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

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

One ancient bioweapon that does remain virulent in the region of Site 12A-9 is a genetically-modified fungus. Originally, when it was first deployed, it was fantastically effective, with a nearly ninety-five percent infection rate with the Vertarans against whom it was used. Lethality was rapid, and unpleasant, because the weapon was intended to terrorize enemy populations into surrender.

Six thousand years later, it remains extant, but natural selection has altered it substantially. The original, ancestral strain was optimized for rapid spread, near-certainty of infection, and maximally unpleasant effects. These traits took precedence over successful reproduction. The modern strains are descended from a tiny percentage of the original, which survived the sterilizing effects of the intense radiation that followed in the first few centuries after the wars, and which survived in the tiny handful of Vertarans who still lived in the region after the wars.

The locals call this fungus by a name that translates into English almost precisely as 'cold blue fire'. The symptoms of an infection are initially behavioral. As the fungus spreads through the body, the central nervous system is affected, and paranoia and murderous hostility are displayed. A peculiar and dangerous side-effect is that physical strength is increased by as much as one hundred and fifty percent. This level of intensity rapidly damages the body, but this scarcely matters, because within a few days of the onset of the behavioral symptoms, 'fruiting bodies' form, beginning as swellings in the skin all over the body, followed by the fruiting bodies proper as they break through the skin. This phase rarely lasts more than twenty-four hours before death.

The name of the condition comes from the blue color of the fruiting bodies, and the intense pain that accompanies the emergence of the reproductive bodies. Several species of this life form exist, marked by different shapes of fruiting body, and variations in the incubation period and precise behavior symptoms.

The blue fire fungus is not even close to as virulent as the ancestral form. The original, ancestral form often killed the victim before it could successfully reproduce, and the ancestral fungus could not live long outside a host (which was an intentional safety feature engineered into the weapon).

The modern strains must divert resources to their own survival and reproductive success, which makes them more enduring as species, but more vulnerable to immune defenses and artificial medication. While the ancestral form infected over ninety-five percent of the subjects exposed to the spores, the modern versions have an infection rate of about five to ten percent, unless the subject is very young, elderly, or otherwise vulnerable.

This reduced infection rate is also partly a result of coevolution of the Vertarans who have lived in the shadow of this weapon for six thousand years. As might be expected, these populations have developed various natural defenses against the fungus over all those generations, as the most vulnerable individuals died before they could pass on their vulnerability.

As a result, Vertarans descended from outside the areas where these fungi species exist are more vulnerable. Infection rates after exposure to the spores can run as high as thirty percent among such Vertarans.

Fortunately, there are various defenses and treatments for this fungus. Over thousands of years, various protective measures were developed among the low-tech natives against the fungus, some of them reasonably effective. For example, there are herbal concoctions that can be spread over the skin to make the spores less infectious.

There are also herbs that can be brewed into a medicine that often kills an infection before it can do much damage, if it is administered in time.

This can be difficult, though, because the best time for this brew to work is before the first symptoms appear. By the time the tell-tale behavioral signs appear, it is often too late for the drug to work. For that reason, many of the locals will brew and drink the medicine whenever they suspect they might have been exposed to the spores.

This drug takes the form of a drink, the medicine brewed from a variety of local plants and diluted in as much as a liter of water. If administered in the first twenty-four hours after exposure to the spores, the medicine is effective in almost all cases, destroying the spores before they can take 'root'.

(During this period, the medicine will destroy the infection on anything but a critical failure of the HT roll.)

After the first behavioral symptoms appear, the drug is far less effective, it will destroy the infection in about a quarter of all cases, though the survivors will be left with permanent damage. With every six hours that passes after the symptoms begin, the chance of the drug working falls substantially.

Modern TL10 medicine has several ways of treating the infection, and in fact can usually destroy it right up to just before death. Repairing the damage the infection leaves behind, though, is much harder.

The fungus in optimized to infect Vertarans, but other humanoids are not totally invulnerable to it. The chance of infection upon exposure is lower, but definitely still real. Fortunately, the local herbal drug works as well on most other humanoids (including Humans) as it does on Vertarans.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

As mentioned above, the ancient city that Dr. Howardson and her staff are excavating was enormous. At its height, just before the great wars began, it covered an area of well over two thousand square kilometers. In modern map terms, it covered most of Sectors 12A, 12B, and 12C, and parts of 11A and 13B and 13C. Dr. Howardson and her staff have only just begun to excavate Site 12A-9, and they have a long way to go on just that one site.

If they only knew it, though, little more than one kilometer from their excavation area lies something that would revolutionize their understanding of the ancient Vertaran civilization of Veranis.

Recall that the effects of those wars was so terrible that only a tiny handful of survivors came through them to become the ancestors of the modern Vertaran populations of Mardis and Veranis. A single language was spoken throughout the Dyaxor System before the wars. By 2124, there are literally thousands of mutually-incomprehensible languages spoken on the two garden worlds of the system. All those languages, though, 'descend' from the single star system wide language that was spoken six thousand years before.

Veranis and Mardis have been an unparalleled challenge and learning experience for Terrestrian philologists. For two decades, these linguistic specialists have been pouring over every scrap of information, comparing different languages, learning to 'read' the underlying 'laws' that govern the evolution of spoken language on these two worlds. Though the going was slow at first, by 2124 the philologists have begun to 'reconstruct' the ancestral language, and progress has been accelerating.

