainfall (<25 cm/Earth year), high oasis count. Seasonal plains can be found here especially in the flatter parts. For part of the year, these tend to be fairly dead, but when the rains come, the soil's bio-crust will come to life, with the structured plants becoming more active, especially with spreading their spores, and invertebrate plants like flowers blooming, taking advantage of the relatively dense oases to spread their heavier and more unwieldy seeds. After these great bloomings, a lot of the vegetation dries out, leading to fungal blooms as the planet's signature plate-like fungi will activate to break down the dead plant matter. And so the cycle repeats. The structured plants are mixed, but with a noticeable bias towards exoskeleton plants. Otherwise, these types of biomes include regular-old semi-arid desert (albeit with rather alien plants and animals) dominated by sturdy exoskeleton plants and drought-adapted animals. Ikun sits in a transitional zone between seasonal plains and semi-arid deserts, though the oasis itself is a mix of heavily urban and oasis environments, rather than either of the other biomes. The general geopolitical and ecological region that Ikun sits in, sandwiched between two impact ranges and an erosional basin to the south, has been (rather chauvanistically) labeled by Ikun-based cartographers as the Rktakien Kwardniet (literally "Civilized Plateau"), a name that has propagated to much of the Kyanah homeworld. The Rktakien Kwardniet is slightly smaller than the Earth continent of Asia.
Low rainfall (<25 cm/Earth year), low oasis count. This is most often found eroded basins less than 30 degrees from the equator, as well as the wind shadows of the impact ranges, and are usually characterized by arid deserts and badlands. Example biomes include rocky barrens, which tend to be found in areas that are relatively sheltered from wind, and more open dunelands, characterized by the endless undulating sand dunes more in line with a stereotypical desert planet--though due to the higher gravity, they are often not as high as Earth dunes. The most important example of a dunelands biome are *the* Dunelands, located immediately south of the Rktakien Kwardniet inside a huge eroded basin. The Deadlands, characterized by endless badlands, salt flats, and very minimal habitation even in modern times, are another such region; only about 40-50 million Kyanah call an area the size of the US and Canada combined home. What few large, structured plants can be found in the most arid regions of the Kyanah homeworld tend to be hardy exoskeleton plants. Temperatures in the Dunelands can exceed 70 Celsius in the summer, and the Deadlands aren't far behind. There are also the polar barrens, currently only found in the extreme southern latitudes, below 80 degrees south. It is cold enough for winters with substantial snowfall, with winters reaching as low as -10 to -15 Celsius on some plateaus and summers being around 20. Not a terrible climate for humans, but many of the biological processes of the Kyanah and other life forms on their homeworld aren't well equipped for such temperatures. Few animals inhabit the polar barrens, leaving them entirely to the sparse, cold-resistant plants that cling to bare rock or gravel, as there isn't enough plant life to break down the rocks into proper soil. As oases are rare and and the ground is very rocky, snowmelt provides an important source of water for such plants. The Kyanah have established city-states in even this hellish polar region, though it's the second least densely populated region on the planet, after the Deadlands.
Shattered biomes. These are wild-card biomes, characterized by extreme climate swings across seasons, time of day, and different elevations; in some areas it can go from 20 Celsius to 60 and back to 20 in a couple of days. Harsh, jagged, arid ridges and mountainous shards suddenly give way to sheer crater walls, with numerous crater lakes where asteroid impacts have punched deep into the crust to expose water tables that would otherwise be hidden. These crater lakes are filled with lush vegetation, while winds created by ridge lift carry water up the crater walls, allowing hardy plants to hang on around the crater rims. Outside the crater rims, plate-like desert fungi cling to the ground, breaking down the drifting airweeds and spores that sometimes get caught in the mountains and die. As far as structured plants go, exoskeleton plants tend to dominate here. Shattered biomes tend to be quite bio-diverse, with many esoteric and rare ecosystems hiding out in the innumerable craters.
In addition to these, there are plenty of transitional biomes, sub-biomes, and of course the ecosystems of all the countless oases follow their own rules. Oops. Guess the Kyanah homeworld is no more a desert planet than Earth is an ocean planet.
As the Kyanah homeworld doesn't have plates, the planet's geology is largely driven by other forces. Rather than Earth's tectonic mountains, they have impact mountains. As the Tau Ceti system has a far denser asteroid belt than Earth, asteroid impacts are far more common. While most of the instant planet-killers have been cleared out of the inner system, huge numbers of asteroids in the range of tens of kilometers or more still lurk in the asteroid belt, occasionally colliding into each other and creating colossal clouds of asteroid fragments. While many either coalesce back into one asteroid or drift apart harmlessly, or hit another planet, occasionally the fragments of a large asteroid will head their way, crashing into the Kyanah homeworld. Naturally a 50-kilometer asteroid would one-shot all multi-cellular life if it impacted in one piece, but fortunately for the Kyanah and everything else that lives on their planet, such large rocks tend to arrive in millions of pieces, kicked from asteroid belt by the constant chaos. Such events are thus not a single apocalyptic event, but more like the mother of all meteor showers, with building-sized to town-sized fragments raining down over a period of years in a long line across the surface of the Kyanah homeworld. The ejecta kicked up by these impacts, together with the raw mass of the asteroid themselves, serve to create most mountain ranges on their planet. Events large enough to create notable mountain ranges tend to occur once every 50-100 million years, causing mass extinctions when they arrive. In between, smaller fragment clouds create minor ranges of hills and sometimes lone impactors arrive, creating individual craters. Ikun city-state is actually located inside one such crater, about 1200 meters deep and 55 kilometers across. Prior to the development of aircraft and long-range artillery, this made Ikun virtually unassailable and even in modern times, their contingency plans for an attempted land invasion include blowing up all the roads leading down into the crater.
