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: 7203
- 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: 3025
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- Location: New York City, USA, November 5th 2032 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.
“In the quantum multiverse, every choice, every decision you've ever and never made exists in an unimaginably vast ensemble of parallel universes.”
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: 7203
- 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.
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firestar464
- Posts: 7203
- Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2022 7:45 am
Re: Road to Hope
How did they evolve without exiting water?
Re: Road to Hope
Wdym exiting water?
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firestar464
- Posts: 7203
- Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2022 7:45 am
Re: Road to Hope
You know, how fish moved on land to make reptiles. (OVERSIMPLIFICATION IKR)
Re: Road to Hope
Oh I see...well the Kyanah homeworld doesn't have fish and reptilesfirestar464 wrote: ↑Thu May 02, 2024 4:17 pm You know, how fish moved on land to make reptiles. (OVERSIMPLIFICATION IKR)
The bestiary post kinda explains this, but the primordial animals were the kenits, which showed up around 500 million Earth years ago. These were colonial organisms shaped like masses of tentacles extending from a substrate attached to the oasis floor, feeding on plants, microbes, and detritus that they were able to ensnare and reproducing by having individual kenits detach from the substrate and swim somewhere else to put down a substrate and become sessile once more. At the time, the planet was warmer and wetter than in modern times, so riparian web biomes were more widespread, allowing the kenits to traverse between oases easily.
Fast forward to around 300 million years ago and the planet was becoming cooler and drier, so the riparian webs were receding, making propagating between oases more difficult. As a result, some kenits gradually evolved into the first neuz, a much more advanced form of life. Neuz were permanently mobile and amphibious, requiring much more sophisticated eyes and brains to function, as well as an internal skeleton to support their movement. They were also amphibious, able to prowl the shorelines for plants and crawlcritters to eat. To spread between oases, some relied on wind-borne eggs, while others, often the larger species, simply slithered over land to get to another oasis, taking advantage of their new skeletons to move much more efficiently than kenits.
That being said, the neuz weren't the first land creatures on the Kyanah homeworld; the crawlcritters had beaten them to the punch by a hundred million years, also evolving from kenits by gaining independent mobility and protective shells and spreading to land. Initially confined to worm-like forms, they quickly diversified and ruled the land during this time. The dominant life on land at this time were the colonial crawlcritters, eusocial land-dwelling vaguely crab-like forms (carcinization is so powerful it even exists on alien planets!) who lived by the thousands or even millions in vast burrows or mounds, attacking and defending in swarms and could reach considerable sizes, upwards of 20 centimeters for the largest species, making it difficult for the individualistic, unarmored, and legless neuz to gain a permanent foothold on land, despite their modest size advantage (for some species) and more sophisticated brains. However, this order ultimately went extinct in the mass extinction of 267.3 million years ago, which created the Red Mountains impact range, leaving the land open for the taking. The neuz, being more aquatic and able to hide out in oases, were naturally spared.
And so by around 250 million years ago, some neuz species had developed into the first walkers, gaining primitive legs and scaly skin to adapt to permanent life on land.
Re: Road to Hope
The Kyanah do not have a world government like so many stereotypical alien civilizations, nor even large nation-states like Earth. The vast majority of the Kyanah population live inside city-states instead. This arises from the fact that Kyanah by nature distrust centralization, deep hierarchies, and collectivization. Any social unit larger than a pack must continuously justify its own existence and demonstrate that any obligations or restrictions it places on packs are outweighed by the benefits they bring to said packs. There is a school of Kyanah philosophical thought known as Fractalism, which posits that relationships between natural and societal structures at differing levels are essentially the same, and the relationship between a pack and its members is essentially a "zoomed in" version of the relationship between the state and citizen packs. But this is controversial even in the more communal and collectivist southern hemisphere, and generally regarded as complete hogwash in the north, where Centralism is much more prevalent, positing that the pack is the center of society, and every other component and societal structure exists to serve the pack structure. Under Centralist thought, it's quite difficult to justify huge governments spanning billions of citizens and vast stretches of territory, as the benefit to individual packs is much less clear than something like a city-state.
The prevalence of city-states over nation-states also means that there have never been large colonial empires in Kyanah history. There have been attempts to establish them, especially during the heyday of the Utopian era, but inevitably they have crashed and burned within a matter of years, with local administrators and populations simply failing to comply with directives from central authorities and ignoring the would-be colonial powers whenever their backs were turned, to an extreme degree. Thus, controlling fast colonial territories inevitably tends to be a money sink for outweighing any possible economic gain. That is not, of course to say, that the Kyanah have a peaceful history or that city-states haven't invaded and overthrown each other. All throughout history, plenty of city-states have been invaded and overthrown; Ikun alone has been responsible for hundreds of regime changes during the Hegemony Era. The difference between this and colonialism, is that Kyanah will tend to leave the conquered city-state once they've gotten what they wanted, whether that be resources, or putting a different government in power, instead of sticking around to try and administrate faraway territories themselves. The exceptions to this rule throughout Kyanah history have almost exclusively involved groups being driven from their home city-states by either natural disasters or persecution or war, and forcefully relocating themselves to someone else's land--again not exactly the same as establishing colonies.
The closest thing to colonialism in Kyanah geopolitics is likely the Globalist doctrine--so named because city-states use their influence to extract natural resources on a global scale. This is an outgrowth of treaties concerning so-called "open land" that exists outside the political and economic borders of any city-state and is thus free for any city-state or any citizens thereof to extract natural resources and develop infrastructure anywhere they please, as long as they don't attack foreign citizens or damage foreign infrastructure they come across in open land. While in theory a fair and just way to handle resources outside the purview of any jurisdiction, rich and powerful city-states were quick to find ways to game the system. Essentially, corporations and city-states in the affluent and heavily industrialized Rktakian Kwardniet could afford to send ultra long-range missions to acquire natural resources in ways that many others could not. Corporations based in city-states like Ikun, and the states themselves, were able to travel halfway around the world to extract resources from right under the snouts of smaller and weaker city-states that may not have the finances to send such resource-gathering expeditions very far afield. The developed northern city-states are thus able get the raw materials they want while cutting out the middleman and avoiding a morass of tariffs and regulations that are inevitable when dealing with global trade networks with thousands of city-states. Meanwhile, weaker city-states are locked out of natural resources that might be sitting just outside their borders.
Of course, private and state-sponsored expeditions to cut out the middleman in trade networks have existed for centuries in all parts of the Kyanah homeworld, but in the period after the Utopian Wars, marked by the exploding popularity of civilian cargo aircraft, nuclear power, and rapidly expanding road and rail networks, made it far more practical to do this on a massive scale. This led to the Globalist doctrine, with city-states in the Rktakian Kwardniet (especially Ikun) getting far more systematic and tactical with it; instead of just getting their hands on natural resources, these expeditions serve secondary, sometimes multiple strategic purposes, with who doesn't get access to resources often being just as important as who does. Ikun has, for instance, been known to orchestrate blatantly unprofitable mining ventures or burn down ecosystems in open lands, solely to block specific developing city-states from mining and harvesting easily accessible resources just outside their borders, in order to advance some geopolitical goal of their own. As the Far South city-states such as Koranah have developed economically, they have also begun to employ Globalist tactics, despite consistently railing against Ikun's implementation of the same tactics in inter-city forums. Despite these tactics, global trade networks continue to grow and grow; no city-state can make everything on their own, every city-state has to import something. Ikun in particular, despite being the most powerful city-state in the world, is a net importer of food, and also extensively imports nanogears--critical components for the Kyanahs' mechanical computers--from Koranah, who produce them at the highest quality and the highest quantity of any city-state.
Possibly the biggest example of Globalist doctrine in action in Kyanah history is the Water Distribution System. The WDS originated after the Utopian Wars as a highly decentralized project, with hundreds of corporations and city-states each building water piplines, silos, collection plants, wells, and all the other necessary infrastructure to efficiently exchange water between themselves and their neighbors and allies. However, Ikun saw the opportunity to use its own technology and infrastructure to merge it all into a cohesive system by bridging crucial gaps in strategic locations around the world, refining and optimizing the infrastructure, and vastly expanding the number of control nodes used to direct the flow of water. This way, flow of water could be optimized across the entire planet, swiftly moving excess water to drought-stricken regions and eliminating droughts. This vision was realized early in the administration of Ikun City Alpha Nyektak-pack, creating the Water Distribution System in its modern form. However, with Ikun technology and Ikun control nodes dominating the system, this gave them an outsized level of control over where the water would flow, with their control nodes being in some cases able to cancel out and override those of other city-states by virtue of numbers. This didn't give Ikun absolute mastery over all water on the planet--other city-states had control nodes too--but it did give them the ability to put their finger on the scale at critical moments and exert undue influence. That being said, water actually did get cheaper and deaths by drought actually did decrease--at least until increasing ecological disasters began to strain the system--so the Water Distribution System has a rather controversial reputation globally.
Eventually, Koranah city-state, Ikun's strongest foreign rival, would come to take inspiration from the Water Distribution System. As environmental destruction intensified year by year, many city-states had the idea to use advanced geoengineering technologies to combat this, planning to construct vast control nodes like living factories that would pump out genetically engineered microbes and nanobots to eat pollution, stabilize ecosystems, and control local weather patterns. Koranah's diplomats encouraged this, secretly planning to do what Ikun did with the Water Distribution System and bring these disparate projects together into a cohesive system, which Koranah would seek to control by establishing their own control nodes at the points in the world where they could have the greatest influence for the least effort. This would create the Climate Control System, able to optimize weather and ecosystems globally instead of just locally, while allowing Koranah to use their control nodes to influence the weather at key points to maximize their own interests. Naturally, Ikun was highly opposed to this and moved to ban geoengineering and use its network of allies and privileged position in the Coalition of Cities to pressure other city-states into following suit or facing sanctions. As an alternative, Ikun touted its own plan Project Hope, a military invasion of Earth designed to revitalize its own faltering economy and demonstrate its unparalleled capability of force projection to allies and enemies alike, thereby keeping the Hegemony alive while still giving their city-state's citizens hope (hence the name) that they will be able to escape the looming ecological disaster coming from geoengineering being banned, and start a new life on Earth.
The interesting thing about all of these is that Kyanah city-states are exerting their influence in foreign lands without actually creating empires and directly controlling other city-states, they're not really making colonies per se even if their activities have a global reach. City-states utilizing Globalist doctrine aren't ruling over or directly plundering foreign cities, they're extracting resources and developing infrastructure in the Kyanah equivalent of international waters, albeit with occasionally devastating consequences to weaker and poorer city-states. Even the invasion of Earth by Ikun city-state doesn't involve Ikun establishing direct control over all or even part of Earth. They couldn't do that even if they wanted to, not with the Kyanah tendency to reject centralized authority, and the 12 year speed of light delay for all communications. The goal is simply to establish independent but Ikun-friendly regimes in politically dominant positions on Earth to expand the Hegemony from one world to two.
Though the Hegemony, Ikun's policy of outsized, unparalleled influence on global affairs, is backed by more than just subtle economic manipulation. The Globalist doctrine, including the Water Distribution System, is just one pillar. Another key pillar is the nuclear monopoly. Having used their own nuclear weapons to preemptively destroy every other city-state seeking to develop them, Ikun maintains the policy that while all city-states may use nuclear power for peaceful purposes, only Ikun can have nuclear bombs. They know good and well that if other city-states developed them--especially Koranah, whose economy and conventional military have all but caught up to Ikun--the Hegemony would collapse in an instant and be replaced by a multi-polar world dominated by mutually assured destruction, diminishing Ikun from hyperpower to mere superpower. Ikun also retains an extremely strong conventional military that it uses to project force across the world, overthrowing and propping up regimes as it sees fit, though during the Nyektak-pack administration, such overt methods are less commonly used than the early days of the Hegemony Era.
The third pillar of the Hegemony is Ikun's influence in the Coalition of Cities. Originally conceived by young idealists and activists as a neutral forum for city-states to resolve their issues in a civilized manner, professional bureaucrats and politicians quickly joined and took over the organization, and Ikun adopted the strategy of using the Coalition as a very much not neutral forum to coordinate its own allies and target its enemies with sanctions and weaponized diplomacy. Much like the Water Distribution System, they carefully select their allies--there are thousands to choose from thanks to the Kyanah having city-states rather than nation-states--to maximize their influence over the Coalition for minimum effort. Normally, as there are over 3000 member states, it's not practical for all ambassador-packs to be at Coalition HQ at all times, especially as a lot of the time, city-states may be using the forum for relatively trivial matters of only regional interest. It can be a crapshoot which members are being represented there at any given time, but savvy ambassadors will try to be present whenever inter-city deals are being made that might concern their city-states, or use occasions when ambassadors from rival city-states aren't present to ram through treaties that are harmful to them. Ikun has an have an uncanny knack for both of these; it's likely no coincidence that they maintain very close diplomatic ties and very preferential trade deals with Kutwenyah, the ostensibly neutral city-state where the Coalition of Cities is headquartered.