The ancient ancestral language endured the wars, and splintered into first hundreds, and then thousands, of different tongues. As mentioned upthread, though, the ancient written language of the system-wide Vertaran civilization was utterly lost in the aftermath of the wars. Writing was literally reinvented from scratch by the descendants of the ancient Vertarans, or at least, mostly recreated from scratch.

It turned out that the written symbols for numbers somehow survived the aftermath of the wars, and were incorporated into the new written languages. A handful of other specific symbols and bits and pieces of writing also survived into the new writing, but only a tiny handful of such were so.

The result of this is that even so substantial amounts of ancient writing is available on Veranis, on Mardis, and in space, most of it remains unreadable in 2124. Numbers can be translated. A few bits and pieces of scientific information are recognizable, in things that are obviously what they are, such as periodic tables and molecular models and machine diagrams. These give hints about the writing. With all such aid, though, no more than perhaps one to five percent of the ancient writing can be even partially translated.

Which brings us back to the undiscovered trove mentioned above. Technically it is located in what the maps would call Site 12A-7. Physically speaking, it is about one kilometer from the excavations at Site 12A-9. A number of what look superficially like hills are present at 12A-7. These 'hills' are actually the remains of fallen skyscrapers, covered in a layer of soil and trees and jungle growth in the millennia since they fell.

This is much like much of the entire region, but underneath one of these rubble piles, in what was once a sealed subbasement of a towering structure, is a piece of still-near-functional machinery. What was once a mainframe computer, used by an ancient organization as its records repository, among other things, still exists and could be made operational with only a modest amount of effort by a skilled technician.

This is, in its way, somewhat miraculous. In the final stages of the war, the vast city was repeated subjected to nuclear explosions, it was saturated by radioactive dust, and then it was abandoned to six thousand years of the elements. Once there were thousands of such machines, all long gone.

The survival of this particular machine is improbable...but improbable things happen when there is enough chance. There were millions of major computers in the ancient city, thousands of them were 'hardened' and protected in underground vaults such as this one, the survival of this particular machine was a one-in-a-thousand chance at best...but there were thousands of chances, too.

The vault housing it was buried under tens of meters of rock and soil at its start. Other such vaults existed, this is the one that managed to avoid cracking open to admit flood waters and other such damaging agents. The radiation shielding of this particular vault happened to work especially well, and it was well-enough made to keep the dusts out.

What would make this machine more valuable is that its software and its data are intact and uncorrupt, waiting for the machine to be repaired and powered up.

If that could be done, the 'reconstructed' language of the ancients could be used to communicate with the machine, which was very 'user friendly'. It might be clumsy at first, because the 'reconstructed' language is surely not perfectly, completely accurate. But the machine itself could help the linguists perfect the reconstruction. It could also teach the users the symbols and grammar and meanings of the ancient writing.

In short, if the archaeologists were to discover this vault and its contents, and realize what they had, the machine could be their long-sought 'Rosetta Stone' that could permit them to translate all the ancient writing. Additionally, its memories could reveal a great deal of detailed information about the ancient civilization, and the wars that ended it, and why.

In short, it would be the most valuable imaginable discovery that Veranisian archaeology could possibly make. It would be epochal in terms of historical understanding.

Unfortunately, nobody in 2124 has the slightest idea that it is there, waiting to be discovered, just a bit over one kilometer from the dig at Site 12A-9.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

On the North Continent, Catakatia is a strongest and most technologically and economically advanced state. It does not boast the largest territory, but it has substantial resources and even before the Thakarian invasion, it was the most technologically and industrially advanced of the Northlander polities.

Directly to the east of Catakatia is Galantakatia. Like Catakatia, it grew up around a river system that flowed into the ocean on the southern coast, and it has a single major port city at the river mouth. Unlike Catakatia, though, Galantakatia controls only a narrow stretch of oceanic coast, centered around that port city. The entire oceanic coast of Galantakatia is no more than fifty kilometers long.

Historically, in the centuries immediately before the Thakarian invasion, Catakatia and Galantakatia were traditional rival states, and each invaded the other more than once over the course of centuries. As a result of those old wars and maneuverings, the border between the two states stabilized, more or less, along the summit line of a range of low hills. The hills were by no means particularly high or steep, but for TL5 and lower armies such as were being fielded at the time, they were high enough to be a significant barrier, and they ran for hundreds of kilometers.

The hill line began not far from the ocean, near the port city that was the main link to the open ocean for Galantakatia, and ran roughly northward at first, and then northwest/southeast for several hundred kilometers. A few places along the ridge line were low enough to make for convenient travel (and thus common lines of invasion in previous centuries).

Unlike Catakatia, though, the capitol city of the state was not located in its primary ocean port, nor was that part the largest city in Galantakatia.

The entire North Continent has at least a slight northward pitch. The southern coast is the lowest land on the continent (except for a few deep valleys), and the land rises more or less gradually as one goes northward, with the trend increasing as one approaches the rising mountain range on the northern coast. In some parts of the North Continent, the rise is gradual, in others it is rough and uneven.

This last is true of most of Galantakatia. From the southern coast to the middle reaches of Galantakatia, the land is a wide, relatively flat coastal plain, except for a few strands of hills here and there, such as the one that makes up the western border. About halfway through the territory as one goes north, one encounters a sudden relatively sharp series of rises, culminating the the Upper Plateau country of Galantakatia.

The great river than eventually reaches the sea in the main port city rises in the North Range as a series of separate tributaries that flow (more or less) southward across the Upper Plateau. Some of these rivers merge before the reach the main fall line, others come together in a vast lake.

