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Thalmvaric context!
a year ago
Hey! Hi! Hello! howdyfolks!
So there was some confusion about the first page of this comic which is totally fair as it takes place in the thalmvar which, while a part of the setting I've built up over the past 2 years I've only scarcely talked about on the discord and barely here! There are a few drawings in the Gallery that talk about the Thalmvar, Celestial Ships , Artifices, etc. But time for some context me thinks!
History of the Timeline in about a few paragraphs
This is going to generalize a lot as the entire timeline is rather complicated, and probably best not all spilled here to explain what the Thalmvar is!
Of course the timeline never really stops with Imua and the Long Hike, if anything Imuas story takes place in the transition between the early awakening (when the 1st generation is around to build and live in the first iterations of draconic society). But even the period Imua lives in, known as the Awakening period will far outlast her, ending around 150 years Post Awakening (PA)
Really the timeline keeps going, to keep things short we're going to simply sum up the first 10,000 years. Which is a long set of ages in which bronze metallurgy becomes a generally dominant technology, though not universal. Where several empires and states rise and inevitably collapse, and where slowly different iterations on manatechnology develop. Eventually at the end of those 10,000 years the last of the Sivilão would finally fall under the first, truly stable and long lasting nation states, powered by industrialized manatechnologies and urbanized, intensive insect farming peoples.
This would usher in what is known as the draconic golden age, a 4000 year long period of generally stable existence, and something in which much of the technologies that would define the rest of the timeline would proliferate. This period was simply, a golden age! Between the various rural tribes and communities and urbanized states and nations it was generally a peaceful time, not entirely mind you! but peaceful enough. The proliferation of manatechnology also would go on to achieve some rather fantastical things that for now I will save for more specific rambles or lore entries. This is also where some of the rotted remnants of the thalmvar would see their birth, like the Priests of Syrinx.
However these golden age societies would slowly rot or collapse
Gradually, case by case over millennia, the industrialization of the american plana specifically would take it's toll, putting increased environmental and economic strain on various states. Some would collapse outright into non state societies, and others would descend into more totalitarian, extremist militant states. Closer to the end of these thousands of years of gradual rot many of these more totalitarian states would swallow up most others, forming a series of large, draconic blocks in the Americas mainly. These draconic blocks, as well as the societies before them long understood that humanity was on the outside of their realm as, frankly, interactions with humanity would continue between the Awakening and Thalmvaric age.
Moreover a bigotry against humans by dragons is something that is as old as GoDomer in the Awakening period and, with these increasingly massive, nationalistic blocks, ideologies of draconic supremacy would proliferate and fester.
This, at some point lost to time close to 20,000PA would explode into the universally apocalyptic event known as the Human Thalmvaric war. The Steiron (the thing broken that started this whole mess eons ago by this point) Would be broken entirely, crumbling and smashing what was left of our own reality and õndemic reality in a cataclysmic collision.
A united front of fascistic societies across the Americas themselves would poor across the destroyed, crashing boundaries with vast armadas to wipe out humanity, colonize the new planar constructed of the remaining continents of Earth and the Moon, and suck the resources of those continents dry. Though of course humanity themselves had 20,000 years to recover and prepare themselves, leading ot the establishment of Nullzones that could resist õndemic reality. Which turned what was meant to be a speed invasion into a centuries long war of protracted sieges.
Dragons from Logáu and another plana, Agõrl, would rally to fight against this American axis and would invade the Americas. Of course the scale of this war is hard to put into words, it was a war that literally shattered realities and glassed entire planar. It lasted for centuries with armies going from professional militaries at the zenith of their technological capabilities to little more than post apocalyptic raiders.
While eventually humanity was made extinct at the end of 589 years of non stop warfare and the death of trillions, the american societies that once started the war would themselves collapse entirely, leading to the death of billions more under the immense ecological collapse and distortion of the Americas. Many of these remnants, as well as survivors from Logáu, Agõrl, and the drekified remnants of humanity, would all flee into the endless skies of the Celeste that replaced our own Space, to settle in new places.
After that point the timeline becomes impossible to truly track, as a day let alone a year is going to vary plana to plana and expanse to expanse, made worse by the storms of reality disruptions that could mess with time itself outright. so when I mention "years" it would be 365 days in any of the Planar of the Earthen Expanse.