The prevalence of city-states over nation-states also means that there have never been large colonial empires in Kyanah history. There have been attempts to establish them, especially during the heyday of the Utopian era, but inevitably they have crashed and burned within a matter of years, with local administrators and populations simply failing to comply with directives from central authorities and ignoring the would-be colonial powers whenever their backs were turned, to an extreme degree. Thus, controlling fast colonial territories inevitably tends to be a money sink for outweighing any possible economic gain. That is not, of course to say, that the Kyanah have a peaceful history or that city-states haven't invaded and overthrown each other. All throughout history, plenty of city-states have been invaded and overthrown; Ikun alone has been responsible for hundreds of regime changes during the Hegemony Era. The difference between this and colonialism, is that Kyanah will tend to leave the conquered city-state once they've gotten what they wanted, whether that be resources, or putting a different government in power, instead of sticking around to try and administrate faraway territories themselves. The exceptions to this rule throughout Kyanah history have almost exclusively involved groups being driven from their home city-states by either natural disasters or persecution or war, and forcefully relocating themselves to someone else's land--again not exactly the same as establishing colonies.
The closest thing to colonialism in Kyanah geopolitics is likely the Globalist doctrine--so named because city-states use their influence to extract natural resources on a global scale. This is an outgrowth of treaties concerning so-called "open land" that exists outside the political and economic borders of any city-state and is thus free for any city-state or any citizens thereof to extract natural resources and develop infrastructure anywhere they please, as long as they don't attack foreign citizens or damage foreign infrastructure they come across in open land. While in theory a fair and just way to handle resources outside the purview of any jurisdiction, rich and powerful city-states were quick to find ways to game the system. Essentially, corporations and city-states in the affluent and heavily industrialized Rktakian Kwardniet could afford to send ultra long-range missions to acquire natural resources in ways that many others could not. Corporations based in city-states like Ikun, and the states themselves, were able to travel halfway around the world to extract resources from right under the snouts of smaller and weaker city-states that may not have the finances to send such resource-gathering expeditions very far afield. The developed northern city-states are thus able get the raw materials they want while cutting out the middleman and avoiding a morass of tariffs and regulations that are inevitable when dealing with global trade networks with thousands of city-states. Meanwhile, weaker city-states are locked out of natural resources that might be sitting just outside their borders.
Of course, private and state-sponsored expeditions to cut out the middleman in trade networks have existed for centuries in all parts of the Kyanah homeworld, but in the period after the Utopian Wars, marked by the exploding popularity of civilian cargo aircraft, nuclear power, and rapidly expanding road and rail networks, made it far more practical to do this on a massive scale. This led to the Globalist doctrine, with city-states in the Rktakian Kwardniet (especially Ikun) getting far more systematic and tactical with it; instead of just getting their hands on natural resources, these expeditions serve secondary, sometimes multiple strategic purposes, with who doesn't get access to resources often being just as important as who does. Ikun has, for instance, been known to orchestrate blatantly unprofitable mining ventures or burn down ecosystems in open lands, solely to block specific developing city-states from mining and harvesting easily accessible resources just outside their borders, in order to advance some geopolitical goal of their own. As the Far South city-states such as Koranah have developed economically, they have also begun to employ Globalist tactics, despite consistently railing against Ikun's implementation of the same tactics in inter-city forums. Despite these tactics, global trade networks continue to grow and grow; no city-state can make everything on their own, every city-state has to import something. Ikun in particular, despite being the most powerful city-state in the world, is a net importer of food, and also extensively imports nanogears--critical components for the Kyanahs' mechanical computers--from Koranah, who produce them at the highest quality and the highest quantity of any city-state.
Possibly the biggest example of Globalist doctrine in action in Kyanah history is the Water Distribution System. The WDS originated after the Utopian Wars as a highly decentralized project, with hundreds of corporations and city-states each building water piplines, silos, collection plants, wells, and all the other necessary infrastructure to efficiently exchange water between themselves and their neighbors and allies. However, Ikun saw the opportunity to use its own technology and infrastructure to merge it all into a cohesive system by bridging crucial gaps in strategic locations around the world, refining and optimizing the infrastructure, and vastly expanding the number of control nodes used to direct the flow of water. This way, flow of water could be optimized across the entire planet, swiftly moving excess water to drought-stricken regions and eliminating droughts. This vision was realized early in the administration of Ikun City Alpha Nyektak-pack, creating the Water Distribution System in its modern form. However, with Ikun technology and Ikun control nodes dominating the system, this gave them an outsized level of control over where the water would flow, with their control nodes being in some cases able to cancel out and override those of other city-states by virtue of numbers. This didn't give Ikun absolute mastery over all water on the planet--other city-states had control nodes too--but it did give them the ability to put their finger on the scale at critical moments and exert undue influence. That being said, water actually did get cheaper and deaths by drought actually did decrease--at least until increasing ecological disasters began to strain the system--so the Water Distribution System has a rather controversial reputation globally.
Eventually, Koranah city-state, Ikun's strongest foreign rival, would come to take inspiration from the Water Distribution System. As environmental destruction intensified year by year, many city-states had the idea to use advanced geoengineering technologies to combat this, planning to construct vast control nodes like living factories that would pump out genetically engineered microbes and nanobots to eat pollution, stabilize ecosystems, and control local weather patterns. Koranah's diplomats encouraged this, secretly planning to do what Ikun did with the Water Distribution System and bring these disparate projects together into a cohesive system, which Koranah would seek to control by establishing their own control nodes at the points in the world where they could have the greatest influence for the least effort. This would create the Climate Control System, able to optimize weather and ecosystems globally instead of just locally, while allowing Koranah to use their control nodes to influence the weather at key points to maximize their own interests. Naturally, Ikun was highly opposed to this and moved to ban geoengineering and use its network of allies and privileged position in the Coalition of Cities to pressure other city-states into following suit or facing sanctions. As an alternative, Ikun touted its own plan Project Hope, a military invasion of Earth designed to revitalize its own faltering economy and demonstrate its unparalleled capability of force projection to allies and enemies alike, thereby keeping the Hegemony alive while still giving their city-state's citizens hope (hence the name) that they will be able to escape the looming ecological disaster coming from geoengineering being banned, and start a new life on Earth.
The interesting thing about all of these is that Kyanah city-states are exerting their influence in foreign lands without actually creating empires and directly controlling other city-states, they're not really making colonies per se even if their activities have a global reach. City-states utilizing Globalist doctrine aren't ruling over or directly plundering foreign cities, they're extracting resources and developing infrastructure in the Kyanah equivalent of international waters, albeit with occasionally devastating consequences to weaker and poorer city-states. Even the invasion of Earth by Ikun city-state doesn't involve Ikun establishing direct control over all or even part of Earth. They couldn't do that even if they wanted to, not with the Kyanah tendency to reject centralized authority, and the 12 year speed of light delay for all communications. The goal is simply to establish independent but Ikun-friendly regimes in politically dominant positions on Earth to expand the Hegemony from one world to two.
Though the Hegemony, Ikun's policy of outsized, unparalleled influence on global affairs, is backed by more than just subtle economic manipulation. The Globalist doctrine, including the Water Distribution System, is just one pillar. Another key pillar is the nuclear monopoly. Having used their own nuclear weapons to preemptively destroy every other city-state seeking to develop them, Ikun maintains the policy that while all city-states may use nuclear power for peaceful purposes, only Ikun can have nuclear bombs. They know good and well that if other city-states developed them--especially Koranah, whose economy and conventional military have all but caught up to Ikun--the Hegemony would collapse in an instant and be replaced by a multi-polar world dominated by mutually assured destruction, diminishing Ikun from hyperpower to mere superpower. Ikun also retains an extremely strong conventional military that it uses to project force across the world, overthrowing and propping up regimes as it sees fit, though during the Nyektak-pack administration, such overt methods are less commonly used than the early days of the Hegemony Era.
The third pillar of the Hegemony is Ikun's influence in the Coalition of Cities. Originally conceived by young idealists and activists as a neutral forum for city-states to resolve their issues in a civilized manner, professional bureaucrats and politicians quickly joined and took over the organization, and Ikun adopted the strategy of using the Coalition as a very much not neutral forum to coordinate its own allies and target its enemies with sanctions and weaponized diplomacy. Much like the Water Distribution System, they carefully select their allies--there are thousands to choose from thanks to the Kyanah having city-states rather than nation-states--to maximize their influence over the Coalition for minimum effort. Normally, as there are over 3000 member states, it's not practical for all ambassador-packs to be at Coalition HQ at all times, especially as a lot of the time, city-states may be using the forum for relatively trivial matters of only regional interest. It can be a crapshoot which members are being represented there at any given time, but savvy ambassadors will try to be present whenever inter-city deals are being made that might concern their city-states, or use occasions when ambassadors from rival city-states aren't present to ram through treaties that are harmful to them. Ikun has an have an uncanny knack for both of these; it's likely no coincidence that they maintain very close diplomatic ties and very preferential trade deals with Kutwenyah, the ostensibly neutral city-state where the Coalition of Cities is headquartered.
Re: Road to Hope
Finally, after eight years, a definitive map of the Kyanah homeworld. No more vague handwaving and here-be-dragons nonsense.
(Here's another version without the regions labeled)
In red are the impact ranges, the equivalent to mountain ranges since they have no tectonic plates on their homeworld. These are, as previously discussed, formed by debris streams from colossal asteroids--dozens of kilometers across before breaking apart--crossing orbits with the world, creating devastating meteor showers year after year, each event creating more and more craters and impact peaks and ejecta piles until the large rocks mostly run out after a few centuries. These impacts aren't always uniformly distributed across their entire great circle, and geological processes like erosion can wear away parts of an impact range over millions of years, so all the ranges have discontinuities, giving the illusion that they're separate mountain chains. However, by the time Kyanah science reached the level of 17th century Earth, geologists realized that they were all connected to others along great circle lines, and for this reason their maps usually fill in the gaps where the mountains have eroded away over time, hence the thin red lines. All the impact ranges are named after colors, a fact which has everything to do with early modern cartographers drawing each one in a particular color, and nothing to do with me being lazy. Exactly how these debris streams impact along great circles instead of just randomly impacting all over the place was not discovered until their science reached the level of the 20th century, and the Aktektan Effect was discovered: unique minerals in the Tau Ceti system's asteroid belt interact with the solar wind to produce a slight electrostatic charge preventing asteroid fragments from rapidly dispersing and instead holding them together in a relatively dense and narrow stream, allowing for the creation of cohesive impact ranges. (In-universe, the Aktektan Effect also explains how the Tau Ceti system has an enormously dense asteroid belt despite being older than the Solar System.)
Of course, not all impacts arrive in the form of debris streams, there have been plenty of one-off impacts over the eons. Dozens of recognizable independent impact craters over 50 kilometers across can be found on the planet, with the biggest being 300 kilometers across and still almost 2 kilometers deep despite being filled in over millions of years. The lack of oceans and less frequent rain has kept many of these craters well preserved, with who knows how many having eroded away or been buried. While there are no plate tectonics to create large volcano chains, some volcanoes have formed over hot spots or as a result of asteroid impacts; these stand alone or in small clusters, with only dozens of active ones instead of thousands like on Earth.
This is also a BIG world, with a radius of 10,100 km (compared to Earth's 6300) and a lack of oceans, there's 9 times the surface area to work with. It's not uncommon to have trade routes that are 20-30,000 kilometers long. For instance, getting from Ikun to Koranah by car is about 28-29,000 kilometers by the most popular route and takes weeks to drive. For obvious reasons, most Kyanah who want to go from Ikun to Koranah or vice versa fly.