As a result, mountain ranges on the Kyanah homeworld aren't clean and pretty things. They're ugly scars slashed across the landscape with shattered, chaotic terrain, a mix of jagged, irregular peaks, debris flows, ejecta blankets, and countless overlapping craters connected to the peaks by sheer cliffs reaching hundreds or even thousands of meters. Despite being "mountain ranges", the average elevation doesn't differ too much from the surroundings; insead it's a complete mess of deep craters mixed with central peaks and ejecta. Some of the highest peaks can tower kilometers over the surrounding terrain. These tend to be a nightmare to climb, with the only routes up requiring treacherous ascents along narrow ridges with zero room for error while navigating through endless boulder fields and ejecta scree, along with the traditional hazards of Earth mountains, like cold weather and thin air. There's a reason why only 13 Kyanah packs have ever climbed the tallest mountain, the 6600-meter Irytkan Shard (dozens have attempted, but most died or turned back) and none have bothered with the second highest (all of the difficulty and none of the prestige). The highest one that's regularly climbed is the 4100 meter tall Ronyr Shard, as any Kyanah with the right training and equipment and a base level of fitness can reliably make it without bottled oxygen, and it's only a two hour flight from Ikun plus a several hour drive to base camp instead of being thousands of kilometers from anywhere and/or in a politically unstable region.
While most of the planet's mountain ranges are from asteroid fragment clouds, every one associated with a mass extinction event, some mountains and mountain ranges do occur from volcanism. Due to the lack of plate tectonics and arid climate, wind-based erosion is the dominant driver of geological processes, gradually carving out basins or carving out everything else and leaving plateaus behind. Another interesting geological feature unique to the Kyanah homeworld is their version of rivers. Such features don't occur on most of the planet, but in areas with a high oasis density and high rainfall (relatively speaking), water from overflowing oases can carve channels, connecting nearby oases at different elevations; this creates a web-like structure of river-like features that ultimately go nowhere since there are no oceans, rather than the tree-like river systems that feed into Terran oceans.
The geological features on the Kyanah homeworld, together with the weather patterns, determine the layout of biomes. Due to the lack of oceans or plates, their world doesn't have definable continents, so biomes are often used to divide up the world instead, with many cultural and geopolitical groupings tending to occur along biome lines. In general biomes can be grouped into five types: high rainfall, high oasis count; high rainfall, low oasis count; low rainfall, high oasis count; low rainfall, low oasis count; and shattered biomes, which often don't fit neatly into the aforementioned types due to the unique terrain of the impact ranges. Notably absent of course, are oceans, as well as anything that humans would consider a forest, since their tree analogues, the structured plants, take up considerable space and can't cluster densely together, in addition to being quite a bit smaller than a lot of Earth trees due to the higher gravity. As the world is quite large--10100 kilometers in radius, with no oceans to break things up, biomes can get rather large.
High rainfall (>25 cm/Earth year), high oasis count: these tend to be dominated by riparian webs. As the oases are interconnected by web-like water channels, the dense vegetation that surrounds natural oases also spreads between them, creating a web-like pattern of trees and bushes with semi-arid meadows in the middle. These especially occur in less flat areas, at the edge of impact ranges or plateaus. Riparian webs often serve as hubs for agriculture and livestock raising. The largest consecutive riparian web, about twice the size of Europe, is known as the Meatbucket, a play on the term breadbasket. This region is the largest producer of livestock, and feed for livestock on the Kyanah homeworld. In flatter areas, especially in hot climates of this type, there tend to be flood meadows. Due to the flat terrain, the annual wet seasons cause water from overflowing oases to just sit around, creating temporarily flooded terrain. Endoskeleton plants tend to be more common than exoskeleton plants, but both types can be found here, along with unstructured plants like flowers that take advantage of the periodic flooding.