Those being Suyu (Americas) , Logáu, Agõrl, The Moon Belt, Erob (Europe, North Africa, West Eurasia, Caucuses), Alkebulán (Africa, Arabic Peninsula, Central Asia, Middle East) and Zoqon (Asia, SE Asia, the Pacific Islands). Which are all connected by the same sea known as the Great Earthen Celestial way
But of course at this point there are *millions* of planar that, over thousands of years become inhabited by both Draconic Éldimor (Drekir, Ormer, Mavõtur) as well as other species, (Pradadi, Rusqub etc.) over a universes distance. Each one of those planar are going to themselves have histories and measurements of time that are completely separate from what any single measurement of time can capture.
This is the age of the endless onward, an apocalypse that never truly ends, and an age after the end of any one time. It's the Thalmvar! Kinda the endpont of the timeline of the Dragonscape as after this point there is no way to really measure time in any way that is helpful to any particular part of the lore.
And that is the period in which This side story takes place
The Martian Expanse of Planar are a whole different set of landmasses floating in the endless skies from the Earthen planar, with very different conditions. They only formed during the Human Thalmvaric war as a consequence of the Steiron being destroyed and were only settled after the slaying of the Syrinxian Overlord by the Sovard known as the Last Warlord of Tal.
That fight would break the dominant and incredibly advanced syrinxian priests, by that point more bronze than flesh, more oil than water. Their ships would scatter across the Celeste and many of their ships would themselves wreck upon the various planar of mars in a particularly high concentration. The survivors of these ships would start anew, namely the enslaved flesh thralls the syrinxians would use to do bulk labor unbefitting beings of the age of metal. As such the Martian planar can actually pull a lot of history from their Syrinxian past just as those old immortal automatons can serve as stark, crazed reminders corroding away deep in their titanic ruins.
So the drekir in this story, almost 8000 earthen planarial years after the war (as if that matters by that point) are some of those descendants.
There are a lot of other things to cover, but I did want to answer some questions in a more detailed way that were brought up in the comment of page 1
Why are these communities so "low tech" in spite of it being so far in the timeline?
I think there are a few answers
The first is simply that being in the future doesn't guarantee a high tech society. Just like how the future for the late Bronze Age was a 500 year period that saw a widespread loss of writing. Even moreover, progress itself is subjective. The DragonScape itself is a place where societies change in ways that usually arent in the direction of big nation states and empires. It's a place where empires and nations rise and buckle under their own weight and collapse. Much like how I feel our own history as people is.
The second is that manatechnology can be very powerful in an industrialized economy and scale. But really one of its greatest advantages is that you don't need complex logistical chains and interlocking economies of scale and industry to achieve. Manatechnology allows people to obtain a pretty high standard of living without nearly as much work as conventional technologies.
A fridge is as simple as a temperature proof room floored with stabilized ice slate, a hot shower is a simple reservoir and tap with a piece of perpetually hot "boiling bronze". Fast transportation is as simple as using a reality press to break an antigrav obelisk into existance and building a vehicle around it. Even robotics is as simple as building a mechanical body and getting a spirit to inhabit it for a time.
You can gain more while industrialized but for many dragons, especially in the unstable reality of the thalmvar, they don't need to in order to get by comfortably.
That isn't to say there aren't nations, city states or even interplanarial empires. It's just they are rare, I tend to say a lot to folks that I think of the DragonScape as an inherently anarchic universe in nature and that is reinforced by things like how the éldimor operate as species amongst other aspects. It is not a setting of complex international or planarial politics and wars, it's a setting of small rural communities and tribal politics. Even in the thalmvar while the technology has changed, that still remains!
Is this canonical to The Long Hike?
Well it's in the same universe and same timeline! Just separated from Imuas story by almost 28,000 years (on the earthen planar) So really quite far outside of the context in which Imua would live her life! But who knows? The afterlife is canonically a randomized reincarnation so it could be possible that a version of Imua could reincarnate as a Thalmvaric drek or orm!
But really while TLH and this story are on the same timeline, they're so far apart from eachother that the rules will look a bit different. Same basics! But very distant!
Let me know if you got questions
Reality is, like with the Awakening period the lore can be quite expansive and its hard to know where to start with answering a question unless someone asks one! so if you got a question, feel free to ask! Happy to expand in more detail about things as specified
Be well!
So there was some confusion about the first page of this comic which is totally fair as it takes place in the thalmvar which, while a part of the setting I've built up over the past 2 years I've only scarcely talked about on the discord and barely here! There are a few drawings in the Gallery that talk about the Thalmvar, Celestial Ships , Artifices, etc. But time for some context me thinks!