This lake, which the locals call Galantataasha, is about one hundred kilometers long east-west, but only averages between ten and fifteen kilometers across north-south. The lake is perched, more or less, on the edge of the fall line, held back by a long natural rock ridge along the top of the fall line. Several major waterfalls drain the lake through gaps in the rock, falling to lower levels of the descending slope, until finally coming down to form new rivers on the Lower Plain.

Perched on a long shelf of land halfway down the fall line (which is itself several tens of kilometers wide north-south) is the capitol and largest city of Galantakatia, which the locals call Galtaanaa. The city is located near several of the largest waterfalls in the complex. An industrial revolution had been underway in the Northlands before the Thakarians arrived, and the Galantakatians had made extensive use of these waterfalls as a source of mechanical energy for their nascent industries.

The climate of the Upper Plateau country is cool, by Veranisian standards, due to its latitude and altitude. Of course, 'cool by Veranisian standards' is warm-to-mildly-hot by Terrestrian standards. Even in the northern hemisphere winter, the Upper Plateau rarely sees temperatures below sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and typical winter temperatures run five to ten degrees higher.

The soil of the Upper Plateau country varies considerably in quality, from sandy and rocky through waterlogged to well-drained and well-watered. Most of the Upper Plateau is at least moderately arable, and some of the lands near the upper part of the fall line are an agricultural 'breadbasket' region. As one approaches the northern border of Galantakatia, the lands become harsher and the soil rockier and less amenable to farming, but much of this land is quite suitable for grazing and pasture.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

Below the fall line (which in fact follows the general run of an ancient tectonic fault, a place where a rift failed to split the North Continent in the deep past) is the coastal plain region. This is slightly misleading, because the lowlands run from the coast, but the region is mostly relatively level plain or in some cases low rolling hills. The lower plain is much more densely populated than the upper plateau, with over one hundred small cities (or large towns) scattered across a stretch of fertile farmland. The towns are mostly found alone the two large rivers that form from the various smaller tributaries that come down across the fall line.

These two rivers flow separately into the sea, with the main port city lying between them (the river mouths are only about fifteen kilometers apart). The plain slopes gently into the ocean on the southern coast, and much of the area around the city is a swampland fed by the two great rivers.

(Though their main streams remain separate, many small connecting channels do exist in this area).

The port city often reminds Terrestrians of New Orleans, at least in terms of its physical nature and surroundings. The city proper is built on a relatively small are of higher, firmer ground, as well as some pilings and supports driven deep into the floor of the swamps.

Since Galantakatia narrows as it goes south, the population density rises steadily as well.

There are many parallels between Galantakatia and Catakatia. In some ways, they could be compared to, say, England and France, states with a common religious and cultural heritage that nevertheless developed in different ways. Galantakatian and Catakatian are mutually unintelligible, but to a philologist the languages are clearly 'siblings' descended from a common tongue as recently as a millennium earlier. There are many cultural parallels between the two states.

One such similarity is that both are governed by a hereditary royal family. The title of the ruler of Galantakatia is 'jallis'. Terrestrial philologists quickly recognized that the title 'jallis' is as similar to the Catakatian royal title 'jarak' as the words 'king' and 'koenig' are in English and German.

The situations of the two governments in 2124 are also remarkably parallel in some ways. In both states the previous monarch reigned under the relatively tight supervision of the Thakarians, and when that came to an end in 2105, both faced a sudden unexpected succession. As the highest-ranking and best connected Thak-Tarak fled the planet after the unexpected Terrestrian victory in deep space, the former monarchs of both Catakatia and Galantakatia abdicated and fled with the Thakarians.

The former crown prince of Catakatia, and his younger brother, also both abdicated their claims and fled with their father. The royal Torq passed to a nephew of the former monarch, a young man who had only just recently passed his sixteenth* birthday, Prince Sahandar.

In Galantakatia, the former monarch had been a relatively young man, and he had abdicated childless. In the confusion of the time, with riots in the streets and a breakdown of law and order, the Torq of Galantakatia passed to the former monarch's cousin, a man of thirty named Goltean.

At first glance, Galantakatia looked to have been more fortunate in its royal succession that neighboring Catakatia. Catakatia was now ruled by a sixteen year old who had never been expected to inherit and had not been trained with that in mind. The new monarch of Galantakatia was a man of thirty years, and an experienced administrator and diplomat who had run several ministries for the former monarch at one time or another. In the chaos and confusion of the time, many expected Catakatia to suffer for this.

Appearances, though, can sometimes be deceiving.

After a rough and stumbling start, the teenaged Sahandar III proved to be an able, effective, and responsible monarch, who guided his state through the chaos of the transition from Thakarian to Terrestrian rule with some competence.

Goltean I, on the other hand, discovered that being the Jallis was not like being a minister or any other lower rank. He did have some skills and talents that were useful in his new role. Goltean is a good administrator, and responsible, in the sense of being dedicated to his task. He is personally honest, his government has not been prone to bribery or graft, or no more so than most places and times.

The problem with Goltean is that along with administrative competence, he is somewhat hidebound, fixated on the details of policy and activity to the point that it often blinds him to the bigger picture. Goltean is also unimaginative, his first impulse when facing any problem or decision is to look for precedent. While this is not always a bad trait in a ruler, Goltean tends to take it to extremes. The Jallis is more likely to apply a poorly-fitting precedent to a new problem than he is to adapt a precedent to fit. At the same time, he instinctively looks for the 'perfect' solution, even if no such option exists, rather than negotiate an imperfect but workable settlement. Trying to create his own solution to a novel problem is something that comes very hard to him, emotionally and intellectually.