There are a bit over a hundred major Kyanah city-states with populations over 10 million individuals. Most of these occur in clusters, though there are a few one-off ones that gained such a high population due to their own assorted economic or political quirks. These clusters also, needless to say, have hundreds or even thousands of smaller city-states in between the larger ones. Major city-state clusters include:
The Rktakian Kwardniet (literally Civilized Plateau) (region 1), with 9 major city-states. As a whole, this is the wealthiest and most developed region on the planet, with 14 of the 20 strongest militaries. However, it wasn't always the political and economic center of the world; in pre-modern times, it was far from the wealthiest region, as it as locked out of the major ancient trade routes on all sides. To the north was the White Impact Range, to the west, the Red Impact Range, and to the south, the hot and desolate Dunelands, and the treacherous Shatter, where extant parts of the Yellow, Blue, and Black Impact Ranges (the first of which being the newest and thus most chaotic one, only 34 million Earth years old) cross each other in the same place, creating the widest and highest reach of shattered land in the world. Even in modern times, there are no railways or paved roads through the Shatter, and the vast majority of all travelers and commerce go around or fly over it; to pre-modern Kyanah in the Dunelands and the Rktakian Kwardniet, it truly seemed like the edge of the world. As time went on, they eventually had their own Age of Discovery and joined the ever-expanding global trade networks in earnest. However, the increase in contact between different parts of the world also spread disease and started a deadly pandemic called the Shadow. Without a scientific understanding of viruses or oceans to stop its spread, it circled out the planet, wiping out as many as a billion lives according to some estimates. The Rktakian Kwardniet was particularly hard-hit, losing over a quarter of their population in a generation, which necessitated the adoption of mechanization and industrialization to adapt to the labor shortage. Naturally, this proved to be a blessing in disguise, as the region underwent a meteoric rise in wealth and prosperity, and the first city-states to industrialize gained enormous political influence over the rest of the world. After the Utopian Wars, the rise of Ikun, the establishment of the Hegemony, and the Globalist doctrine further boosted the region's strength, partially at the expense of the poor equatorial regions. The gradual shift to a post-industrial service/information economy and their extensive lead in commercializing space during the Hegemony also contributed significantly. Though as of the Project Hope era, their crown is slipping as city-states in several other regions are rapidly catching up. Many packs from the Dunelands to the south have been immigrating here in recent decades, fleeing drought, corruption, and war to start anew in the wealthier northern city-states.
The Far South (region 2), with 20 major city-states. Currently the second most economically developed region on the planet, this cluster is located along an extant section of the Green Impact Range in the far southern hemisphere (duh). The northern side of the mountains tends to have a surprisingly mild climate for its latitude due to the westerlies bringing warmer air into the region, though the southern side (where a few major city-states have set up shop) is the opposite, with the very same mountains trapping them in a wind shadow with the dry, frigid polar air, creating exceptionally frigid (by Kyanah standards) climates; snow flurries aren't an uncommon sight in the winter, though they rarely accumulate. Most Far South city-states on both sides have the midnight sun and polar night, which both play a big role in their religion and culture, with huge festivals and ceremonies every year at the last sunset before polar night, and the sunrise of the polar day. The biggest reason these areas are densely inhabited in the first place is for the mining of precious metals and valuable minerals deposited by asteroids via the impact range. This meant that the Far South had a relatively poor economy centered around resource extraction and raw materials until after the Utopian Wars and the establishment of the Hegemony. It was at this point that they began to rapidly industrialize and undergo a second population boom to reach the vast population levels of modern times. While plenty of mining cities remain, the most prosperous ones have pivoted to high-tech industry, including but not limited to vehicles, satellites, robotics, consumer electronics, and computer hardware/software. This factor alone doesn't entirely explain the vast population boom; additionally, many of these city-states have a deeply religious populace that puts a high value on procreation. This is often encouraged by their governments, some of which even have hatchling quotas in order to boost their population to economically (and perhaps eventually militarily) compete with the Rktakian Kwardniet; many governments in the region dislike the Hegemony and are neutral to hostile towards the north, though Ikun and other Rktakian Kwardniet have various allies in the region all the same.
The Meatbucket (region 3), with 5 major city-states. This region is characterized by having some of the wettest climates on the planet, with rains exceeding 50 centimeters per Earth year. Trade winds being deflected northwards by an outcropping of the Black Impact Range, westerlies being deflected around the White Impact Range, and polar easterlies from the north all meet here, creating extensive storm systems. Combined with fertile soil being deposited against the White Impact Range by these winds, this is the best agricultural region in the northern hemisphere, a fact which the Kyanah have taken full advantage of; even in modern times, it remains the planet's breadbasket. Despite most city-states having an economy primarily based around agriculture and light industry, it has an average standard of living rivaling that of the Rktakian Kwardniet itself. Due to being next door to said region, it has enjoyed some of the knock-on effects from early industrialization and was an early adopter of high-tech mechanized agriculture, allowing it to produce more meat and livestock feed than any other region. Politically, while the Meatbucket city-states tend to stay out of the drama and convoluted geopolitical games between the north and the south, they also tend to maintain friendly relations with city-states in the Rktakian Kwardniet. Most governments in this region are quite stable and have relatively low levels of corruption. Though much like the Rktakian Kwardniet, the Meatbucket also has many immigrants coming from their south (the Nyruietkot Riyentkin), and also like the Rktakian Kwardniet, this tends to be politically controversial.
The Boreal Cities (region 4), with 14 major city-states. Spread widely across the planet's far northern hemisphere, and often not very culturally or diplomatically involved with each other these city-states are mostly found in the boreal scrubland, with a few in the boreal savanna. Despite mostly having a middling income and unremarkable economy by global standards, several city-states have attained a vast population simply by being very old, though it hasn't been a global power center for centuries, if not millennia. The boreal scrublands are the Kyanahs' ancestral homeland and the hatching place of the first civilizations, so many city-states have been around for thousands of years and gradually accumulated many, many packs. The low density of oases also encourages populations to clump together. The region tends to have a cool and damp climate by the planet's standards...though humans would call it warm and semi-arid.
The Western Sector (region 5), with 5 major city-states. Like the Rktakian Kwardniet to its immediate east, it is also wedged between the White and Red Impact Ranges, though it's separated from the other region by the White Impact Range. While being early to industrialize due to their proximity to the Rktakian Kwardniet, and thus having a high standard of living, most of them never caught up to their eastern neighbors and thus never gained the same tremendous influence on global affairs. Despite considerable cultural differences with the Rktakian Kwardniet, Kyanah in other parts of the world often see them as one and the same, something which neither the Rktakian Kwardniet nor the Western Sector are particularly amused by.
The Nyruietkot Riyentkin (literally Rising East) (region 6), with 33 major city-states. Located in a scorching yet not particularly arid part of the equatorial region, between several old and relatively broken down impact ranges, this region is actually one of the poorest despite its huge population. With an economy heavily centered on resource extraction and cash crops--despite attempts by some of the more well-to-do city-states to break into energy production and manufacturing--having large numbers of young is necessary to have enough helping hands for such demanding industries. Efforts by these city-states to modernize their economies have been hampered by ecological catastrophes, civil unrest caused by the large populations of said city-states, and the use of the region by both the Rktakian Kwardniet and the Far South and a proving ground for Globalist doctrine. Many refugees have fled the region and immigrated to the Meatbucket to the north.
The Middle South (region 7), with 17 major city-states. Rather obviously, it's located in between the Far South and the Near South (not a commonly used term, but typically referring to everything from the Dunelands south to the Shatter. It's easy to see why the Middle South is densely populated; large open plains with wind and precipitation from the westerlies (often carrying rich volcanic soil from the volcanic cluster at the west end of the region) have created a region almost as suitable for agriculture as the Meatbucket. Indeed, in the last few centuries before the Rktakian Kwardniet industrialized, the Middle South was the richest region on the planet, with massive trade hubs dealing in alcohol, hides, spices, and slaves from the northern hemisphere; gold, gems, meteoric iron, and exotic preserved meats from the Far South; and exporting their own textiles, printed books and paper, ceramics, and timber to everyone around them. Though naturally, many other goods were imported and exported over the centuries as well. However, the Middle South was relatively lightly affected by the Shadow, which proved to be a double-edged sword, as they didn't have the same pressure to industrialize and were rather late to the party. Coal would be discovered there in the industrial age, boosting its relevance again somewhat. Development remains mixed in modern times, with some city-states adopting high-tech economies and others sticking to agriculture or coal.
The Dunelands (region 8), with 0 major city-states (the largest is Orokun, with a population of just 8.6 million). However, as the Rktakian Kwardniet's immediate neighbors, they deserve a mention, especially as one pack in Road to Hope comes from the Dunelands. This region is located in a scorching hot and dry basin filled with extensive sand dunes, hence the name. It has a relatively low population-density overall, with most city states having lower middle income economies. The spent the pre-industrial era mostly locked in their own microcosm, with the Rktakian Kwardniet, as to their immediate south are the equally arid Ptekyen Highlands and the treacherous Shatter. They ultimately did not industrialize as quickly as the Rktakian Kwardniet, despite being right next door, which can mostly be attributed to political factors. The Dunelands were thus left in the dust by their northern neighbors and remain plagued by droughts, environmental destruction, and in many city-states, corruption, dictators, and civil unrest.
(Here's another version without the regions labeled)
In red are the impact ranges, the equivalent to mountain ranges since they have no tectonic plates on their homeworld. These are, as previously discussed, formed by debris streams from colossal asteroids--dozens of kilometers across before breaking apart--crossing orbits with the world, creating devastating meteor showers year after year, each event creating more and more craters and impact peaks and ejecta piles until the large rocks mostly run out after a few centuries. These impacts aren't always uniformly distributed across their entire great circle, and geological processes like erosion can wear away parts of an impact range over millions of years, so all the ranges have discontinuities, giving the illusion that they're separate mountain chains. However, by the time Kyanah science reached the level of 17th century Earth, geologists realized that they were all connected to others along great circle lines, and for this reason their maps usually fill in the gaps where the mountains have eroded away over time, hence the thin red lines. All the impact ranges are named after colors, a fact which has everything to do with early modern cartographers drawing each one in a particular color, and nothing to do with me being lazy. Exactly how these debris streams impact along great circles instead of just randomly impacting all over the place was not discovered until their science reached the level of the 20th century, and the Aktektan Effect was discovered: unique minerals in the Tau Ceti system's asteroid belt interact with the solar wind to produce a slight electrostatic charge preventing asteroid fragments from rapidly dispersing and instead holding them together in a relatively dense and narrow stream, allowing for the creation of cohesive impact ranges. (In-universe, the Aktektan Effect also explains how the Tau Ceti system has an enormously dense asteroid belt despite being older than the Solar System.)
Of course, not all impacts arrive in the form of debris streams, there have been plenty of one-off impacts over the eons. Dozens of recognizable independent impact craters over 50 kilometers across can be found on the planet, with the biggest being 300 kilometers across and still almost 2 kilometers deep despite being filled in over millions of years. The lack of oceans and less frequent rain has kept many of these craters well preserved, with who knows how many having eroded away or been buried. While there are no plate tectonics to create large volcano chains, some volcanoes have formed over hot spots or as a result of asteroid impacts; these stand alone or in small clusters, with only dozens of active ones instead of thousands like on Earth.
This is also a BIG world, with a radius of 10,100 km (compared to Earth's 6300) and a lack of oceans, there's 9 times the surface area to work with. It's not uncommon to have trade routes that are 20-30,000 kilometers long. For instance, getting from Ikun to Koranah by car is about 28-29,000 kilometers by the most popular route and takes weeks to drive. For obvious reasons, most Kyanah who want to go from Ikun to Koranah or vice versa fly.
There are a bit over a hundred major Kyanah city-states with populations over 10 million individuals. Most of these occur in clusters, though there are a few one-off ones that gained such a high population due to their own assorted economic or political quirks. These clusters also, needless to say, have hundreds or even thousands of smaller city-states in between the larger ones. Major city-state clusters include:
The Rktakian Kwardniet (literally Civilized Plateau) (region 1), with 9 major city-states. As a whole, this is the wealthiest and most developed region on the planet, with 14 of the 20 strongest militaries. However, it wasn't always the political and economic center of the world; in pre-modern times, it was far from the wealthiest region, as it as locked out of the major ancient trade routes on all sides. To the north was the White Impact Range, to the west, the Red Impact Range, and to the south, the hot and desolate Dunelands, and the treacherous Shatter, where extant parts of the Yellow, Blue, and Black Impact Ranges (the first of which being the newest and thus most chaotic one, only 34 million Earth years old) cross each other in the same place, creating the widest and highest reach of shattered land in the world. Even in modern times, there are no railways or paved roads through the Shatter, and the vast majority of all travelers and commerce go around or fly over it; to pre-modern Kyanah in the Dunelands and the Rktakian Kwardniet, it truly seemed like the edge of the world. As time went on, they eventually had their own Age of Discovery and joined the ever-expanding global trade networks in earnest. However, the increase in contact between different parts of the world also spread disease and started a deadly pandemic called the Shadow. Without a scientific understanding of viruses or oceans to stop its spread, it circled out the planet, wiping out as many as a billion lives according to some estimates. The Rktakian Kwardniet was particularly hard-hit, losing over a quarter of their population in a generation, which necessitated the adoption of mechanization and industrialization to adapt to the labor shortage. Naturally, this proved to be a blessing in disguise, as the region underwent a meteoric rise in wealth and prosperity, and the first city-states to industrialize gained enormous political influence over the rest of the world. After the Utopian Wars, the rise of Ikun, the establishment of the Hegemony, and the Globalist doctrine further boosted the region's strength, partially at the expense of the poor equatorial regions. The gradual shift to a post-industrial service/information economy and their extensive lead in commercializing space during the Hegemony also contributed significantly. Though as of the Project Hope era, their crown is slipping as city-states in several other regions are rapidly catching up. Many packs from the Dunelands to the south have been immigrating here in recent decades, fleeing drought, corruption, and war to start anew in the wealthier northern city-states.