History of the Timeline in about a few paragraphs
This is going to generalize a lot as the entire timeline is rather complicated, and probably best not all spilled here to explain what the Thalmvar is!
Of course the timeline never really stops with Imua and the Long Hike, if anything Imuas story takes place in the transition between the early awakening (when the 1st generation is around to build and live in the first iterations of draconic society). But even the period Imua lives in, known as the Awakening period will far outlast her, ending around 150 years Post Awakening (PA)
Really the timeline keeps going, to keep things short we're going to simply sum up the first 10,000 years. Which is a long set of ages in which bronze metallurgy becomes a generally dominant technology, though not universal. Where several empires and states rise and inevitably collapse, and where slowly different iterations on manatechnology develop. Eventually at the end of those 10,000 years the last of the Sivilão would finally fall under the first, truly stable and long lasting nation states, powered by industrialized manatechnologies and urbanized, intensive insect farming peoples.
This would usher in what is known as the draconic golden age, a 4000 year long period of generally stable existence, and something in which much of the technologies that would define the rest of the timeline would proliferate. This period was simply, a golden age! Between the various rural tribes and communities and urbanized states and nations it was generally a peaceful time, not entirely mind you! but peaceful enough. The proliferation of manatechnology also would go on to achieve some rather fantastical things that for now I will save for more specific rambles or lore entries. This is also where some of the rotted remnants of the thalmvar would see their birth, like the Priests of Syrinx.
However these golden age societies would slowly rot or collapse
Gradually, case by case over millennia, the industrialization of the american plana specifically would take it's toll, putting increased environmental and economic strain on various states. Some would collapse outright into non state societies, and others would descend into more totalitarian, extremist militant states. Closer to the end of these thousands of years of gradual rot many of these more totalitarian states would swallow up most others, forming a series of large, draconic blocks in the Americas mainly. These draconic blocks, as well as the societies before them long understood that humanity was on the outside of their realm as, frankly, interactions with humanity would continue between the Awakening and Thalmvaric age.
Moreover a bigotry against humans by dragons is something that is as old as GoDomer in the Awakening period and, with these increasingly massive, nationalistic blocks, ideologies of draconic supremacy would proliferate and fester.
This, at some point lost to time close to 20,000PA would explode into the universally apocalyptic event known as the Human Thalmvaric war. The Steiron (the thing broken that started this whole mess eons ago by this point) Would be broken entirely, crumbling and smashing what was left of our own reality and õndemic reality in a cataclysmic collision.
A united front of fascistic societies across the Americas themselves would poor across the destroyed, crashing boundaries with vast armadas to wipe out humanity, colonize the new planar constructed of the remaining continents of Earth and the Moon, and suck the resources of those continents dry. Though of course humanity themselves had 20,000 years to recover and prepare themselves, leading ot the establishment of Nullzones that could resist õndemic reality. Which turned what was meant to be a speed invasion into a centuries long war of protracted sieges.
Dragons from Logáu and another plana, Agõrl, would rally to fight against this American axis and would invade the Americas. Of course the scale of this war is hard to put into words, it was a war that literally shattered realities and glassed entire planar. It lasted for centuries with armies going from professional militaries at the zenith of their technological capabilities to little more than post apocalyptic raiders.
While eventually humanity was made extinct at the end of 589 years of non stop warfare and the death of trillions, the american societies that once started the war would themselves collapse entirely, leading to the death of billions more under the immense ecological collapse and distortion of the Americas. Many of these remnants, as well as survivors from Logáu, Agõrl, and the drekified remnants of humanity, would all flee into the endless skies of the Celeste that replaced our own Space, to settle in new places.
After that point the timeline becomes impossible to truly track, as a day let alone a year is going to vary plana to plana and expanse to expanse, made worse by the storms of reality disruptions that could mess with time itself outright. so when I mention "years" it would be 365 days in any of the Planar of the Earthen Expanse.
Those being Suyu (Americas) , Logáu, Agõrl, The Moon Belt, Erob (Europe, North Africa, West Eurasia, Caucuses), Alkebulán (Africa, Arabic Peninsula, Central Asia, Middle East) and Zoqon (Asia, SE Asia, the Pacific Islands). Which are all connected by the same sea known as the Great Earthen Celestial way
But of course at this point there are *millions* of planar that, over thousands of years become inhabited by both Draconic Éldimor (Drekir, Ormer, Mavõtur) as well as other species, (Pradadi, Rusqub etc.) over a universes distance. Each one of those planar are going to themselves have histories and measurements of time that are completely separate from what any single measurement of time can capture.