As one frustrated Three Power Commission staffer put it: "Goltean is a good man, but deep down he wants to rule by algorithm, and he spends way too much time and energy trying to find that algorithm."

All of which is problematic for the people of Galantakatia. In peaceful, settled times, the limitations of the Jallis might not be that bad, but current times on Veranis in 2124 are anything but peaceful or settled. Many of the same problems that bedevil Catakatia also trouble Galantakatia. Like Catakatia, Galantakatia has a mixed population of Vertarans and Humans of Thakarian descent. Like Catakatia, inter-specific hostility and often hatred are very real and serious things in Galantakatia. The economy is in the same turmoil of transformation as well.

Goltean himself finds being Jallis deeply frustrating. It is not that he does not have any sense of responsibility as monarch, he does. He would like to do what is best for his nation and people, but he is not quite sure what that would be. Not just not sure how to get there, but unsure what the destination would be. By instinct, he feels there should be some specific formula he could follow to achieve the best results, but of course no such formula exists.

Compounding the issue is that his health is failing. Goltean is only forty-nine years old in 2124, but he often feels at least twenty years older, and not just because of the stress of his station (though that has not helped). Goltean was never exceedingly healthy, even in his youth. He suffered from repeated bouts of a breathing disorder in his teenaged years, and it has returned to plague him since he entered his forties.

MORE LATER.

*Sixteen Terrestrian years old, that is.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

Jallis Goltean is old enough to easily remember the Thakarian regime that formerly ruled the planet. He was already an adult when the Three Powers tolk over the planet.

Goltean has come to believe that the rule of the Thak-Tarak was preferable to that of the Commission, and his reason is precisely that the Thak-Tarak was much more 'hands on', much stricter and quicker to impose their will than the new rulers. What many Veranisians remember as oppression, Goltean remembers as 'order'.

When the Thakarians ruled Veranis, what had to be done was usually obvious. Goltean has a personality that craves order, stability, and definite rules and expectations, all of which existed under Thakarian rule. The constant, frustrating, maddening uncertainty that bedevils Goltean as Jallis was absent in those days.

Goltean has reached the point where he actively longs for the Thak-Tarak regime to regain control of Veranis. He has become active, albeit very secretly, in the pro-Thakarian movement on Veranis. His high profile status means that he must move with extreme caution, since the Commission and their intelligence agents are watching. On the other hand, that same high status makes him immensely valuable to the underground movement.

Goltean takes little direct, personal involvement, of course. But he quietly funds many activities of the underground, through indirect channels. His law enforcement establishment and Commission contacts form a channel through which underground activities can be fed useful information. Compromised members of the movement, Human or Vertaran, can be moved to Galantakatia and given new identities and new backgrounds.

Goltean, though not imaginative or particularly flexible, is by no means stupid. His connections to the underground, and to the Thak-Tarak, are all at arms-length, usually through 'cut outs'. He is constantly on the alert for anything that could give a clue about his activities to the Commission, or to the less Thakarian-sympathetic governments of Veranis.

One might wonder why someone as averse to uncertainty would take such risks as becoming involved in the pro-Thakarian underground. The answer is rooted in the personality of the Jallis. He is not, in fact, particularly risk-averse as such. What troubles his soul is uncertainty. Goltean is fully prepared to take considerable risks to obtain a world of more certainty.

Goltean is doing his best to match the modernization program initiated in Catakatia by Sahander III. On his own, he would have great difficulty in doing so, because his craving for stability and familiarity would undercut it. Goltean is being quietly advised by Thak-Tarak agents, though, which is making up for much of this deficiency.

On their own, the Thak-Tarak were always hesitant to encourage that sort of advancement by the native population. They ruled Veranis for over a century, and during that time they were careful to restrict technical training and acces to modern interstellar-level technology to their loyal classes.

Now, though, it is in their interest for their secret puppet state to industrialize at TL10 levels, in order to keep them competetive with their neighboring states. By working through Goltean, they hope to reestablish eventual control over Veranis, with Galantakatia as their dominant puppet state.

In 2124, Goltean maintains contact with the Thak-Tarak leadership through traders who regularly visit Veranis. Most of those traders are just what they seem, but some are also Thak-Tarak intelligence agents.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The population of Galantakatia is about eight million, of whom about seven hundred and fifty thousand are Human, mostly of Thakarian descent, and the remainder are Vertarans.

It might seem that the population of Veranis in 2124 is peculiarly low. The entire population of the planet is in the neighborhood of seventy million, and over ten million of those are Veranis-born Humans. Only about sixty million Vertarans live on Veranis in 2124.

The reason for this low population is multifold.

To begin with, of course, the ancient wars that wrecked the old Vertaran civilization left very few survivors. So terrible were those wars, so total was the hostility between the factions, that they came close to actually wiping out the Vertaran population of the Dyaxor System.

(There are other Vertarans elsewhere in the galaxy, so the species would not have been extinct, but the population of the Dyaxor System came within sight of non-viability.)

No one in 2124 knows exactly how many Vertarans survived those wars on Veranis and Mardis, the sister world. The best estimates, though, by Terrestrian archaeologists, is that their population was no higher than a few million, across both worlds.

Those survivors lived on worlds battered by over a century of TL10 warfare. Entire regions were effectively uninhabitable, due to radioactivity, long-lasting chemical agents, or still-potent bioweapons. Food was difficult to find, water was often poisoned, simply surviving long enough to reproduce was a challenge.