The Far South (region 2), with 20 major city-states. Currently the second most economically developed region on the planet, this cluster is located along an extant section of the Green Impact Range in the far southern hemisphere (duh). The northern side of the mountains tends to have a surprisingly mild climate for its latitude due to the westerlies bringing warmer air into the region, though the southern side (where a few major city-states have set up shop) is the opposite, with the very same mountains trapping them in a wind shadow with the dry, frigid polar air, creating exceptionally frigid (by Kyanah standards) climates; snow flurries aren't an uncommon sight in the winter, though they rarely accumulate. Most Far South city-states on both sides have the midnight sun and polar night, which both play a big role in their religion and culture, with huge festivals and ceremonies every year at the last sunset before polar night, and the sunrise of the polar day. The biggest reason these areas are densely inhabited in the first place is for the mining of precious metals and valuable minerals deposited by asteroids via the impact range. This meant that the Far South had a relatively poor economy centered around resource extraction and raw materials until after the Utopian Wars and the establishment of the Hegemony. It was at this point that they began to rapidly industrialize and undergo a second population boom to reach the vast population levels of modern times. While plenty of mining cities remain, the most prosperous ones have pivoted to high-tech industry, including but not limited to vehicles, satellites, robotics, consumer electronics, and computer hardware/software. This factor alone doesn't entirely explain the vast population boom; additionally, many of these city-states have a deeply religious populace that puts a high value on procreation. This is often encouraged by their governments, some of which even have hatchling quotas in order to boost their population to economically (and perhaps eventually militarily) compete with the Rktakian Kwardniet; many governments in the region dislike the Hegemony and are neutral to hostile towards the north, though Ikun and other Rktakian Kwardniet have various allies in the region all the same.
The Meatbucket (region 3), with 5 major city-states. This region is characterized by having some of the wettest climates on the planet, with rains exceeding 50 centimeters per Earth year. Trade winds being deflected northwards by an outcropping of the Black Impact Range, westerlies being deflected around the White Impact Range, and polar easterlies from the north all meet here, creating extensive storm systems. Combined with fertile soil being deposited against the White Impact Range by these winds, this is the best agricultural region in the northern hemisphere, a fact which the Kyanah have taken full advantage of; even in modern times, it remains the planet's breadbasket. Despite most city-states having an economy primarily based around agriculture and light industry, it has an average standard of living rivaling that of the Rktakian Kwardniet itself. Due to being next door to said region, it has enjoyed some of the knock-on effects from early industrialization and was an early adopter of high-tech mechanized agriculture, allowing it to produce more meat and livestock feed than any other region. Politically, while the Meatbucket city-states tend to stay out of the drama and convoluted geopolitical games between the north and the south, they also tend to maintain friendly relations with city-states in the Rktakian Kwardniet. Most governments in this region are quite stable and have relatively low levels of corruption. Though much like the Rktakian Kwardniet, the Meatbucket also has many immigrants coming from their south (the Nyruietkot Riyentkin), and also like the Rktakian Kwardniet, this tends to be politically controversial.
The Boreal Cities (region 4), with 14 major city-states. Spread widely across the planet's far northern hemisphere, and often not very culturally or diplomatically involved with each other these city-states are mostly found in the boreal scrubland, with a few in the boreal savanna. Despite mostly having a middling income and unremarkable economy by global standards, several city-states have attained a vast population simply by being very old, though it hasn't been a global power center for centuries, if not millennia. The boreal scrublands are the Kyanahs' ancestral homeland and the hatching place of the first civilizations, so many city-states have been around for thousands of years and gradually accumulated many, many packs. The low density of oases also encourages populations to clump together. The region tends to have a cool and damp climate by the planet's standards...though humans would call it warm and semi-arid.
The Western Sector (region 5), with 5 major city-states. Like the Rktakian Kwardniet to its immediate east, it is also wedged between the White and Red Impact Ranges, though it's separated from the other region by the White Impact Range. While being early to industrialize due to their proximity to the Rktakian Kwardniet, and thus having a high standard of living, most of them never caught up to their eastern neighbors and thus never gained the same tremendous influence on global affairs. Despite considerable cultural differences with the Rktakian Kwardniet, Kyanah in other parts of the world often see them as one and the same, something which neither the Rktakian Kwardniet nor the Western Sector are particularly amused by.
The Nyruietkot Riyentkin (literally Rising East) (region 6), with 33 major city-states. Located in a scorching yet not particularly arid part of the equatorial region, between several old and relatively broken down impact ranges, this region is actually one of the poorest despite its huge population. With an economy heavily centered on resource extraction and cash crops--despite attempts by some of the more well-to-do city-states to break into energy production and manufacturing--having large numbers of young is necessary to have enough helping hands for such demanding industries. Efforts by these city-states to modernize their economies have been hampered by ecological catastrophes, civil unrest caused by the large populations of said city-states, and the use of the region by both the Rktakian Kwardniet and the Far South and a proving ground for Globalist doctrine. Many refugees have fled the region and immigrated to the Meatbucket to the north.
The Middle South (region 7), with 17 major city-states. Rather obviously, it's located in between the Far South and the Near South (not a commonly used term, but typically referring to everything from the Dunelands south to the Shatter. It's easy to see why the Middle South is densely populated; large open plains with wind and precipitation from the westerlies (often carrying rich volcanic soil from the volcanic cluster at the west end of the region) have created a region almost as suitable for agriculture as the Meatbucket. Indeed, in the last few centuries before the Rktakian Kwardniet industrialized, the Middle South was the richest region on the planet, with massive trade hubs dealing in alcohol, hides, spices, and slaves from the northern hemisphere; gold, gems, meteoric iron, and exotic preserved meats from the Far South; and exporting their own textiles, printed books and paper, ceramics, and timber to everyone around them. Though naturally, many other goods were imported and exported over the centuries as well. However, the Middle South was relatively lightly affected by the Shadow, which proved to be a double-edged sword, as they didn't have the same pressure to industrialize and were rather late to the party. Coal would be discovered there in the industrial age, boosting its relevance again somewhat. Development remains mixed in modern times, with some city-states adopting high-tech economies and others sticking to agriculture or coal.
The Dunelands (region 8), with 0 major city-states (the largest is Orokun, with a population of just 8.6 million). However, as the Rktakian Kwardniet's immediate neighbors, they deserve a mention, especially as one pack in Road to Hope comes from the Dunelands. This region is located in a scorching hot and dry basin filled with extensive sand dunes, hence the name. It has a relatively low population-density overall, with most city states having lower middle income economies. The spent the pre-industrial era mostly locked in their own microcosm, with the Rktakian Kwardniet, as to their immediate south are the equally arid Ptekyen Highlands and the treacherous Shatter. They ultimately did not industrialize as quickly as the Rktakian Kwardniet, despite being right next door, which can mostly be attributed to political factors. The Dunelands were thus left in the dust by their northern neighbors and remain plagued by droughts, environmental destruction, and in many city-states, corruption, dictators, and civil unrest.
Re: Road to Hope
Some of the city-states! As previously mentioned, there is no exact count of the number of Kyanah city-states, but there is an exact count of Coalition of Cities members. Of these, the breakdown as of Y976 is 283 tier 1 cities, 1469 tier 2 cities, 1195 tier 3 cities, and 460 tier 4 cities. Tier 1 is usually characterized by "luxurious" living standards, basic needs being obtainable for all working packs, with a high variety and quality available for most consumer products and a near universal access to high-tech appliances, electronics, and robotics. Slums are virtually nonexistent. Tier 2 is characterized by "comfortable" living standards, basic needs are still generally obtainable, but there may not be as large of a variety of consumer products and luxuries are not as common. Slums are uncommon. Tier 3 is characterized by "adequate" living standards, power, water, and internet are generally present, but can be inconsistent and luxuries are sparse except for the upper classes. A significant minority of the population lives in slums. Tier 4 is characterized by "inadequate" living standards, a significant part of the population rarely if ever has necessary amenities, and the majority of the population lives in slums.
Ikun. Location: 38N, 0W; Elevation: +0m; Population: 13.7 million; GDP: $2.8 trillion. Tier: 1. The largest economy and strongest military in the world--the only one with nukes in fact--equal parts revered and reviled across the world as the Hegemon. It is Ikun city-state who is responsible for the Kyanah invasion of Earth, with their four starships taking 20 Earth years to build and arriving after a 160 Earth year journey. It's rather like if humans were invading another planet, but instead of the combined forces of all humanity, it was just New York City. Ikun is at the center of the world both figuratively and literally, as the prime meridian is defined by a special monument in the city center, which also serves to define the baseline elevation in the absence of oceans on the Kyanah homeworld. Confusingly, though, hundreds of city-states define coordinates and elevation relative to their own locations, and the scientific community is increasingly gravitating towards the use of the planet's average elevation as a baseline. Ikun is a very modern and high-tech city, with many tall buildings over 200 meters high, their steel and concrete frames often covered with ornately detailed stone facades. Like most Kyanah architecture, tall buildings tend to have flying buttresses as a countermeasure against the high gravity, which all intermesh with each other to provide mutual support, making the aesthetic quite different from Earth cities. It sits at the center of a vast network of infrastructure, including the Water Distribution System, is a large trade hub, and has the largest spaceport in the world, with dozens of space stations for tourism, research, and zero-G manufacturing, especially of room temperature superconductors and superalloys. They also have constructed some of the only legitimate megaprojects in space in Kyanah history: the 2-kilometer-wide spinning-ring Interstellar Vehicle Assembly Hub (for processing asteroids and assembling the starships for Project Hope), the Project Hope starships themselves, a cycler that makes regular intersections with Ryitu (Tau Ceti f) and a base on said planet (rather similar in size and character to human Antarctic bases, with space for 1000 Kyanah, though their presence there has been downsized to a bit over 200 due to Project Hope).
Aside from their space industry, manufacturing in Ikun has been on the decline, (though the manufacturing and construction sectors are still vast by global standards, Ikun was no longer #1 before the start of Project Hope) with the economy increasingly pivoting to services, knowledge work, and finance; in fact one of the key goals of Project Hope was to revitalize domestic manufacturing. Standards of living in Ikun are fairly high even by the standards of the Rktakian Kwardniet, and extremely high by global standards, though they can vary a lot by district, and Project Hope has severely strained the economy. Ikun has an aggressive and interventionist foreign policy, maintaining a nuclear monopoly under threat of nuclear annihilation and regularly intervening in the domestic affairs of foreign city-states with both military action and sanctions. They have the most powerful military in the world, with around 150,000 personnel (slightly over 1% of the population) who have extremely high-tech equipment and advanced AI engines. However, overt regime changes have become less frequent under Nyektak-pack's administration in favor of exerting economic and diplomatic control through the Water Distribution System and other means. The city-state is a prime target for immigrants from all corners of the world, and hundreds of ethnic and linguistic groups in its borders--though educated Kyanah in most of the world tend to learn at least some of Ikun's native vernacular due to its considerable soft power. Ikun is located deep inside a large crater in a transition zone between seasonal plains and semi-arid desert, with the former being predominantly found to the north of the city. Temperatures vary considerably, from around 30C in the winter up to 60 in the summer. Ikun is a very chaotic and noisy city; buildings have traditionally just been plopped down wherever, with streets being added to accommodate them; music, radio, and TV broadcasts are being randomly blasted everywhere at all hours, and traffic can be quite aggressive and unpredictable--autonomous vehicles are a must to be able to safely navigate the streets. Being a huge city-state located in the middle of a crater, there is a nearly omnipresent industrial smog. However, the streets are kept relatively clean due to advanced technology and robotics--along with cheap immigrant labor. Activity in Ikun never really dies down, even in the middle of the night.
