ORICHALCUM UNIVERSE: VERANIS (Dyaxor A V) in 2123...

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

As mentioned above, before the Thakarians arrived on Veranis, the most powerful states were to be found in the Northlands. These polities commanded the greatest resources of men and materiel, the most sophisticated and powerful economies, and the most advanced local technology. At that time, most of the indigenes of the equatorial continents were either at late Stone Age or early metal age technological levels. The Southlands were a wider mix.

The states of the Northlands, at that same time, were in an early-industrial level of development. The cutting edge developments in the Northlands included steam technology, limited electrical technology, and use of metals such as aluminum (albeit in very small quantities). Wind power was still in wide use to propel Northland sea vessels, but they had built steam-driven ships. The overall Northlands level of development could be loosely compared to that of the Western nations of late Victorian Age Earth.

There were nine major states in the Northlands at that time, along with perhaps two dozens smaller realms, satellite states, and microstates and city-states of various sorts. Of the nine great powers, Catakatia (pronounced roughly 'ku-taka-tia', emphasis on the second syllable) was the strongest military and economically, though only about fourth in terms of territory. Still, the territory that Catakatia did control included some of the best land, and richest natural resources, in the Northlands.

One problem that all the Northlands states faced, and indeed a problem shared with all of Veranis in a sense, was limited sources of certain key resources. The reason for this was simple: Veranis had already seen two full rounds of advanced technological civilization come and go.

First, in the ancient past, the Lakegrandians who had been the first humanoid inhabitants of Veranis had maintained an advanced civilization for millennia.

Then, after the mysterious disappearance of the Lakegrandians from Veranis, the Vertarans that they had imported from the other inhabited world of their star system eventually created their own interplanetary civilization with their cousins on the fourth planet. This period lasted for centuries. Unlike the Lakegrandians, though, the fate of this civilization is well known. Full on nuclear, chemical and biological warfare ended in reducing both planetary societies to primitive conditions, and millennia later, the states of the Northlands were only just beginning to regain some of the lost abilities.

Unfortunately, two previous waves of high-technology civilization had inevitably tapped and used many of the readily available natural resources of Veranis. Many of the readily accessible deposits of useful metals had already been mined. Much of the hydrocarbon reserves to be found on Veranis had long since been extracted and either burned or converted into plastics and other products by the previous civilizations.

Those resources based in the active biosphere renewed themselves over time, of course. By the time the peoples of the Northlands had reached this level of development, the fish population the oceans were back to original numbers, the forests had regrown, making wood plentiful, etc.

Other resources renewed themselves far more slowly.

There was still some accessible coal. Veranis never had as much coal as Earth, but there was a substantial amount and much of it remained in the ground, even after two waves of civilization. It was not always the highest quality coal, of course. Anthracite was rare on Veranis by 1990 A.D., but there was plenty of lignite and bituminous coal left.

Catakatia was one of the states of the Northland that had hardly any coal, but they could trade for it with neighbors. They made up for this lack by a great stroke of luck: there were still substantial untapped petroleum reservoirs in their territory, reservoirs that were not all that deep or hard to tap. For whatever reasons, those reserves had never been utilized by either of the previous waves of civilization, and so they were available for the Catakatians.

On the other hand, the Catakatians were always short of most metals. Basic industrial metals like copper and tin were in short supply. They had learned to use aluminum a little at this time, but refining aluminum was difficult and required huge amounts of energy.

Fortunately, they did have access to substantial amounts of iron, which helped enormously.

On Earth, the best deposits of iron ore were in 'banded iron' rocks created when free oxygen first became a significant component of the atmosphere and hydrosphere, precipitating the dissolved iron. This occurred over a period of many hundreds of megayears.

Veranis, on the other hand, had been terraformed by the Familiar Eldren over the course of a few centuries, and before that, its natural environment had been rather different than that of Earth, even pre-oxygen Earth. Thus many of the local ores and minerals were different than those of Earth, especially in the deeper, older layers of rock.

There had indeed been significant amounts of dissolved iron in the pre-terraformation oceans of Veranis. The sudden changes imposed by the Familiar Eldren had led to much of this iron precipitating out very quickly, creating concentrated ore bodies that were relatively easy to tap into ages later. Even after two waves of technical civilization, there was still substantial amounts of readily accessible iron on Veranis.

(Of course, the flip side of this was that the total supply of iron ore was small compared to that of Earth in absolute terms. On Earth, as oxygen precipitated the iron in the oceans, it would be replenished by erosion from the land masses, and then rising oxygen would again trigger precipitation of iron, over and over. This meant that Earth had much more iron ore in absolute terms, but what ore Veranis had was easier to obtain and refine.)

Most of the Northlands states had access to at least some iron ore, or could readily trade for it. It so happened that the best single deposit of iron ore remaining in the Northlands was in Catakatian territory.

Catakatia, even with the limits they struggled under, had grown wealthy and powerful by the time the Thakarians finally came. Cataka City was the capitol of Catakatia and the seat of its hereditary royal family, and it was already a major trading and manufacturing center by the time the Thakarians arrived.

Of course, the arrival of the Thakarians changed everything.

MORE LATER.