Time passed, though, and the radioactivity faded away, the poisons were diluted, buried, dissipated harmlessly, or degraded into harmless substances. A lack of subjects to infect, combined with natural selection, reduced the potency of the artificial diseases to manageable levels.

As conditions improved, populations should have increased much more rapidly than they did. Terrestrian archaeologists are still gathering data, but they have noticed, by 2124, an emerging pattern in that data. Though they cannot be certain because their information is still very limited, it appears that after the wars ended, the Vertaran population would suffer periodic local crashes, for no obvious reason, from the end of the cataclysmic wars up until about two thousand years earlier. These crashes seem to have had a serious retarding effect on overall population growth. It also appears from the data that the majority of the population growth since the wars happened during that last two thousand or so years.

The great nuclear/chemical/biological/psionic wars ended six thousands years earlier. Six thousand years is a long time. Given even a modest annual growth rate, it would be more than enough time for the few million survivors to grow into a population of hundreds of millions, or more. Even allowing for the difficulties in the first millennium or so after the wars, demographers in 2124 calculate that Veranis ought to have at least ten times its current population.

There are various reasons for this, most of which remain unknown to the Veranisians and the Terrestrians in 2124. One of those reasons, though, is hinted at in myths and legends all over Veranis and Mardis.

Almost every culture, tribe, and civilization on both Veranis and Mardis has their own rich mythic heritage. Many of those myths, as one might expect, can be traced back to the great nuclear wars. The variety of these myths and folklore is enormous.

One story, or at least one kind of story, though, seems to turn up over and over in the myths of peoples all over Veranis and Mardis. These stories are similar enough that both Veranisian and Mardisan historians and folklorists have noted it, and Terrestrians noticed the same commonality when they began to study the legends of the locals.

These stories spoke of monsters. Though the details and explanations vary widely, almost all of them spoke of monsters of two kinds. Always the stories would speak of first one kind of monster appearing, then the other afterward.

The first monsters would be shapeshifters, or dopplegangers, or something along those lines. As noted, the details varied from legend to legend, but always the theme would be creatures who would look just like people, who would even replace people in a tribe or city-state or whatever the people organized as. They would lie, deceive, but subtly, to bring conflict and strife and violence, to turn friend against friend, kin against kin.

Then, a second kind of monster would appear, metal demons who would slaughter those who survived the first group.

Again, though the details vary widely, all the stories say the second monsters are physical creatures, not spirits or wraiths, and most of the stories say they are either made of metal, or made of stone, or of glass.

The stories vary enormously, but across two worlds those themes reappear again and again and again.

In 2124, many people are pondering these stories, but no one yet suspects the dark truth.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

Behind all those varied myths, spread across two worlds, lies a very dark and deadly truth.

The terrible star-system-wide wars that destroyed the ancient Vertaran civilization in the Dyaxor System lasted for well over a Terrestrial century. There were many factions and groups engaged in the fighting, on Veranis, on Mardis, and among the substantial space-dwelling population that had grown up over previous centuries.

One of those factions was very small, in population terms, but among the most technologically capable of the hundreds of factions. The time was about halfway through the wars, when it was becoming clear their entire civilization was likely to come crashing down before the struggles were over. This group, based on one of the moons of the enormous gas giant that is Dyaxor A VII, foresaw that they had no realistic possibility to emerging as a victor. There were too few of them, their resource base was too small, their strategic position in their location too precarious. Thus they pursued a policy of merely defending their own, and not attempting to influence the large-scale fighting or the outcome of the wars.

This would have been unworkable, except that their position was somewhat isolated, and their resources were not so great as to be a particularly tempting prize to the major factions and powers. Thus they were not a particularly tempting prize, and their isolationist policy kept them from allying with any given faction and thus antagonizing any other faction. They were occasionally attacked by other local small powers, but they could defend themselves against such, at least in the short term.

In the long term, they knew they faced likely extinction. The major powers were warring each other into oblivion, and it was becoming clear to the farsighted at that time that this conflagration was not going to stop short of total collapse. Once the system-wide industrial base collapsed sufficiently, maintaining their artificial habitats on their moonlet would become effectively impossible. They had lived there for several centuries, but without the larger supporting infrastructure, they could not continue to do so.

To those of their leadership who were more farsighted, it was obvious that their own position was untenable, long term. If the collapse proceeded as far as they expected it to do, the only places in the Dyaxor System where humanoids could hope to survive would be the two garden worlds, Mardis and Veranis. Even they were battered and damaged, but life would still be possible there after the infrastructure was gone.

Unfortunately, it was also obvious to them that all the other surviving space-based communities and nations would also realize that, the survivors were all going to be trying to reach one or the other living world. As if that was not sufficient, it was also true that the populations of the living worlds were huge enough that there would be a substantial number of 'native' survivors, as well.

To survive, their descendants would have to reach one of those worlds, and then find habitable, defensible territory that they could hold against the other survivors. But their own small population and resources made that prospect untenable as well. They could not go to Mardis or Veranis while the wars still raged, and when they died down, they would not be numerous enough or powerful enough to stake out a territory even then.

Desperation can drive extreme measures. In this case, they gambled that they might be able to thread the needle if they could wipe out their rivals secretly. They were technologically one of the most advanced groups in the ancient society, and they constructed a series of automated spacecraft, which they managed to conceal here and there in the Dyaxor System.