Nktan. Location: 38N, 0E (~25 km from Ikun); Elevation: +35m; Population: 2.3 million; GDP: $400 billion. Tier: 1. Nestled against the eastern wall of Ikun's crater, Nktan is actually just a part of the Ikun metropolitan area that was granted independence in Epoch 10 (Y640-Y703) to prevent Ikun city-state from becoming too large and unstable; it's the largest of four city-states created around that time for the same reason. Ikun, Nktan and the other three city-states are collectively known as the Craterzone (or by detractors as the Ikunzone or Greater Ikun, in reference to Ikun's massive influence on the area). The entire Craterzone has a population of just under 19 million. While Nktan has their own independent City Alpha, Lawspeakers, bureaucracy, and legal system, the entire Craterzone share the same language and currency, and citizens of one city-state are free to live and work in any of the other. Nktan's military, while equipped with very modern and high-tech gear from Ikun, are so small--eight army cohorts and two air force cohorts, or about 1700 Kyanah in total--as to be basically a formality, with the city-state almost entirely relying on Ikun's military and nuclear umbrella for protection. Nktan University, which is (obviously) located here, is considered to be the most prestigious university in the world (as a private university, students must be invited to attend rather than applying) and the surrounding districts have a distinct college town vibe in contrast to the vast corporate campuses and sprawling middle class high rises that dominate the rest of the city-state.
Ryden. Location: 41N, 5W (~800 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1200m; Population: 11.9 million; GDP: $2.0 trillion. Tier: 1. One of Ikun's closest major neighbors, so naturally it sees a lot of tourists from Ikun who are looking to go to a foreign city without traveling particularly far or having to deal with a drastically different culture. Culturally they are only slightly different from Ikun and the vernacular is close enough to be mutually intelligible without study, though some words and a few niche aspects of grammar are different, and the locals have a noticeably different accent. Other than that, Ryden is just another large and powerful Rktakian Kwardniet city-state with a post-industrial service/information economy, friendly relations with Ikun, and economic interests stretching around the world, including a fair bit of dabbling in Globalist doctrine and military interventionism--though far less than Ikun--and Kyanah living there enjoy all the comforts of a tier 1 city-state. As they are not down in a crater, the climate is slightly cooler, with the city-state being located firmly within a seasonal plains biome. Ryden is connected to Ikun and the city-state of Aktan by the Ryden-Aktan Highway, which extends across open land and is maintained by all three, along with various private companies. It's not shown on the map for space reasons, but there are about a dozen independent city-states along the road between Ikun and Ryden, ranging in population from around 200k up to a few million; the Rktakian Kwardniet is overall pretty densely populated.
Aktan. Location: 38N, 5E (~700 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1100m; Population: 10.6 million; GDP: $1.3 trillion. Tier: 1. Another one of Ikun's close neighbors, located at the far end of the Ryden-Akten Highway. Aktan is firmly inside the semi-arid desert biome, with climates almost the same as Ikun, and like most city-states in the Rktakian Kwardniet, has a high standard of living. During the Utopian Wars, Ikun and Aktan fought in Y788 and again in Y819-820, but during the Hegemony Era, they have consistently retained relatively solid relations, as Ikun has generally tried to avoid making enemies right next door. There are a number of medium-sized city-states between Ikun and Aktan, and like Ryden, Aktan often uses Ikun's spaceport--located along the Ryden-Aktan Highway--for its commercial space activity. Language and culture tend to be fairly similar to Ikun as well, though as with Ryden, there are noticeable differences in the vernacular and specific traditions.
Lakyanah. Location: 27N, 22W (~3800 km from Ikun); Elevation: +440m; Population: 0; GDP: $0. Tier: N/A. Located at the southwestern end of the Rktakian Kwardniet, not far from the edge of the Dunelands Basin. This is a former city-state that is no more, having been deleted by Ikun's nukes during the Day of Tower Clouds in Y831. At the time, this came as a shock to many, as Ikun and Lakyanah were staunch allies during the later years of the Utopian Wars. However, Lakyanah had rejected Ikun's offer to be under their nuclear umbrella, preferring instead to pursue their own independent nuclear weapons program. To Ikun, any nuclear proliferation was an unacceptable security risk, and so Lakyanah met the same fate as all 13 city-states pursuing nuclear weapons in Y831. It's believed that Lakyanah was just weeks away from its first nuclear test when the Day of Tower Clouds happened, which is probably why it happened when it did. With a 5.5 megaton fusion bomb to the city center and eight 200 kiloton fission bombs taking out every major military installation and infrastructure in the city-state, Lakyanah functionally didn't exist any more, and the survivors gradually trickled out to start over elsewhere; with the government, military, and infrastructure gone, and the looming threat of radiation poisoning (at the time, nobody knew for sure how long it would take to subside to safe levels), most Kyanah had no reason to remain in the area and it emptied out within a few years. In modern times, the radiation has subsided considerably and it's relatively safe to visit, but the city remains abandoned, with nature creeping in and many areas crumbling away or being buried under the sand. The area might remind a human observer of Pripyat, only with more ruins and outright leveled buildings along with the merely abandoned ones. As of Y976, it's been about 66 Earth years since the Day of Tower Clouds, most of the OG survivors are dead except a few who were hatchlings or children at the time, and their descendants have largely assimilated into nearby city-states. While there's no permanent population around Lakyanah's oasis, tourists and salvage companies looking to make some qoin do occasionally visit. It's possible that in the future, some group may migrate there to clean up the rubble and establish a new city-state under a different name, but this has yet to happen as of Y976.
Taktan. Location: 43N, 11W (~1700 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1300m; Population: <20k; GDP: Unknown. Tier: N/A. One of the first two city-states nuked by Ikun at the end of the Utopian Wars, in Y824; it was this abrupt destruction of an entire city-state that brought the chain reaction of the Utopian Wars to a halt in the first place. Like Lakyanah, the survivors abandoned the area after the city-state fell, but unlike Lakyanah, it does not remain completely abandoned. In the past 10-20 Earth years, companies have begun clearing away the remains of Taktan and developing properties there, and thousands of packs have moved into company towns in the vicinity. There is as yet no formal government, but it seems likely that a new city-state will be founded eventually. This area is in a seasonal plains biome, characterized by a mix of endoskeleton and exoskeleton type structured plants, with alternating periods of flower blooms, elevated fungal activity, and relatively dead, arid periods.
Awkoryah. Location: 27N, 24E (~4000 km from Ikun); Elevation: +500m; Population: 6.7 million; GDP: $450 billion. Tier: 2. One of the poorer city-states in the Rktakian Kwardniet, it is located at the southeast edge of the region, where semi-arid desert gives way to the hot desert of the Dunelands Basin. Some would in fact say it's an honorary Dunelands city-state at this point, as more than half the population are Dunelanders; many Kyanah from the eastern Dunelands immigrate here instead of pushing further into the Rktakian Kwardniet. While still having a higher standard of living than most (but not all) of the Dunelands, Awkoryah has seen better days; the manufacturing sector has been greatly reduced in the past couple of generations the same ecological disasters ravaging the Dunelands are also affecting them. "Awkoryah Sauce", a popular nyrud's blood based condiment takes its name from this city-state, though the actual product sold in Ikun is heavily modified for Ikun palates and no Kyanah from Awkoryah would be caught dead putting it on anything.
Kutwenyah. Location: 41N, 22E (~3000 km from Ikun); Elevation: +2400m; Population: 800k; GDP: $200 billion. Tier: 1. Positioned at the outskirts of the White Impact Range (one of the newer and thus more chaotic impact ranges), Kutwenyah is in a shattered biome, characterized by rapid swings in both climate and elevation, with a vast maze of craters, ejecta piles, and impact peaks, diverse micro-ecosystems hiding inside craters and harsh, windy conditions beyond the crater walls. Their economy is primarily based on a mix of tourism (packs coming to sightsee or climb the many craters and impact peaks) and luxury goods (ornate compute-watches, the Kyanah equivalent of a smartphone, and expensive alcohol are the most famous examples). However, it owes most of its influence to being the place where the Coalition of Cities, the largest and arguably most successful inter-city organization in history, was founded and the location of its headquarters. Thousands of packs of ambassadors visit throughout the year, looking to make deals with whatever diplomats they can find and advance the status of their home city-states. While ostensibly neutral, they maintain close economic ties to Ikun and in turn quietly keep them updated on any notable goings on with the Coalition, and sometimes, albeit rarely, straight up turn away diplomats whose presence would be inconvenient to Ikun.
Ikun. Location: 38N, 0W; Elevation: +0m; Population: 13.7 million; GDP: $2.8 trillion. Tier: 1. The largest economy and strongest military in the world--the only one with nukes in fact--equal parts revered and reviled across the world as the Hegemon. It is Ikun city-state who is responsible for the Kyanah invasion of Earth, with their four starships taking 20 Earth years to build and arriving after a 160 Earth year journey. It's rather like if humans were invading another planet, but instead of the combined forces of all humanity, it was just New York City. Ikun is at the center of the world both figuratively and literally, as the prime meridian is defined by a special monument in the city center, which also serves to define the baseline elevation in the absence of oceans on the Kyanah homeworld. Confusingly, though, hundreds of city-states define coordinates and elevation relative to their own locations, and the scientific community is increasingly gravitating towards the use of the planet's average elevation as a baseline. Ikun is a very modern and high-tech city, with many tall buildings over 200 meters high, their steel and concrete frames often covered with ornately detailed stone facades. Like most Kyanah architecture, tall buildings tend to have flying buttresses as a countermeasure against the high gravity, which all intermesh with each other to provide mutual support, making the aesthetic quite different from Earth cities. It sits at the center of a vast network of infrastructure, including the Water Distribution System, is a large trade hub, and has the largest spaceport in the world, with dozens of space stations for tourism, research, and zero-G manufacturing, especially of room temperature superconductors and superalloys. They also have constructed some of the only legitimate megaprojects in space in Kyanah history: the 2-kilometer-wide spinning-ring Interstellar Vehicle Assembly Hub (for processing asteroids and assembling the starships for Project Hope), the Project Hope starships themselves, a cycler that makes regular intersections with Ryitu (Tau Ceti f) and a base on said planet (rather similar in size and character to human Antarctic bases, with space for 1000 Kyanah, though their presence there has been downsized to a bit over 200 due to Project Hope).
Aside from their space industry, manufacturing in Ikun has been on the decline, (though the manufacturing and construction sectors are still vast by global standards, Ikun was no longer #1 before the start of Project Hope) with the economy increasingly pivoting to services, knowledge work, and finance; in fact one of the key goals of Project Hope was to revitalize domestic manufacturing. Standards of living in Ikun are fairly high even by the standards of the Rktakian Kwardniet, and extremely high by global standards, though they can vary a lot by district, and Project Hope has severely strained the economy. Ikun has an aggressive and interventionist foreign policy, maintaining a nuclear monopoly under threat of nuclear annihilation and regularly intervening in the domestic affairs of foreign city-states with both military action and sanctions. They have the most powerful military in the world, with around 150,000 personnel (slightly over 1% of the population) who have extremely high-tech equipment and advanced AI engines. However, overt regime changes have become less frequent under Nyektak-pack's administration in favor of exerting economic and diplomatic control through the Water Distribution System and other means. The city-state is a prime target for immigrants from all corners of the world, and hundreds of ethnic and linguistic groups in its borders--though educated Kyanah in most of the world tend to learn at least some of Ikun's native vernacular due to its considerable soft power. Ikun is located deep inside a large crater in a transition zone between seasonal plains and semi-arid desert, with the former being predominantly found to the north of the city. Temperatures vary considerably, from around 30C in the winter up to 60 in the summer. Ikun is a very chaotic and noisy city; buildings have traditionally just been plopped down wherever, with streets being added to accommodate them; music, radio, and TV broadcasts are being randomly blasted everywhere at all hours, and traffic can be quite aggressive and unpredictable--autonomous vehicles are a must to be able to safely navigate the streets. Being a huge city-state located in the middle of a crater, there is a nearly omnipresent industrial smog. However, the streets are kept relatively clean due to advanced technology and robotics--along with cheap immigrant labor. Activity in Ikun never really dies down, even in the middle of the night.
Nktan. Location: 38N, 0E (~25 km from Ikun); Elevation: +35m; Population: 2.3 million; GDP: $400 billion. Tier: 1. Nestled against the eastern wall of Ikun's crater, Nktan is actually just a part of the Ikun metropolitan area that was granted independence in Epoch 10 (Y640-Y703) to prevent Ikun city-state from becoming too large and unstable; it's the largest of four city-states created around that time for the same reason. Ikun, Nktan and the other three city-states are collectively known as the Craterzone (or by detractors as the Ikunzone or Greater Ikun, in reference to Ikun's massive influence on the area). The entire Craterzone has a population of just under 19 million. While Nktan has their own independent City Alpha, Lawspeakers, bureaucracy, and legal system, the entire Craterzone share the same language and currency, and citizens of one city-state are free to live and work in any of the other. Nktan's military, while equipped with very modern and high-tech gear from Ikun, are so small--eight army cohorts and two air force cohorts, or about 1700 Kyanah in total--as to be basically a formality, with the city-state almost entirely relying on Ikun's military and nuclear umbrella for protection. Nktan University, which is (obviously) located here, is considered to be the most prestigious university in the world (as a private university, students must be invited to attend rather than applying) and the surrounding districts have a distinct college town vibe in contrast to the vast corporate campuses and sprawling middle class high rises that dominate the rest of the city-state.