This is the age of the endless onward, an apocalypse that never truly ends, and an age after the end of any one time. It's the Thalmvar! Kinda the endpont of the timeline of the Dragonscape as after this point there is no way to really measure time in any way that is helpful to any particular part of the lore.
And that is the period in which This side story takes place
The Martian Expanse of Planar are a whole different set of landmasses floating in the endless skies from the Earthen planar, with very different conditions. They only formed during the Human Thalmvaric war as a consequence of the Steiron being destroyed and were only settled after the slaying of the Syrinxian Overlord by the Sovard known as the Last Warlord of Tal.
That fight would break the dominant and incredibly advanced syrinxian priests, by that point more bronze than flesh, more oil than water. Their ships would scatter across the Celeste and many of their ships would themselves wreck upon the various planar of mars in a particularly high concentration. The survivors of these ships would start anew, namely the enslaved flesh thralls the syrinxians would use to do bulk labor unbefitting beings of the age of metal. As such the Martian planar can actually pull a lot of history from their Syrinxian past just as those old immortal automatons can serve as stark, crazed reminders corroding away deep in their titanic ruins.
So the drekir in this story, almost 8000 earthen planarial years after the war (as if that matters by that point) are some of those descendants.
There are a lot of other things to cover, but I did want to answer some questions in a more detailed way that were brought up in the comment of page 1
Why are these communities so "low tech" in spite of it being so far in the timeline?
I think there are a few answers
The first is simply that being in the future doesn't guarantee a high tech society. Just like how the future for the late Bronze Age was a 500 year period that saw a widespread loss of writing. Even moreover, progress itself is subjective. The DragonScape itself is a place where societies change in ways that usually arent in the direction of big nation states and empires. It's a place where empires and nations rise and buckle under their own weight and collapse. Much like how I feel our own history as people is.
The second is that manatechnology can be very powerful in an industrialized economy and scale. But really one of its greatest advantages is that you don't need complex logistical chains and interlocking economies of scale and industry to achieve. Manatechnology allows people to obtain a pretty high standard of living without nearly as much work as conventional technologies.
A fridge is as simple as a temperature proof room floored with stabilized ice slate, a hot shower is a simple reservoir and tap with a piece of perpetually hot "boiling bronze". Fast transportation is as simple as using a reality press to break an antigrav obelisk into existance and building a vehicle around it. Even robotics is as simple as building a mechanical body and getting a spirit to inhabit it for a time.
You can gain more while industrialized but for many dragons, especially in the unstable reality of the thalmvar, they don't need to in order to get by comfortably.
That isn't to say there aren't nations, city states or even interplanarial empires. It's just they are rare, I tend to say a lot to folks that I think of the DragonScape as an inherently anarchic universe in nature and that is reinforced by things like how the éldimor operate as species amongst other aspects. It is not a setting of complex international or planarial politics and wars, it's a setting of small rural communities and tribal politics. Even in the thalmvar while the technology has changed, that still remains!
Is this canonical to The Long Hike?
Well it's in the same universe and same timeline! Just separated from Imuas story by almost 28,000 years (on the earthen planar) So really quite far outside of the context in which Imua would live her life! But who knows? The afterlife is canonically a randomized reincarnation so it could be possible that a version of Imua could reincarnate as a Thalmvaric drek or orm!
But really while TLH and this story are on the same timeline, they're so far apart from eachother that the rules will look a bit different. Same basics! But very distant!
Let me know if you got questions
Reality is, like with the Awakening period the lore can be quite expansive and its hard to know where to start with answering a question unless someone asks one! so if you got a question, feel free to ask! Happy to expand in more detail about things as specified
Be well!
Really enjoyable read btw!
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/57726581/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/58082201/
Here are two drawings (top one on the artifice dump) that are more of that classic martian landscape. Extremely dry deserts. Mining glaciers for water in some cases even.
Planar usually do have unique atmospheres... but the celeste itself has breathable air in many places, so technically space also has several "atmospheres". But weather and larger patterns tend to be dictated by the celestial currents as much as the local atmosphere.
We can rebuild her - stronger, faster, bronzer! And her reign shall usher in a new Golden Age - one which will never end! (...because it's stuck in a weird time loop.)