(There might not generally be stealth in space, but there can be misdirection, and once in their hiding places, mostly on tiny, remote planetoids in inconvenient orbits, they were fairly safe from detection.) Then came the other half of the plan: they constructed suspension systems that would enable their population to go into stasis, and wait. This was dangerous, and difficult, even for their technology, but it was doable and they did it. Their entire society, more or less, went into a state of suspended animation, except for a small watch group. (This group had a total population of no more than a few thousand).

The wars waged on as this group had expected, and the infrastructure that had once spanned a star system degraded. To borrow a line from a Terrestrian who would not be born until millennia later, the breakdown proceeded 'slowly, then all at once'. The final collapse, when it came, happened quickly, as the overstrained systems that sustained the civilization fell apart.

Naturally, this fell heaviest and most quickly on those parts of the population that lived in space, or on the non-living worlds of the system. A tremendous population crash happened, and the few survivors were those who could make their way to a wrecked Mardis or a devastated Veranis, and survive there.

About fifty Terran years after the last few survivors of the space-based societies had either died out, or made their way somehow to Mardis or Veranis, the concealed spacecraft came on-line and began to carry out their programming. The automated ships made their way to Veranis and Mardis.

This was still a difficult proposition. No one was left alive in space, but some automatic weapon systems and other dangers remained, and these vessels were small and lightly armed, with modest delta-V. They were required to take slow trajectories to reach their goals, the more so because they had to retain enough propellant to safely land.

Still, their builders had wrought well, and most of the automated ships did successfully make their voyages to Veranis and Mardis and manage safe landings thereupon. Then phase two began.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

In a testament to the design and engineering skill of the creators of these machines, most of them worked perfectly. Robots established enclaves, and constructed machines. These in turn constructed other machines. There were two basic forms of these machines, which led to the legends that would haunt Veranis and Mardis in later centuries.

One was a set of robots designed to 'pass' as Vertaran humanoids. The machines would stalk a small tribe or party of descendants of survivors of the final wars, and capture a few. Their features would then be applied to the humanoid robots, and they would infiltrate the groups, and work to set them against each other. Weakened by this, then they would be easy prey for the larger combat robots. Entire villages, tribes, nascent new societies were wiped out to the last man by this. Survivors would begin the legends of the two kinds of monster.

In spite of the skill of the builders, though, as time passed these unmaintained systems broke down. One by one, they failed, and the former threat became an incomprehensible legend, and then a myriad of myths on two worlds. Before they failed, though, they slowed the regrowth of the population substantially.

What happened to the original builders? The plan had been for their robots to make sure that there would be empty lands available when they came out of stasis after the wars, but in practice, that never happened. Their bunkers were destroyed by a mistaken strike from one of the last factions of the wars, before their robots ever even activated.

In 2124, all the ancient robot enclaves are gone...except one. In a hidden set of caverns in the mountains in the northern lands of Galantakatia, one of the ancient complexes remains mostly intact. It was constructed in accordance with the program, but it never activated because of a programming glitch, and a subsequent earthquake buried the entrances to the complex, about one thousand years after the initial construction ended.

Time has taken some toll on the machines, it would be difficult for them to activate on their own in 2124, but they could reveal a great deal about the ancient civilizations of the pre-war era if they were discovered. Some of their weaponry could also be made readily operational by a competent TL10 technician.

There is little external sign of the complex in 2124. The mountainous territory is thinly settled, and the entrances lie behind a rockslide that in turn has been stable for millennia, and is covered by trees and other overgrowth.

A hundred kilometers or so south of the foothills of the northern range is what remains of a former town from the pre-wars era. It was never a large city, its pre-war population was probably about one hundred thousand, and archaeologically, it is of little use, because it has been extensively mined.

Mined, in this case, is the literal term. As already mentioned, with Veranis having experienced two previous cycles of high-technology industrial civilization, many of the native deposits of the useful metals and other raw materials have already been mined out, millennia or tens of millennia earlier.

While a few native deposits remain, especially of iron, most of the metals used by the Veranisians in 2124 are 'mined' from the ruins of the previous Vertaran civilizations from six thousand years earlier. This has been happened for centuries, and so most of the former population centers in the Northlands have been extensively dug and mined and pulled apart to provide raw material for the new rising civilization.

These 'mining' efforts, historically, have been somewhat dangerous. Those six thousands years is enough time for most radiological hazards to dissipate away, chemical hazards can be open-ended, and things such as poison or flammable/explosive gases were and are a very real risk in such efforts. Digging into the ruins can easily cause ancient structures to collapse, creating slides, sinkholes, and other hazards.

The metals were extremely valuable and absolutely necessary as industrial technology began to reemerge on Veranis. Even before that, the refined metal from such ruins could be used to make armor and swords and plowshares, so the practice of mining the old ruins goes back centuries. The value of the metals, and the risks associated with obtaining them, made the men who were able and willing to gain them wealthy and influential.

As noted upthread, the Northlander cultures had no particular concept of scientific interest in the past. There were certainly curious people, but the idea of organized study of prehistory was not a thing in their society. The Thakarians who conquered Veranis were little different in that respect.

The currently-ruling Terrestrians are another matter, but at the same time, the ruins in the Northlands have been extensively mined for centuries, so there is little to be done about it either way. The Veranisians need the metals, as well, scientific archaeology is a luxury, raw materials are a necessity.

Galantakatia had more than its share of such ruins from the ancient past, and as a result, it had a greater supply of refined metals and other raw materials than its sister-states in the Northlands. In previous centuries, this was a primary source of wealth for the Galantakatians.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

As mentioned above, the lands below the fall line are some of the best agricultural land in Galantakatia. The area between the great falls and the swamps and wetlands of the long flat coast is rich, arable soil with plentiful rain, and almost every major crop grown on Veranis can be found somewhere here. In most due to this region, Galantakatia is a net food exporter to her neighbors, while retaining plentiful calories for her own population as well.