Ryden. Location: 41N, 5W (~800 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1200m; Population: 11.9 million; GDP: $2.0 trillion. Tier: 1. One of Ikun's closest major neighbors, so naturally it sees a lot of tourists from Ikun who are looking to go to a foreign city without traveling particularly far or having to deal with a drastically different culture. Culturally they are only slightly different from Ikun and the vernacular is close enough to be mutually intelligible without study, though some words and a few niche aspects of grammar are different, and the locals have a noticeably different accent. Other than that, Ryden is just another large and powerful Rktakian Kwardniet city-state with a post-industrial service/information economy, friendly relations with Ikun, and economic interests stretching around the world, including a fair bit of dabbling in Globalist doctrine and military interventionism--though far less than Ikun--and Kyanah living there enjoy all the comforts of a tier 1 city-state. As they are not down in a crater, the climate is slightly cooler, with the city-state being located firmly within a seasonal plains biome. Ryden is connected to Ikun and the city-state of Aktan by the Ryden-Aktan Highway, which extends across open land and is maintained by all three, along with various private companies. It's not shown on the map for space reasons, but there are about a dozen independent city-states along the road between Ikun and Ryden, ranging in population from around 200k up to a few million; the Rktakian Kwardniet is overall pretty densely populated.
Aktan. Location: 38N, 5E (~700 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1100m; Population: 10.6 million; GDP: $1.3 trillion. Tier: 1. Another one of Ikun's close neighbors, located at the far end of the Ryden-Akten Highway. Aktan is firmly inside the semi-arid desert biome, with climates almost the same as Ikun, and like most city-states in the Rktakian Kwardniet, has a high standard of living. During the Utopian Wars, Ikun and Aktan fought in Y788 and again in Y819-820, but during the Hegemony Era, they have consistently retained relatively solid relations, as Ikun has generally tried to avoid making enemies right next door. There are a number of medium-sized city-states between Ikun and Aktan, and like Ryden, Aktan often uses Ikun's spaceport--located along the Ryden-Aktan Highway--for its commercial space activity. Language and culture tend to be fairly similar to Ikun as well, though as with Ryden, there are noticeable differences in the vernacular and specific traditions.
Lakyanah. Location: 27N, 22W (~3800 km from Ikun); Elevation: +440m; Population: 0; GDP: $0. Tier: N/A. Located at the southwestern end of the Rktakian Kwardniet, not far from the edge of the Dunelands Basin. This is a former city-state that is no more, having been deleted by Ikun's nukes during the Day of Tower Clouds in Y831. At the time, this came as a shock to many, as Ikun and Lakyanah were staunch allies during the later years of the Utopian Wars. However, Lakyanah had rejected Ikun's offer to be under their nuclear umbrella, preferring instead to pursue their own independent nuclear weapons program. To Ikun, any nuclear proliferation was an unacceptable security risk, and so Lakyanah met the same fate as all 13 city-states pursuing nuclear weapons in Y831. It's believed that Lakyanah was just weeks away from its first nuclear test when the Day of Tower Clouds happened, which is probably why it happened when it did. With a 5.5 megaton fusion bomb to the city center and eight 200 kiloton fission bombs taking out every major military installation and infrastructure in the city-state, Lakyanah functionally didn't exist any more, and the survivors gradually trickled out to start over elsewhere; with the government, military, and infrastructure gone, and the looming threat of radiation poisoning (at the time, nobody knew for sure how long it would take to subside to safe levels), most Kyanah had no reason to remain in the area and it emptied out within a few years. In modern times, the radiation has subsided considerably and it's relatively safe to visit, but the city remains abandoned, with nature creeping in and many areas crumbling away or being buried under the sand. The area might remind a human observer of Pripyat, only with more ruins and outright leveled buildings along with the merely abandoned ones. As of Y976, it's been about 66 Earth years since the Day of Tower Clouds, most of the OG survivors are dead except a few who were hatchlings or children at the time, and their descendants have largely assimilated into nearby city-states. While there's no permanent population around Lakyanah's oasis, tourists and salvage companies looking to make some qoin do occasionally visit. It's possible that in the future, some group may migrate there to clean up the rubble and establish a new city-state under a different name, but this has yet to happen as of Y976.
Taktan. Location: 43N, 11W (~1700 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1300m; Population: <20k; GDP: Unknown. Tier: N/A. One of the first two city-states nuked by Ikun at the end of the Utopian Wars, in Y824; it was this abrupt destruction of an entire city-state that brought the chain reaction of the Utopian Wars to a halt in the first place. Like Lakyanah, the survivors abandoned the area after the city-state fell, but unlike Lakyanah, it does not remain completely abandoned. In the past 10-20 Earth years, companies have begun clearing away the remains of Taktan and developing properties there, and thousands of packs have moved into company towns in the vicinity. There is as yet no formal government, but it seems likely that a new city-state will be founded eventually. This area is in a seasonal plains biome, characterized by a mix of endoskeleton and exoskeleton type structured plants, with alternating periods of flower blooms, elevated fungal activity, and relatively dead, arid periods.
Awkoryah. Location: 27N, 24E (~4000 km from Ikun); Elevation: +500m; Population: 6.7 million; GDP: $450 billion. Tier: 2. One of the poorer city-states in the Rktakian Kwardniet, it is located at the southeast edge of the region, where semi-arid desert gives way to the hot desert of the Dunelands Basin. Some would in fact say it's an honorary Dunelands city-state at this point, as more than half the population are Dunelanders; many Kyanah from the eastern Dunelands immigrate here instead of pushing further into the Rktakian Kwardniet. While still having a higher standard of living than most (but not all) of the Dunelands, Awkoryah has seen better days; the manufacturing sector has been greatly reduced in the past couple of generations the same ecological disasters ravaging the Dunelands are also affecting them. "Awkoryah Sauce", a popular nyrud's blood based condiment takes its name from this city-state, though the actual product sold in Ikun is heavily modified for Ikun palates and no Kyanah from Awkoryah would be caught dead putting it on anything.
Kutwenyah. Location: 41N, 22E (~3000 km from Ikun); Elevation: +2400m; Population: 800k; GDP: $200 billion. Tier: 1. Positioned at the outskirts of the White Impact Range (one of the newer and thus more chaotic impact ranges), Kutwenyah is in a shattered biome, characterized by rapid swings in both climate and elevation, with a vast maze of craters, ejecta piles, and impact peaks, diverse micro-ecosystems hiding inside craters and harsh, windy conditions beyond the crater walls. Their economy is primarily based on a mix of tourism (packs coming to sightsee or climb the many craters and impact peaks) and luxury goods (ornate compute-watches, the Kyanah equivalent of a smartphone, and expensive alcohol are the most famous examples). However, it owes most of its influence to being the place where the Coalition of Cities, the largest and arguably most successful inter-city organization in history, was founded and the location of its headquarters. Thousands of packs of ambassadors visit throughout the year, looking to make deals with whatever diplomats they can find and advance the status of their home city-states. While ostensibly neutral, they maintain close economic ties to Ikun and in turn quietly keep them updated on any notable goings on with the Coalition, and sometimes, albeit rarely, straight up turn away diplomats whose presence would be inconvenient to Ikun.
Re: Road to Hope
To-on Kan: Location: 57S, 66W (~19500 km from Ikun); Elevation: -1200m; Population: 1.2 million; GDP: $65 billion. Tier: 2. A little bit outside of the main Far South region, but nevertheless culturally and politically aligned. The climate is relatively cool and dry, though winds from the Middle South make it slightly warmer and wetter than it otherwise would be. Much like Ikun, they are located inside an impact crater, though this one is over 200 kilometers across. Almost the entire economy is centered around mining tantalum (despite some attempts to dabble in geoengineering, which were swiftly shut down by sanctions from Ikun), and they have the largest mines on the planet, though they aren't the only supplier. Tantalum is used in the alloys needed for high-performance nanogears for their mechanical computers. For this reason, it's an important strategic city; Ikun had an air base there until they removed it in order to extract political concessions from Koranah in other areas, at which point Koranah promptly invaded and installed a puppet regime as part of a plan to corner the tantalum market and vertically integrate their nanogear production.
Kanenhah: Location: 68S, 55W (~20200 km from Ikun); Elevation: +3200m; Population: 3.5 million; GDP: $500 billion. Tier: 1. Unlike most Far South city-states, Kanenhah is located not just near the Green Impact Range, but inside it, making the climate colder than most in the Far South; temperatures routinely drop as low as 5C in the winter and only rise to about 30-35 in the summer, so basically their summer is like Ikun's winter. Live there long enough and there's a good chance you'll even see snow flurries, a true sign of arctic climates on the Kyanah homeworld. The high elevation, due to its placement on an ejecta pile, makes the air thin and those from lower elevations often need time to acclimate, though on the flip side, this means that they produce a greater proportion of acclaimed athletes than most city-states. Politically, they are Ikun's closest ally in the Far South and one of the closest in the entire world, and thousands of Ikun troops are present in Kanenhah at all times. This has naturally drawn the wrath of Koranah, and relations between the two are extremely hostile. Koranah has thousands of railguns and missiles hidden in the mountains pointed at Kanenhah and accuse them of being an Ikun puppet. As Kanenhah's population is 1/8 that of their #1 enemy, they are one of only a couple hundred Kyanah city-states to have a draft in modern times, with all newly formed packs being required to join the military for 6 years (~2.7 Earth years). Combined with all the high-tech gear sold to them by Ikun at a discount, they are the 10th strongest military in the world, and the 3rd strongest outside the Rktakian Kwardniet. They still have some of their traditional textile and steel mills, but the bulk of their economy has shifted to cars and aircraft, robots, computers, and software. The city-state is also, oddly enough, something of a hub for high fashion and fine dining. Like most Far South city-states, religion is a much bigger part of life than in the Rktakian Kwardniet, and unlike most of the northern hemisphere, collective worship is common. While the government has secularized somewhat in recent decades, under pressure from both the younger generations and Ikun diplomats, and there are no longer any legal penalties for following the "wrong" religious practices, there may be social and professional consequences for packs that are vocal about it, and religious authorities are guaranteed one Lawspeaker seat (reduced from four packs to one a few years ago in Y967). Attending mass-worship is not mandatory, but businesses are required to close during this time, excluding emergency services and some government offices. As Kanenhah lies just inside the southern polar circle, there is a period of about 8 days where the sun does not rise in the winter and even at +4 there is only twilight; hundreds of thousands of locals and tens of thousands of tourists gather at the onset of polar night for the live music, street food, animal sacrifices, and light shows that mark this occasion.
Koranah: Location: 70S, 48W (~20100 km from Ikun); Elevation: +800m; Population: 29.0 million; GDP: $3.5 trillion. Tier: 1. Ikun's main economic and political rival and the largest economy on the planet by raw GDP. One of the few major Far South city-states to actually be located on the south side of the Green Impact Range, it's in a polar barrens biome, locked off from any moderating climatic (and political) influences by the impact range, so despite their lower elevation, the climate is similar to Kanenhah, but with a slightly longer polar night and midnight sun. In Y839, Ikun invaded Koranah, at the time a backwater city-state with an economy based primarily on resource extraction and low-tech manufacturing, and overthrew the non-aligned government, replacing the reigning City Alpha with a pro-Ikun ethnic minority pack who killed thousands of the majority group and ruled with an iron fist until being deposed in Y861 by the current government, which has proven to be even more authoritarian. City Alphas rule for life, passing on power to close ikoin, Lawspeakers may as well just be there for decoration, and packs who are brave (and stupid) enough to file a challenge against the City Alpha have a mysterious tendency to get into fatal car accidents or be arrested on trumped up charges. Surveillance is omnipresent both outside and sometimes inside homes, and leaving requires permission from the government (there's a meme circulating around net zone 1, which includes Ikun, that goes like 'we need a fence to keep everyone out, they need a fence to keep everyone in'). Koranah's populace tend to be deeply religious and have a tendency to participate in mass worship sessions, as with most of the Far South, and regular attendance is mandatory, as the state uses religious leaders to disseminate propaganda, along with having agents in every net zone stirring the pot and spreading anti-Ikun messaging. Despite all of this, Koranah is a very wealthy and prosperous city-state, in the tier 1 category. Ever since the current regime took over, they have been trying to economically and militarily catch up to Ikun by any means necessary, making vast investments in shifting to high-tech manufacturing, knowledge work, and financial services, implementing an egg quota to boost their population and thus economy, building countless new districts at an astonishingly fast rate, razing many slums and historic buildings alike in the process (with a dictatorial government, they can ram through projects that would be bogged down with years of red tape in a city-state like Ikun), and bolstering their military to a point that their conventional weapons have achieved parity with Ikun, although they haven't dared to challenge Ikun's nuclear monopoly.