High rainfall (>25 cm/Earth year), low oasis count. Often found in areas between 50 and 70 degrees from the equator, these areas include boreal scrublands and boreal savannas. While a warm climate by human standards, these tend to be cool to cold by Kyanah standards. Boreal scrublands tend to occur on plateaus and are of particular importance as the Kyanah themselves, along with many of their domesticated animals, originate in the northern hemisphere's boreal scrublands, and their first civilizations arose here. Boreal savannas tend to occur in the more eroded lower elevations, and were relatively quick to be settled by Kyanah once they began expanding out of their native biome. Temperatures in the boreal scrublands drop to around 10 Celsius in the winter and rise to 40 in the summer, while boreal savannas tend to range from 20 in the winter to 45 in the summer. Endoskeleton plants occur here, but hardy exoskeleton plants tend to be more common. Boreal savannas are characterized by a relative rarity of large structured plants, with crawlers (unstructured plants that crawl along the ground like Terran ivy, serving as an equivalent to grass) being the dominant plant here, whereas boreal scrublands have a dense layer of structured shrubs on the ground with the occasional larger structured plant protruding up. In the hotter areas at the lowest latitudes and elevations, perennial plains dominate. While not as lush as flood meadows, these are also characterized by year-round vegetation on the ground. Flowering plants tend to be less dominant, as it's harder for them to spread for from oases; they are instead replaced with other types of unstructured plants, including various airweed species that sit on the ground like carpets with no direct stems or other attachments, and plate-like desert fungi, and structured plants like small bushes. Endoskeleton and exoskeleton plants both occur here; it's kind of a mixed environment.
Low rainfall (<25 cm/Earth year), high oasis count. Seasonal plains can be found here especially in the flatter parts. For part of the year, these tend to be fairly dead, but when the rains come, the soil's bio-crust will come to life, with the structured plants becoming more active, especially with spreading their spores, and invertebrate plants like flowers blooming, taking advantage of the relatively dense oases to spread their heavier and more unwieldy seeds. After these great bloomings, a lot of the vegetation dries out, leading to fungal blooms as the planet's signature plate-like fungi will activate to break down the dead plant matter. And so the cycle repeats. The structured plants are mixed, but with a noticeable bias towards exoskeleton plants. Otherwise, these types of biomes include regular-old semi-arid desert (albeit with rather alien plants and animals) dominated by sturdy exoskeleton plants and drought-adapted animals. Ikun sits in a transitional zone between seasonal plains and semi-arid deserts, though the oasis itself is a mix of heavily urban and oasis environments, rather than either of the other biomes. The general geopolitical and ecological region that Ikun sits in, sandwiched between two impact ranges and an erosional basin to the south, has been (rather chauvanistically) labeled by Ikun-based cartographers as the Rktakien Kwardniet (literally "Civilized Plateau"), a name that has propagated to much of the Kyanah homeworld. The Rktakien Kwardniet is slightly smaller than the Earth continent of Asia.
Low rainfall (<25 cm/Earth year), low oasis count. This is most often found eroded basins less than 30 degrees from the equator, as well as the wind shadows of the impact ranges, and are usually characterized by arid deserts and badlands. Example biomes include rocky barrens, which tend to be found in areas that are relatively sheltered from wind, and more open dunelands, characterized by the endless undulating sand dunes more in line with a stereotypical desert planet--though due to the higher gravity, they are often not as high as Earth dunes. The most important example of a dunelands biome are *the* Dunelands, located immediately south of the Rktakien Kwardniet inside a huge eroded basin. The Deadlands, characterized by endless badlands, salt flats, and very minimal habitation even in modern times, are another such region; only about 40-50 million Kyanah call an area the size of the US and Canada combined home. What few large, structured plants can be found in the most arid regions of the Kyanah homeworld tend to be hardy exoskeleton plants. Temperatures in the Dunelands can exceed 70 Celsius in the summer, and the Deadlands aren't far behind. There are also the polar barrens, currently only found in the extreme southern latitudes, below 80 degrees south. It is cold enough for winters with substantial snowfall, with winters reaching as low as -10 to -15 Celsius on some plateaus and summers being around 20. Not a terrible climate for humans, but many of the biological processes of the Kyanah and other life forms on their homeworld aren't well equipped for such temperatures. Few animals inhabit the polar barrens, leaving them entirely to the sparse, cold-resistant plants that cling to bare rock or gravel, as there isn't enough plant life to break down the rocks into proper soil. As oases are rare and and the ground is very rocky, snowmelt provides an important source of water for such plants. The Kyanah have established city-states in even this hellish polar region, though it's the second least densely populated region on the planet, after the Deadlands.
Shattered biomes. These are wild-card biomes, characterized by extreme climate swings across seasons, time of day, and different elevations; in some areas it can go from 20 Celsius to 60 and back to 20 in a couple of days. Harsh, jagged, arid ridges and mountainous shards suddenly give way to sheer crater walls, with numerous crater lakes where asteroid impacts have punched deep into the crust to expose water tables that would otherwise be hidden. These crater lakes are filled with lush vegetation, while winds created by ridge lift carry water up the crater walls, allowing hardy plants to hang on around the crater rims. Outside the crater rims, plate-like desert fungi cling to the ground, breaking down the drifting airweeds and spores that sometimes get caught in the mountains and die. As far as structured plants go, exoskeleton plants tend to dominate here. Shattered biomes tend to be quite bio-diverse, with many esoteric and rare ecosystems hiding out in the innumerable craters.
In addition to these, there are plenty of transitional biomes, sub-biomes, and of course the ecosystems of all the countless oases follow their own rules. Oops. Guess the Kyanah homeworld is no more a desert planet than Earth is an ocean planet.