In 2124, though, the farmlands of Galantakatia are facing a menace in the form of a tiny animal called a frilk. A frilk is a very small herbivorous dinosaur, rarely growing more than twelve centimeters long. Naturalists on Veranis recognize that the frilk has a close relative, which they call a slokk.

A slokk is larger than a frilk, often reaching thirty centimeters, and is carnivorous, feeding on smaller animals and insects, while the frilk is strictly a plant-eater. A slokk is more dangerous to an individual humanoid than a frilk, because it is larger, and has a nasty (though non-venomous) bite that can readily become infected. On the other hand, a slokk will rarely attack a humanoid unless itself bothered.

A frilk is shyer, they are rarely spotted unless a humanoid knows what to look for, or else they are present in overwhelming numbers. Unfortunately, this latter condition is all too common when a frilk infestation becomes active. For all its shyness and inoffensive personality, the frilk is one of the most feared animals on Veranis, at least among agricultural societies.

Periodically, frilks appear in huge numbers, and when they do they feed, almost exclusively, on the primary cereal grains and other agricultural plants used by the humanoids of Veranis. For reasons unknown to the Veranisians in 2124, when these huge population booms happen, the frilks begin to ignore the wild plant life to devour the crops of Man.

So voracious and efficient can these sudden hordes be that they have been known to wipe out entire crops, to blight entire regions. In earlier millennia after the great Wars, frilk infestations often destroyed enough crops to leave whole villages and towns and tribes to die out from starvation. Frilks have been so destructive that they have impressed themselves on the cultural and mythology of Veranis in the centuries since the Wars ended, and they are a significant part of the reason why population recovery took so long.

As technology advanced among the peoples of Veranis after the Wars, attempts were made to wipe out the frilks. Vigorous efforts went into destroying their eggs and nests, hunting them with felines and canines and other animals, and attempts to poison them. Sometimes, these efforts seem to show considerable success, at times it was thought that the frilks had been wiped out, at least in the Northlands. Years, then decades, would go by, with no traces of frilks seen or found. Then, suddenly, without much warning, a new infestation would burst onto the land and the problem would begin anew.

The arrival of the Thakarians actually helped enormously with this problem: the resources of an interstellar culture could do far more than the TL4/5 technology available to the Northlanders at that time. Microbot-based hunting systems proved especially effective. The Thakarians also introduced some genetically-modified strains of crops that were toxic to frilks, which reduced their harm considerably.

But even then, over and over, when the frilks were thought to have been wiped out, they would suddenly reappear, as if from nowhere. In 2124, the current frilk infestation is being beaten back by poisons, hunting animals, microbots, and other methods, but it has still done enormous damage. Though frilk outbreaks no longer threaten mass starvation, they certainly can do enormous economic harm.

The truth is stranger than either the Veranisians or their Terrestrian rulers know. The truth is that the frilks, and their close cousin species the slokks, are actually a single species, a product of genetic engineering and biowarfare technology deployed during the Wars six millennia earlier.

Most of the time, slokks behave just as they appear to be. Small carnivores, they feed on even smaller animals and insects, and they avoid larger creatures assiduously. Most humanoids on Veranis regard them as harmless, though best left alone due to their bite.

In fact, though, under certain conditions, a normally-dormant set of genetic instructions activate, and slokks begin laying eggs that hatch out baby frilks instead of slokks. Once the new-hatched frilks reach sexual maturity (a period of about one Terrestrian year) they mate and hatch out more frilks. When food supplies are limited they reproduce slowly, laying one to four eggs at a time. The more food is available, the faster they reproduce. If food is plentiful female frilks can lay ten to fifteen eggs at a time, three to four times a year. A frilk can live up to five years or so if food remains plentiful, with sexual maturity happening at about one year.

Slokks/frilks were designed as bioweapons. A frilk is genetically programmed to concentrate on eating precisely the same plants that farmers raise. The designers of the creatures, thousands of years before, also created sprays and other treatments that would make their own crops unappetizing to frilks, of course, but those safeguards are long lost. Between their voracious appetites, highly selective palates, and rapid reproductive rate, frilks can be a terrible threat to any agricultural society. The frilks will eat and eat and eat until the food supply is wiped out. Then, as a rule, follows mass starvation and a population crash among the frilks (and in pre-Thakarian times, all too often among the local Vertaran population as well.)

Slokks can hatch out frilks when conditions are right, but never the reverse. A frilk always produces more frilk eggs. Even when the triggering conditions are present, a slokk only produces frilk eggs ever third or fourth breeding cycle, so plenty of slokks remain, and slokks and adult frilk ignore each other.

This is why the frilk always seem to reappear. The efforts by humanoids to wipe them out have, in fact, often been fully successful, at least on a local and regional level. The problem is that the slokks, which are rarely seen as problematic, contain within themselves the seeds for future outbreaks.

The trigger conditions for the slokks to begin producing new frilks are the presence of various cereals and other plants in large amounts in the general region. Subtle chemical cues trigger frilk production when agricultural activity occurs on a significant scale. A slokk that is laying frilk eggs will show a behavior change, laying the eggs near humanoid fields and farms rather than well away, as they do with slokk eggs. Slokk display no parental care for frilk, instead laying the eggs (almost always at night) and hastily departing the site immediately afterward.