Modern Koranah has what humans would call a cyberpunk vibe, a vast sea of plain cookie-cutter skyscrapers extending out to the horizon in a grid pattern, with extensive buttresses blocking out large chunks of the sky at street level, and seemingly every surface being a screen of some sort--useful for displaying larger than life propaganda everywhere, while endless flocks of drones soar through the skies. As laws against littering and noise pollution are very strict, Koranah tends to be cleaner and quieter than Ikun--except when the city-wide loudspeaker network is summoning citizens to mass worship or blasting the city anthem as it does every morning. The city has a very sleek and extensive mass transit system and a network of tunnels below street level to allow residents to traverse between buildings without facing the cold outside, so private car ownership is not very common. As Koranah's economy and population have grown, they have participated in the same Globalist tactics used by the Rktakian Kwardniet, siphoning away natural resources from faraway impoverished regions and seeking to grow their influence abroad through military and economic interventionism. They are also the mastermind behind the Climate Control System, a hypothetical network capable of controlling weather and ecosystems on a global scale in much the same way as Ikun controls the Water Distribution System; for this reason Ikun has spent large amounts of political capital getting as many city-states as possible to ban geoengineering technology. Koranah is also the largest manufacturer of high-performance nanogears, important components for the Kyanahs' mechanical computers; if Koranah stopped nanogear exports, computers would likely become several times more expensive overnight, a fact which they use to their advantage politically. Additionally, they have a considerable footprint in space, with many zero-G manufacturing hubs and the current (as of Y976) largest Ryitu base, with a population of 400+.
Kanenhah: Location: 68S, 55W (~20200 km from Ikun); Elevation: +3200m; Population: 3.5 million; GDP: $500 billion. Tier: 1. Unlike most Far South city-states, Kanenhah is located not just near the Green Impact Range, but inside it, making the climate colder than most in the Far South; temperatures routinely drop as low as 5C in the winter and only rise to about 30-35 in the summer, so basically their summer is like Ikun's winter. Live there long enough and there's a good chance you'll even see snow flurries, a true sign of arctic climates on the Kyanah homeworld. The high elevation, due to its placement on an ejecta pile, makes the air thin and those from lower elevations often need time to acclimate, though on the flip side, this means that they produce a greater proportion of acclaimed athletes than most city-states. Politically, they are Ikun's closest ally in the Far South and one of the closest in the entire world, and thousands of Ikun troops are present in Kanenhah at all times. This has naturally drawn the wrath of Koranah, and relations between the two are extremely hostile. Koranah has thousands of railguns and missiles hidden in the mountains pointed at Kanenhah and accuse them of being an Ikun puppet. As Kanenhah's population is 1/8 that of their #1 enemy, they are one of only a couple hundred Kyanah city-states to have a draft in modern times, with all newly formed packs being required to join the military for 6 years (~2.7 Earth years). Combined with all the high-tech gear sold to them by Ikun at a discount, they are the 10th strongest military in the world, and the 3rd strongest outside the Rktakian Kwardniet. They still have some of their traditional textile and steel mills, but the bulk of their economy has shifted to cars and aircraft, robots, computers, and software. The city-state is also, oddly enough, something of a hub for high fashion and fine dining. Like most Far South city-states, religion is a much bigger part of life than in the Rktakian Kwardniet, and unlike most of the northern hemisphere, collective worship is common. While the government has secularized somewhat in recent decades, under pressure from both the younger generations and Ikun diplomats, and there are no longer any legal penalties for following the "wrong" religious practices, there may be social and professional consequences for packs that are vocal about it, and religious authorities are guaranteed one Lawspeaker seat (reduced from four packs to one a few years ago in Y967). Attending mass-worship is not mandatory, but businesses are required to close during this time, excluding emergency services and some government offices. As Kanenhah lies just inside the southern polar circle, there is a period of about 8 days where the sun does not rise in the winter and even at +4 there is only twilight; hundreds of thousands of locals and tens of thousands of tourists gather at the onset of polar night for the live music, street food, animal sacrifices, and light shows that mark this occasion.
Koranah: Location: 70S, 48W (~20100 km from Ikun); Elevation: +800m; Population: 29.0 million; GDP: $3.5 trillion. Tier: 1. Ikun's main economic and political rival and the largest economy on the planet by raw GDP. One of the few major Far South city-states to actually be located on the south side of the Green Impact Range, it's in a polar barrens biome, locked off from any moderating climatic (and political) influences by the impact range, so despite their lower elevation, the climate is similar to Kanenhah, but with a slightly longer polar night and midnight sun. In Y839, Ikun invaded Koranah, at the time a backwater city-state with an economy based primarily on resource extraction and low-tech manufacturing, and overthrew the non-aligned government, replacing the reigning City Alpha with a pro-Ikun ethnic minority pack who killed thousands of the majority group and ruled with an iron fist until being deposed in Y861 by the current government, which has proven to be even more authoritarian. City Alphas rule for life, passing on power to close ikoin, Lawspeakers may as well just be there for decoration, and packs who are brave (and stupid) enough to file a challenge against the City Alpha have a mysterious tendency to get into fatal car accidents or be arrested on trumped up charges. Surveillance is omnipresent both outside and sometimes inside homes, and leaving requires permission from the government (there's a meme circulating around net zone 1, which includes Ikun, that goes like 'we need a fence to keep everyone out, they need a fence to keep everyone in'). Koranah's populace tend to be deeply religious and have a tendency to participate in mass worship sessions, as with most of the Far South, and regular attendance is mandatory, as the state uses religious leaders to disseminate propaganda, along with having agents in every net zone stirring the pot and spreading anti-Ikun messaging. Despite all of this, Koranah is a very wealthy and prosperous city-state, in the tier 1 category. Ever since the current regime took over, they have been trying to economically and militarily catch up to Ikun by any means necessary, making vast investments in shifting to high-tech manufacturing, knowledge work, and financial services, implementing an egg quota to boost their population and thus economy, building countless new districts at an astonishingly fast rate, razing many slums and historic buildings alike in the process (with a dictatorial government, they can ram through projects that would be bogged down with years of red tape in a city-state like Ikun), and bolstering their military to a point that their conventional weapons have achieved parity with Ikun, although they haven't dared to challenge Ikun's nuclear monopoly.
Modern Koranah has what humans would call a cyberpunk vibe, a vast sea of plain cookie-cutter skyscrapers extending out to the horizon in a grid pattern, with extensive buttresses blocking out large chunks of the sky at street level, and seemingly every surface being a screen of some sort--useful for displaying larger than life propaganda everywhere, while endless flocks of drones soar through the skies. As laws against littering and noise pollution are very strict, Koranah tends to be cleaner and quieter than Ikun--except when the city-wide loudspeaker network is summoning citizens to mass worship or blasting the city anthem as it does every morning. The city has a very sleek and extensive mass transit system and a network of tunnels below street level to allow residents to traverse between buildings without facing the cold outside, so private car ownership is not very common. As Koranah's economy and population have grown, they have participated in the same Globalist tactics used by the Rktakian Kwardniet, siphoning away natural resources from faraway impoverished regions and seeking to grow their influence abroad through military and economic interventionism. They are also the mastermind behind the Climate Control System, a hypothetical network capable of controlling weather and ecosystems on a global scale in much the same way as Ikun controls the Water Distribution System; for this reason Ikun has spent large amounts of political capital getting as many city-states as possible to ban geoengineering technology. Koranah is also the largest manufacturer of high-performance nanogears, important components for the Kyanahs' mechanical computers; if Koranah stopped nanogear exports, computers would likely become several times more expensive overnight, a fact which they use to their advantage politically. Additionally, they have a considerable footprint in space, with many zero-G manufacturing hubs and the current (as of Y976) largest Ryitu base, with a population of 400+.
Re: Road to Hope
Adronkin. Location: 12N, 37W (~7400 km from Ikun); Elevation: -900m; Population: 700k; GDP: $18 billion. Tier: 3. A quintessential and fairly average Dunelands city-state, located deep in the west end of the Dunelands Basin where summertime temperatures can reach 70 Celsius in the summer and 60 in the winter, and rainfall is scarce, averaging 10-15 centimeters per year in most of the region. Even with the Water Distribution System, water is expensive and sometimes unreliable during extreme weather and civil unrest. Like most Dunelands cities, it lags behind the Rktakian Kwardniet in terms of economic development. While most citizens aren't starving, living conditions are noticeably more bare-bones than in Ikun, with considerably fewer packs having things like cars or desktop computers, and middle managers in Adronkin making about the same money as janitors in Ikun. The government is often run by dictators or quasi-dictators, leading to frequent paramilitary activity, attempted coups, and corruption, with police shaking down citizens for bribes and government officials selling off state property and pocketing the profits. However, the military doesn't even crack the top 2500 globally, with no air force and only nine army cohorts, mostly equipped with outdated surplus gear from the Far South. Textile mills and brick factories are the backbone of the local economy. Most of the city-state consists of plain concrete or brick mid-rises, industrial areas, and the occasional slum, but the city center and surrounding eight blocks or so have some stone-facade office buildings, high rises, and high-end shops and restaurants, as well as Adronkin's one university, which primarily serves to educate the rich and future government officials. Due to the scorching heat of the Dunelands, society tends to operate on a nocturnal schedule, with Kyanah working at night and sleeping during the day, in contrast to the diurnal rhythm most common outside the Dunelands. This place is honestly only on the map because one of the major packs in Road to Hope came from here and (understandably) immigrated to Ikun.
Orokun. Location: 14N, 24E (~5700 km from Ikun); Elevation: -500m; Population: 8.6 million; GDP: $300 billion. Tier: 3. The largest city-state in the Dunelands by both population and GDP, it is located in the more densely populated eastern side of the Dunelands. While authoritarian, it's also relatively stable for its size and is a regional power in the Dunelands, with a sizeable army and air force, though their budget and equipment lag far behind Ikun. Orokun's old town is famous for its distinct architecture featuring domed mud brick buildings adorned with brightly colored ceramic tiles. Obviously, plenty of modern steel and concrete skyscrapers are present as well in the more recently built districts. Naturally, some districts are dominated by slums as well. They depend heavily on the Water Distribution System to remain stable, and relations with Ikun have varied over the years, depending on how much water they're able to draw from the system, though even at their worst they have never aligned themselves with Koranah.
Andin: Location: 43N, 47E (~6300 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1700m; Population: 10.1 million; GDP: $1.1 trillion. Tier: 1. The largest economy in the Meatbucket, though a couple of city-states have it beat in terms of population. Andin is located in a riparian web biome, where the density of oases combined with the high rainfall (~55 cm/Earth year, making it one of the wettest major cities on the planet) cause water to overflow out of the oases and form interconnected webs that spread across large areas. Winds from the north, which get deflected around the White Impact Range, make the climate milder than Rktakian Kwardniet city-states at the same latitude; winters average around 20C and summers around 45C. Andin's economy is dominated by agriculture and agri-tech, with vast fields of feed crops for nyruds and tyukruds extending out to the city-state's economic borders. Despite its agriculture-heavy economy, Andin is a tier 1 city-state, and as such, the crops are highly genetically engineered and tended by swarms of robots and drones rather than manual laborers with hand tools. Andin has in recent years been quite bullish on geoengineering and Weather Control System technology, which has partially soured otherwise friendly relations between them and Ikun, though they still remain more on Ikun's side than Koranah's in the ongoing economic war between the two. Much as Ikun is a holy grail for immigrants from the Dunelands, Andin is a holy grail for immigrants from the Nyruietkot Riyentkin. Andin is the biggest participant in a regional Meatbucket alliance that has built a small Ryitu base with a population of a few dozen and otherwise has an active commercial space sector.
Aiyahah. Location: 63N, 34W (~5700 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1900m; Population: 2.3 million; GDP: $150 billion. Tier: 2. A large city-state in the boreal scrublands biome, with temperatures ranging from 10 Celsius in the winter to 40 in the summer and 30-40 cm of rain per Earth year. Tends to be a common destination for tourists from the Rktakian Kwardniet during the summer, due to the mild climate, exotic wildlife, and the fact that summer nights only last a couple of hours. Tends to be a net exporter in the Water Distribution System. Aiyahah city-state is thousands of years old as a political entity--one of the oldest continuously populated city-states--with unorganized settlements and nomadic presence at their oasis dating back even further; it is only a few hundred kilometers from the site of the oldest fossils of anatomically modern Kyanah. Their closest living relatives, the tkorks, can be found in large numbers in the surrounding scrubland, and some populations have migrated into the city, doing well for themselves and becoming something of a pest, especially as their chimpanzee-level intelligence prevents them from falling for obvious traps, and they tend to keep coming back when removed.
Dagtan. Location: 9S, 67W (~13800 km from Ikun);Elevation: +600m; Population: 11.5 million; GDP: $650 billion. Tier: 2. One of those city-states that reached a massive size due to one-off quirks instead of being part of some larger cluster. In Dagtan's case, it sits at one of the through accessible routes through the Yellow Impact Range and thus was historically right in the middle of the Merchant Paths. In pre-modern times, traders from the Rktakian Kwardniet or the Dunelands getting to the Middle and Far South (or vice versa) had no choice but to go through Dagtan (unless they wanted to either cross the Shatter or spend months going all the way around the Yellow Impact Range). Trade going through the Western Sector and even some parts of the Boreal Scrublands also passed through here. Air travel has reduced its relevance slightly, but it's still home to one of the largest rail hubs in the world and countless truck convoys pass through as well.
East Anweri. Location: 36S, 113W (~22700 km from Ikun); Elevation: +900m; Population: 35.4 million; GDP: $1.4 trillion. Tier: 3 (some sources say 2, it's a close call). The largest city-state in the Middle South. While they are rapidly developing, the benefits have been unevenly distributed; there are very well-off districts that would not look out of place in the Rktakian Kwardniet, and districts that are actual slums. Since the end of the Utopian Wars, they have shifted from agriculture and coal into energy production and manufacturing consumer goods and in recent years has developed a homegrown space sector with thousands of satellites, hundreds of astronauts, a spaceport with a fleet of SSTO nuclear spaceplanes, and a small spin gravity space station used mainly for research and tourism. The tallest building on the planet, the 343-meter 98-floor Tower Fantasy 98, is located in East Anweri. Politically, they tend to avoid overtly committing to either Ikun or Koranah's sphere of influence and work with both at the same time while being distrustful of both--Ikun because of their actions in West Anweri and Koranah because of their treatment of ethnic Anweri in their city-state and their general interventionist foreign policy. East Anweri has tried to paint themselves globally as an third way for city-states disaffected by Ikun and Koranah's geopolitical game, but without much success.
West Anweri: Location: 36S, 114W (~22800 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1400m; Population: 45k; GDP: $1 billion. Tier: 3. Formerly a twin city-state of East Anweri and located at the base of one of the planet's few dozen active volcanoes. In Y831, they were pursuing nuclear weapons development and so fell during the Day of Tower Clouds. While initially abandoned like all city-states destroyed in this manner, the region is too densely inhabited to just leave a prime oasis untouched and Kyanah settlements have been slowly making a resurgence around West Anweri's former oasis. This new West Anweri isn't politically or culturally closely related to the OG one and is considered a different city-state for all intents and purposes, as there was no continuity of governance.
Dyrnyoknyok: Location: 14S, 78E (~15800 km from Ikun); Elevation: -400m; Population: 40.4 million; GDP: $350 billion. Tier: 4. Has the dubious honor of being the largest city-state in the world by population, though with looming civil war, a largely non-functional and dictatorial government, spillover from other conflicts in the Nyruietkot Riyentkin, and a reliance on farming cash crops--which are often unreliable in this equatorial region--with relatively low-tech tools. Dyrnyoknyok is located in a relatively wet and hot climate with a high oasis density, putting it in a flood meadow biome; temperatures range from 55-65 Celsius with minimal variation throughout the year, but this is trending upwards due to industrial activity. Many packs from here are emigrating to the Meatbucket.
Ioktaknytor: Location: 25S, 66E (~15700 km from Ikun); Elevation: -600m; Population: 0; GDP: $0. Tier: N/A. Formerly seen as an economic success story in the Nyruietkot Riyentkin, having made substantial strides to modernize and diversify into manufacturing and solar power, albeit under a brutal dictatorship. Allegedly, they pursued nuclear weapons development, and so were annihilated by Ikun in Y866, the first and only city-state to meet this fate since the Day of Tower Clouds. Subsequent visitors to the former city-state failed to find the remains of nuclear weapons facilities and some have accused Ikun of launching the attack in response to the Ioktaknytor army attacking Ikun truckers and resource gathering expeditions near their borders, and seizing the assets of local companies and packs doing business with Ikun, in order to make an example of Ioktaknytor. The official narrative by the Ikun government is that these facilities were hidden in open land rather than the city-state itself, but no one has found them yet. It remains a very divisive mystery, to say the least, in certain net zones.
Orokun. Location: 14N, 24E (~5700 km from Ikun); Elevation: -500m; Population: 8.6 million; GDP: $300 billion. Tier: 3. The largest city-state in the Dunelands by both population and GDP, it is located in the more densely populated eastern side of the Dunelands. While authoritarian, it's also relatively stable for its size and is a regional power in the Dunelands, with a sizeable army and air force, though their budget and equipment lag far behind Ikun. Orokun's old town is famous for its distinct architecture featuring domed mud brick buildings adorned with brightly colored ceramic tiles. Obviously, plenty of modern steel and concrete skyscrapers are present as well in the more recently built districts. Naturally, some districts are dominated by slums as well. They depend heavily on the Water Distribution System to remain stable, and relations with Ikun have varied over the years, depending on how much water they're able to draw from the system, though even at their worst they have never aligned themselves with Koranah.
Andin: Location: 43N, 47E (~6300 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1700m; Population: 10.1 million; GDP: $1.1 trillion. Tier: 1. The largest economy in the Meatbucket, though a couple of city-states have it beat in terms of population. Andin is located in a riparian web biome, where the density of oases combined with the high rainfall (~55 cm/Earth year, making it one of the wettest major cities on the planet) cause water to overflow out of the oases and form interconnected webs that spread across large areas. Winds from the north, which get deflected around the White Impact Range, make the climate milder than Rktakian Kwardniet city-states at the same latitude; winters average around 20C and summers around 45C. Andin's economy is dominated by agriculture and agri-tech, with vast fields of feed crops for nyruds and tyukruds extending out to the city-state's economic borders. Despite its agriculture-heavy economy, Andin is a tier 1 city-state, and as such, the crops are highly genetically engineered and tended by swarms of robots and drones rather than manual laborers with hand tools. Andin has in recent years been quite bullish on geoengineering and Weather Control System technology, which has partially soured otherwise friendly relations between them and Ikun, though they still remain more on Ikun's side than Koranah's in the ongoing economic war between the two. Much as Ikun is a holy grail for immigrants from the Dunelands, Andin is a holy grail for immigrants from the Nyruietkot Riyentkin. Andin is the biggest participant in a regional Meatbucket alliance that has built a small Ryitu base with a population of a few dozen and otherwise has an active commercial space sector.
Aiyahah. Location: 63N, 34W (~5700 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1900m; Population: 2.3 million; GDP: $150 billion. Tier: 2. A large city-state in the boreal scrublands biome, with temperatures ranging from 10 Celsius in the winter to 40 in the summer and 30-40 cm of rain per Earth year. Tends to be a common destination for tourists from the Rktakian Kwardniet during the summer, due to the mild climate, exotic wildlife, and the fact that summer nights only last a couple of hours. Tends to be a net exporter in the Water Distribution System. Aiyahah city-state is thousands of years old as a political entity--one of the oldest continuously populated city-states--with unorganized settlements and nomadic presence at their oasis dating back even further; it is only a few hundred kilometers from the site of the oldest fossils of anatomically modern Kyanah. Their closest living relatives, the tkorks, can be found in large numbers in the surrounding scrubland, and some populations have migrated into the city, doing well for themselves and becoming something of a pest, especially as their chimpanzee-level intelligence prevents them from falling for obvious traps, and they tend to keep coming back when removed.
Dagtan. Location: 9S, 67W (~13800 km from Ikun);Elevation: +600m; Population: 11.5 million; GDP: $650 billion. Tier: 2. One of those city-states that reached a massive size due to one-off quirks instead of being part of some larger cluster. In Dagtan's case, it sits at one of the through accessible routes through the Yellow Impact Range and thus was historically right in the middle of the Merchant Paths. In pre-modern times, traders from the Rktakian Kwardniet or the Dunelands getting to the Middle and Far South (or vice versa) had no choice but to go through Dagtan (unless they wanted to either cross the Shatter or spend months going all the way around the Yellow Impact Range). Trade going through the Western Sector and even some parts of the Boreal Scrublands also passed through here. Air travel has reduced its relevance slightly, but it's still home to one of the largest rail hubs in the world and countless truck convoys pass through as well.
East Anweri. Location: 36S, 113W (~22700 km from Ikun); Elevation: +900m; Population: 35.4 million; GDP: $1.4 trillion. Tier: 3 (some sources say 2, it's a close call). The largest city-state in the Middle South. While they are rapidly developing, the benefits have been unevenly distributed; there are very well-off districts that would not look out of place in the Rktakian Kwardniet, and districts that are actual slums. Since the end of the Utopian Wars, they have shifted from agriculture and coal into energy production and manufacturing consumer goods and in recent years has developed a homegrown space sector with thousands of satellites, hundreds of astronauts, a spaceport with a fleet of SSTO nuclear spaceplanes, and a small spin gravity space station used mainly for research and tourism. The tallest building on the planet, the 343-meter 98-floor Tower Fantasy 98, is located in East Anweri. Politically, they tend to avoid overtly committing to either Ikun or Koranah's sphere of influence and work with both at the same time while being distrustful of both--Ikun because of their actions in West Anweri and Koranah because of their treatment of ethnic Anweri in their city-state and their general interventionist foreign policy. East Anweri has tried to paint themselves globally as an third way for city-states disaffected by Ikun and Koranah's geopolitical game, but without much success.
West Anweri: Location: 36S, 114W (~22800 km from Ikun); Elevation: +1400m; Population: 45k; GDP: $1 billion. Tier: 3. Formerly a twin city-state of East Anweri and located at the base of one of the planet's few dozen active volcanoes. In Y831, they were pursuing nuclear weapons development and so fell during the Day of Tower Clouds. While initially abandoned like all city-states destroyed in this manner, the region is too densely inhabited to just leave a prime oasis untouched and Kyanah settlements have been slowly making a resurgence around West Anweri's former oasis. This new West Anweri isn't politically or culturally closely related to the OG one and is considered a different city-state for all intents and purposes, as there was no continuity of governance.
Dyrnyoknyok: Location: 14S, 78E (~15800 km from Ikun); Elevation: -400m; Population: 40.4 million; GDP: $350 billion. Tier: 4. Has the dubious honor of being the largest city-state in the world by population, though with looming civil war, a largely non-functional and dictatorial government, spillover from other conflicts in the Nyruietkot Riyentkin, and a reliance on farming cash crops--which are often unreliable in this equatorial region--with relatively low-tech tools. Dyrnyoknyok is located in a relatively wet and hot climate with a high oasis density, putting it in a flood meadow biome; temperatures range from 55-65 Celsius with minimal variation throughout the year, but this is trending upwards due to industrial activity. Many packs from here are emigrating to the Meatbucket.
Ioktaknytor: Location: 25S, 66E (~15700 km from Ikun); Elevation: -600m; Population: 0; GDP: $0. Tier: N/A. Formerly seen as an economic success story in the Nyruietkot Riyentkin, having made substantial strides to modernize and diversify into manufacturing and solar power, albeit under a brutal dictatorship. Allegedly, they pursued nuclear weapons development, and so were annihilated by Ikun in Y866, the first and only city-state to meet this fate since the Day of Tower Clouds. Subsequent visitors to the former city-state failed to find the remains of nuclear weapons facilities and some have accused Ikun of launching the attack in response to the Ioktaknytor army attacking Ikun truckers and resource gathering expeditions near their borders, and seizing the assets of local companies and packs doing business with Ikun, in order to make an example of Ioktaknytor. The official narrative by the Ikun government is that these facilities were hidden in open land rather than the city-state itself, but no one has found them yet. It remains a very divisive mystery, to say the least, in certain net zones.
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firestar464
- Posts: 7203
- Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2022 7:45 am
Re: Road to Hope
I'm just imagining people and Kyanah coexisting on Earth and eventually becoming part of the same society.
Eventually one day, Ikun's inhabitants see some sort of rocket land, with strange organisms in suits exiting alongside some Kyanah- who have come home for the first time in centuries.
Eventually one day, Ikun's inhabitants see some sort of rocket land, with strange organisms in suits exiting alongside some Kyanah- who have come home for the first time in centuries.