(This is programming designed by their creators to keep rival groups from recognizing the slokk/frilk connection.)

A slokk can live up to twenty to twenty-five years, and usually lays one or two slokk eggs at a time, every other year. Their populations remain much more limited, and grow more slowly, and their reproductive rate tends to fall off as food supplies become strained. They are tough, disease-resistant creatures, tolerant of a wide range of temperatures and conditions. Thus they carry the potential for new frilk outbreaks safely from decade to decade, century to century, while remaining inoffensive and indeed barely noticeable to humanoids.

Slokk and frilk do resemble each other, structurally and physically, with the most noticeable external differences being the jaws. Slokk jaws are adapted to carnivory, frilks to herbivory. Both are covered in a fine down that is a distant cousin of feathers, and Terrestrian naturalists recognize that they are slightly closer to the therapods than to the sauropods.

Both Thakarian and Terrestrian science would be able to recognize the actual nature of the link between these 'two' species, if they were to examine both creatures looking for such a thing. As of 2124, though, neither has had any reason to make such a close examination.

Slokks/frilks do share a weakness: cold. Both versions of the species would be left sluggish and weakened in sustained temperatures below about fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and freezing temperatures would swiftly kill them. On Veranis, though, such low temperatures are very rare.

Slokk and frilk both have IQ 3. Slokk have ST 2, DX 13, and HT 17/2. Slokk have Spd 6, and their bite can do 1d6-1 impaling damage. Frilk have ST 1, DX 13, and HT 17/2 and Spd 7. They can attempt to bite, and will as a last resort if handled or attacked, but they do only 1d-3 crushing damage at worst.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

As one goes further eastward in the North Continent, one reaches the eastern border of Galantakatia. While the boundary between Catakatia and Galantakatia is a line of eroded ancient hills, the eastern boundary of Galantakatia is a large river that flows mostly north-to-south (like most of the major rivers of the Northlands), but which turns to the southwest as it approaches the coast, narrowing the lands of Galantakatia to a short strip along the southern coast.

This river is naturally substantial, and a series of dams along its length have created large reservoirs and artificial lakes along much of the length as well.

Beyond this river lies the eastern coastlands of the Northern Continent. Beyond the river-border of Galantakatia, the coastlands run on average two hundred kilometers or so to the sea, though with considerable variation as the eastern coast is very uneven. No single polity controls this entire region, with it instead being broken into five major polities and a couple of city-states. Forms of government vary considerably among these five states, with two republics, a hybrid republic/theocracy, a formalized oligarchy, and one monarchy. Relations among the east coast states vary from friendly trade and easy relations to tense near-war conditions. The Three Power Commission intelligence staffers consider the eastern coast region to be the part of the Northern Continent most likely to require peace enforcement in the near future, as of 2124.

None of the five significant territorial states of the east coast is nearly as large, populous, or military/economically potent as their larger neighboring states to the west. Still, they are not trivial states and all of them are capable of mustering armies strong enough to make conquest difficult and expensive, assuming the Commission did not intervene to stop such a war.

At about midpoint on the east coast is an interesting geological structure, which is also the site of one of the above-mentioned coastal pocket states.

The feature is a large embayment, open to the sea through a relatively narrow gap on the east, surrounded by a circle of modestly-eroded mountains. A large island occupies the middle area of the bay. The island is about thirty kilometers across, with the overall bay being a very close to circular structure about seventy kilometers across. The island produces a ring of seawater, usually about twenty kilometers from main shore to island edge. The ring of low mountains/high hills is about one hundred kilometers across and surrounds the bay on all sides. The mountain ring even extends out to sea, with a single low gap permitting the ocean to penetrate into the interior of the ring and produce the bay.

The opening to the ocean proper is about ten kilometers wide, and relatively shallow, though easily deep enough for most seacraft. The combination of the wide interior waters, the sheltering ring of mountains, and the long double coastline of the shore and island make this site the single best deep-water harbor in the Northern Continent, and arguably the best harbor on Veranis.

The surrounding mountains provide excellent protection from even the most extreme ocean weather. The ring of water is deep enough for even the largest vessels, and there are many small indentations and peninsulas on both the main shore and the island that provide superb places for docks.

The central island rises toward a modest peak on the northern edge, rising about five hundred meters above the sea level. Most of the island is lower, but cliffs do face the sea in several places. In one of these cliffs, wave action long ago eroded out flooded sea-level caves large enough to admit a ship. Local Vertaran natives have used these caves as ship shelters both in the days before the interplanetary wars, and again since.

The entire structure, geologically speaking, is very strange, it doesn't fit into the surrounding terrain. Before the Thakarians arrived on Veranis, the locals tended to interpret it as a vast extinct volcano of some sort. They were wrong, and their ancestors before the interplanetary wars certainly knew the truth, but that was long forgotten until the Thakarians arrived.

In actuality, the entire ring of mountains and interior bay structure is the remnant of a major impact crater. Some millions of years before the Familiar Eldren brought the first humanoid inhabitants to Veranis, a substantial planetoid struck Veranis here, gouging out a mega-crater and creating a huge crater wall. Rebound produced a raised interior in the crater as well. At that time, the site was well inland.

The passage of time eroded the crater walls into the circle of steep hills that now occupy the site. At the same time, an overall subsidence on the eastern coast, unrelated to the impact, brought the coastline closer to the crater. Eventually, the rising local ocean and the eroding crater walls admitted the ocean and created the circular bay and central island.

MORE LATER.